This Can't Be Happening!

The issue of economic equity is appearing on the national agenda. We’re suddenly hearing lots of talk about raising the minimum wage and other reforms to break the cycle of social Darwinism and provide working people at least a livable wage for their labor.

As a political activist, I’m impressed with how issues like these play out in the cultural realm where narrative and storytelling play a powerful role in forming the political consensus for reform in a globalized world.

I’m particularly interested in the genre of noir crime fiction. In our hi-tech, distraction-based culture, it’s arguably the rule that to get ahead one must break rules. Foolish losers follow the rules. Writing on Brazilian culture in Brazil On the Rise, Larry Rohter talks about a tradition there where laws are seen as not applying to the powerful; laws are, instead, used by the powerful against their enemies. A similar, more Anglo Saxon climate of corruption plays out in our North American capitalist world. The rich get richer and the poor, poorer. Money drives elections and justice itself.

There’s no better overarching narrative structure to address this than the genre of crime fiction, especially what is known as noir, a genre the crime fiction maven Otto Penzler, publisher and owner of the Mysterious Bookstore in New York, says is classically about desperate “losers” struggling to get somewhere in a harsh world.

There’s a movement in Philadelphia to resurrect the pulp fiction novels of David Goodis from the 1950s that emphasize ordinary working class protagonists in an essentially lawless, rough underworld in Philly. Utilizing art and entertainment, stories like this ennoble the struggle of ordinary working people.

The 1953 pulp novel's cover and a scene from Jean-Jacques Beineix's 1983 film of The Moon in the Gutter
 

The Moon in the Gutter, Goodis’ 1953 classic is a wonderful pulpy noir about the realities of class in a working class river ward of Philadelphia. The plot revolves around stevedore Bill Kerrigan, a beefy, working man struggling with life at the bottom and the effort to retain some dignity. While not all “Marxist,” the novel is about the collision of class, specifically involving “slummers,” well-off, uptown people who like to drown their sorrows or walk on the wild side in a poor working class neighborhood along the Delaware River. Much of the drama takes place in a bar called Dugan’s Den, “the kind of room where every time piece seemed to run slower,” where a double shot of rotgut rye cost twenty cents. “At Dugan’s there was little interest in time. They came here to forget about time.”

Let’s start here by conceding that today’s New York Times editorial saying that President Obama should “find a way to end (Edward) Snowden’s vilification and give him an incentive to return home” was pretty remarkable.

It shouldn’t be, though.

Former National Security Agency employee and contractor Edward Snowden, currently living in exile in Russia under a temporary grant of amnesty, but facing charges of espionage and theft of government property here at home for his copying of thousands of pages of NSA files and for releasing them to US and foreign journalists, is a hero of democratic freedom. He has raised the bar for whistleblowers everywhere, putting his own life at risk to let Americans and citizens of the world know just how pervasively the NSA is spying on us all. The Times, as well as the rest of the news media in the US, should have joined in a campaign to have him nominated for a Nobel Prize. Instead the nation’s leading newspaper, long an ardent supporter of the national security state, simply says he should be offered some kind of a “plea bargain” or presidential clemency, so that he doesn’t have to face the prospect of “spending the rest of his life looking over his shoulder,” or of facing a life sentence in prison.

I’m glad the Times is finally calling for at least some kind of justice or leniency for Snowden. Back on June 11, the paper’s same editorial board was pontificating that Snowden should accept the price of civil disobedience, which the board wrote means “accepting the consequences of one’s actions to make a larger point.” The same editorial writers (none of whom has ever shown that kind of courage), stated that Snowden had “broken the agreement he made” to keep NSA documents secret,” and that he would likely be charged with violating the Espionage Act, a hoary 1917 law that the Obama administration has already dusted off and started using to keep its activities secret, and they said he could face 10 year sentences for each count of document theft — enough to keep him in jail for life.

That earlier editorial view wasn’t quite as bad as some political hacks like House Speaker John Boehner and Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Diane Feinstein, who have been ignorantly calling Snowden a traitor (a crime that carries the death penalty), or journalistic hacks like CNN legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin, who called Snowden a “grandiose narcissist who deserves to be in prison.”

The Times is now admitting Snowden did the whole country and the world a favor by exposing the “crimes” of the NSA, but in its latest cautious editorial, the editors are still saying that Snowden “may have committed a crime” in copying and disclosing NSA files, and they are still okay with the idea that he might end up having to face some “substantially reduced punishment.”

