Did everyone catch the story about active CIA moonlighting for banks and other corporations?

[JackRiddler]

Watch this, please:

http://www.democracynow.org/2010/2/9/eamon_javers_on_the_secret_world

Active CIA employees are allowed to moonlight for private contractors and the few known examples include analysis and apparently spy work for Wall Street banks on the market.

Keep in mind the intelligence chiefs have the power to suspend SEC accounting rules for corporations working in the "national interest." (As it is, the rules were suspended for all the Wall Street banks last year with the lifting of "mark to market" rules, allowing banks to value their assets however they like.)

Keep in mind 2/3 of the intel budgets now goes to private contractors.

Remember too the revolving door system - the contractors hire former intel as consultants and executives at much higher pay, and then these same guys go back to the agencies they worked for to negotiate new contracts.

Contractors in turn are free to pursue private sector business.

In short, we tolerate and finance a covert branch of government surrounded by a world of private parapolitical operators who are above the law and beyond any oversight by the visible government.

Can we pretend reform is possible - can we pretend democracy is possible? - as long as this kind of power can be exercised in secret?

[Grand Taurean]

1. kick

[libodem]

2. Democracy vs Capitalism

Can they coexist. We imported democracy to Iraq. How's that workin' for 'em? Don't see a lot of other countries signing up for an invasion.

[JackRiddler]

3. I forgot to add...

Contractors are free to pursue private sector business - and of course that might include corporate espionage, contracts for allied foreign agencies, arms dealing.

The CIA especially by definition exists to break the laws of other countries. Thus it's carte blanche to do so whenever is convenient.

Nowadays it's hard to distinguish between other countries and this one, especially in the realm of media. The disinfo created in one place spreads everywhere else.

Finally, we have the simple facts of human nature known to all of us. Unaccountable power is going to corrupt people, attract already corrupt people, and create all manner of temptations in which people will almost always persuade themselves that national security coincides with personal interest.

Oh yeah, and did anyone notice the very large number of right-minded people in this area of government who think of themselves as the Real Americans and patriots and Christians, or the neocon types, and others who think they are at war with the rest of the country already?

In short, a gigantic, INVISIBLE mess that our culture doesn't even want to allow exists (thanks to the "conspiracy theory" conditioning), although there's no denying the $50 billion in subsidies that go into it every year, and the even larger private spook industries.

[JackRiddler]

4. kick