Charlie Rose interviews Guardian editors Alan Rusbridger & Janine Gibson

The methodology pursued by the mainstream American press on the matter of the NSA's global data mining operations has been to question the nature, psychology, and patriotism of  Edward Snowden, the leaker. Understandably, rather than discussing an abstract, unconstitutional and criminal operation that has Orwellian dynamics, those who manufacture consent would much rather the public consider irrelevant personal trivia. Similarly, reports in the American press about Julian Assange/WikiLeaks and Pvt. Bradley Manning typically have misidentified the actual topic at hand; that being deliberate government lies and state criminality conducted against their own citizens and foreigners.  So instead of zeroing in on the copious deceptions of the state, we are left with banal inquiries into the legitimacy of the data breaches.

The interview above with the Guardian's Alan Rusbridger and Janine Gibson is an example of this infuriating process.  While I think Charlie Rose has produced some wonderful and thoughtful interviews on many subjects, his line of inquiry into the motivation of Mr. Snowden belies deference to state propaganda.  The Guardian editors clearly articulate that there has been no evidence by either the US government or any other sources that these leaks have been harmful to anyone or the US government.

Is it really too much to have television journalists ask questions like:

• Why has this program been running, when the public clearly said it was unacceptable back in the middle of the decade of the zeroes?
• Why are members of the US Congress so woefully ignorant of the scope of these programs?
• What penalties shall be administered upon those members of the military and government, who have been lying to the public about these programs?
• Under what authority does the US government have in stealing all the private and personnel data of non-citizens not located within the United States? 
• Why does the US government continually prevent these programs from being adjudicated and subject to constitutional review, if they deem them truly legal?
• Why doesn't the press call those in government who lie to the public and engage in illegal behavior traitors?
• Why are private corporations used to such an extent in gathering and processing clandestine information?
• Why does the current US government engage in prosecuting and penalizing whistleblowers to the extent that they do?

As others have said on this matter, the only reason a universal monitoring program is in place is that the state believes its true enemy is its own citizens.

Spanish society in freefall...

Spain currently has a mass unemployment rate of 24.1% and youth unemployment rate (15-24 y/o) that exceeds 50%, up from 18.2% in 2007.  In comparison Italy's youth unemployment is 29%; Portugal is 30%; and 24% of young people in France are without employment.  The Spanish economy has been contracting each of the past two quarters and is officially back in recession.  As the financial sector attempts to wade through the morass of over-development, massive consolidation of the banks and the crippling of credit has occurred.

The root cause of much of this disaster lies in the corrupt nexus between local bankers and regional politicians, which happen in many instances to be one and the same.  Lax lending standards, cheap foreign labor, and easy inflows of European capital all lead to a massive over-development.  The days of cheap credit ended with the financial crash of 2008.  Private debt was absorbed by the balance sheets of the state and ultimately the collective nations of the Eurozone.

Whereas the chicanery that lead to this bloody mess is a story that needs to be told, I'm interested today in discussing the impact on real people and the current generation of people who will have to pay for this economic catastrophe for the rest of their lives.  The decline and hopelessness felt across Spain has been chronicled in a number of newspapers and journals.  Here are some of the highlights.

In the Spanish daily La Pais, a 9-March article titled Generation Nimileuristra described the lives of young people who see opportunities denied and their lives stagnating with either low or no paying jobs.  

In 2005 youth unemployment was about 20%. Now [reaching] 50% while doubling the European average (22.4%) . The best educated generation has the worst outlook since the transition and feels a victim of the excesses of others...

In Spain there are 10,423,798 people between 18 and 34... Their average net income (including the unemployed), is 824 euros per month. And those who are working earn on average 1,318 euros a month (data from the Youth Council of Spain)...  Professions that seemed safe... are not. The Polytechnic University of Valencia followed the first steps in the process of engineers and architects who graduated in 2008: one in four did not reach [jobs with salaries over 1000 euros/month]. And what is worse: the [educated with jobs with salaries under 1000 euros/month] had advanced by 8% compared to graduates a year earlier.

In many cases youth are forced to abandon independence and relocate into their family's homes.

It has been established that even small levels of protracted unemployment in developed countries can have serious implications for the unemployed.  Those include reduced lifetime wages, reduced employment opportunities, and higher mental health issues.  With respect to society at large, depressed wages will promote educated youth emigrate to other jurisdictions, resulting in a brain-drain to the nation.  Undereducated and unemployed male youth on the other hand are statistically more likely to participate in criminal activity.

In many OECD countries the unemployment rate is substantially higher than the general population. An Economist article from Sept-11, 2011 discusses the various disadvantages and impacts under-employment and unemployment will have on these people.

Unemployment of all sorts is linked with a level of unhappiness that cannot simply be explained by low income. It is also linked to lower life expectancy, higher chances of a heart attack in later life, and suicide. A study of Pennsylvania workers who lost jobs in the 1970s and 1980s found that the effect of unemployment on life expectancy is greater for young workers than for old. Workers who joined the American labour force during the Great Depression suffered from a persistent lack of confidence and ambition for decades.

The implications of this situation are severe.  Not only will youth not be entering the work force, they will not be participating in the economy and doing normal things, such as buying cars, homes, furniture. So there is a negative cascade felt across the nation on all levels. Secondly, since they will not be paying taxes, who will bear the burden of maintaining the welfare state that Europeans are so proud of?   As fewer people are contributing to these pay-as-you-go programs, older generations will see a reduction in benefits.

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The financial crisis has lead to governments across Spain to drastically cut programs, services, and cash transfers to lower levels.  A New York Times article elaborates:

Just as Spain’s national and regional governments are struggling with the collapse of the construction industry, overspending on huge capital projects and a pileup of unpaid bills, the same problems afflict many of its small towns.

