Domestic Spying, Inc.
by Tim Shorrock , Special to CorpWatch
November 27th, 2007

A new intelligence institution to be inaugurated soon by the Bush administration will allow government spying agencies to conduct broad surveillance and reconnaissance inside the United States for the first time. Under a proposal being reviewed by Congress, a National Applications Office (NAO) will be established to coordinate how the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and domestic law enforcement and rescue agencies use imagery and communications intelligence picked up by U.S. spy satellites. If the plan goes forward, the NAO will create the legal mechanism for an unprecedented degree of domestic intelligence gathering that would make the U.S. one of the world's most closely monitored nations. Until now, domestic use of electronic intelligence from spy satellites was limited to scientific agencies with no responsibility for national security or law enforcement.

The intelligence-sharing system to be managed by the NAO will rely heavily on private contractors including Boeing, BAE Systems, L-3 Communications and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). These companies already provide technology and personnel to U.S. agencies involved in foreign intelligence, and the NAO greatly expands their markets. Indeed, at an intelligence conference in San Antonio, Texas, last month, the titans of the industry were actively lobbying intelligence officials to buy products specifically designed for domestic surveillance.

The NAO was created under a plan tentatively approved in May 2007 by Director of National Intelligence Michael McConnell. Specifically, the NAO will oversee how classified information collected by the National Security Agency (NSA), the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and other key agencies is used within the U.S. during natural disasters, terrorist attacks and other events affecting national security. The most critical intelligence will be supplied by the NSA and the NGA, which are often referred to by U.S. officials as the "eyes" and "ears" of the intelligence community.

The NSA, through a global network of listening posts, surveillance planes, and satellites, captures signals from phone calls, e-mail and Internet traffic, and translates and analyzes them for U.S. military and national intelligence officials.

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), which was formally inaugurated in 2003, provides overhead imagery and mapping tools that allow intelligence and military analysts to monitor events from the skies and space. The NSA and the NGA have a close relationship with the super-secret National Reconnaissance Office (NRO), which builds and maintains the U.S. fleet of spy satellites and operates the ground stations where the NSA's signals and the NGA's imagery are processed and analyzed. By law, their collection efforts are supposed to be confined to foreign countries and battlefields. http://www.warprofiteers.com/article.php?id=14821

McClone needs to extend the US occupation of Iraq for another 100 years to please the military industrial media complex. They will be pissed if the occupation ends and disrupts the wonderful revenue stream it has provided. An eternal revenue stream is every capitalist's dream.

The Iraq occupation is currently the only thing keeping the US stock market from crashing and no politician wants to be blamed for that, so don't expect the occupation to end any time soon.

One crucial step in forming a useful model of today's corporate/political world is the recognition that the predatory criminals involved in war profiteering, governmental manipulation, and increasing corporate control over the future of the planet generally divide the human race into two groups -- winners or players, which they are (naturally), and losers or suckers (the rest of us). There is no place in their world for any intelligent action that is unrelated to the pursuit of short-sighted self interest. Actions that appear unrelated to short-sighted self interest must be either devious (with self-interest the real goal) or foolish.

ANDERSDL......sooner or later the iraqis are going to get tired of killing each other...and the violence will end...with the united states there or not....the u.s will leave iraq within the next 2 years ......(remember ireland) they got tired of the killing

We defeated aristocracy and the 'redcoats' ... but they've come back!

If Ike thought it was a problem, it's hard to argue. Aristocrats have always relied on ignorance. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

A nice, nuanced analysis by ANDERSDL: "sooner or later the iraqis are going to get tired of killing each other..."

So, America is in Iraq as a peacekeeping force to prevent 24 million Iraqis from hacking each other to death?

I can see you've swallowed all the lies, ANDERSDL.

Bush's policies should reflect the fact that a genocide is taking place, so do they?

First off, Bush has upheld a Ba'athist law banning trade unions in the public sector and in public enterprises. He has effectively banned oil unions in Iraq, freezing their bank accounts. Immediately after the invasion, Bush removed all trade barriers, tariffs, and quotas, flooding Iraq with cheap imports, putting Iraqi businesses out of business - this at a time when unemployment was at over 70%. He has imposed a 15% flat rate tax for foreign corporations, with no requirement to reinvest their profits in Iraq. Bush illegally tried to sell off Iraqi state assets and state firms at fire sale prices. At one factory, this resulted in an Iraqi manager being murdered for supporting the sell-off (many workers would have lost their jobs had the sale gone ahead, and with no safety net, it would have meant starvation for them and their families).

Bush forbids Iraqis from repairing their own infrastructure - contracts go to U.S. corporations, and cheap labor is brought in from poor countries wherever possible. Iraqis told Bush they wanted a job for every Iraqi. Bush told them to get stuffed!

In 2003/2004 Iraqi oil workers said they would join the insurgency if America did not increase their wages. America relented, raising their paltry incomes from $40 A MONTH to $60 A MONTH.

I could go on, but I don't have time to make a long post.

So, what about military action? This surely must reflect the fact that Bush is trying to deter Iraqis from killing each other.

Does razing 60% of a city - Fallujah - sound like peacekeeping? Over 200,000 Iraqis fled the city with nowhere to go. Surprisingly, those 200,000 didn't hack each other to death. All males aged 15-55 were prevented from leaving Fallujah. Anything that moved - and much that didn't - was then destroyed, including dogs, sheep, and most buildings.

And what has been happening recently?

