Collusion Found Between German Secret Service and Neo-Nazis.

Germany's secret service - Ver­fas­sungss­chutz (VS) - is at the center of a scandal involving a very well armed neo-Nazi terrorist cell operating in Germany since 2000. Last week, it was found that the Ver­fas­sungss­chutz destroyed files containing vital information on  the National Social­ist Underground (NSU), the day before it was supposed to be turned over to federal prosecutors.

The VS was built up after 1955 by Hubert Schrübbers, who had served the Nazi regime as a member of the SA storm troopers and as attorney general. According to Wikipedia, he filled a huge number of posts in the secret service with former members of the SS and its intelligence service, the SD.

 Heinz Fromm, head of the VS has resigned following an investigation initiated by the German judiciary on a series of unsolved murders dating from the period 2000-2010. During the investigations, the investigators have established a connection between the German Secret Service and the terrorist organization "clandestinity National Socialist" (NSU), a neo-Nazi terrorist cell accused of at least 10 murders.

The resignation of Fromm represent the latest chapter of an investigation started by magistrates last November. After careful analysis, the investigators concluded that the secret services were not only aware of the terrorist organization, but at the time of the opening of investigations have conveniently destroyed seven folders containing information provided by the militant neo-Nazi group, used as intelligence informants.

Fromm's resignation will not stop the work of the investigators intending to clarify the links between the NSU and intelligence agencies. Meanwhile, German politicians have spoken out in favor of the former intelligence chief, believed by the majority and the opposition "intact and unconnected with the facts on which the investigations are conducted."

This may be hard to believe, but according to a survey done by the Free University of Berlin, from a sample of 7,500 students over 15 years, 50% do not know who Adolf Hitler was, and, of those who do know, one-third believe he was a protector of human rights!

Operation Gladio was part of a post-World War II program set up by the CIA and NATO:

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Please Help Defend Whistleblower, John Kiriakou

Peter Landesman at The Public Intelligence Blog is asking people to help in the defense of CIA officer Jon Kiriakou who is being charged under the Espionage Act of 1917.

No one involved in the waterboarding of terror suspects has ever faced criminal charges, but John is facing charges for the "crime" of having talked honestly to journalists about what happened and who did it. If convicted, John could be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison.

Dear Friends and Colleagues:

We write to ask you to join us in supporting, protecting and materially helping our friend and colleague, John Kiriakou, a long-time former C.I.A. official and case officer. Incredibly, John has been accused by the Department of Justice of crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act, a charge historically reserved for persons who betrayed their country to foreign governments for money.

Why? The prosecutors have not claimed that John talked to any foreign government, passed any government documents or accepted funds from anyone hostile to the United States. Instead, according to the facts asserted in the indictment, he committed the “crime” of responding honestly to a query from the New York Times related to the agency’s interrogation program under the Bush Administration, which included waterboarding.

We know the government wants to send a signal to the lawyers representing prisoners at Guantanamo that the U.S. is intent on protecting its secrets from disclosure in cases relating to torture, and wants to chill further disclosures by anyone. But this is a case that should never have been brought anywhere – let alone in a country that values free speech and the protections of the First Amendment.

Journalists covering national security issues understand the stakes here, and what this case represents. A recent New York Times column described how the White House press secretary opened a briefing by honoring Marie Colvin and Anthony Shadid for having sacrificed their lives “in order to bring truth” while reporting in Syria. Referring to John Kiriakou, the White House correspondent for ABC News asked in response how the administration could square supporting journalism in distant lands while “aggressively
trying to stop aggressive journalism in the United States by using the Espionage Act to take whistle-blowers to court?”

While no one involved in the waterboarding of terror suspects has ever faced criminal charges, John now stands in the crosshairs of the Department of Justice for the “crime” of having talked honestly to journalists about what happened and who did it.

If convicted, John could be sentenced to as much as 30 years in prison. The irony is extraordinary. For more than 14 years, John worked in the field and at home, under conditions of great peril and stress and at great personal sacrifice, dedicating himself to protecting America and Americans from harm at home and abroad.

