This Can't Be Happening!

How much noise does the other shoe make when it drops? If the shoe is a law that would complete the development of a police surveillance state in the United States, it’s almost silent.

Last week, the Senate Intelligence Committee quietly sent a bill to the Senate that would require Internet companies (like Twitter and Facebook) and on-line Internet content and service providers (from giants like Comcast to more specialized providers like May First/People Link) to literally become part of the country’s intelligence network by turning over to the government — without any government request — any posts on their systems related to “terrorist activities” and the identities of the posters.

News about the bill only became public when Reuters noticed and reported on it.

Turning the Magnifying Glass on Us – original http://www.davidicke.com
 

The provision, Section 603 of Senate Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2016, is terse, simple and frightening. If passed, it could force Internet companies and providers to turn over information on organizations, activists, journalists, researchers and even interested commenters whose posts touch on “terrorist activity”: the over-used under-defined term that drives so much of our contemporary legislation. It would also encourage these services to monitor their systems for any material that could possibly be considered relevant to “terrorism”.

Not only does the provision chill communications but it turns the Internet into a law enforcement agency and that would fundamentally change its character and the society it serves.

The full Senate will now debate the law and it will probably sail through in the Fall. The House hasn’t announced a similar measure but, given who runs the House, such a companion bill is very likely.

I don’t know which is worse: President Obama asserting, in defense of the nuclear deal he and his Secretary of State John Kerry negotiated with Iran, that “The choice we face is ultimately between diplomacy and some form of war, maybe not tomorrow, maybe not three months from now, but soon,” or the fact that most Americans, and most American pundits, seem to accept that limited choice of options as a given.

Nothing could be more ridiculous, of course. We already know, because the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) inspectors have repeatedly inspected Iran’s nuclear energy programs and reactors and verified the fact, that no bomb-making work has been going on in Iran for years. Iran has no weapons-grade uranium 235 and no plutonium. Even the US intelligence services and Israel’s Mossad leaders past and present have said that Iran has no nuclear weapons program underway.

If the existence in a country of scientists capable to make a bomb were a cause for going to war, the US would have to be attacking Saudi Arabia, Egypt, South Africa, Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brazil, Argentina, Canada, all the countries of Eastern Europe and all the former Soviet states now referred to as “the Stans” in central Asia, as well as a host of others whose students have performed admirably as engineers and physics majors in US and European universities. Any of these countries could work out the science and the engineering issues needed to design and build a bomb, and if they didn’t have nuclear reactors that could churn out the necessary fissile material (most do), they could buy it on the black market.

So, for that matter, could Iran, if its leaders really wanted The Bomb. How hard would it have been for Iran to surreptitiously buy a nuke or three from ally and fellow Muslim state Pakistan, which has a bunch of them, or from financially strapped North Korea, or just to buy the ingredients for a bomb from them? But Iran has not done this, and despite years of unprovoked Israeli threats to send bombers to attack Iran, a fairly impressive and vicious cloak-and-dagger Mossad campaign to assassinate Iranian nuclear scientists, a US/Israeli-orchestrated cyber attack, called Stuxnet, that destroyed most of Iran’s nuclear centrifuges and supercomputers, and covert US support of terrorist actions inside Iran, Iran’s leaders have not reconsidered their decision back in 2003, a full 12 years ago, to halt the country’s research on developing a nuclear bomb, which Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has declared to be a “sin” under Islam.

Anyone who is convinced Iran plans to build a bomb and create Mideast mayhem by using it should ask themselves how that would benefit Iran. The country has been battered by sanctions and an oil embargo that have hampered any and all of its efforts to grow its economy and to improve the lives of the Iranian people. Iran also experienced first hand the horrors of war in the prolonged and horrific struggle it had against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein (who had US backing). Even if there are people who occasionally still shout “death to America” at demonstrations in Tehran, it would be hard to find someone in that country who would really want a war with the US, or with Israel either for that matter — a country that has at its disposal some 400 nuclear weapons (and which, unlike Iran, has never signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty, does not allow international inspectors on its territory, and most importantly, has never ruled out using nukes first or against a country that has no nukes).

