Apologist for the CIA were out in full force since our last episode. We’ve clipped their labored justifications & break them down point by point. Plus the critical president Obama is silently setting for future administrations.

It’s been a bad week for Russia & our local correspondent discusses the tragic events in Sydney Australia, then we wrap the show with a little good news.

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— Show Notes —

CIA Torture Report

‘Rectal Hydration’: Inside the CIA’s Interrogation of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed

Along with the waterboarding, Mohammed was subjected to days of standing sleep deprivation, slapping and “stress positions,” the report says. And it says that several times he underwent an emergency medical procedure known as “rectal rehydration,” or proctolysis

The report matter-of-factly notes that such** treatment was “medically unnecessary” for Mohammed**, whom it describes as having been doused with, submerged in or force-fed water hundreds of times. After one session, the medical officer present reported that Mohammed’s gastric contents were “so diluted by water” that Mohammed was in danger of water intoxication. The medical officer later wrote that “in the new technique we are basically doing a series of near drownings.”

• Is rectal feeding an actual modern medical practice?

**”It’s almost never done,” **he wrote to the NewsHour in an email. “There are so many easier and more effective ways to hydrate or feed a patient.”

Thomas Burke, an emergency doctor at Massachusetts General Hospital who teaches at Harvard Medical School echoed that in an interview with the Washington Post.

“For all practical purposes, it’s never used,” Burke said. “No one in the United States is hydrating anybody through their rectum. Nobody is feeding anybody through their rectum. … That’s not a normal practice.”

• Fact Check: CIA’s Use of Rectal Rehydration, Feeding Not Medical Procedures – Press Releases – News Room – United States Senator Dianne Feinstein

Contrary to some claims, this is not a medical procedure, nor was it ever approved by the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel as an authorized interrogation technique. On December 10, 2014, the New York-based Physicians for Human Rights stated that “Contrary to the CIA’s assertions, there is no clinical indication to use rectal rehydration and feeding over oral or intravenous administration of fluids and nutrients.”

Dick Cheney’s Tortured Appearance On ‘Meet The Press’ Should Be His Public Swan Song

Torture is “an American citizen on his cellphone making a last call to his four young daughters shortly before he burns to death in the upper levels of the Trade Center in New York on 9/11.”

Cheney would be right were he to pose this as an example rather than the defining metric when seeking to determine an act of torture. The horrendous, unthinkable experience referred to by Cheney is, unquestionably, one example of inflicting torture—and a pretty good example of horrific torture at that—but hardly the sole method that Cheney insisted on pretending to be the case.

Yet, each time Cheney was asked for a more realistic and more encompassing definition of torture that would rationally go beyond any one particular example, he continuously returned to the experiences of our lost countrymen on 9-11. This seemed, in the mind of Dick Cheney, to be the only standard to be applied when determining if our interrogation methods may have exceeded the legal bounds imposed by the Geneva Convention for the treatment of detainees.

At a point, it became more than clear that Cheney had pre-planned this “non-answer” for his appearance, thinking it to be very clever.

By pretending that only a horrible infliction of agony similar to what was heaped on the victims of 9-11 would rise to a level that could be termed torture, the Vice-President was simply sending a coded message to his supporters to remind them that, given what the bad guys did to us, there was nothing too horrible that we could do to them—Geneva Convention be damned.

• The 11 Most Psychotic Things Dick Cheney Said About Torture on Meet the Press | The Daily Banter

U.S. Sen. Rockefeller helps release CIA report; torture practice

On Dec. 8, the outgoing senator spoke on the floor after the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence released the Executive Summary of its Study on the CIA’s Detention and Interrogation Program. The redacted summary was released after the Intelligence Committee voted in April 2014 to declassify the summary and after negotiations among the Committee, the White House, and the CIA.

News

Sony Just Canceled The Pre mire Of ‘The Interview’

Sony Pictures has decided to cancel the Dec. 25 release of “The Interview” after major theaters said they wouldn’t screen the movie.

“We have decided not to move forward with the planned December 25 theatrical release of ‘The Interview,'” the company said in a statement.

Sony dropped its plan to release the film after the four largest theater chains in the United States — Regal Entertainment, AMC Theaters, Cinemark and Carmike Cinemas — and several smaller chains said they would not show the film. The cancellations virtually killed “The Interview” as a theatrical enterprise, at least in the near term, one of the first known instances of a threat from another nation pre-empting the release of a movie.

• Seth Rogen and James Franco Cancel All Media Appearances for ‘The Interview’

The duo has withdrawn from previously scheduled press appearances, including Rogen’s Thursday appearance on “Late Night with Seth Meyers” and an interview with both of them on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” on Wednesday, leading up to “The Interview’s” Christmas Day release. They were also booked for an appearance on Buzzfeed Brews in New York on Tuesday.

U.S. Links North Korea to Sony Hacking

American intelligence officials have concluded that the North Korean government was “centrally involved” in the recent attacks on Sony Pictures’s computers, a determination reached just as Sony on Wednesday canceled its release of the comedy, which is based on a plot to assassinate Kim Jong-un, the North Korean leader.

Senior administration officials, who would not speak on the record about the intelligence findings, said the White House was still debating whether to publicly accuse North Korea of what amounts to a cyberterrorism campaign.

Kerry speaks of lifting Russia sanctions if Putin makes the right decisions

Russia has made constructive moves in recent days towards reducing tensions in Ukraine, US Secretary of State John Kerry said yesterday (16 December), and he raised the possibility that Washington could lift sanctions if Moscow keeps taking positive steps.

Speaking in London, Kerry said the United States and Europe could lift sanctions within days or weeks if President Vladimir Putin keeps taking steps to ease tensions and lives up to commitments under ceasefire accords to end the Ukraine conflict.

—

“These sanctions could be lifted in a matter of weeks or days, depending on the choices that President Putin takes,” Kerry told reporters.

“Their sole purpose here is to restore the international norm with respect to behavior between nations,” to ensure respect for borders, sovereignty and rights, he said.

Russia imposes steep interest rate hike as ruble plummets

The fear was sparked by the plummeting ruble, which has dropped 17 percent against the dollar in two days despite a dead-of-night decision Tuesday by the Russian central bank to impose a steep interest-rate hike to stem the currency losses.