Well, on Tuesday, a US airstrike on "rampaging Iraqis charging at each other with meat cleavers" - at least that is what Bush would have you believe - left at least fifty people dead and 130 injured, many of them women and children. The US airstrike, it was reported, destroyed at least three homes, burying families beneath the rubble.

An Iraqi had this to say about America's latest "peace keeping" efforts: "'A catastrophe, a catastrophe. If you have not heard of catastrophe, this is one. An earthquake, an earthquake carried out by a vengeful being.'"

Looks like the real war is between America and the Iraqi people. And that can only mean one thing: while America stays in Iraq, the violence will go on.

EZEFLYER: Your posting adds whole new meaning to the genre (music), "Easy listening..."

STAYING SANE: Excellent explanation to those with eyes who cannot see.

Clinton once again show her irresponsible thinking at any price to gain the American nomination to continue to lead the world to oblivion. I read with interest the comments of Americans. I consider myself a humanist and not one that has the USA tattooed to my backside although I gave three years to the military and so have a right to speak. Nationalism, is always based in me-firstism, let the rest of the world be damned mentality. Clinton is the new spokesperson for that idea and has now teamed up with the Fox network and the rabid so-called journalists who have helped diminish the America I once knew and fought to maintain. The way the rest of the world looks at the USA is colored by people like these at the highest levels of power.

The economic system that determines all peoples survival regardless of where they exist, also determines what a country will become, much of it the result of chance. In that regard the USA has been lucky, with well-worn imperialist ideas brought over with the Pilgrims. America has taken this country from the people who were here, the European model, without paying them. Some of us here know the story. The so called, "free market market system", formerly American capitalism, and now globalization into which it has now morphed. the US with its European allies has created the current means of controlling everything for the few. The G 8 has developed ever-greater means to develop these ideas and to take what it wants from the rest of the world and its own population.

The African Americans, the Africans, the Hispanics, Asians and Indians have been the slave classes that have built the white European and American wealth. The historic exploitation of the working classes of America brought from the world into its "melting pot" with the so-called freedoms and democratic ideals built from the blood spilled to form, compared to the European monarchies and divine kingship, so called Democracy unique in the world. The freedoms bought so dearly, were the first "Divine Kingship" of the "Robber Baron" and now, corporate power elitism.

To keep the masses quiet and to build the lives of Americans, consumer ideology supplanted education, the study human purpose, as a goal in itself. The economic forces, which have built their power, care little for human development and survival. They care largely for their continued power as an end in itself and for the few who have the most based on its protection with a huge military force, hence the oil wars in Iraq, this to support an auto centered disposable consumer society.

The expense of privilege in the community of nations may become the death of the globe and its entire people as a result of the American and European economic system, now out of control. Many American economists, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Stiglitz, and others view these historical developments as a threat to global harmony and survival.

American wealth once had an altruistic quality about it. The post-World War II USA, developed the Marshal Plan and cared about the condition of the world. Now the top one percent, those who have taken so much, continue to be supported by the thirty percent of Americans who still believe George Bush, and his myth of global superiority at the expense of the rest of the world. It is clare that to many of Clinton's opinions continue the Bush doctrine, of unilateralism.

We sit on the edge of an environmental and economic disaster. This American system is out of control and the economic meltdown will continue regardless of who occupies the Oval office. The only difference is that Obama is intelligent enough to know that there are fundamental change needed in the way America and the so-called "free world" do business.
Rev Wright, simply addresses continued black slavery in a world of exploitation of all people led by the US and now the power elite in collusion with the government to continue the "American Dream" mentality, represented now by corporate multilateralism and their wealth and power. Corporate elitism cares for itself alone at the expense of all people, the environment, the human experiment, its freedoms, and so called democratic ideals which has become nothing more than an oligarchy.

We should not be too pejorative about Rev Wright who simply rails against the exploitive aspects of the Western mentality and points out the deficiency in the USA of evolved thinking toward the slave classes and the human species. He, having been able to experience directly because of his skin color these abuses is perhaps too angry which limits his effectiveness. His experience in seeing the wreckage of black America and his intelligence, has caused him to take up the defense of the disenfranchised.

America has a history of caring about others, once a genuine American direction, led by people, despite their failings like: The Kennedy's, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and so many others who died for their belief in a better America and a better world, caring about humanity.

The media who carries their continued assault against those, who would in any way, attempt to include different thinking to bear on the so called "American Dream" which has become the world's nightmare must be seen by the masses for what it has become. The media must begin to understand its roll as an objective commentator to the necessary changes that must be made to the USA and the world if humanity is to survive.

The media above all must be changed once again to give democratic exposure to all important ideas. It must present an understanding of the complex thought needed to be brought to bear on global complex issues of survival. A departure from the simplistic superficial treatment ad-nauseam we witness each day which passes for news presented by the Barby-Doll class of newsreader called journalist.

Siouxrose wrote: "STAYING SANE: Excellent explanation to those with eyes who cannot see."

Thanks Siouxrose. I try, but I think people are inclined to think a certain way and there's nothing you can do to change that.

It's also worth pointing out that when you subject a population to such a brutal occupation, they are forced to fall behind violent groups that inevitably emerge under such conditions. The enemy of my enemy is my friend, so to speak. Trouble is, if your enemy gets defeated, the enemy of your enemy is no longer your friend, and your enemy is now an indigenous one.

A point worth making for those who think Iraqis want religious extremists in charge of their country.