A couple of weeks ago I wrote about Obama as the worst president when it comes to whistleblowers and transparency, and the only one to actually receive an award for it. Of course I had mixed reactions and greatly varying reception. On one hand those who value transparency and our Constitution objectively; on the other hand, those who value partisanship above all and are blinded to the realities on the ground. In my writings I had made sure I included the media’s role in giving this awful president the pass despite his solid track record in being the ‘worst’ and the group of foundation-puppies who have been secretly rewarding him for his ‘worst-ness’ in return for a couple of extra bones from their masters. I believe in being fair, well, at least I try. Salon had an excellent piece by Greenwald on Obama’s record as ‘the most awful’ when it comes to transparency and whistleblowers, and here is a well-put quote on ‘awfulness’ of those organizations presenting this ‘awful’ president with an award for simply being awful toward transparency and whistleblowers…and doing so secretly:

It is not hyperbole to say that the Obama administration is waging an all-out war against transparency and whistleblowing (and the transparency groups who obsequiously awarded Obama a transparency award [one accepted in secret] are as disgraceful as the five Norwegians who awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize as he continues to do things like this). The persecution of WikiLeaks — for engaging in the crux of investigative journalism — along with anyone who supports it is one particularly dangerous weapon in that war. And anyone who defies or resists that war deserves, and will need, ample public support.

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Bravo to Greenwald for telling it as is and Salon for actually publishing it. I encourage you to go and read the entire article here at Salon, and while you are there thank him for speaking out on these extremely troubling issues.

Also today, I came across another article at Guardian on ‘Obama: the Worst President for Whistleblowers’ echoing my own piece from two weeks ago titled ‘When it Comes to Whistleblowers Obama Worse than Nixon & Far Worse Than Bush.’ Here are excerpts from Guardian’s article:

Barack Obama has the worst record of any US president when it comes to dealing with whistleblowers, according to the Oscar-nominated director of a documentary about the man who leaked the Pentagon Papers in the 1970s.

Judith Ehrlich, whose 2009 film The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers explored the 70s leak of US government documents on the Vietnam war, said Obama had indicted five alleged whistleblowers since taking office, making him the “worst president in terms of his record on whistleblowing“.

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Next week, on Monday, we are going to start a public campaign targeting Obama’s assaults on transparency, the First Amendment, and of course whistleblowers, and we, the irate minority, are going to go after those who have been encouraging and awarding this ‘worst’ president for all these assaults. On Monday we’ll have a great video clip for you on Mr. Obama’s real record and the implications of being given an award, secretly that is. On Tuesday we’ll be launching a website and a petition to address this incredibly ludicrous award, and we’ll invite all of you to join us in this petition and related campaigns. Please get ready and stay tuned!

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

For the last two years I have been pounding on Imam Fethullah Gulen’s web of organizations and his charter schools empire in the US. For years I have been marveling about the consistent media blackout on the Turkish Imam Fethullah Gulen’s past and present nefarious activities and highly suspicious partnerships with various US government agencies and elected officials. And of course for almost two years I have been writing and discussing Gulen with you over here at Boiling Frogs Post. Now the New York Times appears to be catching up; at least with a fraction of this notorious Imam’s multi billion dollar network of organizations and businesses. Yesterday, the Times ran a fairly detailed and long exposé on Gulen’s dubious and highly secretive penetration of US school systems via his rapidly growing charter school operations; let’s start with the attention grabbing intro:

TDM Contracting was only a month old when it won its first job, an $8.2 million contract to build the Harmony School of Innovation, a publicly financed charter school that opened last fall in San Antonio. It was one of six big charter school contracts TDM and another upstart company have shared since January 2009, a total of $50 million in construction business. Other companies scrambling for work in a poor economy wondered: How had they qualified for such big jobs so fast?

The secret lay in the meteoric rise and financial clout of the Cosmos Foundation, a charter school operator founded a decade ago by a group of professors and businessmen from Turkey. Operating under the name Harmony Schools, Cosmos has moved quickly to become the largest charter school operator in Texas, with 33 schools receiving more than $100 million a year in taxpayer funds.

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Some of the schools’ operators and founders, and many of their suppliers, are followers of Fethullah Gulen, a charismatic Turkish preacher of a moderate brand of Islam whose devotees have built a worldwide religious, social and nationalistic movement in his name. Gulen followers have been involved in starting similar schools around the country — there are about 120 in all, mostly in urban centers in 25 states, one of the largest collections of charter schools in America.

