ramus
7th November 2017, 20:58
There Is A Lucrative Espionage Industry For Covering Up The Crimes Of The Rich
07 Nov 2017 Posted by Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone has been called a “rogue journalist” Despite Johnstone’s provocative desire to fish in troubled waters—doesn’t CP itself like to court controversy, as any “muckraking journalism” worthy of the name should?—[Counter Punch]
http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/top-news/lucrative-espionage-industry-cov
ering-crimes-rich/
A Rolex that once belonged to Paul Newman sold for $17.8 million last month, the
most expensive watch ever sold at auction. The name of the winner of the
duelling phone bids is unknown at this time, but we can be reasonably sure that
it wasn’t Harvey Weinstein. Not because he’s had a lot on his plate lately, but
because it was probably a bit out of his price range.
Harvey Weinstein is an extremely wealthy and powerful man, but there are circles
in which he’s considered small change. In a country with 540 billionaires,
Weinstein has an estimated net worth of a mere $300 million. Given that he’s
only spent a couple million on political influence since the turn of the
century, it seems unlikely that he’d fork out 17.8 from his estate for a
timepiece. Odds are on the other end of that phone bidding line was someone with
some real money.
Weinstein is not one of the wealthiest men in his country, but even he could
afford to hire his own personal army of ex-Mossad intelligence veterans to
conduct espionage and psyops to silence his rape victims.
The New Yorker has published a nauseatingly disturbing article titled “Harvey
Weinstein’s Army of Spies,” detailing how the Hollywood exec used firms like
Kroll and Black Cube to intimidate, spy on, deceive, nullify, and gather
information on women who might come forward with accusations of sexual assault
and the journalists who interacted with them. In addition to undercover
operations wherein agents had covertly recorded conversations with actresses and
journos under false identities, the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube
provided “intelligence analysts, linguists, and ‘Avatar Operators’ specifically
hired to create fake identities on social media, as well as ‘operations experts
with extensive experience in social engineering,’” The New Yorker reports.
The price tag on this whole operation? The final invoice totaled $600,000. Well
within the affordability range of a man like Weinstein, and even considerably
less wealthy millionaires if they really needed such services.
I have a hard time imagining anything more evil that a powerful Hollywood elite
hiring out ex-Mossad agents to silence his rape victims. It’s the kind of
darkness that makes you reconsider your most fundamental beliefs about what
humans are and what we’re doing here. As awful as this particular case is,
though, what I find far more disturbing is its broader implications.
Wanna be seriously creeped out for a minute? Check out Black Cube’s website.
This is their main page, the one they present to people when you search for them
on Google. The dark colors, the men in black suits looming over a city, all
while advertising how they can “map all potential sources of interest by
trawling the deep web and harvesting information from typically inaccessible
areas of the Internet such as the Dark Net” and “extract valuable information
from limited access sources, both in virtual and physical environments.”
Could they be more “Hey rich people! We’ll do pretty much any evil thing you
want if the price is right”?
This is a standard, private service that you can hire if you have enough money.
They’ll work through your lawyer’s office, so that everything they do is legally
protected by attorney-client privilege. You get a personal army of thugs and
manipulators to hamstring, bully, silence, surveille or coerce anybody you want,
trained by one of the most depraved intelligence agencies on the planet. If you
can afford it.
It’s stupid to think that Kroll and Black Cube are the only ones trying to offer
the wealthy these services, and it’s stupid to think that Weinstein is the only
rich elite using such services to cover up his personal evils. Weinstein got
caught because he happens to have a fetish for women of means, who became
wealthy themselves and who can with enough effort can get their voices heard.
Imagine crossing a wealthy person and not having such means at your disposal.
This has doubtless happened to countless people.
Harvey Weinstein is not one of the richest men in America. Imagine the kind of
services whoever bought Paul Newman’s watch could afford? What kind of private
services are available to someone who has $6 million to throw at someone who’s
inconveniencing them? Or $60 million? Or $600 million? You live in a country
where if you cross someone who has enough money, anything could happen to you.
