Media darling General Petraeus gets knuckles rapped for spilling state secrets

You remember David.

Former Sultan of Baghdad.

Former Emir of Kabul.

Former Big Boss at the CIA.

The man credited for winning the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Seldom have so many honours been bestowed on a man who essentially achieved nothing. As a military strategist he was a moron. As a shameless self-promoter, he was without peer.

You may have read about him in Paula Broadwell's best-seller, slyly titled "All In." Seems the General and his biographer had an understanding; if she gave him access to her underpants area, he would give her access to state secrets.

That was a win-win as far as it went, but alas, the shit hit the fan shortly after the General embarked on his sinecure at the CIA. But don't worry for the future of Petraeus; he'll clean up on the speakers' circuit.  He'll be an A-list talking head on the US networks till the day he draws his last breath.

He's got the kind of man's man resume that'll make him a must-have addition to Boards of Directors throughout the military industrial complex. The Paula scandal only made him more appealing to that crowd.

What bothers me is that this charlatan who betrayed state secrets for private gain gets a slap on the wrist, while heroes like Edward Snowden and Chelsea Manning, who betrayed state secrets for the public good, will be persecuted for the rest of their lives.

Snowden v. gay rights in Russia

We knew all along that it was only a matter of time before CIA shills would condemn Edward Snowden for having accepted Russia's offer of asylum.

We at the Falling Downs think tank are all aboard for gay rights and same-sex marriage etc.

We are disturbed by recent anti-queer legislation in Russia.

But if we are forced to choose between Edward Snowden finding sanctuary and gay Russians having a pride parade, well, it's a no-brainer.

"Gay" has been co-opted through and through in the West, to the point where the CIA empowers a gay "Employee Resource Group" to make sure that gay CIA staffers are not discriminated against.

However laudable that may be, some things are more important than "gay rights."

There are a million Mannings

1.4 million to be precise.

That's just folks with the "top secret" security clearance.

For a regular run-of-the-mill secret clearance, there are over five million people.

The think tank here at Falling Downs has it as a matter of policy/mission statement that there is never any reason why a democratic state needs to keep secrets from its citizens.

Never.

Ever.

Manning and Snowden and so many others who have not made the evening news are heroes, because they have called the elite on their anti-democratic mission of valorizing state secrets.

A true democracy never needs to keep secrets from its citizens.

America rises!

This is going to be a hard pill to swallow for that Republican who sometimes reads this blog, but the fact is that Obama has done more for America's international prestige than anyone since Reagan beat back the commies in Grenada.

That was thirty years ago.

Under Clinton and the Bush family, America's rep only went backwards.

But look at the evening news today!

Egypt turns itself inside out to appease the legions of American "democracy activists" on the ground.

Countries large and small trip over themselves rescinding asylum offers from Edward Snowden.

Never in recent history has back-room arm-twisting had such a salutary effect.

The rise is reflected in the price of gold and the relative value of the American dollar against other currencies.

The Big Dog is back, and he means business!

Ecuador's economy at risk in Snowden affair

The private sector in Ecuador is bracing for a big hit in the event that NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden shows up to claim that asylum that's been promised him.

One of the more vulnerable industries is the fresh flower business, which is on the threshold of successfully negotiating a US tariff reduction that would be worth hundreds of millions of dollars to growers.

Frankly, if America needs to import fresh-cut flowers via air-freight from thousands of miles away, that in itself is a searing indictment of how the demands of contemporary capitalism have trumped common sense, logic, and environmental concerns.

But it seems futile and vindictive to punish Ecuador for the actions of Snowden. With millions of people having access to "secret" files, and technology making it ever-easier to abscond with those files, there will be a steady parade of Snowdens crossing our screens for years to come.

US Army General James Cartwright seeks asylum in Ecuadorian Embassy

It's getting downright crowded at the Ecuadorian Embassy.

For those who don't know, that's a bar/hotel on the upper east side, not too far from the UN.