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And this is what the paper says it is attempting to examine:

But an examination by The New York Times of the Harmony Schools in Texas casts light on a different area: the way they spend public money. And it raises questions about whether, ultimately, the schools are using taxpayer dollars to benefit the Gulen movement — by giving business to Gulen followers, or through financial arrangements with local foundations that promote Gulen teachings and Turkish culture.

I suggest you visit the site and read the entire article. It is definitely worth reading. You may also want to read a few select pieces from BFP on Gulen:

Did You Know: The King of Madrasas Now Operates over 100 Charter Schools in US?

Turkish Intel Chief Exposes CIA Operations via Islamic Group in Central Asia

Additional Omitted Points in CIA-Gulen Coverage & A Note From ‘The Insider’

The Sanitized Gulen Coverage Continues

And here are some appetite inducing excerpts from the Times’ article [All Emphasis Mine]: Read more È

Have you ever tried standing on your head in order to view the world upside down? What if the world stage before you turns upside-down; will you then have to stand on your head to view it right-side up? You see, we have a fraudulent institution that has been standing on its head, and has been trying very hard to get you to either stand on your head to see what they see or simply look the other way and take their word in describing a totally upside down phenomena as right-side up. Enough for riddle-like communication; let me put it all in perspective for you, ok? I’ll start with the actors:

We have a very typical Washington DC NGO institution posing as a front. As a front, this establishment NGO front sells under the pretense of being an advocate for transparency, open government, and whistleblower protections. It gets over a million dollars in grants from guess who, the establishment-from Rockefeller to Carnegie to George Soros, to pose as a not for profit organization for government whistleblowers. And it has done very well for over two decades – evident by the same grants from the same establishment that keep flowing into it; evident by creating lots of noise while ensuring no feathers are ever ruffled during the process. The Congress loves them, and knows how to do the pretense dance with them very well. The executive branch also loves them, and views them as a predictable and reliable ally that has to sometimes pose as their foe.  More importantly, they are adored by the President who pets them and gives them a bone or two for being the good loyal pets that they are.

We have a President in the White House who indisputably has the worst record in our nation’s history when it comes to the insurers of government transparency- government whistleblowers. We have a President who loves unconstitutional secrecy and baseless-imaginary presidential executive powers to quash transparency and accountability. We have a President who has an utter disdain for First Amendment practices such as peaceful protests. Okay, let me provide you a glimpse of this President’s indisputable record on Anti-Transparency: Read more È

Stephen Kohn joins us to discuss his book The Whistleblower’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing what’s Right and Protecting Yourself. He explains whistleblowing as a civil liberties and a First Amendment issue, the role of whistleblowers as enablers of congressional oversight, and discusses the legal and political implications involved in whistleblowing. Mr. Kohn presents us with astounding statistics and reports illustrating how whistleblowing is far more effective than regulatory authorities, and how contributions by corporate whistleblowers uncover far more fraud and corruption within their companies than all the government police and regulatory authorities combined. Stephen Kohn talks about the differences and the existing double standards between corporate and government whistleblowers, the escalation of retaliation against national security whistleblowers under the Obama administration, the travesty of justice and constitutional violations in the Bradley Manning Case, upcoming legislation in Congress to further penalize whistleblowers, and more!

Stephen M. Kohn is the Executive Director of National Whistleblowers Center, one of the nation’s foremost experts in whistleblower protection law, and the author of The Whistleblower’s Handbook: A Step-by-Step Guide to Doing What’s Right and Protecting Yourself, and the first legal treatise on whistleblowing, Protecting Environmental and Nuclear Whistleblowers: A Litigation Manual. Since 1984, Mr. Kohn has successfully represented whistleblowers in numerous cases (both at trial and on appeal), has testified in Congress on behalf of whistleblower reforms, and has worked directly with the staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee on drafting the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate whistleblower law. Mr. Kohn has a J.D. from Northeastern University School of Law; an M.A. in Political Science from Brown University; and a B.S. in Social Education from Boston University. In addition to his books on whistleblower law, Mr. Kohn is the author of Jailed for Peace and American Political Prisoners.

Here is our guest Stephen Kohn unplugged!