The Justice Department’s actions have created huge pressures on John and his family. John and Heather have five children – the youngest less than a year old – and face the challenge of raising them while simultaneously fighting the people at the CIA, FBI and Justice Department who are determined to send John to prison.

John’s defense will cost more than half a million dollars, even as John and Heather struggle to hold onto their home and maintain their family. To help them, we have established a trust for the John Kiriakou Legal Defense Fund. Every contribution is a gift — please consider making a contribution today. All donors and donation amounts will be kept strictly confidential.

Every penny of your contribution will help make it possible for John Kiriakou to defend himself and to stand up for the principle that in the United States, no one should go to jail for answering questions from a New York Times reporter about torture.

Friends of John Kiriakou

Please help defend John Kiriakou

Please help Defend John Kiriakou

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What About Murdoch's American Empire?

By now, everyone is familiar with the firestorm of controversy that surrounds the Murdoch media empire, and it's about time considering the News of World phone-hacking schemes has been unfolding for six-years. It was The Guardian's revelation that News of the World had hacked into a teenage murder victim - even erasing the victim's voice-mails, giving the family false hope that she was alive - that broke the story wide open. News of the World also hacked the voice-mail accounts of victims of the London subway terrorist bombings in 2007. However, up until this point, the focus has been on the other side of the Atlantic. Granted, Rupert Murdoch's incestuous relationship with the British government is no secret. In less than a year,  there were 125 major lunches between the Cameron government and the Murdoch people.  But what about Murdoch's American empire?

Ten years ago, Murdoch set his eyes on Floorgraphics (FGI), a company that sells advertising on the floor of supermarkets.  Murdoch sent Paul Carlucci, president of News America (media arm of US Murdoch empire), to meet with the owners of FGI to make them an offer they couldn't refuse, but the owners, George and Richard Rebh (brothers), did, in fact, refuse.  Carlucci, in typical mafioso form,  threatened to destroy them, and over the next few years, that's exactly what  happened: News America hacked into FGI's database, and used the information to steal away  their clients, such as Safeway.

FGI hired a computer expert who traced the hacking to News America.  In 2004,  FGI petitioned Chris Christie  - New Jersey’s large-and-in-charge governor - then a U.S. attorney, to launch a criminal investigation into the alleged hacking, but the future governor of New Jersey refused to file charges. The case went to trial in 2009, and after one week, it resulted in Murdoch purchasing FGI for  $29.5 million.

Trial brief

FGI v. News America Court Testimony

FGI's complaint against News America

Defendant's response

FGI was not the only victim of News Corp. Valassis Communications, Inc claimed Murdoch's tactics caused $1.5 billion in damages. They ended up settling for $500 million

Insignia Systems, Inc. was seeking triple damages on its antitrust claim, alleging that it lost hundreds of millions of dollars as a result of anti-competitive behavior by the News America Marketing unit. They ended up settling for $125 million.

Insignia claimed that News America entered into exclusive contracts with retailers, paid the stores to boycott Insignia and used predatory pricing and bundling of advertising and promotion products, in violation of U.S. antitrust law.

Insignia also claimed News America disparaged it to customers, telling the consumer-goods companies that they would be throwing their money away by contracting with Insignia.

Judge's order finalizing Valassis deal

Insignia Systems complaint.

Sadly, News of the World reporter, Sean Hoare, who broke the was found dead a week after the story broke and his death declared not suspicious before they even did an autopsy.  The heads of DOW and the Wall Street Journal have resigned, and 43-year old Andy Coulson,  editor of News of the World, who left the company under a cloud only to become the media spokesman for Prime Minister Cameron, was arrested. The head of Scotland Yard resigned.

This hacking scandal may be the tip of what could be a Titanic sized iceberg that could sink not only News Corp, but also the “British/American Empire”. How? Well, not only does this scandal  reveal an incestuous relationship that reaches into the highest corridors of power, it may expose the profoundly dark and sinister practices of some of the most powerful people on the planet. More about that later.

