The Deep State

The Deep State’s Christmas Present to America: Surveillance That Never Ends

"The Trump Administration has been actively lobbying Congress to reauthorize Section 702 in its entirety. Now, according to The Intercept, Trump is actively considering a proposal to establish his own global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies and answer directly to the White House. If approved, this would be yet another secret government agency carrying out secret surveillance and counterintelligence, funded by a secret black ops budget that by its very nature does away with transparency, bypasses accountability and completely eludes any form of constitutionality."

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The FBI Is an Enemy of Freedom

"For its entire existence the FBI has served as the strong arm of the federal government. Beginning in 1909 as the Bureau of Investigation, no one’s life, liberty, or property has been safe since. Ostensibly created to investigate anarchists, bootleggers, kidnappers, bank robbers, crimes on federal property, and later, the KKK, the FBI would soon find its true calling: political repression, personal destruction, and terror."

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White House Planning Private Spies to Counter “Deep State” Enemies

"The Trump administration is considering a set of proposals developed by Blackwater founder Erik Prince and a retired CIA officer — with assistance from Oliver North, a key figure in the Iran-Contra scandal — to provide CIA Director Mike Pompeo and the White House with a global, private spy network that would circumvent official U.S. intelligence agencies, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials and others familiar with the proposals."

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The U.S. Media Yesterday Suffered its Most Humiliating Debacle in Ages

"Friday was one of the most embarrassing days for the U.S. media in quite a long time. The humiliation orgy was kicked off by CNN, with MSNBC and CBS close behind, with countless pundits, commentators and operatives joining the party throughout the day. By the end of the day, it was clear that several of the nation’s largest and most influential news outlets had spread an explosive but completely false news story to millions of people, while refusing to provide any explanation of how it happened."

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The Pentagon, CIA, and NSA Are in Charge

"Surrounding himself with generals and giving the national-security establishment carte blanche to do anything it wants to protect 'national security,' Trump, for all practical purposes, has been absorbed by the national-security establishment, even permitting the CIA to continue keeping its long-secret, 50-year-old JFK-assassination records secret from the American people. It is safe to say that for the balance of Trump’s term in office, his actions in foreign affairs will be no different than anything that Hillary Clinton, who undoubtedly would have been a loyal servant of the national-security establishment, would have done with respect to foreign affairs. What gives? Why the dramatic shift in Trump?"

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Alfred McCoy: The Future of the American Empire

"Alfred McCoy was a young rebel academic who waded into the war zone in Southeast Asia to investigate the relationship between the CIA, crime syndicates, and local drug lords. The result, which the Agency tried unsuccessfully to suppress, was his classic The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. In the 45 years since, McCoy has consistently probed the underside of American global power, analyzing how the United States uses covert interventions, local proxies, torture, and worldwide surveillance to maintain its global empire."

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Purged Saudi royals must cough up 70% of their wealth to be freed

"Riyadh seems to have found the way to curb the budget deficit caused by lower oil prices. As the Financial Times report, Saudi officials are offering the arrested royals a deal – pay up to 70 percent of your wealth and go free. The Saudi government could appropriate hundreds of billions of dollars from the arrested to refill depleted state reserves, according to the media."

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James Corbett: The Saudi Purge is a Global Crisis

"The House of Saud is in crisis as MBS consolidates his hold on the kingdom and prepares to transform Saudi Arabia in his image. But what is behind the purge, and how does it relate to the future of the world monetary system. Join James for a classic Corbett Report debriefing on the Saudi purge and the rise of the petroyuan."

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