One town's mayor discusses his small community's problems:

“We lived beyond our means,” Mr. García said. “We invested in public works that weren’t sensible. We are in technical bankruptcy.” Even some money from the European Union that was supposed to be used for routine operating expenses and last until 2013 has already been spent, he said.

The banking upheavals have brought similar troubles to small and medium scale businesses, which represent "60 percent of the economy, and 80 percent of the jobs".  The vicious cycle has resulted in the shuttering of more than 500,000 small business according to the NY Times.  

“The cuts in credit have been so abrupt that some businesses not only lost specific projects they were working on,” said Carlos Ruiz Fonseca, the director of economy and innovation at Cepyme, Spain’s association of small and medium-size companies. “Some companies have just gone out of business.” 

How is any of this supposed to engender confidence in the international markets?  The same banks which are cutting credit lines, reducing exposure to risk, and contracting their businesses are simultaneously being downgraded by the various credit agencies.  Billions of Euros are being requested by the financial sector to keep these debt ridden entities from further collapsing and imploding the entire Spanish economy.

The net result of all these events is a society that is in freefall.  If these trends continue, not only will Europe have generated legions of angry, unemployed persons, they will have created the same foundations that gave rise to the extremists of the last century.

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Update: video link about squatters taking over an vacant apartment complex, built during the construction boom, in Seville

Quote of the Day: On Plutocracy

The interests that would undermine government are strong and growing stronger, with rich individuals leading the charge.

- Simon Johnson (MIT professor and former chief economist of the IMF)  "Koch Brothers, The Cato Institute, And Why Nations Fail", The Baseline Scenario.

Quote of the Day: Chomsky on Resistance

Actually, during this entire crisis, I thought one of the most astute comments was a two-sentence comment by Marwan Muasher. He’s a former high Jordanian official who’s head of Middle East research for the Carnegie Endowment. He said, "There’s an operative principle in the Middle East." He said, "The principle is, as long as people are quiet and passive, we’ll do whatever we like." That’s a general principle of statesmanship that applies here, too. As long as people are quiet and passive, we’ll do whatever we like. Now, of course, if they stop being quiet and passive, we’ll have to adjust somehow. Maybe they’ll even throw us out, but we’ll try to hang on as much as we can. And that’s what we see going on in the Middle East. That’s what we saw going on in Latin America. It’s what we see right here.

- Professor Noam Chomsky, speaking to Amy Goodman at DemocracyNow on the Middle East revolutions earlier in 2011.

Quote of the day: Tom Ricks on Fox News

I think Fox may be the most destructive force in American society nowadays, basically pouring poison into the stream of our political discourse.

- Tom Ricks, "Fox News Scoop!"

As this blog has been discussing for years, the function of the media is not to inform, but to deform reality for the benefit of the ruling class.  In this context, the nature of the news is by definition propaganda and its value, just as Pravda was during the years of the Soviet Union, is to leave the audience with a specific perspective that benefits the powerful.  In the USSR it was the communist party; in the USA it is the broad swath of business interests, including the military-industrial-surveillance complex, big-pharma, big-agri, the financial industry, the energy/chemicals sector, and Health care/insurance industry.  Fox News serves the interests of these people and is, as Ricks points out, a source of outright fraud that contaminates civil discourse with purposefully designed falsehoods and innuendo that plays into the biases and bigotry of their audience.

I found it interesting when Dick Cheney was vice-president, that he wanted the television in his hotel suites preset to Fox news.  Did that mean that he wanted to know what the minions were watching and thus assess the adequacy of his disinformation machine personally?  Or did it mean that Cheney was uninterested in hearing other perspectives of news, other than the one he and his cohorts had created?  Fox News represents the convoluted intersection of corporatism and government sponsored deceit.  This disinformation channel, because it wasn't interested in news but in pushing perspective, became a juggernaut in the decade of the zeroes. The conventional framework of left and right politics has broken down.  As a result, no longer is the prevalent conflict between liberals and conservatives.  Instead, the struggle for America has become a battle between an inverted form of totalitarianism, defined by corporatism, and the free flow of information espoused by those interested in democracy.

There are those who feel that if a person is given sufficient and credible information, they will invariably choose the most rational argument.  The fact that religion, debunked political ideologies, and failed economic models persist amongst the majority of Americans, suggests that this line of thinking is false.  Many people don't want to know the truth.  They want to be lied to and given ridiculous and fictitious narratives that make their lives tolerable.  The majority of the world want to exist under what Nietzsche described as a slave ethic.  A world where they are the constant victims, where forces external to themselves are always punishing them and depriving them of their just deserves.  In the minds of American conservatives, Fox News is their secular conduit to the outside world.  They can justify their ignorance and prejudices through presented falsehoods and manufactured realities, while all the time marching to the beat of their corporate masters.

Quote of the Day: Nick Clegg on opposition to AV

When the vested interests of the old, tired, establishment of politics and the media are so opposed to a reform – turning so personal about it – you know there is something worth fighting for. It is a desperate attempt to defend the indefensible – the old politics of tribalism backed by dinosaurs on all sides of the political spectrum. It is the attack on people working together for the national good that is so dismal.

- Nick Clegg, Leader of the Liberal-Democrats (UK); Guardian newspaper

It has been nearly a year since the coalition government was formed in Britain.  The Conservative Party, lead by David Cameron, and the Liberal Democrats, lead by Nick Clegg, formed a coalition to bridge the fact that no one political party had gained sufficient seats in Westminster to hold the confidence of parliament, after the 2010 elections.  Things have not gone well amongst the ranks of Liberal Democrat supporters, and the biggest challenge advocated  by the party -alternative voting mechanism- appears to be withering.

