As the public finally becomes outraged over the NSA's illegal spying, members of government and the corporate media wage an information war to misdirect that anger to issues of less importance.

To counteract this, a bold new citizen-led initiative to nullify the NSA is now gaining momentum around the United States.

This is the GRTV Backgrounder on Global Research TV.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2HonVknVWBg

One of the less-remembered parts of the Osama bin Laden fairytale was that the NSA had a hard time keeping track of his communications with his Al CIAda operatives. Why? Because, as General Michael Hayden told CBS News back in early 2001, bin Laden used standard encryption and off-the-shelf American telecommunication products.

Sound unbelievable? That's because it is. As they go on to admit in that very same report, they were tracking bin Laden's satellite phone after all, and as James Bamford and others have described in exhaustive detail, the NSA was monitoring Al Qaeda's "communications hub" in Yemen for years prior to 9/11, and purposefullly withholding most of that information from the CIA bin Laden unit. But the idea that the NSA just wasn't able to track bin Laden because of his dastardly technology was a key meme for the NSA to implant in the immediate wake of 9/11. That's why the Hayden interview was replayed on CBS less than 48 hours after the attacks, and that's why, as recently declassified documents show, the NSA used 9/11 as an official talking point to justify their illegal surveillance of Americans.

This meme, of course, was a lie. As NSA insiders have pointed out for years, most if not all of the current illegal collections programs began before 9/11, but the false flag events of September 11th provided the perfect justification for the revelation and expansion of those programs.

Now, over a decade later, that meme is paying off. Just two weeks after a federal district court judge ruled the NSA's collection of telephone metadata unconstitutional, a different district court judge ruled it constitutional. In his particularly florid ruling, U.S. District Court Judge William Pauley wrote:

"The September 11th terrorist attacks revealed, in the starkest terms, just how dangerous and interconnected the world is. While Americans depended on technology for the conveniences of modernity, al-Qaeda plotted in a seventh-century milieu to use that technology against us. It was a bold jujitsu. And it succeeded because conventional intelligence gathering could not detect diffuse filaments connecting al-Qaeda."

No matter if it bears any resemblance to reality. The meme has been planted and the courts are willing to go along with it. It is now official lore that the NSA needs to spy on everyone's phone metadata to prevent the next 9/11 from taking place.

Of course, that's not the only lie in this story. The even bigger lie that is being propounded now is that the national conversation and the court cases are still revolving around the false notion that NSA phone spying is somehow limited to metadata, as if all the NSA is collecting are lists of phone numbers and call durations. We have suspected for years that phone calls were being recorded and stored wholesale, but that was actually confirmed by Tim Clemente, a former FBI counterterrorism agent who casually let it slip on Erin Burnett's CNN program in May that US intelligence agencies have access to complete phone conversations whenever they want in the name of "national security."

Although this caused a buzz at the time and was picked up by numerous publications, it was soon covered over by the Snowden story, which once again focused people's attention on metadata. One person who did not gloss over it, however, was Russ Tice. He was a former NSA employee who became a whistleblower almost a decade ago, as one of the sources for the initial New York Times story exposing the illegal NSA wiretapping program. When he heard Clemente's interview he immediately contacted his ex-NSA friends and discussed whether the NSA was already recording every phone conversation they could intercept and storing them at their new Utah data center. The ex-NSA gathering's consensus: this was exactly what the NSA was doing. As a result, Tice decided to go further than ever before about what he knew regarding illegal NSA activities. In a series of interviews on BoilingFrogsPost.com, The Corbett Report, and other media venues, Tice revealed that during his time as an NSA employee he had personally handled the eavesdropping orders to monitor the communications of high-ranking judges, congressman and military officials, presumably for the purposes of blackmail.

And once again these shocking revelations are being spun away into theory and hearsay. This time it's Senator Bernie Sanders lobbing the softball at the NSA as he sends them a letter politely asking whether the NSA is spying on Congress. Senator Sanders did not ask about the wiretapping of communications that Tice has already exposed, however, but merely whether or not the NSA metadata spying extends to members of congress. Once again, the real scandal is papered over by milquetoast non-confrontation by the bought-and-paid-for congress that have been perfectly content to let this happen for years now.

The entire NSA fiasco is stage-managed theatrics from start to finish, a carefully choreographed stage show with full cooperation from the corporate media that is only too willing to play along and misdirect the national conversation to areas of little or no importance. Meanwhile, in reality, the only question worth discussing is how to abolish the NSA entirely. Since this is not a question that is on the table politically, it is up to the public to find alternative ways of shutting down the NSA. Luckily, there is at least one innovative project happening that proposes to do just that.

Those who are interested in finding out how they can help turn the taps off on the NSA (literally) are encouraged to explore the #NullifyNSA hashtag on twitter and explore the campaign website at OffNow.org.

Good read.

WOW! Did you two kiss and make up?

Seriously tho...... we're all in this together. It is not a time for a nation divided or we will fall to the corporate political arena

i agree, everyone has their opinion, we overlap every now and then...

