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.

Americans Negotiating with Taliban Impostor!

Over and over, the impression given by our marginally elected politicians is that they and their well educated bureaucracy, if given enough time and effort are capable of implementing effective leadership and results across the globe.  The Afghan war is a typical example, in which we the citizens of the West have been promised that the country would be modernized and made safe from the Taliban.

Despite nearly a decade there, neither NATO nor America seems capable of winning a war against a fifth rate nation.  Why is that?  The reason might have something to do with the type of people who we have running the show over there.  Consider this and file it under "My God, they can't be this Fucking Stupid!"

According to international newspapers, both NATO and America have been negotiating with an impostor who claimed to be a high ranking Taliban commander.

NATO and Afghan officials said they held three meetings with the man, who traveled from in Pakistan, where Taliban leaders have taken refuge.

The fake Taliban leader even met with President Hamid Karzai, having been flown to Kabul on a NATO aircraft and ushered into the presidential palace, officials said.

The episode underscores the uncertain and even bizarre nature of the atmosphere in which Afghan and American leaders search for ways to bring the nine-year-old American-led war to an end. The leaders of the Taliban are believed to be hiding in Pakistan, possibly with the assistance of the Pakistani government, which receives billions of dollars in American aid.

That's right.  The US government, including  Gen. David Petreaus the US Senior military commander in the region, was commenting on the progress they were having in negotiating with... a fucking impostor!  The impostor who for months was taking their money and pretending to be interested in halting the Talban's offensives in Afghanistan against NATO troops.  According to others:

The man may have been a Taliban agent. “The Taliban are cleverer than the Americans and our own intelligence service,” said a senior Afghan official who is familiar with the case. “They are playing games.”

Brilliant!  At this point any statements made by anyone in any Western government can be considered useless.  We are fighting semi-literate tribesmen, who have no formal military training, no firm logistical support lines, no long term financing for their guerrilla campaigns, and no discernible resources; other than that provided by the duplicitous and corrupt Pakistani.  Yet we are being told that the war will last for another five years!  Send Biden, Obama, and every member of congress and their adult relatives to do a tour of duty in Afghanistan and this war will end tomorrow.

The continued ascent of the surveillance state

Recently Dana Priest and William Arkin of the Washington Post published another chapter into their ongoing investigation of America's secretive information gathering operations.  In the past series, they discussed the emerging nexus between corporate entities, clandestine information services, and the government.  A system so large that "Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications."  No single entity within the government is capable of understanding the totality or scope of the enterprise; not even the president's own top officials on the subject.

The most recent chapter to this story, involves the involvement of state and local police agencies.  Across the nation terrorism task forces have been created to capture information related to domestic threats that may arise in each jurisdiction in America.  The federal government has provided grants to this regional governments and police forces to purchase high-end military surveillance systems and communication networks to monitor and manage local populations.  In those cases where no terrorism related activities are identifiable, the new task forces are used to monitor criminal classes and/or any person or group the state deems of interest.

The most contentious aspect of the government surveillance lies in the collection of data on individuals who are completely innocent of any wrongdoing.  A Nationwide Suspicious Activity Reporting Initiative, or SAR, has been established to collect data (personal, commercial, financial,...etc) upon any person the state determines suspicious.  Unlike the conventional system, where the state does not have the right to collect and horde every minuta of data about your life, the new terrorism laws and surveillance state network, casts a wide net.

As of December, there were 161,948 suspicious activity files in the classified Guardian database, mostly leads from FBI headquarters and state field offices. Two years ago, the bureau set up an unclassified section of the database so state and local agencies could send in suspicious incident reports and review those submitted by their counterparts in other states. Some 890 state and local agencies have sent in 7,197 reports so far.