GOP rep attempted late bid to kill spy bill | TheHill

One of the biggest thorns in the side of the country’s intelligence agencies attempted to mount an eleventh hour bid to kill the spy agencies’ funding bill on Wednesday.

Rep. Justin Amash (R-Mich.) wrote on Facebook that the intelligence authorization bill that easily passed through the House contained “one of the most egregious sections of law I’ve encountered during my time as a representative.”

“It grants the executive branch virtually unlimited access to the communications of every American,” explained Amash, who has a record of skepticism toward the National Security Agency and other agencies. Last year, he nearly succeeded in an attempt to end the NSA’s controversial phone records program.

That type of collection is currently allowed under an executive order that dates back to former President Reagan, but the new stamp of approval from Congress was troubling, Amash said. Limits on the government’s ability to retain information in the provision did not satisfy the Michigan Republican.

Despite Amash’s late attempt,** the bill easily passed, 325-100**.

The bill passed the Senate earlier this week and is now on its way to President Obama.

Bush, Cheney, Hayden, Rodriguez & Yoo on Sunday talk shows. It's not where they should be appearing. #TortureReport pic.twitter.com/mG7Ze4XbwJ

— Col. Morris Davis (@ColMorrisDavis) December 14, 2014

• Russia invites North Korea leader for May visit: paper | Reuters

Russia has invited North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to attend a May ceremony marking the end of World War Two, in what would be Kim’s first foreign visit since taking the helm of the reclusive state in 2011, Japan’s Asahi Shimbun daily said on Wednesday.

• First ground clash between ISIS and US forces in Iraq

An American force has fought its actual first battle against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria “ISIS” organization during a counter-attack that was carried out by tribal forces

and other force of the Iraqi army near Ein al-Asad base, west of Anbar, in an attempt to remove them from the base of which includes about 100 US adviser in it.

A field commander of the Iraqi Army in Anbar province, said that “the US force equipped with light and medium weapons, supported by fighter force model” F-18 “, was able to inflict casualties against fighters of ISIS organization, and forced them to retreat from the al-Dolab area, which lies 10 kilometers from Ain al-Assad base .

US troops have entered with its Iraqi partner, according to Colonel , Salam Nazim in line against ISIS elements and clashed with them for more than two hours, to succeed in removing them from al-Dolab area, and causing losses in their ranks, at a time American fighter jets directed several strikes focused on ISIS gatherings that silenced their heavy sources of fire. “He points out that the clashes took place between 1 a.m. and 3 a.m. on Sunday night.

• ISIS using bombs containing live SCORPIONS in effort to spread panic

Canisters packed with poisonous varieties of scorpion are being blasted into towns and villages, which explode on impact – scattering the scorpions and causing panic among the innocent local population.

High Note

Tacoma to close medical marijuana collectives

All medical marijuana collectives in Tacoma could soon have to shut down.

City leaders addressed plans last week to send out letters to cease operations as early as January, as they are not licensed under Initiative 502. Both business owners and patients are now expressing concerns.

Medical marijuana wins but marijuana legalization loses in congressional spending deal

The spending bill passed by Congress on December 14 includes a provision that prevents the Department of Justice, including the Drug Enforcement Administration, from interfering with states’ medical marijuana laws.
The provision applies to 32 states and Washington, DC, which allow the use of marijuana or a marijuana-based compound, such as the non-psychoactive CBD, for medical purposes.

Teen marijuana use falls as more states legalize – The Washington Post

Teen alcohol and drug use — including marijuana use — was down across the board in 2014.

That’s the big take-home from the 2014 Monitoring the Future study by the University of Michigan and the National Institutes on Drug Abuse, which was released Tuesday morning. The MTF is an annual survey of 40,000 8th-graders, 10th-graders and 12th-graders. It’s notable both for its size and for the fact that it was conducted this past spring, in the midst of a nationwide conversation about drug reform in the run-up to the midterm elections

The post Tortured Logic | Unfilter 127 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

After a year long battle the Executive Summary of the CIA Torture report is out. This week we document the reaction & bring you the most relevant information on this story we’ve been following for nearly a year.

Plus why the 2015 NDAA is being totally ignored, protests in London & we respond to some lovingly critical listener feedback.

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— Show Notes —

CIA Torture Report

16 Horrifying Excerpts From the Torture Report That the CIA Doesn’t Want You to See – Mic

One prisoner froze to death after being left to sleep, without pants, on a cold concrete floor. Another was forced to stand in a “stress position” on broken bones. CIA officers threatened to sexually assault the wife of one detainee, and cut the throat of another prisoner’s mother.

And it gets worse.

After months of negotiations with the White House and CIA, the Senate Intelligence Committee has released a redacted summary of its original 6,300-page report on the “enhanced interrogation techniques” carried out by George W. Bush-era intelligence agents on suspected terrorists.

Through a process known as “extraordinary rendition,” detainees were taken to prisons in allied nations — so-called CIA “black sites” — where American officers sought to extract information, often by using brutal and repugnant tactics banned by international law. The secret program began sometime in the weeks after 9/11; President Barack Obama’s executive order formally ended it Jan. 22, 2009.

Tuesday’s “executive summary” is approximately 500 pages, with certain key details — names and locations — blacked out by CIA censors. The report is a dense and at times confounding read. CIA officials did their best to obscure the names of the 54 countries that partnered with U.S. intelligence to host the prisons. In 2005, 92 videotapes showing hundreds of hours of extreme interrogations were destroyed. Names of individual agents have also been wiped from the record, either to protect their safety or preserve their careers.

George W. Bush and Dick Cheney must have known about the CIA’s torture of detainees: The Senate Intelligence report suggests they wanted plausible deniability.

The annals of history suggest the latter, and in a few passages, so does the report. A big lesson of the Church Committee—Sen. Frank Church’s mid-1970s probe into black-bag jobs, assassination plots, coup attempts, and other acts of CIA malfeasance since the agency’s origins—is that, in nearly every instance, there was no “rogue elephant” at Langley. Rather, the presidents in office at the time knew what was going on, at least in broad, strategic terms—and their CIA henchmen knew to give the leader of the free world a wide berth of “plausible deniability” in case they got caught.