My conservative followers complain about “class warfare” when I speak about how
the billionaire class rules their country in exactly the same way a king rules a
kingdom, but the war is already happening, brothers — I didn’t start it. The
donor class has bought up the US federal government to the point where
non-wealthy Americans have functionally zero influence over its policies or
behavior, and if they abuse that immense power it turns out that they’re not
only protected by the judicial system, but they have their own private
extrajudicial army as well!
Class warfare has been happening for generations, and ordinary people are only
just now waking up to that fact. It’s like someone’s been punching us in the
face for years, and we’re only just beginning to realize “Hey wait a minute,
this guy’s not my friend! I’m in a fight! I’d better hit back or he’ll kill me!”
I’m not advocating violence here, but I’m also not advocating allowing ourselves
to be intimidated by these revelations into sitting down and shutting up. The
Weinstein case has showed us exactly how to beat these bastards: enough women
coming forward at once made his old tactics for silencing them ineffective. If
enough people decide not to let a few hundred plutocrats rule their world
anymore, we can shrug them off like a heavy coat on a warm day just by crippling
the plutocracy’s propaganda machine and waking mainstream America up to their
manipulations. They cannot rule without their consent-manufacturer. We can beat
them without firing a shot.
Six hundred thousand. That’s not a lot of money to have your own Mossad-trained
psyops and espionage team at your disposal. Most of Silicon Valley could find
that sort of dinero if they were really motivated. And right now, it’s all
legal. There’s no suggestion that anyone will go to jail for acting as
Weinstein’s goon squad. There is no penalty for Weinstein for using these agents
to continue stalking and psychologically abusing his victims long after his
initial assaults were over. No heads will roll for using tacit intimidation and
harassment as a means to silence victims and the journalists who are trying to
tell their story.
It’s exactly the same with the recently released Paradise Papers. There’ll be
public outcry from some of the things revealed there, but it’s unlikely that
many will suffer meaningful legal repercussions for the ways they hid their
money to prevent any of it from going toward helping society. That’s the real
problem here: corruption and economic injustice are not illegal. Improprietous?
Maybe. Illegal, no.
Not yet, anyway. Let’s change that.
07 Nov 2017 Posted by Caitlin Johnstone
Caitlin Johnstone has been called a “rogue journalist” Despite Johnstone’s provocative desire to fish in troubled waters—doesn’t CP itself like to court controversy, as any “muckraking journalism” worthy of the name should?—[Counter Punch]
http://www.thelastamericanvagabond.com/top-news/lucrative-espionage-industry-cov
ering-crimes-rich/
A Rolex that once belonged to Paul Newman sold for $17.8 million last month, the
most expensive watch ever sold at auction. The name of the winner of the
duelling phone bids is unknown at this time, but we can be reasonably sure that
it wasn’t Harvey Weinstein. Not because he’s had a lot on his plate lately, but
because it was probably a bit out of his price range.
Harvey Weinstein is an extremely wealthy and powerful man, but there are circles
in which he’s considered small change. In a country with 540 billionaires,
Weinstein has an estimated net worth of a mere $300 million. Given that he’s
only spent a couple million on political influence since the turn of the
century, it seems unlikely that he’d fork out 17.8 from his estate for a
timepiece. Odds are on the other end of that phone bidding line was someone with
some real money.
Weinstein is not one of the wealthiest men in his country, but even he could
afford to hire his own personal army of ex-Mossad intelligence veterans to
conduct espionage and psyops to silence his rape victims.
The New Yorker has published a nauseatingly disturbing article titled “Harvey
Weinstein’s Army of Spies,” detailing how the Hollywood exec used firms like
Kroll and Black Cube to intimidate, spy on, deceive, nullify, and gather
information on women who might come forward with accusations of sexual assault
and the journalists who interacted with them. In addition to undercover
operations wherein agents had covertly recorded conversations with actresses and
journos under false identities, the Israeli intelligence firm Black Cube
provided “intelligence analysts, linguists, and ‘Avatar Operators’ specifically
hired to create fake identities on social media, as well as ‘operations experts
with extensive experience in social engineering,’” The New Yorker reports.