Interview with Stephen Kohn [ 59:37 ] 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.

I would like you to consider the following hypothetical case: There is a court in X county of Y state with eleven judges. During the past one year 1500 cases of various big corporations vs. the people have been brought before these judges. In every single case, the judges have ruled pro corporation. In every single case. 1500 rulings favoring corporations. 1500 orders against the people. Wouldn’t you expect to see a major uproar and media coverage in this hypothetical case? Wouldn’t you expect that the judges and their lives would become intensely scrutinized? Wouldn’t you suspect some sort of bribery and or extortion in play here?

Now I want you to consider a real-life case. The place- The United States of America. The court- United States Foreign Surveillance Court. The parties- US Federal Government vs. Secret Foreign Targets inside the Unites States. The purpose- for independent and judicial judges to oversee government requests for surveillance warrants, and after carefully reviewing the requests and shown causes, make decisions to grant or not to grant warrants. Last year, in 2010, the federal police agencies brought before these FISA judges 1506 such warrant requests. Last year, in 2010, the FISA Court, every single judge in the FISA Court, eleven out of eleven judges of the FISA Court, granted every single warrant requested of them by our federal police agencies. All 1506 of them. Every single request: Read more È

Last Thursday morning, while driving my daughter to her play group, as I was listening to NPR’s usual circle of experts dissecting and interpreting Bernanke’s press conference, it all came back to me: numerous economic courses taken during my bachelors’ and graduate studies, the Bible of academics in the field of economics – Keynesian economics – the absolutism minus common sense, unquestioning conformity as a prerequisite to acceptance by one’s elite peers, and in the middle of all these convoluted ingredients the questioning  little ‘me.’ I assure you, not the kind of memories you want to come rushing back during a hectic drive. But ‘they’ started it: the Keynesians.

Please don’t be tempted to stop reading further only because you haven’t taken those mandatory courses in economics or because you don’t consider yourself an economic expert. In fact, you may have been saved and still in possession of ‘common sense’ easily erased by systematic academic indoctrination in economic fascism. The following general description of the Keynesian model, if read with sufficient common sense and a bit of critical thinking, should give anyone a pretty good idea of what I mean by economic fascism or an economic model enabling government fascism: Read more È

Once upon a time there was ‘the divine right of kings,’ a political and religious doctrine of political legitimacy asserting that kings are subject to no earthly authority, deriving their right to rule directly from the will of God. The king was thus not subject to the will of his people. According to this doctrine, since only God can judge an unjust king, the king can do no wrong. The doctrine implies that any attempt to depose the king or to restrict his powers runs contrary to the will of God and may constitute a sacrilegious act.

Then came a time and men like Thomas Jefferson to change all that, and with it a new doctrine that basically said: “[A] bill of rights is what the people are entitled to against every government on earth, general or particular, and what no just government should refuse.” 

But things never remain the same. Do they? In this case, devolution of some sort took place, gradually, sometimes more rapidly than at other times, and things reverted back to what they once were. The Divine Right returned, albeit with one or two cosmetic and inconsequential differences. Change the word ‘king’ to ‘Federal Government,’ expand the right to make it ‘rights,’ add a body of votes issued and granted (sometimes) by those who serve the throne, and there you have it: The Divine Rights of the US Federal Government; far bigger than a one-man kingdom, far more dangerous than a few-man monarchy, and far more powerful than a napoleonesque empire.  It is a kingdom in layers: the not so visible top-tier kings-think MIC, Financial Conglomerates; the immune and untouchable presidency layer- think King George and King Obama; the leviathan bureaucracy unleashed with unlimited police powers- think CIA, Pentagon, Homeland Security, FBI and the rest …and let’s not forget the most crucial layer, the largest in size, the smallest in voice, and the most willing in rendering the power: the neo-indentured servants, as in ‘we the people’. Read more È