So few people in any line of politics are willing to say the obvious fact that our current political systems are badly broken and those who talk dismissively about change, are the same persons who exploit that existing system to their maximum political advantage.  I have spoken briefly on what I think are some of the impressive qualities of Nick Clegg in previous posts.  Unlike either the corrupt Labour Party or post-Thatcherite crony-capitalists of the Conservative Party, Mr. Clegg has denounced the Iraq war (here and here), embraced environmentalism (here), and made some of the largest changes to Britain's security-state apparatus, promoted by Labour, to make government accountable to the true sovereign; the people (here).

The fact that so many voters will act with such myopic thinking in opposing the alternative voting system, in order to simply punish the Liberal Democrats for aligning themselves with the Conservatives, only proves that most people are not only unable to think rationally, but are petty to the point of being sadomasochistic.

The revolving door between Government and Big Business

The New York Times reported earlier in December that Peter Orszag, Obama's first budget director, joined Citibank's investment banking group as a vice chairman.  Mr. Orszag joins a long list of former White House officials who have moved from government and into the board room's of America's largest corporations.

Mr. Orszag’s actual duties are murky at best. He is expected to draw on his deep knowledge of public sector financial issues and his experience overseeing the federal budget to counsel Citi’s clients on various policy actions. He is also expected to be something of a corporate rainmaker.

The Economist magazine evaluates the transaction and considers the entire situation an unsuitable arrangement that enforces perceptions of Washingtonian corruption.

Not only is the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street unseemly, its frictionless gliding action suggests corruption is built right into the interface between our government and our great profit-seeking institutions.

James Fallows over at The Atlantic magazine is quoted by the Economist and relays is own thoughts on the matter.

But in the grander scheme, his move illustrates something that is just wrong. The idea that someone would help plan, advocate, and carry out an economic policy that played such a crucial role in the survival of a financial institution—and then, less than two years after his Administration took office, would take a job that (a) exemplifies the growing disparities the Administration says it's trying to correct and (b) unavoidably will call on knowledge and contacts Orszag developed while in recent public service—this says something bad about what is taken for granted in American public life.

When we notice similar patterns in other countries—for instance, how many offspring and in-laws of senior Chinese Communist officials have become very, very rich—we are quick to draw conclusions about structural injustices. Americans may not "notice" Orszag-like migrations, in the sense of devoting big news coverage to them. But these stories pile up in the background to create a broad American sense that politics is rigged, and opportunity too.

The system as I have elaborated in a number of previous posts (ex. here, here, here, here, and here) is corrupt.  Here is a man with all the necessary knowledge on how to circumvent and manipulate whatever limited and existing impediments there are and will use that to his new employer's maximum benefit.  Robert Rubin, former Treasury Secretary under Clinton, joined Citibank to become a senior adviser and board member, with a $10 million a year paycheck with no management responsibility.  Carlos Gutierrez, a former commerce secretary under President George W. Bush, will join Citibank alongside Mr. Orszag, "to counsel Citi’s clients on various policy actions."

It is clear that the government is run by persons whose only interest is in using government to get rich quickly. We need to stop wasting our time asking whether the system is broken; it is.  The real question is how much worst is it going to get before the whole corpulent mess implodes?

Dubya is Threatened with Arrest if He Visits London, UK!

From Scott Horton's blog over at Harper's comes this exquisite piece of news, from the city of London's conservative Mayor.  I usually do not repost entire posts of others, but this succinct and insightful post is too valuable to not be shared in its totality. Bold print has been added by me.

London’s Tory mayor, Boris Johnson, has some strong words of caution for former president George W. Bush: if you come to Europe to promote your book, pack heavily and be prepared for a long stay. In fact, you may “never see Texas again.” As he sees it, Bush’s book and statements he has made in efforts to market it constitute admissions of serious crimes.

Initial reports about Bush’s autobiography did not go over well in Europe, and Britain’s new Conservative government was particularly eager to push back against suggestions that their conservatism had any resemblance to the Bush variety. Bush insisted this his decision to use waterboarding and other torture techniques kept Britain safe. But British Conservatives are having none of it:

In the case of the three men waterboarded on Bush’s orders, British ministers are not aware of any valuable information they gave about plots against Heathrow, Canary Wharf or anywhere else. All the policy has achieved is to degrade America in the eyes of the world, and to allow America’s enemies to utter great whoops of vindication. It is not good enough for Dubya now to claim that what he did was OK, because “the lawyers said it was legal”.

As Johnson sees it, the torture debate is ultimately about America’s claim to leadership in the world and the Bush team’s sullying of the nation’s reputation:

How could America complain to the Burmese generals about the house arrest of Aung San Suu Kyi, when a president authorised torture? How can we talk about human rights in Beijing, when our number one ally and friend seems to be defending this kind of behaviour? I can’t think of any other American president, in my lifetime, who would have spoken in this way. Mr Bush should have remembered the words of the great Republican president, Abraham Lincoln, who said in 1863 that “military necessity does not admit of cruelty”. Damn right.

***

I have been saying this for years.  In yesterday's blog on Republican corruption, I stated that it is only a matter of time before someone in the Bush junta is ensnared and eventually prosecuted for international legal problems arising from their years of legal misconduct.  Whilst America's media glosses over the fact that both Dick Cheney and George W. Bush have admitted to ordering torture, people around the world are looking carefully at the decider's words and movement and evaluating the possibility of bringing him or his henchmen in front of a magistrate to explain themselves in court.