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Why Are We So Vulnerable to Propaganda?

The best defense against the deliberately cloaked propaganda in the mass media is recognizing our susceptibility to it. If we refuse to believe that we are vulnerable, we are much more likely to succumb to propaganda's compelling force. And, it's not always the ignorant and uneducated masses who succumb most easily. Very often, the arrogance of the educated and/or "privileged" class renders them defenseless to its insidious pressure; thus, allowing the propaganda to inform and permeate their psyche.

Jacques Ellul on propaganda:

The average citizen wants to have opinions on domestic and foreign issues. But in reality, he can’t. He is caught between his desire and his inability, which he refuses to accept. For no citizen will believe that he is unable to have opinions. Public opinion surveys always reveal that people have opinions even on the most complicated questions, except for a small minority (usually the better informed and those who have reflected the most). The majority prefers expressing stupidities to not expressing any opinion.

For this they need simple thoughts, elementary explanations, a “key” that will permit them to take a position, and even ready-made opinions. As most people have the desire and at the same time the incapacity to participate, they are ready to accept a propaganda that will permit them to participate, and which hides their incapacity beneath explanations, judgments, and news, enabling them to satisfy their desire without eliminating their incompetence.

The individual does not want information, but only value judgments and preconceived positions. Here one must also take into account the individual’s laziness, which plays a decisive role in the entire propaganda phenomenon, and the impossibility of transmitting all information fast enough to keep up with developments in the modern world.

Besides, the developments are not only beyond man’s intellectual scope; they are also beyond him in volume and intensity; he simply cannot grasp the world’s economic and political problems.

Faced with such matters, he feels his weakness, his inconsistency, his lack of effectiveness. He realizes that he depends on decisions over which he has no control, and that realization drives him to despair. Man cannot stay in this situation too long. He needs an ideological veil to cover the harsh reality, some consolation, a purpose, a sense of values. Only propaganda offers him a remedy for a basically intolerable situation …

If we look at the average man, and not at those few intellectuals whose special business it is to be informed, what do we actually mean when we say this man is informed? It means that, aside from spending eight hours at work and two more commuting, this man reads a newspaper or, more precisely, looks at the headlines and glances at a few stories. He may also listen to news broadcasts, or watch it on TV; and once a week, he will look at the pictures in some kind of news magazine (Time, Newsweek, etc.). This is the case of the reasonably well-informed man, that is, of 98% of all people.

Now, what happens next to a man who wishes to be informed and receives a great deal of news each day? First, straight news reporting never gives him anything but factual details; the event of the day is only always a part, for news can never deal with the whole. Theoretically, the reporter could relate these details to other details, put them into context and even provide certain interpretations–but that would no longer be pure information. Besides, this could only be done for the most important events, whereas most news items deal with less important matters.

But if you shower the public with the thousands of items that occur in the course of a day or week, the average person, even if he tries hard, will simply retain thousands of items which mean nothing to him. He would need a remarkable memory to tie some event to another that happened three weeks or three months ago.

Moreover, the array of categories is bewildering — economics, politics, geography, and so on — and topics and categories change every day. To be sure, certain major stories occasionally become the subject of continuous reporting for several weeks or months, but that is not typical.

Ordinarily, a follow-up story on a previous news item appears two weeks to a month later. To obtain a rounded picture, one would have to do research, but the average person has neither the time or desire for it. As a result, he finds himself in a kaleidoscope in which thousands of unconnected images follow each other rapidly. His attention is continually diverted to new matters, new centers of interest, and is dissipated on a thousand things, which disappear from one day to the next.

The world becomes remarkably changeable and uncertain; he feels as though he is at the hub of a merry-go-round, and can find no fixed point or continuity; this is the effect information has on him. Even with major events, an immense effort is required to get a proper broad view from the thousand little strokes, the variations of color, intensity, and dimension the paper gives him. The world thus looks like a pointilliste canvas — a thousand details make a thousand points. Moreover, blank spots on the canvas also prevent a coherent view.