As the Church reports and books such as Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes clearly show, President Dwight Eisenhower knew about and approved the CIA’s plot to overthrow Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddeq. President John F. Kennedy knew about, and approved, the plots to murder Cuba’s Fidel Castro; in fact, his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy formed a top secret “Special Group” in the White House to oversee the operation. President Lyndon B. Johnson (who, after he left office, told a reporter that Kennedy had been running “a damn Murder Inc. in the Caribbean”) carried on the enterprise elsewhere in Latin America.

Bush White House Was Worried Colin Powell Would ‘Blow His Stack’ If Briefed on Torture – Bloomberg Politics

The Bush White House didn’t brief then-Secretary of State Colin Powell about the specifics of the CIA’s interrogation program until September 2003 because it was worried Powell would “blow his stack” if he found out what was going on, according to the report released Tuesday by the Senate Intelligence Committee.

According to a July 2003 email, the official reason the National Security Council didn’t have a full briefing on the program at that time was to “avoid press disclosures.” But unofficially, the email said, “it is clear to us from some of the runup meetings we had with [White House] counsel that the [White House] is extremely concerned [Secretary of State] Powell would blow his stack if he were to be briefed on what’s been going on.”

The Most Gruesome Moments in the CIA ‘Torture Report’ – The Daily Beast

Interrogations that lasted for days on end. Detainees forced to stand on broken legs, or go 180 hours in a row without sleep. A prison so cold, one suspect essentially froze to death. The Senate Intelligence Committee is finally releasing its review of the CIA’s detention and interrogation programs. And it is brutal.

Off the Grid: Nine CIA ‘Black Sites’ Where Detainees Were Tortured – The Intercept

Margot Williams, The Intercept‘s research editor for investigations, compiled the locations and, with research editor Josh Begley, placed them on the map.

The report identifies the locations of the CIA black sites by color codes and redacts the country names, but previous reports by NGOs, European agencies, media reports and detainee statements can identify most of the locations. The sites are located in Afghanistan, Lithuania, Romania, Poland, Thailand, and a secret site on the Guantanamo Naval Base, known as Strawberry Fields, — “forever.”

WASHINGTON: CIA acknowledges problems but says tactics helped thwart attacks | National News | The State

“While we made mistakes, the record does not support the study’s inference that the agency systematically and intentionally misled each of these audiences on the effectiveness of the program,” the statement said.

CIA lied to the public and John Brennan must quit, says outgoing senator in fiery speech | US news | The Guardian

Mark Udall, who lost his seat in Colorado last month, said the still-classified portions of the Senate report on CIA torture, represented a ‘smoking gun’

Once Senate investigators noticed about 1000 documents mysteriously disappearing from the firewalled network it shared with the CIA, they took portions of a printed copy of the Panetta review back to the Senate, prompting allegations – later scotched by the CIA Inspector General – that the Senate inappropriately accessed classified CIA information.

But the discrepancy between the Panetta Review’s apparent criticism of torture and a response offered by the CIA in 2013, and released Tuesday, prompted the committee to fear the CIA, Udall said, “knowingly provided inaccurate information to the committee in the present day, which is a serious offense and a deeply troubling matter for the committee, the Congress, the White House and our country.”

“The Panetta review corroborates many of the significant findings of the committee’s study. Moreover, the Panetta review frankly acknowledges significant problems and errors made in the CIA’s detention and interrogation program,” Udall continued.

“The CIA continued not only to defend the program and deny any wrongdoing, but also to deny its own conclusions to the contrary in the Panetta review.” Sections of the review, Udall said, remain in the committee’s hands, but not the whole document, which he called on the CIA to turn over.

The CIA declined to respond to Udall directly and referred instead to the 2013-era response to the committee.

Expressing disappointment in Obama and current White House chief of staff Denis McDonough, Udall said that White House complicity in obscuring the CIA’s torture record jeopardized Obama’s anti-torture stance and refuted Obama’s pledge to run a transparent administration.

“Actions speak louder than words,” Udall said.

Ex-CIA Clandestine Service chief Jose Rodriguez defends interrogation techniques – CBS News

As for the interrogation tapes Rodriguez ordered to have destroyed, Rodriguez said he did it to protect the identity of the officers who worked for him and “whose faces were all over those tapes.”

“I knew the tapes would leak someday, and I feared retribution from al Qaeda for my people,” Rodriguez said.

​CIA paid 2 torture experts $81mn for their ‘unique expertise’ — RT USA

In all, the Senate report suggests that the two contractors who
created the torture program were paid more than $80 million in
taxpayer money for their work with the CIA. The government has
agreed to cover upwards of $5 million in additional indemnity
costs for the two men if they incur legal costs for their role as
interrogation program architects through 2021, and the executive
summary released on Tuesday after nearly four years of work
suggests the pair has already received $1.1 million due to legal
fees largely involving the creation of the Senate Committee’s
report.

For CIA, Truth about Torture Was an Existential Threat – The Intercept

The executive summary of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s grindingly exhaustive torture report released Tuesday indelibly captures CIA officials turning their back on human decency, and it all starts with a “novel” legal defense floated in November 2001 by CIA lawyers — and arguably prompted by their White House masters, lurking offstage — that the “CIA could argue that the torture was necessary to prevent imminent, significant, physical harm to persons, where there is no other available means to prevent the harm.”

Specifically, they pointed out: “states may be very unwilling to call the U.S. to task for torture when it resulted in saving thousands of lives.”

There are no indications the CIA is ready to turn things around, of course. CIA Director John Brennan went to extraordinary lengths to stymie and discredit the investigation. And now, he is rebuffing its conclusions.

Brennan’s statement Tuesday acknowledged “shortcomings” and “mistakes,” but reasserted “that interrogations of detainees on whom [enhanced interrogation techniques] EITs were used did produce intelligence that helped thwart attack plans, capture terrorists, and save lives.” He angrily rejected the report’s “inference that the Agency systematically and intentionally misled” Congress, the Executive Branch, and the public.”

Other reports and works of journalism have clearly identified Vice President Dick Cheney as the prime mover in creating a torture regime that extended not just to the black sites, but to Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo and elsewhere. Cheney was no victim of misinformation; he was its architect.