The price tag on this whole operation? The final invoice totaled $600,000. Well
within the affordability range of a man like Weinstein, and even considerably
less wealthy millionaires if they really needed such services.
I have a hard time imagining anything more evil that a powerful Hollywood elite
hiring out ex-Mossad agents to silence his rape victims. It’s the kind of
darkness that makes you reconsider your most fundamental beliefs about what
humans are and what we’re doing here. As awful as this particular case is,
though, what I find far more disturbing is its broader implications.
Wanna be seriously creeped out for a minute? Check out Black Cube’s website.
This is their main page, the one they present to people when you search for them
on Google. The dark colors, the men in black suits looming over a city, all
while advertising how they can “map all potential sources of interest by
trawling the deep web and harvesting information from typically inaccessible
areas of the Internet such as the Dark Net” and “extract valuable information
from limited access sources, both in virtual and physical environments.”
Could they be more “Hey rich people! We’ll do pretty much any evil thing you
want if the price is right”?
This is a standard, private service that you can hire if you have enough money.
They’ll work through your lawyer’s office, so that everything they do is legally
protected by attorney-client privilege. You get a personal army of thugs and
manipulators to hamstring, bully, silence, surveille or coerce anybody you want,
trained by one of the most depraved intelligence agencies on the planet. If you
can afford it.
It’s stupid to think that Kroll and Black Cube are the only ones trying to offer
the wealthy these services, and it’s stupid to think that Weinstein is the only
rich elite using such services to cover up his personal evils. Weinstein got
caught because he happens to have a fetish for women of means, who became
wealthy themselves and who can with enough effort can get their voices heard.
Imagine crossing a wealthy person and not having such means at your disposal.
This has doubtless happened to countless people.
Harvey Weinstein is not one of the richest men in America. Imagine the kind of
services whoever bought Paul Newman’s watch could afford? What kind of private
services are available to someone who has $6 million to throw at someone who’s
inconveniencing them? Or $60 million? Or $600 million? You live in a country
where if you cross someone who has enough money, anything could happen to you.
My conservative followers complain about “class warfare” when I speak about how
the billionaire class rules their country in exactly the same way a king rules a
kingdom, but the war is already happening, brothers — I didn’t start it. The
donor class has bought up the US federal government to the point where
non-wealthy Americans have functionally zero influence over its policies or
behavior, and if they abuse that immense power it turns out that they’re not
only protected by the judicial system, but they have their own private
extrajudicial army as well!
Class warfare has been happening for generations, and ordinary people are only
just now waking up to that fact. It’s like someone’s been punching us in the
face for years, and we’re only just beginning to realize “Hey wait a minute,
this guy’s not my friend! I’m in a fight! I’d better hit back or he’ll kill me!”
I’m not advocating violence here, but I’m also not advocating allowing ourselves
to be intimidated by these revelations into sitting down and shutting up. The
Weinstein case has showed us exactly how to beat these bastards: enough women
coming forward at once made his old tactics for silencing them ineffective. If
enough people decide not to let a few hundred plutocrats rule their world
anymore, we can shrug them off like a heavy coat on a warm day just by crippling
the plutocracy’s propaganda machine and waking mainstream America up to their
manipulations. They cannot rule without their consent-manufacturer. We can beat
them without firing a shot.
Six hundred thousand. That’s not a lot of money to have your own Mossad-trained
psyops and espionage team at your disposal. Most of Silicon Valley could find
that sort of dinero if they were really motivated. And right now, it’s all
legal. There’s no suggestion that anyone will go to jail for acting as
Weinstein’s goon squad. There is no penalty for Weinstein for using these agents
to continue stalking and psychologically abusing his victims long after his
initial assaults were over. No heads will roll for using tacit intimidation and
harassment as a means to silence victims and the journalists who are trying to
tell their story.
It’s exactly the same with the recently released Paradise Papers. There’ll be
public outcry from some of the things revealed there, but it’s unlikely that
many will suffer meaningful legal repercussions for the ways they hid their
money to prevent any of it from going toward helping society. That’s the real
problem here: corruption and economic injustice are not illegal. Improprietous?
Maybe. Illegal, no.
Not yet, anyway. Let’s change that.