Weekly Round Up for January 9

Obama’s Whistleblower-Hunt, ‘Rent-A-Generals’ Industry, A Great Example of Intentionally Awful Journalism, One-Tip-Based Terror Watch List & More!

NYA belated happy new year to all our readers and friends here at Boiling Frogs Post. As you can tell I am just coming up for air. The holiday season happens to be the busiest time for my part-time work which involves a retail business, and my full-time motherhood task which has gotten at least three-fold harder during this not-so-terrible-twos stage. You see I say harder, but I’ll never call it ‘terrible’ because despite the tasking aspect it still remains the best and most rewarding role I’ve ever had; ever. My daughter is now 2.5 years old, and I’m happy to report: she is outspoken, highly opinionated, and on her way to becoming a real activist. She is already stopping those engaged in littering in their tracks for an earful lecture, and orders them to stop, ‘Go home, time out, and take bath!’ I am sharing a few of her recent pictures here. Many of you know all about my ‘no venture into my private life’ over here at BFP…except for an occasional relevant experience(s), or, like these here and the ones from last year to mark a new year at Boiling Frogs Post. Again, Happy New Year.

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For the past two months I’ve been collecting and saving lots of articles to share with you here at BFP. The collection kept getting larger, the list of links grew longer, and I kept falling behind and unable to post regular BFP Round Ups. Some of those articles were time sensitive so they got discarded as ‘stale and no longer relevant’. Some are still sitting on the list waiting for the addition of my comments and analyses. And here are a few important and interesting ones from the past few weeks without much need for added sound bites:

Obama’s Whistleblower-Hunt: Whistleblowers Long for Bush-Cheney Era Leniency?

OBYou thought the Bush-Cheney administration was bad? Think again; especially if you happen to be a whistleblower. Despite its awful record, the current administration witch-hunt like pursuit of whistleblowers and truth-tellers has many whistleblowers and truth-telling advocates longing for the Bush era climate. After all, everything is relevant, right? There was the bad, now it is the worse, or probably worst ever. Despite all the threats and muscle-flexing not a single whistleblower, including myself, got arrested or even pursued criminally under the previous regime. With Obama the era of threats has changed into an era of Punishment-Imprisonment and in some cases even torture. Here is one of the latest:

Former CIA officer indicted for leaks to reporter 
Peter Haldis, RCFP

A former CIA officer was indicted last month for allegedly providing a New York Times reporter with classified information. He is the latest in a string of leakers prosecuted by the Obama administration.

Jeffrey Sterling, 43, of O’Fallon, Mo., was indicted on 10 counts, including six counts of unauthorized disclosure of national defense information and one count of obstruction of justice. He was arrested Thursday in St. Louis.Sterling was indicted Dec. 22, 2010, and the indictment was unsealed Thursday.

…

Sterling is the fifth leaker to be prosecuted by the Obama administration. The others include: former National Security Agency official Thomas Drake, who allegedly sent classified information to an unknown newspaper reporter; Stephen Kim, a former Department of State analyst who allegedly leaked an intelligence report to an unidentified reporter; Bradley Manning, a U.S. Army private alleged to have leaked classified information to Wikileaks; and Shamai Leibowitz, a former FBI linguist who was convicted in May 2010 of charges related to the leaking of classified information to an unidentified blogger and sentenced to 20 months in prison.

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 ‘Rent-A-Generals’ Consulting Firms: An Industry in Its Own

genLast month I came across the following coverage at War Is Business by Corey Pein. This Monday Peter and I will be interviewing Mr. Pein, meanwhile if you haven’t seen this great website check it out now, and put it in your ‘Favorite’ list of websites. I am really looking forward to this interview, too many topics of interest to cover!

‘Rent-A-Generals’ & ‘the Militarization of Economy’ 
By Corey Pein, War Is Business

This man is William B Burdeshaw, a retired US Army Brigadier General and founder of what the Boston Globe, in its must-read investigation of rampant corruption in Pentagon procurement, calls “one of the oldest ‘rent-a-general’ consulting firms” in the country.

His company, Burdeshaw Associates Ltd, is essentially a fixer for corporations looking to land military contracts. The firm is apparently so good at this, its influential “associates”—mostly retired, high-ranking officers—can sell the Pentagon things it didn’t even know it needed.