Our reader would then have to be able to stand back and get a panoramic view from a distance; but the law of news is that it is a daily affair. Man can never stand back to get a broad view because he immediately receives a new batch of news, which supersedes the old and demands a new point of focus, for which our reader has no time.

To the average man who tries to keep informed, a world emerges that is astonishingly incoherent, absurd, and irrational, which changes rapidly and constantly for reasons that he cannot understand. And as the most frequent news story is about an accident or calamity, our reader takes a catastrophic view of the world around him. What he learns from the paper is inevitably the event that disturbs the order of things. He is not told about the ordinary — and uninteresting — course of events, but only of unusual disasters and crime, etc., that disturb that course. He does not read about the thousands of trains that every day arrive normally at their destination, but he learns all the details of a train accident.

In the world of politics and economies, the same holds true. The news is only about trouble, danger and problems. This gives man the notion that he lives in a terrible and frightening era. Man cannot stand this; he cannot live in an absurd and incoherent world (for this, he would have to be heroic, and even Camus, who considered this the only honest posture, was not really able to stick it to it); nor can he accept the idea that the problems, which sprout all around him, cannot be solved, or that he himself has no value as an individual and is subject to the turn of events.

The man who keeps himself informed needs a framework in which all this information can be put in order; he needs explanations and comprehensive answers to general problems; he needs coherence. And he needs an affirmation of his own worth. All this is the immediate effect of information.

And the more complicated the problems are, the more simple the explanations must be; the more fragmented the canvas, the simpler the pattern; the more difficult the question, the more all-embracing the solution; the more menacing the reduction of his worth, the greater the need for boosting his ego.

All this propaganda — and only propaganda — can give him.

… An analysis of propaganda therefore shows that it succeeds primarily because it corresponds exactly to a need of the masses. Effective propaganda needs to give man an all-embracing view of the world, a view rather than a doctrine. Such a view will first of all encompass a general panorama of history, economics and politics. That panorama allows the individual to give proper classification to all the news items he receives; to exercise a “critical” judgment, to sharply accentuate certain facts and suppress others, depending on well they fit into the framework.

News therefore loses its frightening character when it offers information for which the listener already has a ready explanation in his mind, or for which he can easily find one. Man is doubly reassured by propaganda: first, because it tells him the reasons behind the developments which unfold, and second, because it promises a solution for all the problems that arise, which would otherwise seem insoluble.

Propaganda is the true remedy for loneliness. It also corresponds to deep and constant needs, more developed today, perhaps, than ever before; the need to believe and obey, to create and hear fables, to communicate in the language of myths. It also responds to man’s intellectual and desire for security–intrinsic characteristics of the real man as opposed to the theoretical man of the Existentialists.

This situation has another aspect. In our society, man is being pushed more and more into passivity. He is thrust into vast organizations which function collectively and in which each man has his own small part to play. But he cannot act on his own; he can act only as the result of somebody else’s decision. He is more and more trained to participate in group movements and to act only on signal and in the way he has been taught.

The individual becomes less and less capable of acting by himself; he needs the collective signals which integrate his actions into the complete mechanism. Modern life induces us to wait until we are told to act.

At the same time, the individual feels himself diminished. For one thing, he gets the feeling that he is under constant supervision and can never exercise his independent initiative; for another, he thinks he is always being pushed down to a lower level. To be sure, we’re talking of the average man; obviously a corporate president, high-level administrator, or professional man does not feel diminished, but that fact does not change the general situation.

The feeling of being unimportant stems from

•general working conditions, such as mechanization and regimentation
•from housing conditions, with small rooms, noise, and lack of privacy
•from family conditions, with loss of authority over children
•from submission to an ever-growing number of authorities (no one will ever be able to assess fully the disastrous effect on the human soul of all the bureaus and agencies)
– in short, from participation in mass society.

But man cannot stand being unimportant; he cannot accept the status of a cipher. He needs to assert himself, to see himself as a hero. He needs to feel he is somebody and to be considered as such. He needs to express his authority, the drive for power and domination that is in every man.