George W. Bush might have remained unfamiliar with the details until as late as 2006 — “According to CIA records, when briefed in April 2006, the president expressed discomfort with the ‘image of a detainee, chained to the ceiling, clothed in a diaper, and forced to go to the bathroom on himself’.” But he must have had some idea what Cheney and others were up to in the basement.

A 2005 proposal from Senator Carl Levin to establish an independent commission to investigate detainee abuse, for instance, “resulted in concern at the CIA that such a commission would lead to the discovery of videotapes documenting CIA interrogations.” As a result, the CIA destroyed them.

The summary devotes a 37-page appendix on “Inaccurate CIA Testimony” by former CIA Director Michael Hayden in one Senate Intelligence Committee hearing alone.

At the April 12, 2007, hearing, Director Hayden verbally provided extensive inaccurate information on, among other topics: (1) the interrogation of Abu Zubaydah, (2) the application of Department of Defense survival school practices to the program, (3) detainees’ counter interrogation training, (4) the backgrounds of CIA interrogators, (5) the role of other members of the interrogation teams, (6) the number of CIA detainees and their intelligence production, (7) the role of CIA detainee reporting in the captures of terrorist suspects, (8) the interrogation process, (9) the use of detainee reporting, (10) the purported relationship between Islam and the need to use the CIA’s enhanced interrogation techniques, (11) threats against detainees’ families, (12) the punching and kicking of detainees, (13) detainee hygiene, (14) denial of medical care, (15) dietary manipulation, (16) the use of waterboarding and its effectiveness, and (17) the injury and death of detainees.

Hayden told the Senate Intelligence committee: “Punches and kicks are not authorized and have never been employed.” But interviews conducted for two CIA internal reviews described the treatment of Gul Rahman, the detainee was died at the Salt Pit. One witness stated:

[T]here were approximately five CIA officers from the renditions team… they opened the door of Rahman’s cell and rushed in screaming and yelling for him to “getdown.” They dragged him outside, cut off his clothes and secured him with Mylar tape. They covered his head with a hood and ran him up and down a long corridor adjacent to his cell. They slapped him and punched him several times… a couple of times the punches were forceful. As they ran him along the corridor, a couple of times he fell and they dragged him through the dirt (the floor outside of the cells is dirt). Rahman did acquire a number of abrasions on his face, legs, and hands, but nothing that required medical attention. (This may account for the abrasions found on Rahman’s body after his death. Rahman had a number of surface abrasions on his shoulders, pelvis, arms, legs, and face.)

Hayden also lied to Congress about how many detainees were held. At first, the CIA’s lowball numbers were, amazingly enough, just a mistake

Internal CIA documents indicate that inadequate record keeping made it impossible for the CIA to determine how many individuals it had detained. In December 2003, a CIA Station overseeing CIA detention operations in Country [REDACTED] informed CIA Headquarters that it had made the “unsettling discovery” that the CIA was “holding a number of detainees about whom” it knew “very little.”

But five years later, when a CIA officer informed Hayden that the correct number was 112 or more, the officer sent himself an email to memorialize the conversation: “DCIA instructed me to keep the detainee number at 98 — pick whatever date i [sic] needed to make that happen but the number is 98.”

Dianne Feinstein leaving intelligence job amid clash on tactics report – LA Times

But as she prepares to turn over the committee’s gavel next month to Sen. Richard M. Burr (R-N.C.), Feinstein’s tenure as chairwoman is closing amid an acrimonious fight over a project that pits her against the CIA. Her staff has completed a 6,000-page report evaluating and criticizing the agency’s use during the George W. Bush years of harsh interrogation tactics, which President Obama and others have labeled as torture.

Since April, Feinstein has been fighting with the CIA and the White House to make public as much as possible of the report’s 480-page executive summary.

• McCain makes passionate defense for torture report’s release – CNN.com

Republican Sen. John McCain broke with members of his party Tuesday, lauding the release of the Senate Intelligence Committee’s report on torture and decrying the use of torture as having “stained our national honor” and doing “much harm and little practical good.”

2003 George W. Bush Statement on Torture

In 2003, _George W. Bush’s_included the following language:.

The United States is committed to the world-wide elimination of torture and we are leading this fight by example. I call on all governments to join with the United States and the community of law-abiding nations in prohibiting, investigating, and prosecuting all acts of torture and in undertaking to prevent other cruel and unusual punishment. I call on all nations to speak out against torture in all its forms and to make ending torture an essential part of their diplomacy.

News

Protests Continue

• 19 arrested in 4th night of California protests – Yahoo News

• Berkeley protesters march for fourth night, briefly block freeway

• U.S. chokehold protesters ‘die-in’, issue demands in NY | Reuters

• Protesters plan ‘Week of Outrage’ – CNN.com

‘Die-in’ for Eric Garner: Hundreds shut down mall, block streets in London protest

A crowd of people stormed a London mall, blockaded roads, and shouted slogans in an anti-police brutality demonstration against a Staten Island grand jury’s decision not to indict police officer Daniel Pantaleo for Eric Garner’s death on December 4.

Sneak Attack? Congress Slips Controversial Measures into Spending Bil

Congress snuck in two measures to its must-pass spending bill — all without formal debate. The first was a rider that essentially overturns the District of Columbia’s ballot initiative legalizing marijuana, which passed by a more than 2-to-1 margin last month.

The second measure Congress snuck into the spending the bill will be more galling to some, because it amounts to a pay raise for the two unpopular political parties: It raises the $32,400 maximum that donors could give the Democratic National Committee or Republican National Committee to a whopping $324,000 per year, gutting what’s left of the McCain-Feingold campaign-finance law. The Washington Post says this was inserted on page 1,599 of a 1,603-page bill (!!!). These two measures — and probably more like them — will become law because they were jammed into a must-pass spending bill to keep the government open.

21st Century Cold War Has Began; US House Of Reps Passes Resolution 758 Even As US Tells Russia To Stop Self-isolation – International Business Times

The United States has effectively pushed the button of the 21st century Cold War era. On Thursday, its House of Representatives passed Resolution 758, a decree telling the U.S., Europe and its’ allies to “aggressively keep the pressure” on Russia and its President Vladimir Putin until such measures “change his behaviour.”

