NSA Spying: So They Are Listening In, After All By Tom Burghardt

24 June 2013 — Anti-fascist Calling…

Despite a stream of mendacious twaddle from President Obama, congressional grifters and spook agency mouthpieces like Office of the Director of National Intelligence head James Clapper, FBI Director Robert Mueller and NSA chief General Keith Alexander, it turns out our guardians are listening in to America’s, and most of the world’s, telephone conversations after all.

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Money Laundering and Offshore Fraud for the Rich, Economic Austerity for the Poor By Julie Lévesque

2 November, 2012Global Research

Offshore banking is the elephant in the global economic room which the political and financial elite is trying to hide from the public view. While imposing austerity measures on hard working citizens, they are well aware that astronomical amounts of money are secretly held in offshore banks, thus lost in taxes. Where is that money from? What is it for?

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'SWIFT Boating' Iran: Economic War a Prelude to Military Attack By Tom Burghardt

20 February 2012 — Global Research – Antifascist Calling…

Despite, though likely because, Iran is ready to restart negotiations with the so-called P5+1 group (the five members of the UN Security Council plus Germany) over its civilian nuclear program, belligerent rhetoric and sharply-worded political attacks from Israel and the United States have escalated.

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Imperial Military Adventurism: Tensions Rise as U.S. Imposes 'Nuclear Option' on Iran's Economy by Tom Burghardt

2 January 2012 — Antifascist Calling…Global Research

Blocking oil Shipments through the Strait of Hormuz…

Reacting to American threats to crater their economy, Iran’s first vice president Mohammad-Reza Rahimi said last week that the Islamic Republic would retaliate by blocking all oil shipments through the strategic Strait of Hormuz.

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Red Lines and Ticking Clocks: U.S. War Plans Against Iran The possibility of Russia's Military Involvement… By Tom Burghardt

26 December, 2011 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling…

Before the first bomb falls disinformation specialists prepare the ground. Leading media outlets, foreign policy journals and a plethora of think tanks funded by elite foundations, energy and weapons’ conglomerates, “right,” “left” or “center” take your pick, churn out war propaganda disguised as “analysis.”

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IRAN-DRONEGATE: Empires Don't Apologize: Iran in the Imperial Crosshairs By Tom Burghardt

18 December 2011 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling…

After first denying that the Iranian military had captured the CIA’s RQ-170 Sentinel spy drone, and then reluctantly acknowledging the fact only after PressTV aired footage of the killer bot, the Associated Press reported that “the Obama administration said Monday it has delivered a formal request to Iran” that they return it.

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Target Iran: Washington's Countdown to War By Tom Burghardt

25 November 2011 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling…

The Iranian people know what it means to earn the enmity of the global godfather.

As William Blum documented in Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II, 1953’s CIA-organized coup against Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh, guilty of the “crime” of nationalizing the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company, may have “saved” Iran from a nonexistent “Red Menace,” but it left that oil-rich nation in proverbial “safe hands”–those of the brutal dictatorship of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi.

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The Development of "Privacy Killing Technologies": A Link to the Murdoch Scandal? By Tom Burghardt

25 July 2011 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling

Black Ops for Major U.S. Banks and Corporations

Following revelations earlier this year by The Tech Herald that security firms with close ties to the Pentagon ran black ops for major U.S. banks and corporations, it became clear that proprietary software developed for the military and U.S. intelligence was being used to target Americans.

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The Development of “Privacy Killing Technologies”: A Link to the Murdoch Scandal? By Tom Burghardt

25 July 2011 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling

Black Ops for Major U.S. Banks and Corporations

Following revelations earlier this year by The Tech Herald that security firms with close ties to the Pentagon ran black ops for major U.S. banks and corporations, it became clear that proprietary software developed for the military and U.S. intelligence was being used to target Americans.

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Pentagon Ramps-Up Cyberwar Plans By Tom Burghardt

13 June 2011 — Dissident VoiceAnti-fascist calling

The Fire This Time

As the Obama administration expands Bush-era surveillance programs over the nation’s electronic communications’ infrastructure, recent media reports provide tantalizing hints of Pentagon plans for waging cyberwar against imperialism’s geopolitical rivals.

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Protecting Us from Our Freedoms: Congress Set to Renew Patriot Act Spy Provisions By Tom Burghardt

25 May 2011 — Global Research Antifascist Calling…

As night follows day, you can count on Congress to serve as loyal servants and willing accomplices of our out-of-control National Security State.

Last week, in another shameless demonstration of congressional “bipartisanship,” Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), Senate Minority leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) and House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) forged a filthy backroom deal that reauthorizes insidious surveillance provisions of the Patriot Act for an additional four years.

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Invasive Cyber Technologies and Internet Privacy: Big Brother is only a “Ping” or Mouse Click Away By Tom Burghardt

11 October, 2010 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling… – 2010-10-10

As they walked along the busy, yellow-lit tiers of offices, Anderton said: “You’re acquainted with the theory of precrime, of course. I presume we can take that for granted.” — Philip K. Dick, The Minority Report

What do Google, the CIA and a host of so-called “predictive behavior” start-ups have in common?