What we have also seen is that Mr. Obama has made substantial efforts to collude with the former administration in shielding and protecting them from domestic and international prosecutions.  Andrew Sulivan states in his blog that the most recent WikiLeaks information dump, "reveal an extraordinary effort by the US embassy and the Bush and Obama administrations to cajole, pressure, redirect and try to rig legal cases that could reveal the war crimes of the previous administration."  Both administrations are bound by the pirate's ethic of evading responsibility and accountability for any action they or their Jolly-Roger-like counterparts may engage in.  The Obama administration is now culpable in the crimes of his predecessors, and needs to explain their actions, at the very least, to the voters who demanded change that they could believe in.

Charlie Rose interviews Charles Ferguson of the "Inside Job"

http://www.charlierose.com/view/content/11321

The above link is to a recent interview (29 November 2010) between Charlie Rose and Charles Ferguson who produced the well reviewed documentary on the origins of the financial collapse of 2008 and the subsequent global bailout of the financial industry by governments across the world.

He states specifically, "the film is about the systemic corruption of the United States by the financial industry and the consequences of that systemic corruption."

In the interview Ferguson makes it clear that the corruption of America and its legislative and regulatory processes are profound.  He makes the case that much of what happened would not have occurred if the businessmen behind these monolithic investment banks were not so incompetent and blinded by greed and the US government had not abdicated its role, as an agent for fairness, in properly regulating the whole industry.  The actions taken by the government was to save the banks and the elite bankers, while allowing the rest of the population to fend for itself.  The bankers, with the exception of Lehman Brothers, were not made to make any sacrifices.

Ferguson further contends that "massive criminal fraud" was undertaken. Despite the nauseating proclamations by the financial industry and their media stooges, it is clear that both government and the largest corporations in America engaged in what may stand as the largest criminal event of the past quarter century. The reality is that none of these people, given the political climate and entrenched corruption of government, will be held accountable for their actions in destroying trillions of dollars of wealth, eliminating millions of jobs, and pushing families off the cliff.  When ordinary people lose their health care, lose their homes, lose their life savings, and end up destitute, the same people who caused this mayhem will snicker and call the rest of the population parasites!

I've said it numerous times on this blog, that only when people recognize the true nature of corporations in their society and begin to combat the force of coruption through monied politics, will things change.

Open Advice to President Obama

Dear Barack,

I know you don't care what I think, with all those high-paid clowns dispensing all that brilliant strategy to you on how to piss-off those loser hippies who funded, supported, and fought for you across America in 2008, but here it is.

You're a bit like Bubba, in that despite all those flowery speeches about hope or being from a place called hope (who can get it straight anymore) you've given over the past few years, we really don't know what you believe.  I mean, the nihilists and brain-dead masses think you're a Marxist Fascist with ties to Kenyan revolutionaries.  I don't know what that means either, other than interpreting it as an odd way to just call you a nigger.  I've never really thought you were the second coming of FDR, but you were a better option than the Queen corporatist Madam Clinton.  People liked what you had to say and what you represented, but back then it mostly was about voting against eight hard and dismal years under the Bush junta.  However, you waffled and instead of steamrolling what remained of the right wing yahoo's and pushing through a progressive and liberal agenda, you coddled and capitulated to their bizarre demands.  Let's recap:

• Did exactly what Bush said he would do in ending the Iraq war; that being leaving 50K troops to babysit the Shia thugocracy in Baghdad.
• Escalated the Afghan war, which everyone has already admitted is lost.
• Caved into special interests in the health care bill, by eliminating the public option and preventing the  importation of drugs from Canada.
• Created a health care bill that would force individuals to purchase lame health care coverage and subsidise the crooked insurance companies.
• Pushed through a special debt committee, filled with right-wing ideologues and hacks demanding that Social Security be privatized under the guise of bi-partisanship.
• Bailed out your friends and big-donor buddies in the banks, but left the rest of the nation submerged with debt and ever-expanding (and now illegal) foreclosures
• Failed to prosecute any of the major players in the Bush junta for war crimes, crimes against humanity, violations of the Constitution, and numerous illegal acts and unethical behavior
• Advanced the post-911 security-surveillance state to new levels
• Advanced the military-industrial complex in the face of mounting debts and limited resources
• Let Israel make a complete mockery of you, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, and your entire administration relating to the Palestinian issue
• Allowed the minority blue dog Democrats to dictate the terms of major legislation, so they could retain their congressional seats (which as every poll indicates, they won't)
• Put in charge Ken Salazar as Secretary of the Interior, effectively creating what others have referred to as Bush's 3rd term with respect to governmental regulation and resource management of public assets
• Colluded with BP to lie to the public on the scope and severity of the Gulf of Mexico oil spill.

People who voted for you, in the deluded belief that government could mend it ways, are looking at a moribund economy, a Democratic Party that is incapable of defending themselves against corrupt Republican and Tea Party slander, and a crypto-fascist uprising funded by the same assholes whose jobs and balance sheets you saved from complete Armageddon.  A lot of people said early on that you were playing three-dimensional chess and were way smarter than the rest of the dolts on the Hill.  It's pretty clear that not only don't you have game, but you're really not as bright as those Harvard and Columbia degrees might imply.

So Barack, if you want to do something meaningful, do yourself a favor and grow a couple, because this nonsense you've been pedalling for the past 21-months is getting tired and no one is going to vote for you if you keep selling the same recycled shit that Bush left behind on the White House's going-out of business sale in November 2008.

Fuck-you very much.

The Lifer.

All Means to Attract and Distract...

  

As Thomas Frank said in his book What's the matter with Kansas?