Last week John Young’s information site Cryptome.Org began publishing documents related to the interviews conducted by the 9/11 Commission which were released for the first time. On January 3, Cryptome posted the 9/11 Commission’s report on my interview (the infamous Sibel Edmonds Case), and aptly titled this particular file as “Sibel Edmonds Censored Yet Again.� Once you read the PDF document you’ll quickly see the reason for Cryptome’s appropriate label. The entire report, by that I mean the entire report, is blacked out (actually, whited-out;-). It took me less than one minute to scan the entire document; basically, scrolling down the white pages-one white page after another. Initially, I was not a bit surprised. Hey, I’ve been declared the most gagged and classified person in US history, after all- State Secrets Privilege invocation twice, gagging the entire Congress for the first (and only) time in US history, hundreds of pages of blacked out DOJ-IG report… So, as I said, I didn’t find it a bit surprising.  However, after the minute it took to go over these blank pages, I started clicking and scanning all the other files (interviews by the 9/11 Commission), and that’s where I was truly surprised:

Despite some redactions here and there, and in a few cases fairly extensive redaction, there were no interviews where the entire interview (and the report on the interview) was blacked out in its entirety. Mine was the only one privileged and honored to such degree! Why? I mean, come on, we are talking about interviews with: FBI Special Agent in Charge on Counterterrorism, CIA Officers with Directorate of Intelligence with a Specific Focus on Drugs & Thugs, The Chairman of National Intelligence Council, NSA Chief of Counterintelligence & SIGNIT Support, Senior CIA Analysts…Yet, none of these interviews was redacted in its entirety. None. Please be my guest and make your own comparison; My 9/11 Commission interview document here, and the rest, here, here, here, here, here…You can check out the rest published by Cryptome here, and if you want more here for thousands of them. Read more È

Today marks Boiling Frogs Post’s fifth month of operation, and the last day of our fundraising campaign. On behalf of our team members I want to thank all of you for your support, with a special thanks to 658 of you who donated to our cause. We may not have reached our benchmark for our desired objectives and planned expansion, but we have you and a good start, so we’ll continue as best as we can, and work toward those objectives.

I am thrilled to announce the addition of a new team member, Luke Ryland, a good friend and a partner whom I have known and worked with since 2006; please welcome Luke and here is his bio:

Luke Ryland is an independent political analyst and online journalist based in Australia. He has been an expert commentator on the Sibel Edmonds case and nuclear black market cases for various progressive radio shows and online publications. Mr. Ryland’s work focuses on the nuclear black market, the Turkish lobby in the US, the energy and geopolitical wars in Central Asia, and the corruption of US Congress. Mr. Ryland has an MBA and a Bachelors degree in Commerce from the University of Melbourne. Visit Luke Ryland’s website.

We recently published Luke Ryland’s expose on FBI documents confirming major criminal investigations of Turkish operatives and their US official friends in Chicago. And here is a link to a recent interview with Mr. Ryland conducted by Scott Horton of AntiWar.Org: Click here.

Starting this coming Wednesday I’ll be on the road for a few weeks, traveling for work and personal matters. I won’t be out of touch. We have three Boiling Frogs interviews, one of which will be posted every other week: Professor Francis Boyle, Naomi Wolf, and Peter Phillips. Meanwhile, Peter B Collins and I will find ways to overcome significant time zone differences and connection difficulties, and continue to conduct additional interviews. We will also have articles and analyses by our contributors, and of course Paul Jamiol’s great editorial cartoons.

Here is my list of noteworthy articles and links from this past week:

Let’s start with our President, since we’ve been keeping tabs on his changes on his promised changes. The following piece is also related to the Obama White House’s 180 degree turn on protection for national security whistleblowers, which we’ve been covering for over a week.

A little secret about Obama’s transparency
Andrew Malcolm, LA Times

The current administration, challenged by the president to be the most open, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than Bush did.

The Democratic administration of Barack Obama, who denounced his predecessor, George W. Bush, as the most secretive in history, is now denying more Freedom of Information Act requests than the Republican did.

Transparency and openness were so important to the new president that on his first full day in office, he dispatched a much-publicized memo saying: “All agencies should adopt a presumption in favor of disclosure, in order to renew their commitment to the principles embodied in FOIA, and to usher in a new era of open government. The presumption of disclosure should be applied to all decisions involving FOIA.”
One of the exemptions allowed to deny Freedom of Information requests has been used by the Obama administration 70,779 times in its first year; the same exemption was used 47,395 times in Bush’s final budget year.