If I were advising Snowden, I would say don’t trust your life to the thugs now running the US government. They might cut you a deal offering you some reduced charge and a short prison term, but first of all, you’d still be a convicted felon at the end of your shortened stay. And that’s if you survived it. Prison in the US is a violent place, and the prison authorities have ways of turning a short stay into a death sentence if their bosses have it in for somebody on the inside.

Who's the real criminal in the NSA scandal, Edward Snowden or President Obama?

I don’t care if you are 75 and retired, 61 and just about to reach the age when you become eligible for Social Security, 50 and looking out 15 or 20 years to the time when you’ll need to retire, or 25 with grandparents collecting retirement benefits and wondering what will be there when you get old. Whatever your age, don’t let anyone tell you Social Security is in trouble, or that it “won’t be around” when you need it.

That’s a hoary lie that has been pushed by Republicans as far back as 1935 when Social Security was being established, by leaders like President Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, and by corporate lobby groups like the Business Round Table and the US Chamber of Commerce. It’s also been pushed by Democrats like President Clinton and President Obama.

Some, like Bush, have tried to use the lie to convince people to support getting rid of Social Security and replacing it with private investment funds. Others, like Clinton and Obama, have used the lie to try to get the public to agree to cutbacks in Social Security benefits, or to delays in the age of eligibility for benefits. In the most recent iteration of the scam, President Obama has been calling for a shift in the way the Social Security Administration calculates inflation in setting new benefit levels each year, substituting a so-called “chained” Consumer Price Index for the traditional CPI. (In the chained version, appropriately called the cat-food index, instead of looking what has happened to a “market basket” of goods and services people typically use, economists would substitute cheaper or lower-quality goods for goods whose price had risen too much — for example chicken for steak, beans for chicken, Fiats for Fords, bus and subway tokens for commuter rail tickets, smaller apartments, etc.)

The truth is that there is not a chance in hell that Social Security is going to go bust, or get cancelled. There isn’t even a chance in hell that Social Security benefits will be cut, at least over the long term. Why? Because there are 78 million Baby Boomers — one fourth of the entire population of the US — a group whose older members, born between 1946 and 1951, are already old enough to start collecting benefits, and who will increasingly be filing for benefits (technically the Baby Boom is a wave of babies that were born between 1946 and 1964).

The battle for Social Security unites across race, sex, class and age lines

Fracker: It’s just over there on the other side of these trees.
America: What’s that noxious odor I smell upon the breeze?

F: That smell is giving away the surprise.
A: Oh, well, I’ll just close my eyes.

F: See? We pump all this crap into the well
and out comes gas, which we sell.

A: Does this industry make jobs for Maggie and Josh?
F: Good American kids will do “Anything for cash.”

A: Will we be sickened by the chemicals we drink?
F: Not if we don’t see them. What do you think!

(This article was first published in WhoWhatWhy.com)
 

A few weeks ago, WhoWhatWhy ran a piece I wrote criticizing a subtly deceptive article in the New York Times that made light of a wave of exhumations of popular leftist figures in Latin America. Quoting unnamed “scholars,” the paper’s Latin American correspondent Simon Romero suggested the forensic digs may be the secularized continuation of customs from the time of early Christianity, when a vibrant trade involved the body parts of saints.

That, in fact, is nonsense.  The purportedly “natural”, “accidental”, or “suicide-related” deaths of such important left-leaning figures as Nobel Laureate Pablo Neruda, Brazil’s President Joao Goulart and Chile’s President Salvador Allende all occurred during the rule of various rightist dictators.

The re-examination of evidence in these cases is based therefore on strong skepticism about the “official” narratives of their deaths.  This skepticism, in turn, is based on a well-documented history of thousands of cases of political murder in the region.

Far from looking for relics to sell, investigators are looking for evidence that these deaths were actually assassinations, the work of fearful tyrants anxious to prevent the victims’ return to power.  Now one result is in, and it’s explosive.

Truth Commission: Juscelino Kubitschek Assassinated

Investigators from Brazil’s Truth Commission, looking into the 1976 car crash of former leftist Brazilian president Juscelino Kubitschek and his limo driver, have discovered a bullet fragment lodged in the driver’s skull. This finding, the Commission ruled, along with other evidence, suggests that Kubitschek was murdered—most likely at the behest of the leaders of the CIA-backed military coup that also ousted his successor Joao Goulart.

What Romero Did Not Report: U.S. Involvement

Romero himself reported this new inquest finding on December 10 in a short article datelined Santiago (“Brazilian Panel Says Ex-Leader Was Murdered”). Romero noted that at the time of Kubitschek’s death, Brazil was ruled by a junta, but as in the case of his earlier article on exhumations, he very significantly chose not to mention the role of the CIA in bringing Brazil’s junta to power.