The US can't expect fellow Security Council member states China, Russia, France, and even Britain and Germany, to stick with sanctions on Iran if Congress kills the nuclear deal just negotiated
 

You can read the entire article in the New York Times Tuesday business section reporting on Puerto Rico’s default on a payment on its staggering $72 billion debt without once learning that the little Caribbean island, home to 3.5 million US citizens, is a territory of the United States, or more properly, a colony, insofar as its residents have no representation in Washington, cannot vote for national candidates for office, and furthermore, are subject to US federal courts, whose judges are all appointed by the federal government.

At least USA Today made the story its page one lead, instead of just a business story, but it too just notes that the island is a “commonwealth” and that as such it cannot be bailed out as Greece hopes to be, by such international bodies as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) or the European Union. The meaning of the term “commonwealth” is not defined.

The Wall Street Journal ran its report on the bankruptcy on the front of its Money & Investing section, making it clear that the only significance of this story was to the many institutional and individual investors who hold Puerto Rican tax-free bonds in the municipal bond allocation of their investment portfolios. It too failed to explain what it meant to call Puerto Rico a “commonwealth.”

US citizens outside of Puerto Rico, most of whom don’t even know Puerto Ricans are fellow citizens, and not potential “illegal immigrants” to their shores like the Haitians, Dominicans, Cubans and other residents of neighboring islands, are no doubt understandably confused about Puerto Rico’s status, given that Kentucky, Virginia, Massachusetts and Pennsylvania all refer to themselves as “commonwealths” and not as states.

But Puerto Rico is no “commonwealth,” a term which the Oxford dictionary defines as “an independent state or community, especially a democratic republic,” and which Websters dictionary defines as a nation or state or alternatively — in a special category for Puerto Rico and the Northern Mariana Islands, presented without any sense of irony — as “a political unit having local autonomy but voluntarily united with the United States.”

I’m not sure how that last definition got past the editors, though. Puerto Rico is can never, with a straight face, be said to have been “voluntarily united” with the United States. The island was a spoil of war when the US defeated Spain in the Spanish-American War of 1898, and it instantly became a colony under brutal military rule, its indigenous independence movement crushed, and even its native Spanish language barred from public education from 1898 until 1948.

When Puerto Rico’s purely symbolic but powerless elected delegates assembly voted in 1914 to call unanimously for the island’s independence, the US Congress responded in 1917 with the Jones Act, which declared all residents of Puerto Rico to be US citizens, whether they liked it or not (people were given a one-time chance within the next 30 days to renounce that citizenship forever, but nobody since then has had that right).

Puerto Rico's debt crisis is only the latest crisis caused by its colonial status under US rule

Cecil the lion

Let’s have a moment’s
Silence for Cecil (Ses’-al),
But not yet.
During that silence
Let us think about why
Cecil’s life matters.
Was it because his trust was betrayed
And we felt a little responsible?
Or are we just so upset with what is happening
To the whole planet
In our name
That when something so patently disgusting
And immoral happens to an icon
Like Cecil,
We gladly wrap our minds around it,
Sign petitions, and inwardly set up a howling?
Getting mad when you know you are right
Is very cleansing.
So, in our moment’s silence
We can thank Cecil
For stirring our conscience.
It feels good to feel!
And before we get back to business as usual,
And during our moment of silence,
Let us think some more about
Why we’re so pissed
That such a perfectly handsome animal
Was murdered and decapitated.
What was the button
That Cecil’s murder pushed
That set off the alarm?

Someone must have been telling lies about Joseph K., for without having done anything wrong he was arrested one fine morning.
                                    - Franz Kafka, The Trial
 
A couple weeks ago, our military special operations command began an eight-week military exercise called Jade Helm 15 in Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Florida, Arizona, New Mexico and Utah. As reported in The New York Times, some Texans worried it was “actually a ruse for a federal takeover of the state.” Texas Governor Greg Abbott ordered the Texas State Guard to monitor movements of federal special ops elements. A group of volunteers planned to follow military vehicles they could detect and post their locations on a website.

This is not your traditional, old-school military. This is ARSOF Next. No, that’s not a movie title along the lines of Apocalypse Now. ARSOF Next: A Return to First Principles is the title of a propaganda magazine put out by the US Army Special Operations Command. ARSOF stands for Army Special Operations Forces, the doctrine specializing in surgical strike capabilities and special warfare now taking over our military.