An Associated Press examination of 17 major agencies’ handling of FOIA requests found denials 466,872 times, an increase of nearly 50% from the 2008 fiscal year under Bush.
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We’ve been keeping tabs, and our list of ‘Bush-Like’ and ‘Worse-Than-Bush’ points has been expanding continuously. Mr. Obama’s love and usage of State Secrets Privilege, his position against government whistleblowers, his support for illegal domestic wiretapping, his passion for wars and drones, his kind-heartedness towards torturers & other criminals…During his first few months in office, a few of his previously duped supporters were too generous and maybe a bit too naïve to label him ‘Bush-Lite.’ How about now? Is it time to call the President ‘Bush-Dark’? You be the judge; what say you?

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 Karzai talks peace with militant group linked to Taliban
Deb Riechmann, AP

President Hamid Karzai held an unprecedented meeting yesterday with representatives of a major Taliban-linked militant group, boosting his outreach to insurgency leaders to end the eight-year war.

Less certain is whether the talks with the weakened Hizb-i-Islami faction represent a game-changer in the conflict, given its demand to rewrite the Afghan constitution and force a quick exit of foreign forces.

It is the first time that high-ranking representatives of the group, led by warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, have traveled to Kabul to discuss peace. The reconciliation offer from Hekmatyar contrasts with his reputation as a ruthless extremist.

Hekmatyar, who is in his 60s, was a major recipient of US military aid during the war against the Soviets in the 1980s but fell out of favor with Washington because of his role in the civil war that followed the Soviet withdrawal. The US government declared Hekmatyar a “global terrorist’’ in February 2003, saying he participated in and supported terror acts committed by Al Qaeda and the Taliban.

Unless that tag is removed, the designation could complicate any move by the United States to sign off on a deal, even though in recent years Hekmatyar has expressed a willingness to negotiate with the Karzai government. A spokesman for Hekmatyar said the delegation had lunch with Karzai at the presidential palace and planned to meet with him again.

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Last January our team member duo, Liz Gould and Paul Fitzgerald, wrote an excellent piece on this opium dealing terrorist, who happened to get his grooming from our very own CIA. If you haven’t read the Gould-Fitzgerald piece titled ‘Apocalypse of the American Mind’, click here. Was he ever off the CIA list of ‘operators’? I for one would certainly doubt it.

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NATO rejects Russia’s demand to destroy Afghan poppy fields
Deutsche Press-Agentur

 Brussels – NATO and Russia clashed on Wednesday over how to tackle the drug problem in Afghanistan, where Western nations have been fighting a Taliban-led insurgency for eight years.

The country is the world’s largest producer of poppy seeds, a key ingredient in the manufacture of heroin. Russia is keen to pursue an aggressive eradication strategy, while Western allies fear that such an approach risks antagonizing the local population, who rely on selling poppy crops to survive.

The different points of view came to a head at a meeting of the NATO-Russia Council attended by the head of Russia’s Federal Drug Control Agency (FSKN), Victor Ivanov and NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen.

‘Afghan opiates led to the death of 1 million people by overdose in the last 10 years, and that is United Nations data. Is that not a threat to world peace and security?’ Ivanov asked journalists after the meeting.

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Russians know very well what this is about. After all, they used to be a major player in ‘this’ particular field, and now a bit grumpy because…their share of this pie has been significantly reduced? Certainly it’s not about a million+ deaths caused by ‘overdose;’ of that much I can assure you. So maybe our guys will let their guys have a bit more; like this maybe: Read more È

John Young provides us with a brief overview of the history, purpose and mission of his well-known website Cryptome.Org. He talks about the recent controversy involving Microsoft Corporation’s attempted legal action against Cryptome, and the temporary shutdown of the site by the ISP Network Solutions. He speaks to the importance of the free flow of information and challenging the governments’ self-serving secrecy as prerequisites for an informed citizenry and a functioning democracy, the importance of whistleblowers and anonymous disclosures, the existence of various trap websites, impostors and false flag operators to manipulate information, trick whistleblowers, and or plant specific propaganda, and more.

John Young is a New York based architect and online archivist who owns and operates Cryptome.Org, a website that functions as a repository for information about freedom of speech, cryptography, spying, and surveillance. In February 2010, the ISP Network Solutions shut down Mr. Young’s website after he posted a document summarizing Microsoft’s dealings with law enforcement agencies. Shortly after initiating legal action to suppress a document on how to subpoena online user data Microsoft withdrew the complaint, and the website was restored.

Here is our guest John Young unplugged!

Interview with John Young [ 58:19 ] 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.