Read Globe reporter Bryan Bender describe how Burdeshaw cleverly wrung $109 million from the Pentagon for the firm’s client, Northrop Grumman, which wanted to build a remote-controlled helicopter called the Fire Scout. Read more

Podcast Show #23

The Boiling Frogs Presents Julien Mercille

BFP Podcast Logo

Dr. Julien Mercille discusses the trail of Afghanistan’s drug money, the false impression given by the latest UN report on the effects of Afghanistan’s drug production, and the role of other nations and institutions including western banks. He talks about the predominant view of the US and NATO held by the majority in Afghanistan today, his interview with Malalai Joya, Afghanistan’s youngest Member of Parliament, who is well known for openly challenging the US, NATO, warlords and the Taliban, the current state of progressive movements in Afghanistan, and more.


Mercile Julien Mercille is a lecturer in US foreign policy at University College Dublin, where he moved after obtaining his PhD from UCLA. He teaches on US history and foreign policy and has published academic articles on Iran, Iraq and the Cold War, and is now researching the “War on Drugs” and Afghanistan. He has also written for various websites and magazines on those topics and others.


Here is our guest Julien Mercille unplugged!

Interview with Julien Mercille [ 1:02:44 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Tidbits Round Up-July 12


Pardoning Poppy-Kings, Obama’s New Veto Threat & More

Those of you who’ve been reading this blog regularly are familiar with cartoonist and activist Paul Jamiol. I really admire Paul’s astute observations and analytical mind, and of course his artistic capabilities. Last week Paul sent me a variation of a great cartoon he published in 2005, relevant to my new series ‘The Makings of a Police State,’ and kindly gave me permission to use it in my upcoming posts in the series. Here it is, isn’t it powerful? Thank you Paul!


I had the following comment on my ‘Introduction: The Makings of a Police State’ post:

    “…I’m off the belief that people don’t really know because they aren’t affected by this YET!! Notice I said yet. People do get motivated to do something about this when it either affects them or effects their friends or family…”

When I read it I slapped my forehead with the palm of my hand! I should have listed this as the number ONE reason/factor!!! How in the world did I miss that?! Especially since I happen to be a perfect example. Really. My wake up calls came when:

    Three FBI agents came to my house in February 2002 to confiscate my personal computer at home. What was I suspected of? Communicating FBI wrongdoings with the Senate Judiciary Committee; the committee responsible for DOJ-FBI oversight.

    When I was ordered to take a polygraph regarding my communications with the United States Congress on FBI matters that could arbitirarily be declared classified.

    When I had the honor of being slapped with the State Secrets Privilege; a privilege meant for kings and the despots – which was never passed as a law, thus is not even recognized as constitutional…

    When the US Congress was slapped with an after the fact retroactive classification on my case acting as a gag order on my…

What I am trying to say is this: the police state measures did affect me personally and overtly; I was a direct recipient of these measures so contrary to what I perceived to be my rights guaranteed under the Constitution of my country. They were eye-opening experiences for me, thus I began to actually see and hear, and realize. Who knows, maybe I would be among the blinded and deaf masses today if it weren’t for those experiences. So many people, our majority, are in exactly that position – they don’t see these measures affecting them. As the commenter emphasizes – not yet; when in fact they really are affected; they just don’t know it yet.

Since this commenter chose to post anonymously I am not able to give her/him the deserved recognition. Whoever he/she is – Thank You. This is exactly why I’m posting and sharing these thoughts and analyses; to have a forum where we learn from each other and expand our knowledge and understanding.

Here are a few recent developments:

While our administration keeps bombing Afghanistan in our war against…hmmmm…no one really knows, to achieve…hmmmm…no one has a clue on that either, our puppet government in Afghanistan has been busy releasing high-level heroin smugglers, the lords of the poppies, from it’s jails. Here is the latest:

    “Afghan President Hamid Karzai has pardoned five heroin smugglers, at least one of them a relative of a man who heads Karzai’s campaign for re-election next month… A source with knowledge of the case said one of those released was a close relative of Deen Mohammad, who is running Karzai’s campaign for re-election in the August 20 presidential poll. The man was jailed for more than a decade in 2007 for smuggling more than 100 kg of heroin [Emphasis Added]. The source spoke to Reuters on condition that he not be identified.”