A special ops soldier, a lecture on ARSOF Next, and a local police force having fun with a cool new tool

According to the magazine, the United States has reached a “strategic inflection point” characterized by an “uncertain strategic security environment framed by diminishing defense resources and an increasing number and variety of potential threats.” Huge invasions and occupations are totally yesterday, something the Bush debacle in Iraq made quite clear. “Social, political, informational and economic trends in international competition are converging between state and non-state actors and others for superiority over the physical, cognitive, moral security and adequate governance of populations.” Read this military gobble-de-gook about 10 times and you begin to realize we’re not in Kansas anymore.

The nation state idea begun with the 1648 Treaty of Westphalia is breaking down and corporate and other “non-state actors” are filling the void. The New York Times has been running a series on the lawless nature of the world’s oceans, where seaborne slavery and unaccounted-for murder are common occurrences. The next step up in this brave new world is the geographical “failed state,” a term of world politics applied by still-intact nation states to those places where anarchy rules. The “free” market is now king and the still-civilized world is engaged in a world-wide capitalist free-for-all. The “real” world is becoming very mixed up with the cyber world. This all means powers like the US will rely more and more on sophisticated intelligence-gathering and secret, a-legal operational capacities to protect their realms. Hence ARSOF Next and PR about our military as a great empathetic institution.

 
I watched a man whipping an apple tree.
I held the door open to him.
I knew that when he got tired
he would turn around and see me
holding the door for him.
And maybe he would come inside and we could talk.
I could see that many of the trees in his orchard
bore the scars of the whippings
they had received over the years.
Some of the older trees were bent over and knotted
as if riddled with pain.
Finally he turned around.
Who are you? he asked.
I am your door-man, I said.
I never saw you before, or that door.
Has that ever helped, I asked?
Whipping your trees?
It helps quiet my demons, said he.
And then I saw that the grass was crawling
with a nasty host of creeping and flying
and buzzing creatures of hideous appearance.
Anyone might have thought they were insects.
Nothing will make them go away, he said,
so I whip my trees
and they submit, agreeing to stand in
for everything that ever caused me pain or held me back.
You see, they are selfless.
Have you ever tried therapy? I asked.
My brother is a therapist, he answered.
Oh, I said, still holding the door
as he moved to the next tree
as if I wasn’t there.
 

—Gary Lindorff

I’m not a fan of war or of killing of any kind, but the labeling of the deadly attack by Mohammod Youssuf Abdulazeez on two US military sites in Chattanooga, Tennessee as an act of terror is absurd.

Maybe Abdulazeez will turn out to have been a nut-case bent on committing “suicide by police.” There are plenty of those kinds of psychos in the gun-soaked culture of America. But what we’re hearing,

increasingly, is that he was somehow linked to Middle East jihad, and ultimately to ISIS, and that he is therefore a “terrorist.”

That is ridiculous!

If it turns out that Abdulazeez was in any way linked to ISIS, then his action in attacking US military personnel in the US and killing them has to be seen not as terrorism but as a legitimate retributive act of war. That is no dishonor to those Marines killed. It simply makes it clear that they were killed in a war, not by some crazy person.

US citizens need to start accepting the reality that if the United States is going to go around the world blowing up people with fighter-bombers, special forces actions and drone missile attacks, eventually the targets of those aggressive acts of war will start responding against the US in kind. And they would have a legal right to do this under the rules of war.

Was the Chattanooga shooting an act of terrorism or an act of war? (Think before answering)
 

The Internet — always ablaze with controversy — is a wildfire these days with revelations about more pernicious government spying, deals between governments and corporate “hacker companies”, and Ellen Pao’s resignation as head of Reddit.

I’ll have things to say about the rest later this week but the Pao blaze is shining brightest right now and there are some important lessons to be drawn from it.

Since last Fall, Pao has been the “interim CEO” of the privately held corporation (a subsidiary of Conde Nast) that owns one of the Internet’s most remarkable phenomenon. In its ten years of existence, Reddit has grown so large and become so complex that it defies definition.

Happier times? Ellen Pao at Reddit's Office
 

At its core, it’s a message board system, but with 160 million users and tens of thousands of message boards under its roof tied together by dizzying interaction, it is the closest thing the Internet has to a city. True to Internet culture, it’s run by a kind of anarchistic democracy. People start message systems (called “subreddits”) whenever they want about whatever they want and users who start them moderate and control them. You can post text, photos, links to any kind of content you want (including videos) and people answer each other constantly.