That's where Julian Assange has been hanging out for a year and where Ed Snowden is headed, and they've been holding a room for Bradley Manning for years.

Those bold patriots are being joined by General James Cartwright, the former #2 at the Pentagon.

Cartwright's transgression was to blab the beans on the Stuxnet computer virus. That's the little piece of computer virus wizardry designed by the USA that was to sabotage Iran's nuclear program, but instead found its way into the world-wide web and ended up in Japan.

You know the rest.

Obama lowers boom on whistle-blower Snowden

Let this be a warning to you.

If you have pious urges to spill the beans about how much your government is lying to you, be warned.

Government lying is for the greater good.

You talking about it is an act of treason.

Edward Snowden is now officially on the bend-them-till-they-break list with Assange and the hapless dweeb Bradley Manning.

Remember this; when your government lies to you, it's for your own good.

And if you know what's good for you, you'll leave it at that.

Stalin used to call it "governing."

We call it "democracy."

G20 spy scandal gets traction in Turkey, Russia, disappears in US

One of the revelations Edward Snowden made public is that the UK government had their spooks monitor the communications of visiting delegations at the London G20 summit in 2009.

Bags of umbrage are being taken in Russia and Turkey, but the media gods in North American have deemed this a non-story.

American media can fill you in on the 1001 reasons why Edward Snowden is a traitor, but at least for now the actual substance of his revelations seems to be off limits.

Evil Dictator crosses red line just in time to bury NSA domestic spying scandal

The "Assad used chemical weapons on his own people" story has been around for at least a year, kept bubbling on the back-burner, held in reserve till the day we're ready to play it.

Looks like Team Obama thinks now's the time.

The timing is rather too perfect.

Every media outlet in the "free world" is bracing us for the sheer, stark, regrettable, inevitability of the US military establishing a no-fly zone deep in Syrian territory.

The US can count on cheer-leading but little else from the NATO pack. Their militaries face budget woes and their people are sick of the entire empire act that keeps the world in turmoil.

Once Assad is gone, what next?

Surely the civil war that is now ongoing between the Syrian state and a largely foreign jihadist force will not end with the removal of Assad from the picture.

For their part, the Iranians have every reason to see the Americans bogged down for a long time. As in Iraq, the war-heads who dream up this deadly foolishness will end up weakening America and increasing the prestige of Iran.

By playing this hand now the Obama White House is letting the world know they are about to come out from behind the curtain. It starts like this and eventually there will be 101 great reasons why US boots need to be on the ground.

By a fortuitous coincidence thousands of American troops happen to be on the Syria-Jordan border already.

All that talk about domestic spying and privacy laws can be conveniently forgotten...

Technology and "treason"

Not that many years ago, if you wanted to spirit a million pages of top secret stuff out of a government facility you would have needed a forklift and a truck.

And helpers.

And a window of opportunity.

Thanks to the advances in information technology, now you can do it with a memory stick that you can hide anywhere anytime.

With over 1.4 million Americans enjoying "top secret" security clearance, it's open season on state secrets. Snowden and Manning will soon enough be followed by many others.

No state secret is safe.

Ironically, the biggest "secret" spilled by Snowden has been the complicity of big telecom and big IT in betraying their customers to the government via the "PRISM" snooping initiative. Those are the very corporations who have unceasingly trumpeted the democratizing influence of their technology!

Even though the revelations about Prism expose the bankruptcy of the tech giants' commitment to democracy, their technology may inadvertently make their fraudulent claims come true. A state that can't keep secrets is a state that can't lie to its people.

That can only be a good thing, at least for anyone who believes in democracy.

Assange, Manley, Snowden...

Assange, Manley, Snowden... great patriots one and all.

The very idea that a "democracy" needs to hide secrets from its people is profoundly offensive at the most fundamental level.

Hopefully these guys will all be future Nobel winners.

That would atone for some recent Nobel winners.