They’re interested in you, or more specifically, whether your online interests–from Facebook to Twitter posts, and from Flickr photos to YouTube and blog entries–can be exploited by powerful computer algorithms and subsequently transformed into “actionable intelligence.”

And whether the knowledge gleaned from an IP address is geared towards selling useless junk or entering a name into a law enforcement database matters not a whit. It’s all “just data” and “buzz” goes the mantra, along what little is left of our privacy and our rights.

Increasingly, secret state agencies ranging from the CIA to the National Security Agency are pouring millions of dollars into data-mining firms which claim they have a handle on who you are or what you might do in the future.

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FBI Raids Activists’ Homes in Sinister COINTELPRO Replay By Tom Burghardt

27 September, 2010 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling… – 2010-09-26

In a replay of the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s infamous COINTELPRO operations targeting the left during the 1960s and ’70s, America’s political police launched raids on the homes of antiwar and solidarity activists.

Heavily-armed SWAT teams smashed down doors and agents armed with search warrants carried out simultaneous raids in Minneapolis and Chicago early morning on September 24.

Rummaging through personal belongings, agents carted off boxes of files, documents, books, letters, photographs, computers and cell phones from Minneapolis antiwar activists Mick Kelly, Jessica Sundin, Meredith Aby, two others, as well as the office of that city’s Anti-War Committee.

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Undermining the American People’s Right to Privacy: The Secret State’s Surveillance Machine By Tom Burghardt

13 December, 2009 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling… – 2009-12-10

Following the Money Trail: Telecoms and ISPs


“Follow the money.”

And why not. As the interface between state and private criminality, following the money trail is oxygen and combustible fuel for rooting out corruption in high places: indelible signs left behind like toxic tracks by our sociopathic masters.

After all, there’s nothing quite like exposing an exchange of cold, hard cash from one greedy fist to another to focus one’s attention on the business at hand.

And when that dirty business is the subversion of the American people’s right to privacy, there’s also nothing quite like economic self-interest for ensuring that a cone of silence descends over matters best left to the experts; a veritable army of specialists squeezing singular advantage out of any circumstance, regardless of how dire the implications for our democracy.

In light of this recommendation researcher Christopher Soghoian, deploying the tools of statistical analysis and a keen sense of outrage, reaffirmed that “Internet service providers and telecommunications companies play a significant, yet little known role in law enforcement and intelligence gathering.”

That the American people have been kept in the dark when it comes to this and other affairs of state, remain among the most closely-guarded open secrets of what has euphemistically been called the “NSA spying scandal.”

And when the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) posted thousands of pages of documents “detailing behind-the-scenes negotiations between government agencies and Congress about providing immunity for telecoms involved in illegal government surveillance” last month, they lifted the lid on what should be a major scandal, not that corporate media paid the least attention.

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Mind Your Tweets: The CIA Social Networking Surveillance System By Tom Burghardt

27 October, 2009 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling… – 2009-10-24

That social networking sites and applications such as Facebook, Twitter and their competitors can facilitate communication and information sharing amongst diverse groups and individuals is by now a cliché.

It should come as no surprise then, that the secret state and the capitalist grifters whom they serve, have zeroed-in on the explosive growth of these technologies. One can be certain however, securocrats aren’t tweeting their restaurant preferences or finalizing plans for after work drinks.

No, researchers on both sides of the Atlantic are busy as proverbial bees building a ‘total information’ surveillance system, one that will, so they hope, provide police and security agencies with what they euphemistically call ‘actionable intelligence.’

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Big Brother FBI: Data-Mining Programs Resurrect “Total Information Awareness” By Tom Burghardt

8 October, 2009 — Global ResearchAntifascist Calling

Like a vampire rising from it’s grave each night to feed on the privacy rights of Americans, the Federal Bureau of Investigation is moving forward with programs that drain the life blood from our constitutional liberties.

From the wholesale use of informants and provocateurs to stifle political dissent, to Wi-Fi hacking and viral computer spyware to follow our every move, the FBI has turned massive data-mining of personal information into a growth industry. In the process they are building the surveillance state long been dreamed of by American securocrats.

A chilling new report by investigative journalist Ryan Singel provides startling details of how the FBI’s National Security Branch Analysis Center (NSAC) is quietly morphing into the Total Information Awareness (TIA) system of convicted Iran-Contra felon, Admiral John M. Poindexter. According to documents obtained by Wired:

A fast-growing FBI data-mining system billed as a tool for hunting terrorists is being used in hacker and domestic criminal investigations, and now contains tens of thousands of records from private corporate databases, including car-rental companies, large hotel chains and at least one national department store. (Ryan Singel, “FBI’s Data-Mining System Sifts Airline, Hotel, Car-Rental Records,” Wired, September 23, 2009)

Among the latest revelations of out-of-control secret state spookery, Wired disclosed that personal details on customers have been provided to the Bureau by the Wyndham Worldwide hotel chain “which includes Ramada Inn, Days Inn, Super 8, Howard Johnson and Hawthorn Suites.” Additional records were obtained from the Avis rental car company and Sears department stores.

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