Under our present conditions, that instinct is completely frustrated. Only propaganda provides the individual with a fully satisfactory response to his profound need.

The more his needs increase in the collective society, the more propaganda must give man the feeling that he is a free individual. Propaganda alone can create this feeling, which, in turn, will integrate the individual into collective movements.

Though a mass instrument, propaganda addresses itself to each individual. It appeals to me. It appeals to my common sense, desires, and provokes my wrath and my indignation. It evokes my feelings of justice and my desire for freedom. It gives me violent feelings, and lift me out of the daily grind.

As soon as I have been politicized by propaganda, I can from my heights look down on my daily trifles. My boss, who does not share my convictions, is merely a poor fool, a prey to the illusions of an evil world. I take my revenge upon him by being enlightened; I have understood the situation and know what ought to be done. Thanks to propaganda, the diminished individual obtains the very satisfaction he needs.

In addition, to the extent that modern man is diminished, he finds himself faced with the almost constant need for repression. Most of his natural tendencies are suppressed by social constraints.

We live in an increasingly organized and ordered society which permits less and less free and spontaneous expression of man’s profound drives (which, it must be admitted, would be largely anti-social if completely unleashed). But it is impossible to keep the individual in such a situation for long.

The individual who feels himself in conflict with the group, whose personal values are different from those of his milieu, who feels tension toward his society and even toward the group in which he participates–that individual is in a tragic position in modern society.

To seal all outlets and suppress man in all areas is dangerous. Man needs to express his passions and his desires; collective social repression can have the same effect as individual repression. Either sublimation or release is necessary.

Propaganda offers release on a grand scale. For example, propaganda will permit what so far was prohibited, such as hatred, which is a dangerous and destructive feeling and fought by society. But man always has a certain need to hate, just as he hides in heart the urge to kill. Propaganda offers him an object of hatred [think of the giant pictures of Goldstein in 1984, shown during the Five Minutes of Hate], for all propaganda is aimed at an enemy. And the hatred it offers him is not shameful, evil hatred that he must hide, but a legitimate hatred, which he can justly feel.

Moreover, propaganda points out enemies that must be slain, transforming crime into a praise-worthy act [the Ritual Crime between citizen and state]. Almost every man feels a desire to kill his neighbor, but this is forbidden, and in most cases the individual will refrain from it for fear of the consequences. But propaganda opens the door and allows him to kill the Jews, the bourgeois, the Communists, and so on, and such murder even becomes an achievement.

Authoritarian regimes know that people held very firmly in hand need some decompression, some safety valves. The government offers these itself. This role is played by satirical journals attacking the authorities, yet tolerated by the dictator, or by a wild holiday set aside for ridiculing the regime, yet paid for by the dictator (Friday of Sorrows in Guatemala) Clearly, such instruments are controlled by the regime.

These instruments of criticism serve to consolidate power and make people cling even more to the regime by providing artificial release of tendencies that the state must keep in check. In such situations, propaganda has an almost therapeutic and compensatory function.

This role is even more prominent in the presence of another phenomenon: anxiety. Anxiety is perhaps the most widespread psychological trait in our society. On the one hand, the number of dangers is increasing and, because of the news media, man is more aware of them; on the other hand, religious beliefs, which allowed men to face fear, have disappeared almost entirely.

Finally, as a result of all the threats and contradictions in contemporary society, man feels accused, guilty. He cannot feel that he is right and good as long as he is exposed to contradictions, which place him in conflict with one of his group’s imperatives no matter which solution he adopts.

But one of man’s greatest inner needs is to feel that he is right. First, man needs to be right in his own eyes. He must be able to assert that he is right, that he does what he should, that he is worthy of his own respect. Then, man needs to be right in the eyes of those around him, his family, his milieu, his coworkers, his friends, his country.

Finally, he feels the need to belong to a group, which he considers right and which he can proclaim as noble, just and good. But that righteousness is not absolute righteousness, true and authentic justice.