• House Chooses New Cold War With Russia
• House Resolution 758: Russia has been warned | Russia Direct
• Russian Media Warns Of World War 3 Over U.S. Resolution 758, Canada Offers Military Aid To Ukraine | The Inquisitr News

Emergency Unemployment Compensation Extension Act of 2014 (H.R. 3979) – GovTrack.us

On December 4, 2014, the House used the bill again as the vehicle for passage of a third bill, by replacing its text completely and turning it into the bill it is now, the Carl Levin and Howard P. “Buck” McKeon National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2015.

Feedback

• You ask for feedback, I’ve got some. : unfilter

A friend of mine and I were discussing Unfilter (both of us are supporters) and here are some thoughts I have after our discussion. To be clear, my thoughts, not necessarily his. He can chime in here if he likes.

• Digitize the red book? : unfilter

Hey, I think it would be really great if you guys could digitize the Red book and make it searchable. You’re always referencing it and I think a lot of people would also enjoy being able to see what is in it so far and what has and hasn’t come true.

The post CIA Torture Exposed | Unfilter 126 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Part two of Unfilter’s coverage of the return to Iraq, in this episode we examine how sending arms to the Syrian rebels empowered ISIS and their recent overtaking of a major Iraq oil facility.

Plus the Obama administration releases their memo authorizing them to assassinate American citizens with drones, but it’s what’s been redacted that counts, Greenwald hints new NSA revelations and much more!

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— Show Notes —

The Slow Death of Privacy

Microsoft’s Top Lawyer Calls On Congress To End The NSA’s “Unfettered Bulk Collection Of Data”

Smith called on Congress to “close the door on unfettered bulk collection of data” and argued for reform of the “role and nature and proceedings” of the FISA court and for the geographic limiting of warrants issued by the U.S.

Glenn Greenwald: ‘What I Tell People Who Say They Don’t Care About Their Privacy

Glenn Greenwald said people have told him over and over that government surveillance does not concern them.

“Those people don’t believe what they’re saying,” he told a sold-out audience last week at the Nourse Theater in San Francisco.

To illustrate this, every time someone would come up to Greenwald and say they didn’t mind people knowing what they were doing because they had nothing to hide, he would proceed with the same two steps: first, by giving them his email address and then by asking them to send him all their email and social media passwords — just so he could have a look.

Glenn Greenwald: ‘What I Tell People Who Say They Don’t Care About Their Privacy’ | Alternet

U.S. Court Releases Obama Administration’s ‘Drone Memo’ : The Two-Way

The judge admitted that al-Awlaki had a “plausible” case over violations of his due process but as part of the judiciary she could not step into decisions about warmaking, national security and foreign relations.

Can the President Strike an American Anywhere in the World?: Drone Memo Raises Troubling Questions

On September 30, cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan were killed in a drone strike in Yemen. Two weeks later, another U.S. drone killed Anwar’s 16-year-old son, Abdulrahman, in Yemen. A month later, a U.S. citizen named Jude Kenan Mohammad was killed in Pakistan. For the past two-and-a-half years, the Obama administration has refused to release its legal rationale for killing American citizens overseas. That changed on Monday when a federal court released a heavily redacted 41-page memo. It concludes the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force gave the U.S. government the authority to target Anwar al-Awlaki, who the Obama administration claims had joined al-Qaeda.

cryptome.org counting total Snowden doc releases: 42 Years for Snowden Docs Release, Free All Now

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Back in Iraq

To contain ISIS, think Iraq — but also think Syria

The conflict in Iraq will not be settled any time soon. Although the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, or ISIS, and its Sunni allies may not be about to march on Baghdad, they are continuing to expand their control over much of northern and western Iraq. The military and diplomatic steps that President Obama has ordered reflect the U.S. need to prevent ISIS from embedding itself in more of Iraq. Whether they will work, however, is another matter.

Not Worth It: Huge Majority Regret Iraq War, Exclusive Poll Shows

Just 22 percent now believe the 2003 war effort was worthwhile.

Weed Wackers:

• The Pueblo Chieftain | Washington prepares for marijuana retail sales

During Tuesday’s news conference, officials with the state Liquor Control Board, which has been overseeing the implementation of the state’s recreational marijuana law, said that they are poised to adopt emergency rules Wednesday to do three things concerning edible marijuana: require all marijuana-infused products to be labeled clearly as containing marijuana; require all products to be scored in such a way that a serving size is easily identified by the consumer; and requiring marijuana-infused products to be approved by the board before sale.

• FDA To Evaluate Marijuana For Potential Reclassification As Less Dangerous Drug

“FDA conducts for Health and Human Services a scientific and medical analysis of the drug under consideration, which is currently ongoing,” Ventura said. “HHS then recommends to DEA that the drug be placed in a given schedule. DEA considers HHS’ analysis, conducts its own assessment, and makes a final scheduling proposal in the form of a proposed rule.”

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The post Back in Iraq II | Unfilter 103 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

We update you on several big stories we’ve been following this week in this causal supporter show style edition of Unfilter. Plus our thoughts on Mozilla’s CEO stepping down, XP coming to an end, and more!

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— Show Notes —

• Republic, Lost: How Money Corrupts Congress–and a Plan to Stop It: Lawrence Lessig

NSA is Crazy

Edward Snowden: US government spied on human rights workers

The US has spied on the staff of prominent human rights organisations, Edward Snowden has told the Council of Europe in Strasbourg, Europe’s top human rights body.

Giving evidence via a videolink from Moscow, Snowden said the National Security Agency – for which he worked as a contractor – had deliberately snooped on bodies like Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch.

Snowden, meanwhile, dismissed NSA claims that he had swiped as many as 1.7m documents from the agency’s servers in an interview with Vanity Fair.

He described the number released by investigators as “simply a scare number based on an intentionally crude metric: everything that I ever digitally interacted with in my career.”
He added: “Look at the language officials use in sworn testimony about these records: ‘could have,’ ‘may have,’ ‘potentially.’ They’re prevaricating. Every single one of those officials knows I don’t have 1.7m files, but what are they going to say? What senior official is going to go in front of Congress and say, ‘We have no idea what he has, because the NSA’s auditing of systems holding hundreds of millions of Americans’ data is so negligent that any high-school dropout can walk out the door with it’?”