These voters are far more concerned with the frustrations and indignities of everyday life than with scholarly rigor or objective material interests, they suffer from old man’s disorder, their deafness to the insincerity of their leaders is a cultural marvel, it is a place where hatred trumps bread, and I have worse to say.

Yes, we know all that, but what will Tiger Woods think!  And more importantly, since Elin was married to the world's greatest sex-freak, will she ever be satisfied with anyone else between the sheets!  Again, what do the sheeple think?

Quote of the Day: Roubini on Financial Regulations

Unless we make these radical [financial system] reforms, new Gordon Gekkos – and Charles Ponzis – will emerge. For each chastised and born-again Gekko – as the Gekko in the new Wall Street [movie by Oliver Stone] is – hundreds of meaner and greedier ones will be born.

- Nouriel Roubini, Gordon Gekko is Reborn, Project Syndicate

What Roubini is expounding, is that all the ethics and certification programs that have been touted for MBA students, will amount to nothing, unless the prime motivators for excessive risk and greed generation are curtailed.  He suggests four areas that must be effectively dealt with:

1. Compensation schemes for individuals must be realigned so that, "bonuses based on medium-term results of risky trades and investments must supplant bonuses based on short-term outcomes."
2. Reconstituting Glass-Steagall like regulations -which the watered down Volcker rule did not achieve in the recent financial system reform legislation- to separate the commercial banks, investment banks, and the institutions engaged in hedge fund-like casino capitalism.
3. The enormous conflict of interest that currently exists between financial firms and markets, needs to be resolved, permitting greater transparency to reign and allowing confidence in the overall market to be established.
4. Allowing all businesses, including their employees and shareholders, to understand that the government -that being the people's money- will not go towards bailing out their poor decisions; i.e. there should not exist too big too fail.

Since, the US government has not engaged in any meaningful regulatory scheme to ensure that the above occurs, and has in fact gone in the opposite direction in relation to some of these points, we can only assume that the concept of regulatory capture can now be extended to the US Congress as a whole and the office of the President of the United States.  The financial industry alone has spent $251 million this past year to manipulate the legislative process in their favor.  Collectively, they spent more than any other industry group between the months of April and June ($126 million).  Goldman Sachs and  JP Morgan Chase alone, spent in the first half of 2010 as much as they spent all last year (2009) chasing down congressmen, senators, and those involved in regulatory decision making.

The game is rigged folks.  If you think any of these rich, pretentious assholes in the corner office of these banks or in the House of Representatives care about the little people on the street or democracy, you probably still think voting for Democrats or Republicans will make a difference.  It won't.

Government Demands More Digitial Search Authority

Another effort is being pushed by the FBI to gain more information about the digital habits of Americans.  Specifically, the government -in this case the duplicitous and hypocritical Obama administration- has stated that it wants the FBI to obtain the capacity to request an individual's telecommunications history, including but not limited to internet search records, Internet history, and other quantitative data from their service provider without judicial oversight.

With the enormous expansion of the security state subsequent to 9-11, the FBI had already gained via National security letters (NSLs) the authority to obtain people's communication, financial and credit information. As the ACLU states

These requests are not approved by a court, and the FBI does not have to suspect you of actually being a terrorist, spy or criminal; the only thing they have to do to get your records is certify to themselves (not a court) that you are "relevant" to an investigation. To make matters worse, the FBI has the power to prohibit any Internet service provider, bank or credit company from which it demands sensitive customer records from ever disclosing anything about the record demand.

The Washington Post reports that contrary to government statements, NSLs have been aggressively used with repeated frequency.  For example,

The Justice Department issued 192,500 national security letters from 2003 to 2006, according to a 2008 inspector general report, which did not indicate how many were demands for Internet records. A 2007 IG report found numerous possible violations of FBI regulations, including the issuance of NSLs without having an approved investigation to justify the request. In two cases, the report found, agents used NSLs to request content information "not permitted by the [surveillance] statute."

Given that the government has always had the authority to request this information in the case of emergencies, why would they need to circumvent legal review and authorization? The answer is obvious. Various factions within the government don't want anyone to impede or limit their questionable antics, which as their own internal review process has confirmed is corrupt.  Fishing expeditions that pull in ever greater information about people, who do not pose a criminal threat, but a political threat is the new normal.  As discussed in an earlier blog, the various and competing intelligence agencies, in association with a massive quasi-corporate infrastructure, are obsessed with collecting ever more information about ordinary citizens and controling larger domains of state decision-making authority.  Collectively, the growing demands of these organizations are meant to institute state primacy over individuals, civil liberties, and democracy itself.

Noam Chomsky Prevented from Entering Israel

According to news sources, this past Sunday Professor Noam Chomsky, MIT linguist and America's leading political dissident, was barred entry to the state of Israel.  The rational for his visit to Israel was to present a series of lectures at Bir Zeit University, a Palestinian university located in the occupied West Bank. 

The situation has brought strong criticisms of the state by Israeli legal experts and equal condemnation of Prof. Chomsky from right-wing politicians within Israel.  Boaz Okun, a commentator in the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot, describes it as, "a foolish act...[that] may mark the end of Israel as a law-abiding and freedom-loving state, or at least place a large question mark over this notion.” Carlos Strenger said in today's Haaretz newspaper,

Nobody in his right mind can claim that Chomsky represents a security threat to Israel. He’s 81 years old. He is not a specialist on armed insurrection, and he has never called for violence against Israel...

If anything, barring Chomsky gives ammunition to those who say that Israel is infringing on academic freedom in the Palestinian Authority, and that a boycott against its universities is therefore justified.