For the most part, it works wonderfully, making it potentially a model for larger societies — except that in this case the “mean user” is male between 18 to 29 years old and living in the United States. Whether that particular demographic is a cause or an effect, the fact is that this is no utopia. While most subreddits are friendly informative communities talking about the subreddit’s subject, there are subreddits that are virulently sexist, homophobic and racist. Reddit can, and sometimes does, quickly turn into a lynch mob of immature young men acting destructively and viciously.

Ellen Pao was brought in to deal with the craziness; the craziness has forced her out.

Afghan Brigadier General Abdul Sama was accused recently of smuggling over 40 pounds of heroin.

It should come as no surprise that an Afghan general was caught smuggling heroin, the surprise is that any high official in that country should be charged with a crime for profiting from the trade in illegal drugs while under the watchful eye of American forces.

Under American occupation, Afghanistan quickly became the world’s leader in opium production, producing over 90% of the world’s supply. The Taliban had almost shut down opium production prior to the US invasion in 2001 to the chagrin of international drug runners, and no doubt the international banking industry, which earns big profits laundering billions of dollars in illegal drug money annually. Illegal drugs account for about 8% of all international trade.

Few Americans are aware of the long history of the CIA’s running illegal drugs internationally, thanks to the untiring efforts of the mainstream press. Were citizens aware, few would be surprised that heroin production has skyrocketed under US occupation of Afghanistan.

The tragic case of journalist Gary Webb of the San Jose Mercury News is a case in point, and represents perhaps the widest-known attempt at suppressing the story of CIA drug-running endeavors, with the mainstream US press shamelessly and dutifullly attacking Webb for attempting to expose the inconvenient truth.
Afghan harvests opium as US Troops ignore him (or protect him?)

Something huge has happened in Greece, though you wouldn’t know it if you rely on the US corporate media for your information.

That reporting has, with rare exceptions, followed the party line that a bunch of naive “leftists” led by Greece’s relatively young and new prime minister Alexis Tsipras and his motorcycle-riding radical economist finance minister Yanis Varoufakis, have pushed Greece “to the brink of chaos” through their ineptitude. This same biased reporting has been pushing the argument that Greece has “no choice” but to swallow even more austerity, selling off all its public assets to circling capitalist vultures, in the vain hope that someday the country’s economy will bottom out and begin “growing” again.

The reality of what has just happened is quite different. Actually, Greece has suffered seven years of austerity the likes of which countries like the US and northern Europe haven’t seen since the Great Depression. Unemployment is over 20% (50% for young people!), and there is no end in sight if the so-called Troika — the International Monetary Fund, the European Commission and the European Central Bank — continues to hold the country by the throat, demanding regular payments on a debt that even the IMF admits can never be repaid.

Far from being naive or inept, Tsipras, Varoufakis and the ruling Syriza Party have done two remarkable things brilliantly — one of which should not really be remarkable at all, except that the so-called “free world” has moved so far away from real democracy at this point that it’s forgotten what democracy is, and the other of which would not have been necessary were the global media not so fawning towards ruling elites in their respective countries.

The first of these two things was the bold decision by Tsipras to hand the question of what to do next in Greece to the Greek people, by allowing them to vote on whether they wanted to surrender to global and European bankers and the governments of the world’s wealthiest nations, or wanted to say “No!” to further demands for austerity. When Tsipras walked away from further bailout negotiations and made his surprise call for that referendum, and when the Greek parliament backed him by passing a bill setting the poll up, a cacophony of doomsaying pundits in Europe, the US and the Greek conservative media all warned the Greek people to “see reason” and to “vote for Europe,” as though voting against more austerity would inevitably mean pariah status for Greece.

There was a kind of smug gloating over early polls showing that a majority of Greeks planned to vote “Yes” to accepting whatever the banks and the European Union demanded, or later, when it appeared that the vote would be close.

In the end, of course, the Greek people voted by a landslide (61% to 38%)against European austerity demands that Tsipras labeled “blackmail” and “national humiliation,” and that Varoufakis called “fiscal waterboarding.” Tsipras was fully vindicated in his trust in democracy and in the people of his country, which he pointedly reminded had “invented democracy.”

Is Greek PM Alexis Tsipras, in letting Greeks vote on national policy, and in putting their interests first, at risk of becoming another Mossedegh or Allende?