This Can't Be Happening!

It’s a pretty sad spectacle watching the US Congress toading up to the National Security Agency. With the exception of a few stalwarts like Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and to a lesser extent Ron Wyden (D-OR), most of the talk in the halls of Congress is about how to keep the army of Washington private contractors from accessing too many of the government’s secrets (which need to be protected by government employees!), and about whether to try NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden for treason.

NSA Director James Clapper was able to lie bald-facedly to the Senate Intelligence Committee last week without even a reprimand, much less a contempt citation, claiming that the NSA does not spy on millions of Americans’ telecommunications. That type of behavior by members of the executive branch makes a laughing stock out of Congress, but the members of Congress don’t seem to care. They know that they are already viewed as corrupt and loathsome toadies by the broad spectrum of Americans who continue to elect them to office, their collective approval rating now having fallen to a record low of 10% (who are those 10%, anyhow, the extended families of the members of Congress, or dead people in Chicago whose names are being forged on polling forms?). I guess the attitude among Congresspersons must be that they don’t have anything to lose by being accommodating to the march of the national security state. They have hit bottom already.

Poor Snowden, who has put his life on the line in an attempt to try and wake up the somnolent American public to how our free society has been hijacked by a fascist consortium of security agencies and private corporations, has to watch as the broad mass of Americans turn away from the news and switch to the endless stream of police dramas, where the Constitution is viewed as an anachronistic impediment to justice, and the cops are all good guys dedicated to protecting the rest of us.

The frightened and vengeful police state is intent on shutting Snowden down.

Fortunately, Snowden is no slouch, and has given himself some personal insurance in the form of downloaded information that, as he put it in his initial television interview from Hong Kong, could “shut down” the US intelligence machine overnight.

Hong Kong residents march to a rally in front of the US Consulate in defense of NSA whistleblower Ed Snowden, demanding that Hong Kong authorities and Hong Kong courts not extradite him back to the US.

Many years later they found him in a monastery in China.
He agreed to be interviewed.
He looked happy in the eyes.
He said,
“One question.”
So I said,
“Hong Kong, June 2013.
You were 29.
You said your greatest fear was
That nothing would change,
That the government would continue to grant itself
Unilateral powers.
Every time there is a new leader,
‘They’ll flip the switch’, you said.
. . .That it is only going to get worse
Until policies change.
Free speech
Was incriminating everyone —
It was all being stored away.
You spoke of the ‘architecture of oppression’.

A lot of people in the US media are asking why America’s most famous whistleblower, 29-year old Edward Snowden, hied himself off to the city state of Hong Kong, a wholly owned subsidiary of the People’s Republic of China, to seek at least temporary refuge.

Hong Kong has an extradition treaty with the US, they say. And as for China, which controls the international affairs of its Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, while granting it local autonomy to govern its domestic affairs, its leaders “may not want to irritate the US” at a time when the Chinese economy is stumbling.

These people don’t have much understanding of either Hong Kong or of China.

As someone who has spent almost seven years in China and Hong Kong, let me offer my thoughts about why Snowden, obviously a very savvy guy despite his lack of a college education, went where he did.

Hong Kong civil liberties and human rights activists and organizations are already working to build support for Snowden, demanding that he be protected from US prosecution for his whistleblowing. They are starting with a march and rally set for Saturday — putting Hong Kong citizens out ahead of Snowden’s own compatriots in the US when it comes to standing up against the NSA’s Stasi-like tactics.

Drug-related corruption within the Philadelphia Police Department – once again – is the target of federal authorities.

This latest action by federal authorities involves two patrolmen charged with trafficking drugs and robbing suspected drug dealers while on-duty and in full uniform.

A few days before federal authorities announced the early June indictments against those two patrolmen, Philadelphia authorities announced the arrest of a policeman arising from that officer’s scheme to rob drug dealers.

Curiously, this latest federal enforcement action against Philadelphia police tainted by drug corruption did not involve the six officers at the center of a mushrooming scandal that has resulted in Philadelphia city prosecutors refusing to prosecute drug arrests by those officers.

Philadelphia’s DA has yet to fully explain why he will no longer prosecute arrests made by those six officers, now transferred from narcotics to street patrol duty. This decision not to prosecute has led to the dismissal of over 300 cases since December 2012. This dismissal of cases involving those seemingly tainted officers exceeds even the 250 cases prosecutors dropped in the mid-1990s as a result of another a drug-related corruption scandal involving five Philadelphia policemen.

And, curiously, this latest action by federal authorities did not involve the Philadelphia policeman captured on videotape by Police Department Internal Affairs investigators stealing money from drug dealers during an investigation arising largely from evidence against that policeman provided by other police officers who witnessed several instances of his criminal conduct. That cash-copping Philly cop, fired for his corruption, was reinstated to the Police Department in early 2012 by an arbitrator following a process known to be weighted in favor of Philadelphia’s police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, which employed that tainted officer in the union’s headquarters until the union helped secure his reinstatement.