If Israel feels it can defend its actions morally and politically, it should not fear thinkers who criticize it. But Israel is beginning to tamper with free speech, and this is a truly worrying development.

If Israel feels it cannot survive free speech, then it is one step closer to flirting with totalitarianism. In fact, during his questioning, when Chomsky was asked whether he was ever denied entry into a country he said, yes: into Czechoslovakia in 1968, after the Russian invasion, when he wanted to visit his friend Dubcek. This puts Israel into very poor company indeed.

Given that Professor Chomsky is of Jewish heritage and had previously lived in an Israeli Kibbutz, during the 1950's, the entire event leaves an impression usually associated with ham-fisted authoritarian regimes. Due to Prof. Chomsky's international notoriety and known criticisms of Israel, which have not changed since his last visit to Israel in 1997, the office of Israeli Prime Minster Benjamin Netanyahu is backtracking and claiming the whole incident was a mistake by an over-zealous customs officer and all are free to visit Israel.  However, the facts seem to dispute this statement.  According to today's NY Times and other international dailies, the following persons who have at one time or another been vocal of Israeli policies, have been barred:

• Richard Falk, an American Jew and United Nations investigator of human rights in the Palestinian areas
• Norman Finkelstein, a Jewish American scholar who is a critic of Israel and its policies
• Irish Foreign Minister Michael Martin, who is known as a critic of the Israeli-led blockade of Gaza
• Singer Yusef Islam (formerly Cat Stevens) was banned from a Peace Concert to be held in Israel
• Numerous non-violent peace activist groups and Palestinian Relief Agencies

CIA Agents Sought by Spanish Prosecutors

Scott Horton at Harper's Magazine is stating that, "Prosecutors attached to the Audiencia Nacional in Madrid are reportedly requesting that Judge Ismael Moreno issue an order for the arrest of thirteen CIA agents involved in an extraordinary rendition operation from 2004."

The agency has come under substantial investigation over the past few years for their gross incompetence and servitude to the Bush junta's policies of extrajudicial kidnapping, torture, and murder.  For example, only last year 23 American intelligence officers were found guilty, in absentia, of the kidnapping and extraordinary rendition of an Egyptian cleric known as Abu Omar, who the CIA agents seized off the streets of Milan, took to Egypt, and then subsequently tortured.

Similarly, in 2004 another individual named,

Khaled El-Masri, a greengrocer from Neu-Ulm, Germany, [was] seized by the United States as a result of mistaken identity while he was on vacation in the former Yugoslavia. El-Masri was placed on a CIA-chartered jet that arrived in Macedonia from Palma de Majorca in January 2004, en route ultimately to Afghanistan. It appears that Majorca was used regularly as a refueling and temporary sheltering point for the CIA, with the knowledge of the prior conservative government. While held in the notorious CIA prison known as the Salt Pit, El-Masri was apparently tortured during extensive interrogations before intelligence officers realized that they had seized the wrong man. The Washington Post reported that CIA agents, fearing the consequences of releasing him, argued for his continued detention and in fact held him for at least several weeks after his release had been ordered. Condoleezza Rice, then national security advisor to President Bush, intervened and directed his release. El-Masri’s CIA abductors entered Spanish territory using forged British passports, according to the prosecutors.

Criminal proceedings are also underway in Germany on similar charges of kidnapping and torture.

Icelanders tell UK & Dutch Governments to Screw Themselves!

I was hoping to find a newspaper somewhere, anywhere declaring solidarity with the people of Iceland against the tyranny of the high-priests of high-finance.  But alas nary a headline could be found stating "We are all Icelanders Now!"

To review, in 2008 all three of Iceland's banks collapsed due to their inability to refinance short-term debt and a concomitant run on deposits by European clients who had sought the supposed advantages of high-interest accounts offered by these banks and their Internet subsidiaries (i.e. Icesave).  The commercial collapse crippled the Icelandic economy and precipitated a severe economic recession that devalued the nation's currency by 90%, contracted GDP by 5.5% within the first six-months of 2009, and has already been estimated to exceed 75% of Iceland's GDP in total cost.  

In what may have become the most obscene misuse of legal authority, the government of the UK used anti-terrorism rules to take control of assets held in Britain by Landsbanki Islands hf.  Stephen Timms, financial secretary to the Treasury, said in Britain's Parliament that "To protect U.K. economic interests the government has frozen the funds and financial assets held by Landbanksi."  When Landsbanki failed, the UK government bailed out its citizens deposits.  However, the UK made it clear that it wanted this money returned from the Icelandic government, despite the fact that it never guaranteed the deposits.

In December 2009, the President of Iceland vetoed a bill, pushed by the UK and Netherlands, that would have effectively placed a usurious burden upon the citizens of Iceland by their European counterparts, for what was effectively bad private investments made by Europeans looking for easy money.  According to the Economist magazine:

The Landsbanki debts alone amount to over €12,000 for each of the country’s 320,000 citizens; total debts are approaching 1,000% of GDP. Such sums would take many decades to repay, and would strangle the economy in the meantime.

In addition, the governments of the UK and Netherlands have made both public and private threats that they were willing to force Iceland off the cliff and into financial oblivion.  The threats have including denying Iceland the opportunity for future EU membership and freezing current IMF loans, unless the citizens of the sovereign nation accepted Treaty of Versailles-like repatriations.  For example, the deal would require each Icelander to pay approximately $135 USD a month for eight years; the equivalent of 25% of an average four-member family's salary.

A referendum at the beginning of this month (March 2010) on the specifics of the debt-repayment scheme was rejected by more than 93% of the Icelandic population.  As the Christian Science Monitor notes:

a large portion of voters viewed the deal as an unfair result of their own government's failure to curtail the recklessness of a handful of bank executives, including those who expanded operations to seduce British and Dutch customers with generous returns from online savings.