In the Vanity Fair interview the whistleblower said he paid the bill in the Mira Hotel using his own credit card because he wanted to demonstrate he was not working for a foreign intelligence agency. “My hope was that avoiding ambiguity would prevent spy accusations and create more room for reasonable debate,” he told the magazine. “Unfortunately, a few of the less responsible members of Congress embraced the spy charges for political reasons, as they still do to this day.”

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CIA Torture Scandal Marches On

Fury at attack on Dianne Feinstein by ex-CIA director Michael Hayden

The latest row broke on Sunday when Hayden, a former NSA and CIA director, said the Senate intelligence committee’s landmark report on torture and coercive interrogations was not objective because Feinstein, a California Democrat, was too “emotional”.

Ron Wyden, a member of the Senate intelligence committee, said on Monday that Michael Hayden’s attack on Feinstein, the committee chairperson, was “outrageous” and fitted a pattern of “misleading” the American public.

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The post Narrative of Negligence | Unfilter 92 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Grab the popcorn it’s special occasion and were throwing out the playbook and doing it live. Unfilter is bringing you play-by-play coverage of Obama’s 2014 Station of the Union.

Plus we’ll fact checking the talking points, take your live calls, our follow up, and much much more.

On this week’s episode of, Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

State of the Union

• Obama invites guests to State of the Union

• President Obama lauds partnership with Apple, other tech firms in ConnectED program

• The State of Obama’s Past SOTU Proposals

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NSA is Crazy:

• Angry Birds and ‘leaky’ phone apps targeted by NSA and GCHQ for user data

Exploiting phone information and location is a high-priority effort for the intelligence agencies, as terrorists and other intelligence targets make substantial use of phones in planning and carrying out their activities, for example by using phones as triggering devices in conflict zones. The NSA has cumulatively spent more than $1bn in its phone targeting efforts.

The disclosures also reveal how much the shift towards smartphone browsing could benefit spy agencies’ collection efforts.

A May 2010 NSA slide on the agency’s ‘perfect scenario’ for obtaining data from mobile apps. Photograph: Guardian

One slide from a May 2010 NSA presentation on getting data from smartphones – breathlessly titled “Golden Nugget!” – sets out the agency’s “perfect scenario”: “Target uploading photo to a social media site taken with a mobile device. What can we get?”

The question is answered in the notes to the slide: from that event alone, the agency said it could obtain a “possible image”, email selector, phone, buddy lists, and “a host of other social working data as well as location”.

• Snowden-Interview in English

Whistleblower Edward Snowden leaked the documents about US mass surveillance. He spoke about his disclosures and his life to NDR journalist Seipel in Moscow.

• Edward Snowden tells German TV that NSA is involved in industrial espionage | World news | The Guardian

“If there’s information at Siemens that’s beneficial to US national interests – even if it doesn’t have anything to do with national security – then they’ll take that information nevertheless,” Snowden said in the interview conducted in Russia, where Snowden has claimed asylum.

Snowden also told the German public broadcasting network he no longer had possession of any documents or information on NSA activities and had turned everything over to select journalists. He said he did not have any control over the publication of the information.

Top Story in the unfilter Subreddit

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The post Unfiltering the State of the Union | Unfilter 83 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

President Obama has outlined his so called reforms of America’s controversial surveillance tactics. But as expected the reforms are light on real change, and leave many of the worst policies in place and unabated. We’ll dig into the most egregious.

Plus: It’s new round of character assassination for Edward Snowden, and this time the claims are even more ridiculous. Is Snowden a double agent for the FSB? We’ll debunk.

Then it’s your feedback, our followup, and much much more.

On this week’s Unfilter.

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— Show Notes —

NSA is CRAZY

• Michael Morell joins CBS News

Michael Morell, who retired as deputy director of the CIA last summer, has joined CBS News as an intelligence, national security and counterterrorism contributor, the network announced this week.

• Obama’s proposed NSA ‘reform’ changes nothing

The Washington Post has already identified the five big takeaways from Obama’s speech:

1. US intelligence agencies will no longer hold Americans’ phone call records.

2. There will, nevertheless, be some system for those records to be accessible when required.

3. The US will no longer monitor the communications of the heads of state or government of “close friends and allies”.

4. A new panel will be created to provide additional input into the secret court that oversees the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA), including privacy specialists and other non-government folks.

5. There will be new rules to extend some of the privacy provisions applying to US citizens to foreigners, unless there’s a “compelling national security purpose”.

6. ’The USA knows that for us spying is a crime’

“The German justice system will not stand idly by if the efforts of the NSA blithely continue here,” he told Bild newspaper on Monday.

• New documents: NSA provided 2–3 daily “tips” to FBI for at least 3 years | Ars Technica

Hours after President Barack Obama finished his speech last Friday on proposed intelligence and surveillance reforms, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) declassified a number of documents from the nation’s most secretive court.

The new documents are heavily redacted orders from FISC to the FBI. These items request that the court order an entity (likely a business) to provide “tangible things” under Section 215 of the PATRIOT Act. The documents do not refer to who the target is, nor which company or organization they apply to.

“The Court understands that NSA expects that it will continue to provide on average approximately three telephone identifiers per day to the FBI,” reads a footnote in a 2007 court order (PDF) authored by FISC Judge Frederick Scullin, Jr.

• Rating Obama’s NSA Reform Plan: EFF Scorecard Explained | Electronic Frontier Foundation

We’ve put together a scorecard showing how Obama’s announcements stack up against 12 common sense fixes that should be a minimum for reforming NSA surveillance. Each necessary reform was worth 1 point, and we were willing to award partial credit for steps in the right direction. On that scale, President Obama racked up 3.5 points out of a possible 12.

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Snow Job:

• Snowden Denies Suggestions That He Was a Spy for Russia – NYTimes.com

Mr. Rogers said on the NBC News program “Meet the Press” on Sunday that Mr. Snowden should be seen not as a whistle-blower but as “a thief, who we believe had some help.”

Officials at both the N.S.A. and the F.B.I. have said their investigations have turned up no evidence that Mr. Snowden was aided by others.