The objective of the system is to amass as much information on each person within the United States as possible. The federal state has had a long and sordid history of monitoring, infiltrating, and undermining civilian populations engaged in nothing less than constitutionally sanctioned criticism of government practices. The following examples confirm the misuse of the current security state powers:

• In Virginia, the state's fusion center published a terrorism threat assessment in 2009 naming historically black colleges as potential hubs for terrorism.
• From 2005 to 2007, the Maryland State Police went even further, infiltrating and labeling as terrorists local groups devoted to human rights, antiwar causes and bike lanes.
• And in Pennsylvania this year, a local contractor hired to write intelligence bulletins filled them with information about lawful meetings as varied as Pennsylvania Tea Party Patriots Coalition gatherings, antiwar protests and an event at which environmental activists dressed up as Santa Claus and handed out coal-filled stockings

In America, the public has generally accepted the rise of the surveillance state. Trivialities such as civil liberties, the abuse of constitutional freedoms, the invasion of individual privacy, and the monitoring of lawful public assemblies, are glossed off by the mainstream media and the population as minor irritants that only affect those swarthy and obviously guilty dark-skinned persons with funny names. Glenn Greenwald expands on this asymmetric information relationship:

One of the hallmarks of an authoritarian government is its fixation on hiding everything it does behind a wall of secrecy while simultaneously monitoring, invading and collecting files on everything its citizenry does. Based on the Francis Bacon aphorism that "knowledge is power," this is the extreme imbalance that renders the ruling class omnipotent and citizens powerless.

The cabal of corporate fascists has extended its tentacles into every aspect and function of every person in the nation. Big brother is not just a metaphor, he is the state.

Why WikiLeaks matters in this age of Chinese Democracy

In Spain, the WikiLeaks disclosures have dominated the news for three days now. The reporting has been led by the level-headed El País, with its nationwide competitor, Público, lagging only a bit behind. Attention has focused on three separate matters, each pending in the Spanish national security court, the Audiencia Nacional: the investigation into the 2003 death of a Spanish cameraman, José Cuoso, as a result of the mistaken shelling of Baghdad’s Palestine Hotel by a U.S. tank; an investigation into the torture of Spanish subjects held at Guantánamo; and a probe into the use of Spanish bases and airfields for extraordinary renditions flights, including the one which took Khaled El-Masri to Baghdad and then on to Afghanistan in 2003.

- Scott Horton, "The Madrid Cables"

Within the elite political classes and global mainstream media, there is a rising anger and palatable contempt of Wikileaks' periodic information dumps.  The information to date has not been on the scope of the Pentagon Papers. As Fareed Zakeria said in Time magazine, "The Pentagon papers revealed that the U.S. engaged in a systematic campaign to deceive the world and the American people and that its private actions were often the opposite of its stated public policy."  The information clearly has shown governments across the world, be that autocratic or supposedly democratic, to have engaged in deceit, deception, and propaganda to achieve their own statist objectives.  Many in the MSM yawn and say that everything posted has been known.  Perhaps, but the MSM certainly didn't do their job in actively verifying those known suppositions.  Others, like CNN's Wolf Blitzer are filled with rage that anyone would dare to willingly examine the state secrets of the American Empire without first getting the state's tacit approval; like how him and all the other "respectable" laggards of the MSM do.

One commentator has said, "The difference between WikiLeaks and other media organizations is that WikiLeaks is doing its job properly."  Statist leaning politicians and right-wing bloggers on the other hand, are issuing their typical belligerent and illogical fatwas on WikiLeaks.  Despite an obvious understanding of the role of freedom of the press and in the case of America, the first amendment of the US constitution, we have the following verbal flatulence.

• Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the US House of Representatives stated that Juilan Assange of WikiLeaks, "deserves to be hunted and executed" and held as an "enemy combatant."
• Sen. Minority Leader Mitch McConnell told NBC's David Gregory Sunday that Assange is a terrorist.
• Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin) suggested that Assange deserved the same treatment as terrorists and insurgents.
• Sen. Lieberman (I-CT) has asked American companies to not assist WikiLeaks disseminate the data.  To date, Amazon.com has pulled WikiLeaks from its servers, PayPal has stopped donations, and a Seattle based company Tableau Software removed data visualizations published by WikiLeaks to Tableau Public.
• Tom Flanagan, a professor at the University of Calgary and former advisor to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, half-jokingly called for Mr. Obama to assassinate Mr. Assange.
• National Review's Jonah Goldberg asked, "Why wasn't Assange garroted in his hotel room years ago?"
• The same politicians who demanded that America illegally invade Iraq and permanently occupy Afghanistan, now claim that that WikiLeaks will have blood on its hands.

When the White House, the Pentagon, or any other agent of the government willingly passes "state secrets" to the press, such as in the lead-up to the Iraq war through the NY Times' Judith Miller or in the outing of CIA WMD investigator Valerie Plame, the same voices are silent.  When official court stenographer for the Bush White House, Bob Woodward, distributes state secrets in his books, in the way that teenage girls spread gossip, the mainstream press is agog with effuse praise.
 
On another level, the entire WikiLeaks criticism is typical of the fundamental contempt that the political and media class has for democracy, transparency, and government accountability. Governments do not want anyone to understand how incompetent and criminal they are in their everyday blunders. The American government has shown an extreme and persistent proclivity to lie to its citizens, to disseminate false information to the press and public, and conceal their criminal actions to further its own statist objectives. They and their paid cultural managers want a population engaged in the trivial and the irrelevant. A public that is aware and actively demanding accountability is an unacceptable situation for those leading the American Empire Project.

We are living in an age of Chinese Democracy, where the our imperious leaders tell us we are free to do as we are ordered.  The government continues to classify more and more of its activities behind the shield of state secrets, while maximizing its surveillance of innocent people through both legal and illegal means. This is why WikiLeaks matters. The lies that lead to the invasion of Vietnam, the falsehoods that attempted to justify the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the evasion of responsibility surrounding the regulatory framework that lead to the Great Recession, the concealment of war crimes committed by US soldiers and CIA functionaries, the erosion of civil liberties and freedom... etc. are all reasons why whistle-blowers like WikiLeaks matter to functioning democracies.

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.

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.

The Ascendancy of the American Thought Police

Dana Priest and William Arkin, at the Washington Post, have compiled and documented in a three-part series the elaborate web of quasi government-corporate agencies, that are ostensibly engaged in intelligence gathering for various factions within the US government.  Multiple agencies have been created to enhance and supplement the vast information gathering capabilities of the state since the 11-September attacks.  The size and scope of the operations is unlike anything available to any other government across the globe.  As a result, a vast and unaccountable network of corporate entities masquerading as government intelligence resources, information technology experts, and foreign security forces have been added to the government's payroll, with in most cases little or no oversight.  The military, intelligence agencies, profit driven corporations, and government/ civilian personnel are all integrated into a nebulous monstrosity that monitors and collects unprecedented levels of information on Americans and foreigners alike and acts with maximum brutality in executing the objectives of its masters.

A bullet point summary of the two-year investigation is listed below:

• Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
• An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
• In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings - about 17 million square feet of space.
• Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.
• Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year - a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Implications

The overwhelming conclusion that can be drawn from these news reports is how unbalanced the entire post-9/11 world in Washington has become.  A virtual shadow government that has integrated for-profit corporations and hundreds of thousands of civilians to manage state-secrets with little congressional or internal controls has been created. 

The amount of data being accumulated by the state and its corporate accessories is unprecedented.  For example,

Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of communications. The NSA sorts a fraction of those into 70 separate databases.

The central faults prior to 9/11 were that various levels of government were not cooperating and vital information to prevent an attack were not being aggregated efficiently.  Today, that system is even more unwieldy and inefficient.  More agencies, personnel, and data are flowing through the system.  Few people are capable of understanding or controlling the multiple factions, some working with oppositional goals, within the shadow government.  Overlapping missions and unclear lines of authority and accountability remain the norm.  As proof, each of the major incidents that have emerged in the past year including the lone vigilante attack at Fort Hood, the Times Square bomber, and the underwear-bomber were all missed.