Furthermore, another perspective is that Icelanders are convinced that the UK/Dutch duo are acting in bad faith and demanding excessive requirements on a country that provided the chieftains of high-capital exactly what they wanted: banking deregulation, pro-business policies, trans-national mobility of capital, and favorable financial products for European clients.  

What the citizens of the West should be saying is that the blackmailing of the people of Iceland by the dunces who have shown themselves equally inept at running their own economies, is not acceptable.  None of these assholes should be telling anyone what to do with their money.  All these bankers and useless government charlatans who turned a blind eye when the priests of high-capital were doing their dirty deeds need to be hung from a tree for facilitating the greatest economic collapse in human-history.  Instead the media has dismissed the issue as a peripheral item about a small and relatively unimportant country that grew too fast and too big.

Eliot Spitzer on Obama's First Year

Spitzer who knows a thing or two about taking on established power, points out in the above video and in his 26-Jan. 2010 State article how Mr. Obama can re-assert the progressive liberal agenda in which he was elected to enact and save the Democrats from electoral defeat in the 2010 midterm elections.

In the article he basically calls Rahm Emanuel (WH Chief of Staff), Larry Summers (Director of the National Economic Council), and Tim Geithner (US Secretary of the Treasury) incompetent political operatives who are a liability to both the Obama presidency and the nation as a whole.

He also contends that the president's working model is useless and Obama needs to aggressively control the legislative process, rather than ceding it to congressional weaklings.

It is time for President Obama to imitate Lyndon Johnson and Franklin Roosevelt: define the progressive agenda and impose party discipline, use the 59 votes in the Senate—still an overwhelming majority—and an equally robust majority in the House to make every effort to pass the critical pieces of the Democratic agenda and then let the Republicans try to counter.

Mr. Obama has failed repeatedly over the past year to heed the criticisms of those on his left-flank.  As a result, both him and the Democrats, by underwhelming and playing footsie with K-Street, are posed to lose massively in the 2010 midterm elections to the Republicans; whose only solution to America's problems is more war and less taxes.  If he wants the Democrats to continue being an appendage of the corporate state, then he should prepare himself to vacate the White House in 2012, because few who voted for a reformist agenda, to correct the extravagances of the Bush junta, will bother to do so again with the present course of action.

Niall Ferguson: I've seen the future and it stinks!

Niall Ferguson gives an interview with business journalist Consuelo Mack of the PBS program 'WealthTrack'.  In it Ferguson does his standard song and dance about the origins of the strife between the USA and China or what he ofter refers to as Chi-merica.   He sternly admonishes those who feel that the current recession/depression is over and the classic 'V' shape recovery is occurring.   Paul Krugman, who has been having a public feud with Ferguson, addresses both topics in his NY Times column (respectively here and here).  In both cases, Ferguson and Krugman are basically on the same page in offering both concerns and veiled predictions of weak American economic performance in 2010.

The take home message in my opinion, which comes near the end of the interview, is Ferguson's comparison of the current 'depression' with of the depression of 1873.  This particular event, which is almost never referenced in the press, involved depressions emerging in both America and Europe.  In America, construction work lagged, wages were cut, real estate values fell and corporate profits vanished.  A total of 89 railroad companies went bankrupt, 18,000 businesses failed between 1873 and 1875, and unemployment reached 14% by 1876.  Whereas in Europe, the Vienna stock exchange crashed, Viennese banks failed, speculative bubbles collapsed, and industries crashed.  Deflation ensued for the next twenty years and an economic shift from Europe to America occurred.

In Ferguson's analysis, China plays the part which America played in the 1873 crash, in terms of the shift of industrial strength.  He also believes that like the populist backlash that emerged in the first Gilded age, current day populist rage across the Western world arising from severe unemployment, decreasing social amenities, and the realization of the corrupt financial/governmental systems, could pose substantial risk for standing governments.

The second message, despite his early preening in the interview about the rise of the emerging markets and especially China, is in his own words,  "I've been to Chongqing. I've seen the future and it stinks!"  He concludes that China's communist party is incapable of fundamental reform or eliminating the rampant corruption that underlies the fabric of its merchantalist society.  I have written a fair degree on China's corrupt business practices (here, here, and here for example) and believe likewise, that this facet of their culture will be one of the principle agents why the so-called Chinese miracle will not overtake the West.

Canada Suspends Democracy during Olympics!

In general, Canada is a pretty good place to live.  In terms of ease of doing business, global competitiveness, individual liberty, and overall quality of life, it consistently ranks amongst the top ten nations of the world.

Yesterday, the Prime Minister's Office announced that it was seeking proroguing parliament and expanding the traditional Christmas break season for Parliament until March 3rd; until after the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, BC.  The concept of prorogation, which involves the termination of a legislative period, thus ending all standing committees, closing question period in the House of Commons, and letting all legislation that hasn't received Royal Ascent to be dismissed, is neither novel nor is it illegal.  However, the current context to which it has been utilized by the Conservative Party, is an unprecedented attempt by a minority government to evade public accountability, marginalize the role of the opposition in Parliament, and enhance the party's hold on the instruments of power.

At the begining of 2009, in the face of a potential coalition government forming between the opposition Liberal Party and NDP and shortly after national elections had returned Mr. Harper's Conservatives to power, parliament was prorogued.  This incident was a clear attempt to sow public dissension and confusion over coalition prospects. The officially stated reason for this most recent prorogation, was to allow the Tories to seek a national consensus on Canada's economic policies for the new year.  This becomes the third time in three years that prorogation has been used by the Conservatives.