As the people of this country, and much of the world, observe the year-end holidays, we can look back on 2013 as the year when any illusion of genuine democracy was dashed by the remarkable revelations about the police-state surveillance that watches us. Last week, we saw a deeply disturbing stroke added to that incrementally developing picture.

In the ever-expanding and groan-provoking saga of the NSA’s attack on our privacy, it was revealed that the agency paid a major Internet security firm to insert a flawed encryption formula into the company’s software. The news, sparked by leaks from Edward Snowden and first reported by Reuters, raises serious questions about the security of popular encryption programs and indicates that the U.S. government was consciously involved in massive and very destructive fraud.

The Accomplice: RSA's logo

The revelations indicate that the NSA paid $10 million to RSA, one of the most prominent encrytion software companies in the world, to include the NSA’s own encryption formula in a very popular and heavily used encryption product called “Bsafe”. While Bsafe offers several encryption options, the default option (the one you use if you don’t specifically choose any) is the NSA’s own code.

The massive attack on encryption by the NSA has been reported before but this recent revelations about payments made demonstrate an intentionality to defraud and a complete disregard for the law, honesty and people’s rights. RSA offered a partial and fairly weak statement of defense. The NSA has yet to comment.

“There is a remarkable and almost charming egalitarianism in it. Everybody is treated in exactly the same disrespectful, casually brutal, and arrogant fashion.”

–Defense Attorney Ron Kuby about how “standard procedure” works for arrests in the United Police States of America
 

The diplomatic brouhaha between the US and India over a federal arrest and multiple strip-search and cavity search of a high-ranking Indian consular official in New York has exposed the astonishing hypocrisy of the US when it comes to the issue of diplomatic immunity, even as it has also exposed the ugly, brutal and sadistic truth about what passes for a “justice system” in 21st Century America..

India’s government is outraged not just at the abusive treatment of Deputy Consul General for Political, Economic, Commercial and Women’s Affairs, Devyani Khobragade, who was arrested a few days ago by US State Department Agents and charged with lying on a visa application for her Indian housekeeper. It is claiming that as a diplomat in the country’s New York consulate, she is entitled to diplomatic immunity.

The US is denying that she has diplomatic immunity, because she is a consular official, not an embassy official. The difference is important. Larger countries like the US and India often have many consular offices in cities of larger countries, primarily to handle visa and other issues, both for citizens of the home country, and for citizens of the host country who may wish to travel to the home country. But each country is allowed only one embassy in a foreign country, with the primary purpose being conducting diplomacy. Embassies are thus always located in the capital city of the host nation.

Denying Deputy Consul General Khobragade immunity might be okay, because under the Vienna Conventions governing Embassies and Consulates, consular officials only are granted limited immunity. Specifically, they are immune from prosecution for crimes involving their performance of consular business, but not for crimes outside of their official duties. Embassy employees, however, have broader immunity. The only exception, which applies to both Embassy and Consular officials, is “serious crimes,” such as rape or murder, where a host country can over-ride immunity, even of an ambassador.

Arguably, Deputy Consul General Khobragade’s alleged crime of lying on a visa document (about the amount she was planning to pay in wages) for an Indian woman she was bringing to the US as a housekeeper, would fall outside of her official duties, which would allow the US to prosecute her, (though I suppose a case could also be made that as an on-call envoy, having in-home round-the-clock childcare might be considered part of the job of deputy consul general–something that it might be worth seeing how us consular officials handle).

However, the US has often taken a different view of such matters, when it is on the other side of a case.

Two 'diplomats' arrested, one in Pakistan, one in the US, one for a visa fraud, one for murder. Which deserves diplomatic immunity?

For the third time in three years, a CIA station chief has been outed in Pakistan, a country where the CIA is running one of its largest covert operations. It’s a remarkable record of failure by the CIA, since each outing, which has required a replacement of the station chief position, causes a breakdown in the agency’s network of contacts in the country.

The full names of all three station chiefs have been published widely in Pakistan and India and all over the world via the Internet—though Americans getting their news exclusively from domestic mainstream media wouldn’t know, as those organizations have consistently blacked out the names.

The latest outing was the work of a major political organization, the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party (PTI) and its founder, cricket star Imran Khan, who has been calling for an end to US drone strikes inside his country. Khan’s party came in second in Pakistan’s recent parliamentary election.

The PTI, angry that Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif has not demanded a halt to the US “targeted killing” of Pakistanis, filed a public complaint with police in late November.