For what matters is not to be just, or to act just, or that the group to which one belongs is just — but to seem just, to find reasons for asserting that one is just, and to have these reasons shared by one’s audience. [The rallying cries of "multiculturalism" and "diversity" come to mind here.]

This corresponds to man’s refusal to see reality — his own reality first of all — as it is, for that would be intolerable; it also corresponds to his refusal to acknowledge that he may be wrong. Before himself and others, man is constantly pleading his own case and working to find good reasons for what he does or has done. Of course, the whole process is unconscious. Relevant here is the tendency of the individual to reconstruct his past to demonstrate that his conduct was right. But this is justification rather than explanation of behavior. Man thus lives in a seemingly reasonable fiction.

On the collective level one can say that most ideologies and political or economic theories are justifications. A study by M. Rubel has shown that Marx’s rigid and seemingly uncompromising doctrine was one gigantic intellectual justification for sentimental and spontaneous positions taken by him in his youth.

It is difficult, if not impossible, to accept reality as it is and acknowledge the true reasons for our behavior, or to see clearly the motivations of a group to which we belong. If we practice a profession, we cannot limit ourselves to its financial rewards; we must also invest it with idealistic or moral justification. It becomes our “calling,” and we will not tolerate its being questioned.

Obviously, the prodigious universality of justification makes it so effective: the man who justifies himself and unconsciously plays this farce not only believes it himself but also has the need for others to believe it. And, in fact, the others do believe it, because they use the rationalizations and become accomplices of the play in which they themselves are actors.

Justification really attains its effectiveness only on the basis of this complicity, which is so all-pervasive that even those who are victims of justification go along with it.

Propaganda appeases tensions and resolves conflicts. It offers facile, ready-made justifications, which are transmitted by society and easily believed. At the same time, propaganda has the freshness and novelty which correspond to new situations and give men the impression of having invented new ideals. It provides man with a high ideal that permits him to give into his passions while seeing to accomplish a great mission.

Propaganda dissolves contradictions and restores man to unitary world in which the demands are in accord with the facts. Here, propaganda plays an idealistic role, by involving a man caught in the world of reality and making him live by anticipation in a world based on principle.

In conclusion: For all these reasons contemporary man needs propaganda; he asks for it; in fact, he almost instigates it. The development of propaganda is no accident. The politician who uses it is not a monster; he fills a social demand. The propagandee is a close accomplice of the propagandist. Only with the propagandee’s unconscious complicity can propaganda fulfill its function; and because propaganda satisfies him — even if he protests against propaganda in abstracto, or considers himself immune to it — he follows its route.

Propaganda is the inevitable result of the various components of technological society, and plays so central a role in the life of society that no economic or political development can take place without the influence of its great power.

Social work, Human Relations in social relationships, advertising (Human Engineering in the economy) propaganda in the strictest sense in the field of politics — the need for psychological influence is everywhere the decisive factor, which progress demands and which the individual seeks in order to be delivered from his own self.

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In the Spy Business, the Dagger is Replacing the Cloak.

Science of spying 1965

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What a Tangled Web We Weave...

Michael and Robert Meeropol, the sons of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, aged ten and six at the time of their parent's execution, always believed firmly that both parents were innocent. In the 55 years that followed, both men continuously learned that what lead up to their parent's execution did not fall at either end of the spectrum between black and white. Rather, this was a case where murky intentions and shady morality created a convoluted tangled mass of countless shades of gray.

Remember warm and fuzzy "Uncle Joe"? The leader of one of the most evil regimes in all of history? Who in the end, was responsible for more deaths than Hitler? Well, as much as we hate communism now, or anything we feel resembles communism - socialism - during WWII, we were allies with good ol' "Uncle Joe" (Why do I feel like Sarah Palin?). "Uncle Joe" exterminated approximately 20 million people...every single Russian family lost, at the very least, one friend or relative to Stalin's forces.