Both parties dem amd repug are silent on this issue and in agreement.

On issues that truly matter they are in lock step.

Oh sure one is pro labor one against abortion one for abortion rights etc etc but at the end of the day there really isn't a dimes worth of difference.

"....This meme, of course, was a lie. As NSA insiders have pointed out for years, most if not all of the current illegal collections programs began before 9/11, but the false flag events of September 11th provided the perfect justification for the revelation and expansion of those programs...."

So? What would one expect after the attacks? Business as usual? Surveillance would naturally increase after 9/11, as it did after Madrid, London and Bali. National Security Agency denotes it is their responsibility to perform just such tasks, and yet many view this with surprise.

Typical spin from Global Research, though. I suppose a believer would have to be convinced that 9/11 was a False Flag attack, despite the idea being a little 'on the fringe'.

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Globalresearch.ca

Globalresearch.ca (also under the domain name globalresearch.org) may best be described as a left-wing equivalent to WingNutDaily. It is the website of the Montreal-based non-profit The Centre for Research on Globalisation (CRG), founded by Michel Chossudovsky.

The website describes itself as an "independent research and media organization." Globalresearch.ca takes pride in being a reliable "alternative news" source serving as a major repository of a broad range of "news articles, in-depth reports and analysis on issues which are barely covered by the mainstream media" (such as the New World Order). Its politico-economic stance is strongly anti-capitalist, anti-imperialist, anti-militarist, "internationalist but anti-globalization." Its view of science, the economy and geopolitics seems to be broadly conspiracist.

While many of Globalresearch.ca's articles discuss legitimate humanitarian or environmental concerns, the site has a strong undercurrent of reality warping and Bull$hitt throughout its pages.

Despite presenting itself as a source of scholarly analysis, Globalresearch.ca mostly consists of polemics many of which accept (and use) conspiracy theories, pseudoscience and propaganda. The prevalent conspiracist strand relates to global power-elites (primarily governments and corporations) and their New World Order. Specific featured conspiracy theories include those addressing 9/11, vaccines, genetic modification, Zionism, HAARP, global warming, and David Kelly. Analyses of these issues tend follow the lines of the site's political biases.

Apparently, contributors to Globalresearch.ca consider information sourced from anyone who seems aligned to their ideology as reliable; during the 2011 Libyan civil war the site was an apologist for Muammar al-Gaddafi, reproducing his propaganda and painting him as a paragon of a modern leader. It's no surprise then that the site has long become a magnet for radicals, fringe figures and crank elements from the left in general. And ironically, it has more in common with its writers' enemies and wingnut rivals than they would ever admit.

MICHAEL CHOSSUDOVSKY, PROFESSOR OF ECONOMICS, UNIVERSITY OF OTTAWA
As overseer of the anti-U.S., anti-globalization website GlobalResearch.ca, Chossudovsky has manufactured a long list of eyebrow-raising accusations that often read more like wild-eyed conspiracy theories than serious political discourse: the U.S. had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks ("Of course they knew!"); "Washington's New World Order weapons have the ability to trigger climate change"; the U.S. knew in advance about the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, but kept it to themselves (apparently so they could ride to the rescue of devastated coastal regions); big banking orchestrates the collapse of national economies. Of course, all that talk of banking conspiracies can lead one into some bigoted territory. B'nai Brith Canada has complained to the University of Ottawa about anti-Semitic postings on Chossudovsky's site.(Posted under "Canada's Nuttiest Professors")

even if you ignore the conspiracy parts, it still makes a bit of sense..

It's more an 'appeal to emotion' than anything resembling an accurate analysis.

yea, well..point taken, but the underlying message is the same... i personally don't think it was a "false flag" event, but the powers that be sure used it to their advantage...

Or they responded to it accordingly in order to prevent it occurring again. It's all about perspective really. Imagine if they did nothing regarding stepping up security after 9/11, and Al-Qaeda committed another atrocity on domestic US soil? The fallout within the media and the electorate would be astronomical.

To put it simply, your government cannot allow this to happen again, and it knows this only too well. Please note, that I have no affiliation with the right or the left.

there's no trust left with our government... doesn't matter what they do or say, lots of people just don't believe anything they say anymore...

lots of people believe they started the terrorism in the first place in order to fulfill there agenda plans... plausible, considering past events..
personally, i think 9-11 happened mostly the way they said it did, but all the crap after makes no sense to me... the metadata they are keeping, it's not about terrorists, there is way to much they already have to be only terrorists...

the TSA...
the NSA
FEMA
Patriot Act
16 separate departments that start with the word "defense"
http://www.usa.gov/directory/federal/E.shtml

my point is that no matter all these people saying false flag this, false flag that, it doesn't matter, there is a problem no matter who says what... that much is obvious.

the truthers can say the government did it, or aliens that turned steel into dust, or dumbledore hit the buildings with his magic wand, whatever...

the people here know things are not right, no matter how much they confuse the issue with the sillyness...