A stark contrast to the outrage officials nationwide always express in the wake of arrests involving police tainted by drug corruption is the consistent lack of outraged effort authorities give to a more serious issue.
Drug War: Lost before it began, but causing massive corruption in police departments across America

Many years ago, back in 1975 when Gerald Ford was the nation’s default president, I spent a summer living in the home of two Minneapolis friends, both important anti-war academics, who had two young children. One of their kids, Jacob, who was about seven at the time and smart as a whip, had been given the gift of a can of compressed air which carried a label claiming it contained a miracle product called “Bullshit Repellent.” Whenever someone in the house — family member, me, or some other guest — would say something ridiculous, stupid or false, someone would inevitably yell out, “Jacob, get the Bullshit Repellent!” Jacob would come running in enthusiastically with the can and would spray it proudly at whoever was uttering the BS.

I sure wish I had Jacob and his spray can right now. I simply cannot believe the BS being spouted by President Obama, National Security Agency Director James Clapper, or the members of Congress who should be demanding their heads for the unprecedented surveillance and spying on all Americans that has just been exposed.

Let’s begin at the top: Our president (who once boasted of having taught Constitutional law), decried, way back in 2007 when he was contemplating a run for the White House, what he correctly labeled the Bush-Cheney administration’s “false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we provide.” Fast forward to the president today, after his all-encompassing monitoring of all the phone and internet communications of all Americans, and here’s what he’s saying now (speaking last Friday in San Jose) after the humongous pervasiveness and intrusiveness of the spying was exposed in the U.K Guardian newspaper and the Washington Post:
 

“I think it’s important for everybody to understand … that there are some trade-off’s involved. You can’t have 100 percent security and also then have 100 percent privacy and zero inconvenience. You know, we’re going to have to make some choices as a society.”
 

Jacob, quick! The bullshit repellent!

Where to start? A security-for-liberty trade-off, he says? Where’s the security? We just had a bombing in Boston that would have been spotted in a minute if the FBI were monitoring the Tsarnaev brothers‘ websites (assuming they are the guilty parties). But the FBI claims it “stopped” monitoring Tamerlan Tsarnaev after interviewing him several times, and “closed” his case, despite his having travelled to Dagestan, a former Soviet struggling with separatist Islamic rebels, and despite warnings from Russian intelligence. This is the kind of “100 percent security” we get in return for losing 100% of our privacy on the phone and online? What incredible BS!

The NSA’s $2-billion National Cybersecurity (sic) Initiative Data Center nearing completion in Utah. Feeling safer now?

This week, the government began their assault against private Bradley Manning. Even though he has already plead guilty to misusing classified documents and faces twenty years in prison, prosecutors want him branded as having aided the enemy, with a life sentence to go along.

The government is incensed that this lowly private would take his oath to protect and preserve the Constitution seriously enough to expose illegal and unconstitutional acts by our government. They are furious that Manning’s leaks gave the world video proof of some of the American military’s war crimes. They want vengeance because the callous, supercilious, erroneous and ignorant acts by government officials in dealing with international affairs have been revealed to all through the leaked cables. They are embarrassed that they have been exposed as the lying liars that the public generally assumes them to be. They are mortified that some citizen or news organization will draw peoples’ attention to the fact that the government is over-classifying documents at conspiratorial levels.

So, reminiscent of the best of Stalin or Kafka, they have put Bradley Manning “on trial” for his crimes. They will rely on secret evidence to make their case. They will not give Manning’s defense full access to this evidence. And they will prevent him from being able to shine the spotlight on what should really be on trial here: the illegal and immoral actions of the United States government and military. Even Fulgencio Batista, the military dictator of Cuba, allowed Fidel Castro to speak in his own defense without censoring him while he was being tried for an armed assault on a Cuban military installation. Of course, Batista would soon be driven from power by Castro, and the oligarchy that runs America doesn’t want to make the same mistake. So they will stack the deck against Manning, bring the media on board with tantalizing but vague claims of national security threats and then concoct some sort of narrative that casts the Private as a troubled, unstable soul, or perhaps a misguided and vindictive one that will explain away the why of the crime and the erase the significance of anything unearthed in the leaked documents.

Let’s take a moment to consider some of the conduct of our most recent leaders and the outcomes of that conduct. Lyndon Johnson lied about a naval incident in the Gulf of Tonkin in order to initiate combat in Vietnam. Nixon lied to the American people about a secret plan to end the war while he was actually using intermediaries to delay peace talks to help his election chances. More than one million Vietnamese and 58,209 Americans perished in that senseless war. America’s prestige was exposed as a fraud and we are still exacting a price from homeless veterans, Agent Orange survivors and PTSD victims, not to mention the decades it has taken in restoration efforts in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Pvt. Bradley Manning, a hero betrayed by his own commander in chief

This past Thursday (June 6), The Guardian (the British newspaper) and the Washington Post simultaneously reported that the National Security Agency has been collecting staggering amounts of user data and files from seven of the world’s most powerful technology companies.

An information collection program called Prism has been routinely tapping the servers of these companies and collecting emails, articles, on-line searches, chat logs, photos and videos. There are no subpeonas, court orders or even clearly-defined investigations supporting this program. Traditionally, the government must establish that what they’re seizing is relevant to an investigation. With Prism, they seize everything, review it and then decide its relevance. It’s an information vacuum cleaner.