They don't come any more evil than "Uncle Joe", yet we decided to ally ourselves with this regime, during WWII. Unfortunately the United States had no choice. We could not have defeated Nazi Germany without entering into this unholy alliance. However, not only were we allies with this malignant commie, we also agreed, at the end of the war, to force the repatriation of approximately one million Russian troops, who had rejected communism and willingly surrendered to Americans. Our military appropriately named this part of the agreement, Operation Keelhaul.

It was well known, at the time of the Yalta Agreement, that every single one of these men would face the wrath of Stalin, a.k.a. execution…another holocaust, if you will. This concession to Stalin made the United States reluctant, although informed accessories in the murder of two million people, as "Operation Keelhaul" extended beyond Russian troops.

"Operation Keelhaul" tarnishes our exemplary role in WWII. It proves that war is never black and white...that there are no good guys in war...even the U.S. in WWII, the one war, where the bad guys could not get any worse. We are all tainted with the blood of the innocent, it's just a matter of degree and some would say, intent.

The Rosenbergs after sentencing.
During this time, when the Soviets were "good" guys and "Uncle Joe" was warm and fuzzy, before communism was condemned so harshly, young Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, avidly pro Communist, supposedly began to engage in espionage for the Soviet Union. Whatever their involvement, their reasons for doing so was to bolster there strong beliefs in international solidarity. In 1953, their strong convictions and possibly their actions lead to their execution and the first case of civilians executed for spying in U.S. history.

Very early in the 1950s, at the time of the Rosenberg's arrest, the political atmosphere changed drastically. Anti-communism permeated the political atmosphere. Intellectuals, activists, scholars, artists, communists, socialists etc., like Ethel and Julius Rosenberg were tormented, sometimes prosecuted, and many times lost their jobs and "status" in society. The Rosenbergs lost their lives.

The belief in perpetuating international solidarity, in an of itself, is a noble conviction. Mr. Rosenberg's methods of achieving that goal - at the most, some form of low-level spying - however, completely unacceptable, although, nowhere near the level of unacceptability that would warrant the death penalty. As for Mrs. Rosenberg, it's obvious that the state executed an innocent person.

Fast forward to September 11, of this year, and new "evidence" has come to light that suggests Julius Rosenberg is guilty. However, he's not guilty of what he was executed for, conspiring to steal atomic secrets, rather, at most, he was involved in coordinating the exchange of anti- aircraft information. This had nothing to do with passing the secrets of the atomic bomb.

This new "evidence" also strongly suggests Ethel Rosenberg was completely innocent. The FBI used Ethel Rosenberg as a lever in an effort to convince her husband, Julius to talk. The FBI never believed that the Rosenbergs passed on the secrets of the atomic bomb. They understood that the construction of the atomic bomb was much more complex than simply passing on a simple recipe. Records show that even J. Edgar Hoover did not request the death penalty for Ethel Rosenberg.

Since 1975, when the Rosenberg sons filed for information on their parent's case, under the Freedom of Information Act, they also learned that their parents were victims of people who abused their power. They were framed by Judge Kaufman and the prosecutors involved in the case, one of whom is the notorious Roy Cohn. Cohn illegally communicated with Judge Kaufman, collaborated to fabricate and coerce testimony from supposed witnesses, and manufactured evidence all in an effort to get the Rosenbergs to collaborate in a lie, as the others who were arrested for espionage, did. The Rosenbergs refused and ended up dead, whereas the others got off with fairly light sentences in comparison. In other words, they were rewarded for purjuring themselves and agreeing to tell lies about their friends and sister, in the case of David Greenglass.

Judge Kaufman and Roy Cohn, especially, on the "right" side of the law, are the people who saw to it that the Rosenbergs fried. Roy Cohn, who embodied a Joseph Stalin type of "moral" code easily assumed the power to end the lives of two people who had far more integrity and courage in the tiny bones of their inner ear than Roy Cohn had throughout his whole body.