• Snowden Calls Russian-Spy Story ‘Absurd’ in Exclusive Interview : The New Yorker

Speaking from Moscow, where he is a fugitive from American justice, Snowden told The New Yorker, “This ‘Russian spy’ push is absurd.”

“It’s not the smears that mystify me,” Snowden told me. “It’s that outlets report statements that the speakers themselves admit are sheer speculation.” Snowden went on to poke fun at the range of allegations that have been made against him in the media without intelligence officials providing some kind of factual basis: “ ‘We don’t know if he had help from aliens.’ ‘You know, I have serious questions about whether he really exists.’ ”

Snowden went on, “It’s just amazing that these massive media institutions don’t have any sort of editorial position on this. I mean these are pretty serious allegations, you know?” He continued, “The media has a major role to play in American society, and they’re really abdicating their responsibility to hold power to account.”

• Before Snowden, Nixon Admin Pioneered Evidence-Free ‘Russian Spy’ Smears Against Daniel Ellsberg | Techdirt

Ellsberg is commonly looked at as the quintessential whistleblower today, but shortly after he leaked the top secret Vietnam War study, the Nixon administration made a concerted effort to paint him as a Soviet spy in the press, using anonymous quotes and non-existent ‘secret’ evidence.

• Live Q&A with Edward Snowden: Thursday 23rd January, 8pm GMT, 3pm EST | Free Snowden](https://freesnowden.is/_2476.html)

Top Story in the unfilter Subreddit

• NSA collects millions of text messages daily in ‘untargeted’ global sweep

The National Security Agency has collected almost 200 million text messages a day from across the globe, using them to extract data including location, contact networks and credit card details, according to top-secret documents.

The untargeted collection and storage of SMS messages – including their contacts – is revealed in a joint investigation between the Guardian and the UK’s Channel 4 News based on material provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden.

The documents also reveal the UK spy agency GCHQ has made use of the NSA database to search the metadata of “untargeted and unwarranted” communications belonging to people in the UK.

The NSA program, codenamed Dishfire, collects “pretty much everything it can”, according to GCHQ documents, rather than merely storing the communications of existing surveillance targets.

The NSA has made extensive use of its vast text message database to extract information on people’s travel plans, contact books, financial transactions and more – including of individuals under no suspicion of illegal activity.

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The post Obama’s NSA Reform Ruse | Unfilter 82 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

Weeks after the first major NSA revelations so many questions remain, but some facts are clear. The world is a surveillance state. Now their corporate allies in crime publicly lash out to distance themselves from the scandal. The conversation is in transition and the focus is shifting from the people, to the elites.

Edward Snowden steps back into the international dialog, and commits to going on record. We’ll share the details.

Plus a look at the recent tragic shootings, our thoughts on the failed GMO labeling initiative, your feedback, and much much more.

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— Show Notes —

Shootings

• Los Angeles airport shooting reignites calls to arm the TSA

Unlike prior terrorist attempts on the country’s air travel, last
Friday’s attack at LAX by 23-year-old Paul Anthony Ciancia seemed
squarely aimed at the security agency itself. Since the shooting,
authorities have said that the gunman had walked through the
airport terminal asking bystanders if they “were TSA,” and
walking off if the answer was no. In Ciancia’s bag was also a
hand-written note critical of the government, and stating he
“wanted to kill TSA and pigs.”

• LAX shooting: Some TSA agents should be armed, union says – latimes.com

J. David Cox Sr., president of the American Federation of Government Employees, which represents 45,000 Transportation Security Administration agents, said that the “sad truth is that our TSA officers are subject to daily verbal assaults and far too frequent physical attacks while performing their security duties.”

“At this time, we feel a larger and more consistent armed presence in screening areas would be a positive step in improving security for both TSOs and the flying public,” Cox said in a statement. “The development of a new class of TSA officers with law enforcement status would be a logical approach to accomplishing this goal.”

• New Jersey mall gunman found dead hours after shooting – CNN.com

Richard Shoop’s body was found at 3:20 a.m. Tuesday in an obscure part of Westfield Garden State Plaza mall, hours after he fired at least six bullets without striking anyone in the massive shopping center.

He acted alone, authorities say.

• Los Angeles airport shooting reignites calls to arm the TSA

Currently, the agency’s 45,000 screeners are not considered law
enforcement officers. The TSA’s union, the American Federation of
Government Employees, says that a new category of armed
agents would bolster security throughout the country’s airports.

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NSA is CRAZY

• Clapper contradicts White House, says Obama was aware of spying on allies

America’s top intelligence official acknowledged Tuesday that President Obama and other senior White House officials were well aware of U.S. surveillance activities targeting leaders of friendly foreign nations

• Snowden Asks U.S. to Stop Treating Him Like a Traitor

Mr. Snowden made his appeal in a letter that was carried to Berlin by Hans-Christian Ströbele, a veteran member of the Green Party in the German Parliament. Mr. Ströbele said he and two journalists for German news outlets met with Mr. Snowden and a person described as his assistant — probably his British aide, Sarah Harrison — at an undisclosed location in or near Moscow on Thursday for almost three hours.

In the letter Snowden wrote: Yet “my government continues to treat dissent as defection, and seeks to criminalize political speech with felony charges that provide no defense,” Mr. Snowden wrote. “However, speaking the truth is not a crime. I am confident that with the support of the international community, the government of the United States will abandon this harmful behavior.”

• Snowden’s “A Manifesto for the Truth”, from this week’s issue of Der Spiegel – Posted by Cool2Man in the Subreddit

• How we know the NSA had access to internal Google and Yahoo cloud data

We do not know exactly how the NSA and GCHQ intercept the data, other than it happens on British territory. But we do know they are intercepting it from inside the Yahoo and Google private clouds, because some of what NSA and GCHQ collect is found nowhere else.

We showed some of the NSA’s briefing slides to private sector experts with detailed knowledge of the internal corporate networks of each company. In separate conversations, they agreed that the slides included samples of data structures and formats that never travel unencrypted on the public Internet.

• What Yahoo and Google did not think the NSA could see – The Washington Post

Last week The Washington Post reported that the National Security Agency is tapping into Google and Yahoo internal networks by intercepting communications from the private links between their data centers. The NSA and the office of Director of National Intelligence James R. Clapper criticized the story.