I guess with poppy production skyrocketing our puppet man Karzai and his poppy-lord clan is faced with a shortage of smugglers. They had to increase the number of their ‘operators’ to keep up with their poppy production. So they went through their list of convicts in prisons and released the best of the bunch they had rounded up a while back – when the production was small enough to be managed by the president’s inner circle clan. Why do I say ‘best of the bunch’? Let’s do a little math: the wholesale price for heroin today is estimated at around $70 per gram. $70 X 100000gr = $7000000; roughly $7 million. So, obviously these smugglers were not dealing in peanuts.

Speaking of Afghanistan, here is an interesting tidbit by Jeremy Scahill on the Obama Administration’s point man on Afghanistan, Richard Holbrooke:

    “Last month Chevron was awarded the “Richard C. Holbrooke Award for Business Leadership” in “recognition of the company’s global public health programs.

    While giving such an award to Chevron is perverse enough on its own, let’s remember whom it is that the award is named after. Richard C. Holbrooke is currently the Obama administration’s point man on Afghanistan and Pakistan with a substantial portfolio that includes areas of Chevron’s current and, likely, future operations. Before becoming Obama’s “Af/Pak” envoy, Holbrooke was the president and CEO of GBC, an organization he spent the past decade building. Holbrooke, who cut his teeth working for Henry Kissinger during Vietnam, has, for decades, marched back-and-forth over the golden bridge linking corporations and government. Chevron received the award in large part because it committed $30 million over three years to the GBC-affiliated Global Fund in 2008 while Holbrooke was GBC’s president and CEO.”

And here is more on this mammoth conflict of interest:

    “…But for the State Department to allow Chevron to receive the “Richard C. Holbrooke Award for Business Excellence” at a ceremony which Ambassador Holbrooke personally attended at a time when Chevron is fighting desperately to convince members of the Obama administration and the Congress to take Chevron’s side in a high stakes legal case is worthy of a Congressional inquiry.”

I guess the Chevron guys will find The Washington Post’s Saloon offerings for $25,000 a pop wayyyyy beneath them. Don’t you think? When these guys talk, they talk ‘millions,’ so they leave those meager influence purchasing transactions to the lobbyists of humbler companies, ey!

And finally, while all these little tidbits make their way into tiny publications our president is hard at work, trying to increase his secrecy level, classification authority, and his highness’ privileges never intended in our Constitution. This is the second time he is pointing his finger to ‘threaten’ the no-good-doers in Congress:

    “President Barack Obama has issued the second veto threat of his presidency, informing his Democratic allies on Capitol Hill that he would reject the House intelligence authorization bill because of provisions that he believes imperil the administration’s ability to guard national security secrets.

    In a Statement of Administration Policy dated Wednesday, the Office of Management and Budget objects to provisions in the legislation that would expand beyond the current “Gang of Eight” the number of lawmakers who must be notified of covert operations. The “Gang of Eight” includes Republican and Democratic leaders in the House and Senate and the chairs and ranking members of the Intelligence committees.”

I wonder why he even bothers. Seriously. The lap puppies in Congress have been more than happy to oblige with all requests of secrecy and cover ups; under both the previous administration and his.

Do you remember how Senator Rockefeller was moaning and groaning once the NSA illegal wiretapping of Americans became public? How he and his colleagues whimpered and feigned outrage once this illegal operation was leaked? Rockefeller was one of the few people on the Intelligence Committee who was briefed about this illegal surveillance program three years prior to its public exposure in 2006. He and the other lapdogs knew all about it. What did he and the others do for three years while sitting on this information? Nothing. Absolutely nothing. Sure, once they were caught with their pants down, they all played helpless victims of secrecy. They said they were all deeply troubled by this illegal program violating the people’s rights, but that they were sworn to secrecy by the President’s Men, thus their hands were tied and their lips remained sealed. Mr. Rockefeller, once he had finished with his dramatic performance portraying himself as the innocent helpless victim in this unconstitutional program, went back and bolstered that same illegal program. He was the lead man steering the Intelligence Committee to grant retroactive immunity to the participating telecom companies. That’s right; that’s how it works!

This scenario has been repeated over and over with the congressional lap-puppies. Rep. Pelosi and her deep knowledge of torture, including water boarding. Rep. Harman and her detailed knowledge of torture …and so on and so on.

Mr. President, why bother? Really. If these lapdogs could keep their mouths shut so easily under the previous administration while they were the minority, now as your party members and lap-puppies they certainly will! No worries, we assure you there is no real need for your repeated veto threats.

Cartoon by Paul Jamiol