The Tories, despite having complained endlessly that Liberal Senators were stymieing and slowing down legislation in the upper chamber, have now allowed for dozens of bills, some they claimed critical to their agenda, to fall to the wayside.  The rational provided by the Prime Minister's Office, if taken seriously, essentially would mean that the current government cannot walk and chew gum at the same time; i.e. they are incompetent.

Kady O'Mally, at CBC News' Parliamentary Blog, explains that the December time date for prorogation, which prevents Parliament from reconvening in the face of national necessity, and not late January when MPs return from break, indicates that this action has more to do with stopping Afghan torture investigations and using Machiavellian ploys to gain a majority on Senate committees.

Opposition parties have already warned that prorogation would disrupt the inquiry of a parliamentary committee looking into accusations that the government ignored warnings about the torture of Afghan detainees. Strategically, prorogation also prevents question period criticisms from the opposition parties during the Olympics.

Andrew Coyne, writes on his Maclean's blog, that this is, "An abuse of process, an insult to Parliament, another step on Parliament’s long slide into irrelevance."  Liberal House Leader Ralph Goodale called the government's move "beyond arrogant" and its justifications for it "a joke."

In another time and place this type of action would be the exclusive purview of tyrants and kings.  Given that Mr. Harper and his cohorts ran on a platform of delivering accountability, transparency, and efficient government to the people of Canada, this transgression is a telling indictment of their inherent hypocrisy and the corrupting force of power.  To prevent the elected representatives of the people from investigating the actions of the current Conservative government, is an affront to the central democratic principle, that the governing party works to enhance the lives of all its citizens and not merely its own status. This is a corruption of Canadian democracy and if people actually were concerned about such abstractions, they would demand the immediate resignation of the Prime Minster and elections be called to end this fraud of a government.

Corruption in China

One of the enduring attributes of a functioning state, is its ability to operate in an efficient and productive manner for all its citizens.  This isn't a trivial task.  Regardless of the country, great lengths are made by those in authority, both in government and commerce, to conceal their actions, distort public policy, and disseminate propaganda, so that they utilize the resources of the state to their own advantage.  Tolerance for corruption is varied, but is solidly rooted in those nations that are governed by dictatorships, unstable military regimes, and crony-capitalism.  Democracies for all their faults, through transparent legal frameworks, the nature of adversarial and partisan politics, and an open and free press, permit some of the most egregious behavior associated with institutional corruption to be minimized.

According to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, China's failure to contain, "Endemic corruption among Chinese officials poses one of the most serious threats to the nation’s future economic and political stability."  This particular study finds that due to the low prosecution rate of corruption, the context is created for even low-level officials to amass an illicit fortune.  As China has moved to a market-driven economy, corruption has exponentially increased.  The report estimates that the direct costs could be as much as $86 billion each year.

The indirect costs of corruption (efficiency losses; waste; and damage to the environment, public health, education, credibility and morale) are incalculable. Corruption both undermines social stability (sparking tens of thousands of protests each year), and contributes to China’s environmental degradation, deterioration of social services, and the rising cost of health care, housing, and education.

The Chinese government has publicly stated its displeasure with this societal manifestation and has made efforts (how successful they are is another question) to rectify the situation.  For example, a mass public trial in Chongqing earlier this year was conducted upon, "9,000 suspects, 50 public officials, a petulant billionaire and criminal organizations that dabbled in drug trafficking, illegal mining, and random acts of savagery, most notably the killing of a man for his unbearably loud karaoke voice."  The trial has exposed to the Chinese public and the world the vast intermingling between organized crime and government.

The New York Times has another interesting article in which the Chinese government itself reports that corruption amongst it's officials is having a serious and negative impact on the country.  How long the country can absorb this activity and what it entails towards China's global aspirations, will dictate the nature of global economics for the next decade. 

NY Times article follows: 

***

China Finds Huge Fraud by Officials
By DAVID BARBOZA

SHANGHAI — Chinese officials misused or embezzled about $35 billion in government money in the first 11 months of the year, according to a national audit released this week.

The announcement is the latest indication of how widespread corruption has become among government agencies and how difficult it will be for Beijing to root it out.

The National Audit Office, which carried out the examination, did not disclose the size of the budgets reviewed this year. But the agency, which is based in Beijing, said that it surveyed nearly 100,000 government departments and state-owned companies, and that more than 1,000 officials were facing prosecution or disciplinary action because of the audits.

Auditors said government officials engaged in everything from money laundering and issuing fraudulent loans to cheating the government through the sale or purchase of state land or mining rights.

“Criminals are now more intelligent, and covert,” Liu Jiayi, the director of the National Audit Office, was quoted as saying in the state-run news media.

Prime Minister Wen Jiabao hailed the work of the auditors on Tuesday and called on them to monitor government projects and prevent waste.

But analysts say the Communist Party faces significant hurdles in trying to curtail corruption. Every year Beijing announces new anticorruption drives, new laws and new policies aimed at dealing with the problem.

But every year the scale of fraud seems enormous, particularly in a country where the average person earns less than $50 a week.

In 2005, for instance, the National Audit Office reported finding about $35 billion worth of government funds misused or embezzled. That was the last year the office gave a national figure covering its audits, according to its Web site.

Experts say the audits revealed one thing: many in government are finding ways to steal public money.

“The huge crackdown reflects the seriousness of corruption in China’s government,” said Zhu Lijia, a professor of public policy at the Chinese Academy of Governance in Beijing. “Even the National Audit Office should be supervised. In the past few years it was the N.A.O. that decided whether to publish or hide some statistics.”