Many critics of the sprawling shadow government describe how as in the case of the Iraq war, corporate agendas for maximizing government largess to benefit individual profits coupled with the revolving corporate-government employment situation, is undermining government control and decision making.  The level of secrecy and unaccountable power that has been transferred into the hands of corporations is equally troublesome to an open and democratic nation.  Historically the military and the intelligence gathering agencies that emerged after the second World War, have been profoundly inefficient, ill-managed, and corrupt.  Thus, It is both naive and irresponsible to imagine that this new outgrowth of the military-industrial complex is a sound use of limited resources and is being used optimally.

Similar to the manner in which defence corporations selectively place themselves in every congressional district, so that budgetary 'pork' is fed to them, the third article in the series outlines the ubiquitous nature of the shadow government.  In the guise of national security, the shadow government's presence has increased across America.  In traditional military towns, entire business districts have been converted to serve special-operations contractors.  Massive sprawling mausoleums concentrating specific agencies have been erected to serve the growing demands of the US government.  Whole cities are now dependant on the secret actions of the shadow government.

The American republic has collapsed in a silent coup and has been usurped by a shadow government.  Corporations, whether they reside on Wall Street or hidden within the national security maze outside of Washington DC, control entire sections of the US state; including legislative, financial, and war-making authority.  The nation is now a de facto plutocracy, precariously sliding everyday into the authoritarian arms of the thought-police.

Nick Clegg, The Iraq Invasion was illegal!

During question period in the British House of Commons this week, Nick Clegg, the current Deputy Prime Minister of the UK coalition government, attacked the morally bankrupt and perennially dishonest Labour Party for its role in the 2003 invasion of Iraq.  He lashed out at Jack Straw by proclaiming, "We may have to wait for his memoirs, but perhaps one day he will account for his role in the most disastrous decision of all: the illegal invasion of Iraq."

No one outside the coterie of miserable propagandists who sold the lies advocating for the invasion of Iraq consider the facts in dispute.  Kofi Annan, as Secretary-General of the United Nations, told the BBC in 2004 that the US-led invasion of Iraq was an illegal act that contravened the UN charter.  The egregious falsehoods, exaggerations, and manufactured evidence posited by Tony Blair's Labour Party, Bush's bipartisan fraud-fest, and the usual suspects in the media and military-industrial complex now lie tattered and recognized for what it actually was.  The new UK coalition government, unlike the cowards in the Obama administration, have created an Iraq War inquiry to understand the details surrounding the decision to go to war.  Already, some startling details have been exposed.  For example, former MI-5 intel chief Baroness Manningham-Buller stated that "we regarded the threat, the direct threat from Iraq as low."

Tom Ricks summarizes on his Foreign Policy blog,

As for al Qaeda and Iraq, she said, "there was no credible intelligence to suggest that connection and that was the judgment, I might say, of the CIA. It was not a judgment that found favour with some parts of the American machine, as you have also heard evidence on, which is why Donald Rumsfeld started an intelligence unit in the Pentagon to seek an alternative judgment."

Furthermore, Baroness Manningham-Buller elaborated that the invasion of Iraq, instead of diminishing the overall risk and likelihood of terrorism on British soil, in fact exacerbated the threat from indigenous Muslim radicals.  The blowback of the 7/7 London transit system was not unexpected.  Most damning of all was her stated opinion that the intelligence on Iraq's threat was not "substantial enough" to justify the action.  Of course, much of this is old news.  Opponents and skeptics of the institutional claims have long been aware of Blair's dodgy dossier consisting of "sexed-up" warnings and memos disclosed by whistle-blowers describing how Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush had predetermined the outcome of invasion.