It’s also a key tool of the Obama Administration. Data gathered through Prism now accounts for almost one in seven intelligence reports, the NSA said in a statement.

One of the Slides from the Prism Presentation (reprinted from the Guardian): (The Guardian)

“Microsoft – which is currently running an advertising campaign with the slogan “Your privacy is our priority” – was the first (company in the program), with collection beginning in December 2007,” the Guardian reported. “It was followed by Yahoo in 2008; Google, Facebook and PalTalk in 2009; YouTube in 2010; Skype and AOL in 2011; and finally Apple, which joined the program in 2012. The program is continuing to expand, with other providers due to come online.”

Because these are the companies whose services comprise Internet life for most of us, the program signals the effective end of privacy as a right. If you use Google or Yahoo or Iphone or Skype, at least some of what you do, write, search, say in chat or put in your a video or photo on any of those services is being collected.

Watching the US Senate Armed Forces Committee wrestle with the issue of rape and sexual abuse in the military opens a whole range of related issues concerning sex and war that will likely not be addressed in the Senate.

First, there’s the world of militant Islam, against whom for over a decade our most war-friendly leaders have put us on a war footing. For many, Islam itself has become the new boogie man to replace the communism of the Cold War era. One critical factor in this war is how the Islamic world sees the treatment of women.

I first encountered this difference when as a young man I was traveling in Turkey. I was amazed at the young American women travelers who wanted to hook up with me and even wanted to share a room. Unfortunately, I soon realized it was not my prowess they were interested in. They sought protection from the incessant fondling and groping that Turkish men felt entitled to with young American females. These women clearly feared the possibility of rape.

I concluded, perhaps rashly, that Muslim men tend to take what they see as their male, masculine rights seriously and see liberated western women as a flagrant provocation.

Police break up anti-rape protesters in India

The New York Times recently reported cases of public rapes in Rio de Janeiro. There have been similar rapes (some that ended in murder) in India and elsewhere with huge street protests in India. The point of The Times article was the irony that such sexually aggressive male behavior was occurring in Brazilian society as that nation approached first-world status. Brazil is planning to host the 2016 Summer Olympics and it recently elected a woman, Dilma Rousseff, as president.

“We’re living a schizophrenic situation, in which important advances have been made in women reaching positions of influence in our society,” Rogeria Peixinho, from the Brazilian Womens Network, told The Times. “At the same time, the situation for many women who are poor remains atrocious.”

Anyone who was a fan of the old ABC TV series “The Untouchables” or of the later series, also on ABC, called “The FBI,” would know something is terribly fishy about the FBI slaying of Ibragim Todashev.

According to the FBI, Todashev, 27, who was an acquaintance, or friend, of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, one of the suspects in the Boston Marathon bombing, was shot and killed by an FBI agent who was interviewing the young man, at his home, at midnight, allegedly because Todashev had suddenly attacked him, causing the agent to feel threatened.

There are an astonishing number of conflicing versions of this official story, involving a variety of different weapons and multiple explanations for how it happened. These versions variously had Todashev threatening the agent with a sword, a knife, a chair, a pipe, a metal pole or even a broomstick. But one thing that stands out is that the agent in each version was alone with Todashev, who was suspected of having been an participant, with Tamerlan Tsarnaev, in an as yet unsolved September 11, 2011 slaying of three suspected young drug dealers in Waltham, Mass. at least one of whom was also a friend of the Tsarnaev brothers.

The critical word here is “alone.”

Watchers of those FBI TV programs know that FBI agents always work in pairs. This is not just Hollywood. It’s FBI policy.

Ibragim Todashev and autopsy photo showing FBI agent's "kill shot" to the head during a midnight household "interrogation"

It’s the nature of the shallow, consumer-driven, dream-drunken culture our society tries to impose on us that we popularly adopt terms without knowing what they mean and, more often than not, they don’t mean much of anything.

Such is the case with “the Cloud”.

The Fictional Cloud with Pen and Coffee (from http://blog.allstate.com/what-is-the-cloud/)

Most people who use computers believe they know what it is except that everyone seems to have a different definition. From a satellite-based storage system to a virtually invisible network to a collection of hard drives all over the world to a new form of storage that doesn’t require computers to…whatever new definition pops up this week. In any case, you have heard of the “cloud” and probably aren’t sure what it really is.

This week, the Army announced it would be putting its Defense Cross-Domain Analytical Capability — a database storing various kinds of “security-relevant” information — on the Cloud. This surprising development indicates a level of maturity for Cloud computing that could be important for us all, in a contradictory way. We are closer than ever to being able to build a completely de-centralized and privacy-protected Internet network and that is a development we all should be actively supporting. Unsurprisingly, it’s a development corporations are frantically seeking to prevent or control.

To understand all this, you have to first understand what “cloud storage” actually is and to do that you have to divert your eyes from the sky. That’s not where you’ll find it — no satellites or “non-wired data transfer” or invisible storage devices. It’s not the complete break with previous Internet technology some think it is. In fact, it’s not even new.