Outed: Craig Osth:

That complaint, called a “nomination letter,” identified as the alleged CIA station chief Craig Peters Osth, and said he was residing and working—illegally, if actually working as a spy and not a diplomat —in the US Embassy.

In the complaint, the PTI accused Osth of being responsible for a deadly November 21 drone strike inside Khan’s home district, which is outside the Pashtun tribal area to which such attacks have normally been confined. The letter also called for the arrest of CIA Director John Brennan, accusing him of “waging war against Pakistan.”

US drone strikes are hugely unpopular in Pakistan, as they are seen as violating Pakistan’s sovereignty and and because they have killed a large number of civilians, including women and many children.

The CIA has refused to confirm or deny Osth’s role in the Agency, or even if he is on its payroll. But in this case the CIA’s standard stonewalling rings especially hollow: this is not Osth’s first outing.

Opposition Leader Imran Khan's party outed an alleged CIA station chief, the third such outing in Pakistan in three years

The web designers will tell you: when it comes to websites, good design can’t mask bad ideas.

I’ve been thinking about that for the last six weeks as I’ve confronted, with waning trust morphing into enraged frustration, the remarkably complicated corridors of The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (popularly known as “Obamacare”). The problems in the roll-out of this ersatz reform are generally known and, depending on who’s talking, have led to irritated calls for fixes or have been cited as proof that anything the government does that is socially responsible is a communist-inspired train wreck.

After nearly 20 years of Internet work, I know that all major web-based projects launch with problems, some of them crippling, and I know they can all be fixed. There is nothing extraordinary about Obamacare’s website problems except the shrill reaction they’ve provoked. This is to be expected. The “looks good, sounds good but can’t do anything right” tag that underlies the controversy is one of racism’s trustiest refrains and this is a President who has been battered by those kinds of comments.

In my case, Obamacare really hurts!
 

But dwelling on the technical side of the web-site break-down is a mistake because it draws attention from the more important problem unmasked by the roll-out and the complexity of these websites: Obamacare isn’t a health-care program, it’s a corporate bail-out. It’s not about avoiding or treating people’s health problems, it’s about avoiding and treating the collapse of the insurance industry.

The websites have run into problems because they are a kind of “Amazon” for health care and they weren’t ready to do that. Soon they will be ready and the technological problems will disappear but the most important social problem — a health care system that has nothing to do with caring for people’s health — will remain.

My own experience, a frightening and painful process, demonstrates this truth. I am 64 years old, a member of the demographic group that most needs Obamacare, and I am not being allowed into the program. Let me tell you the story, starting with a bit of background.

It’s that time of the year again. Ho. Ho. Ho. There’s the urge to celebrate the Winter Solstice (AKA Christmas) with family and friends. It’s also time for end-of-the-year assessments concerning the absurdities of life in a fading empire in denial.

To a responsible American leftist who feels as American as apple pie, the absurdities can be especially pronounced this time of year, given the socially-progressive politics people like me advocate is on the mat and the ref is counting. The pie is getting smaller. And the Social Darwinists are fat and getting hungrier ever day.

The Emperor gives his first press conference
 

In this spirit of Holiday absurdity and frustration, I’m cutting loose. I’m going to just pretend I’m the most ruthless Emperor ever to sit in the cockpit of state of this absurd 21st Century Imperium I’m calling The Corporate and Imperial States of America — C.I.S.A. for short. I sit on a throne made by a homeless designer out of a dozen broken parts from a dozen pieces of thrift shop furniture. A line of correspondents waits to ask me a question. (We’ve cut off Fox News until they learn better how to grovel for access in this new regime.) The correspondent from MSNBC asks the first question. In fact, it’s the only question we’ve allowed this afternoon:

“What are the first ten things you’re going to do?”

1) First we will be releasing Bradley/Chelsea Manning and dropping any legal actions against Julian Assange. We are announcing an amnesty program for Edward Snowden, who will, if he accepts, become a consultant as part of a major re-vamping of the entire US intelligence system. Yes, heads will have to roll. Like they say, you can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs. While we don’t want to throw anybody’s baby out with the bathwater, we may have to throw somebody’s baby out — for the good of the larger whole. It will not be without some bumps, and my newly formed People’s Guard is ready to monopolize on any violence that breaks out. We support the Second Amendment, and all over the country we are establishing and training chapters of a well-armed militia known as the Smedley Butler Brigades made up of disgruntled unionists, the unemployed and the homeless. These are things that have to be done. We are not allowing change to be quashed any longer. The status quo ends here.