Yet, it is, often times, the "Roy Cohns" of the world - those of us with little integrity and/or courage but heaps of self importance - that rise to power in our political system. Our job, as a people, is to limit those in authority - whether that authority takes the form of a judge, prosecutor, legislator, or even juror - from taking on divine powers and deciding whether someone will live or die, as this is as divine as it gets.

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Read the Fine Print...Your Company Can Spy on You Where You Least Expect

Everyone understands a company's need for the first level of security, mainly protecting the physical safety of their buildings and employees. The second level of "security", when companies spy on their employees, their competition, and their customers, is not quite as clear.

In order to remain competitive, it's essential companies have some type of monitoring system in place, now that the Internet is just a keystroke away, tempting employees with unlimited "entertainment" and escape from what they are being paid to do. However, the question is not whether companies should be allowed to spy, rather how far should corporations be allowed to go when engaging in the second level of spying?

Wal-Mart, the shining example of cutting-edge thinking and technology in the corporate world, is also leading the way with its massive internal investigative capability, and has very possibly strayed over the legal line, and most definitely over the ethical line as many places of business have. When corporations own computers more powerful than any one computer found at the Pentagon, that corporation is no different from an employee, one keystroke away from the Internet...the temptation to stray is overwhelming.

Apparently, after technician, Bruce Gabbard, was fired for having secretly taped conversations between Wal-Mart employees and a Times reporter, that same technician spilled the beans on a larger, sophisticated surveillance operation at Wal-Mart, proving once again, how disposable most of us are in corporate America.

Gabbard said the retailer employs a variety of means, including software that can monitor every key stroke on the retailer's network, to keep tabs not only on employees but also on its board of directors, stockholders, critics of the company, and in at least one instance, on a consultant, McKinsey & Co.

Wal-Mart is not the only company involved in corporate espionage. Hewlett-Packard started the ball rolling when it aggressively pursued the "leakers" amongst them by engaging in "pretexting" -- falsely representing an identity to a telephone company in order to obtain telephone records of that person.

A little over one year later, pretexting, now outlawed by Congress due to the public's reaction to the Hewlett-Packard spy scandal; Douglas Frantz reveals how "C.I.A. agents are pushing corporate espionage to ominous new extremes".

Most of the ex-agents employed by corporations engage in perfectly legal activities, from surveillance to lie detection. However, a few of these techniques are a little shady, at best. "Data haunts," which employ extreme methods to capture personal data from an individual is one example. Normally, an outside device is unknowingly place on the person's computer such as a trojan horse to record keystrokes, email traffic or the ex-agents will use an electronic device to track a person's cell phone calls. Sometimes, these corporations will even watch the tail markings of private jets to find out where corporate executives are going.

The "hard shoulder" is another example of corporate espionage taken to the extreme. This is where the company digs up derogatory information about someone and takes it directly to that person threatening exposure if that person does not comply...in other words, black mail or extortion.

One man, employed by a well-known insurance company questioned the company's accounting practices. The company thoroughly investigated his personal life, fired him and threatened if he ever spoke publicly, that they would expose him with whatever information they found on him. The scary part about that situation is that corporations have the power to manufacture information, if let's say, they couldn't find anything on someone they wanted to silence. What chance does that person have against a huge billion-dollar corporation?

Corporations will go as far as buying out the contracts of government agents, doubling their salaries in hopes of getting the targeted government employee to work for them. One such agent whose contract was bought out and whose salary was doubled said, the pharmaceutical company he works for now, doubles the amount of monitoring and background checks Homeland Security and the FBI conduct.

In addition, he said the company he works for install hidden microphones wherever employees gather to monitor conversation. Is it legal? Yes, because all of this is disclosed to the employee in the fine print of their contract. Read the fine print or risk signing away your right to privacy. It's possible the company you work for might bug your brief case, pocketbook, or even you, the employee, and you won't have a leg to stand on, if you happen to discover the people you work with know your favorite sexual positions or how you like your eggs, because you were given the chance to read it in the fine print.

Another scary possibility, WAN, LAN and now HAN (Human Area Networking) technology that uses the surface of the human body as a safe, high speed network transmission path.

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