Today The Post answers some of the questions they raised in an explanatory story and offers additional evidence drawn from documents provided by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden. The documents do not tell the whole story, because our report depended in part on interviews with public and private sector sources. But these slides demonstrate that the NSA, working with the British GCHQ, intercepted information it could only have found inside the Google and Yahoo “clouds,” or private networks.

• Google’s Eric Schmidt calls NSA surveillance ‘outrageous’ | The Verge

“It’s really outrageous that the National Security Agency was looking between the Google data centers, if that’s true,” he told The Wall Street Journal’s Deborah Kan.

• Google chairman: NSA spying on our data centres ‘outrageous’ | Technology | theguardian.com

Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google, has attacked the US government for apparently breaking into the connections that link the company’s data centres around the world as “outrageous” and described other surveillance practices as “possibly illegal”.

Speaking at an event in Hong Kong, Schmidt stepped up the company’s response to revelations in the Washington Post that the National Security Agency, working with its British counterpart, GCHQ, had broken into fibre optic cables that carry the transfer of data around the world for Google and Yahoo.

“It’s really outrageous that the National Security Agency was looking between the Google data centers, if that’s true,” Schmidt told the Wall Street Journal.

“The steps that the organization was willing to do without good judgment to pursue its mission and potentially violate people’s privacy, it’s not OK.”

• More NSA Leakers Followed Snowden’s Footsteps, Whistleblower Lawyer Says

Radack, an attorney who has met with and been in communication with Snowden, said “a handful” of people in the intelligence community have come forward since this summer when several major international newspapers began writing about the NSA’s classified foreign and domestic surveillance programs – stories based on thousands of secret NSA documents allegedly stolen by Snowden, a former NSA contractor.

Oh no… GMO?

• GMO food labeling initiative failing in early returns

Early polling showed voters favored the measure. But a barrage of TV and radio spots financed by a food industry group and five biotechnology companies has helped narrow the gap.

The measure was failing 45 percent to 55 percent as the first votes were being counted Tuesday night.

• Big corporate spending pays off in Washington’s genetically modified food fight

Five corporations together contributed more than $14 million to fight the measure. Monsanto, a biotechnology company that creates genetically modified seeds among many other things, contributed $5.4 million. Dupont, a multinational science company operating in a number of markets including GMO seeds, contributed $3.9 million. Dozens of large food companies contributed through the D.C.-based Grocery Manufacturers Association, including: PepsiCo, which contributed $2.4 million, and Nestle and Coca-Cola, each of which contributed $1.5 million. Fewer than 50 individuals and businesses contributed money in opposition to I–522.

Hands of Chase’ Coke

• Mexican Coke Switching To Corn Syrup From Cane Sugar; 4 Reasons Why This Shift Is Terrible : News : Latin Times

1. High-fructose corn syrup is not healthy.** In 2004, researchers at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center of Louisiana State University published their findings that revealed that high-fructose corn syrup is a major player in America’s obesity epidemic.

2. Sugar is not all the same. **Defenders of high-fructose corn syrup will argue that cane sugar and high-fructose corn syrup are similar in structure and ergo, are not very different. But from a biochemical standpoint, the two ingredients are not identical and as such, they are not processed by the body in the same way.

3. High-fructose corn syrup contains contaminants that are not regulated. High-fructose corn syrup is notorious for containing toxic levels of mercury and other questionable chemical compounds that are not measured or regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

4. It will hinder the taste that “Mexicoke” is famous for. **Those who have tasted both variations of the beverage insist that not only is Mexican Coca-Cola sweeter, but the high-fructose corn syrup variation is bitterer, more sour and boasts a synthetic taste.

Feedback:

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The post Das Snowden | Unfilter 74 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.

In today’s Unfilter we’ve got a reality check for the for the industrial media complex. From nation wide power outage scares, to synthetic propaganda, the media does its best to keep you scared, and watching.

All that and much more, in this week’s Unfilter.

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Show Notes:

ACT ONE:

• Feds blamed in report on gun smuggling

• Missing FBI agent found dead near his Calif. home

  • FBI Agent Fleeing Massive Manhunt Warns “They’re All Insane”
• Rormer FBI agent, Donald Sachtleben, Steven Iven’s former partner, with child pornography charges

• Al Qaeda bomb plot was foiled by double agent – Los Angeles Times

  • Security Theater Critics | Unfilter
  • Al Qaeda Working To Surgically Implant Bombs In People & Even Pets! – YouTube

• Power Is Restored Across India After Worst Blackout in History

• A U.S. Blackout as Large as India’s? ‘Very Unlikely’

Scary Spice:

• DEA raids businesses nationwide for K2, Spice, synthetic drugs

• Synthetic marijuana – Spice – warehouse raided by DEA – YouTube

• US steps up backing for Syrian opposition: Clinton

  • Clinton: \”Friends of Syria\” must unite to stop Russia, China \”blockading\” progress

• Dianne Feinstein – Wikipedia

• \”Either We Stand Together Or We\’ll Hang Separately\” ( I Bet They Say That A LOT At The Pentagon) – YouTube
• The book Dianne Feinstein doesn\’t want you to read:
  [asa]B006LTIS7G[/asa]
• Confront and Conceal: Obama\’s Secret Wars and Surprising Use of American Power Audio Book
• Part of the reason patents are BS

ACT TWO:

• It\’s Happened: Paramilitary Police vs Civilians in Anaheim
• • Police Militarization in Anaheim, CA – YouTube

• BATTLEFIELD MAIN STREET – The Daily

• The Pentagon Is Offering Free Military Hardware To Every Police Department In The US
• Small-Town Cops Pile Up on Useless Military Gear

9 Horrifying Botched Police Raids – Business Insider

CIA collaboration with New York Police Department was never legally approved | The Raw Story

ACT THREE: Feedback

• Dan’s feedback from last weeks
• What kinds of stories do you want submit to unfilter.Reddit.com?
• Cybersecurity Act fails to pass in the Senate
• Central bankers eyeing whether Libor needs scrapping
• The London Olympics
  • The Dark Side of the London Olympics (Part 1/4) – YouTube

Song pick of the week:

[asa]B0013CUL94[/asa]

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The post Keeping you Scared | Unfilter 12 first appeared on Jupiter Broadcasting.