However, the above revelations were not what caught the attention of the press.  Rather, as the Guardian newspaper outlines, was that others considered Clegg's statement in parliament to be a 'gaffe' with the potential that Britain may face charges in some future International court.  The government, more interested in covering their collective asses, distanced themselves by saying that Clegg was expressing his "long-held view" about the Iraq conflict as leader of the Liberal-Democrats.  Downing Street further stated that the government would await the findings of the Chilcot inquiry prior to reaching a view on the war.  It's an odd statement, since Tony Blair's own attorney general, Lord Goldsmith, prior to the war explicitly said, "I remain of the view that the correct legal interpretation of [UN security council] resolution 1441 is that it does not authorise the use of military force without a further determination by the security council."

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.

FBI Repeatedly Broke Law In Phone Record Searches

The FBI, the federal government's central law enforcement agency, has been found to have been engaged in illegal telephone surveillance activities.  According to the Washington Post, the transgressions began shortly after the passage of the Patriot Act and occurred throughout 2002 to 2006.

The USA Patriot Act, an omnibus bill of police state "must haves" enacted literally weeks after the September 11th 2001 attacks, permitted law enforcement agencies to search a home or business without the owner’s or the occupant’s permission or knowledge; expanded access of law enforcement agencies to business records, including library and financial records; and expanded the use of National Security Letters, which allows the FBI to search telephone, e-mail, and financial records without a court order.  It is this latter attribute in which the government, even when receiving carte-blanc authority to monitor its citizens with virtual impunity, determined that existing restrictions on its actions was too much.  The historical record of civil rights abuses and criminality conducted by American law enforcement against innocent civilian groups is well established.   For example, in 1978 the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) was enacted in response to Watergate era civil rights violations and revelations that president Nixon and other administrations had authorized warrantless surveillance of political opponents and activists.

In the stated period, the FBI monitored over 2,000 US telephone conversations under the pretense of terrorism emergencies that did not exist.  The tactic was not limited to Americans with ethnic-sounding names, but used to survey a wide swath of persons that the government was interested in; such as the press.

The FBI’s spying on journalists without any link to known cases of terrorism suggests that the journalists were the victims of political intimidation and retaliation by the FBI for exposing illegal government programs. Ellen Nakashima has written extensively on domestic wiretapping and government intrusions into privacy, while Raymond Bonner’s articles include exposes on detainee abuse and illegal surveillance.

The Washington Post article outlines that the FBI violated the Electronic Communications Privacy Act when it collected phone records without linking the investigations to “emergency terrorist threats.”  A Justice Department probe of the situation is anticipated to find that the bureau routinely violated the law.

FBI officials told The Post that their own review has found that about half of the 4,400 toll records collected in emergency situations or with after-the-fact approvals were done in technical violation of the law. The searches involved only records of calls and not the content of the calls. In some cases, agents broadened their searches to gather numbers two and three degrees of separation from the original request, documents show.

Over-and-over we are told that "innocent" mistakes on behalf of government police agencies resulted in these illegal searches.  However, it is obvious from the development of events, as described in the WaPo article, that these actions were not undertaken to protect the nation from terrorists, but to advance the statist objectives of the Bush junta, so that they could effectively control and extinguish political opposition to their increasingly criminal pursuits.

Will this scanner make my penis look bigger?

If you're in the military-industrial complex, terrorism is an integral part of your profit scheme.  The more than one trillion dollars already spent on the Iraq/ Afghan/ Pakistan/ 'Global War on Terror' boondoggles has been highly profitable for those companies producing military materiel and providing such useful services as preparing meals for servicemen in war-zones (i.e. Halliburton) to lethal mercenary armies (i.e. Blackwater).  Fear of the other motivated the American populace to abandon liberties, scorn opposition to the leader(s) who failed to originally protect them, and give the mad-militarists, who never saw a problem they couldn't bomb into oblivion, a blank check to wage unlimited war against the rest of the planet.

Since the failed Christmas day mission of the "underpants bomber" aboard a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, MI, the brain-trust of several governments have declared their intention to install new high-resolution body scanners across airports in America and internationally with connections to US cities.  BusinessWeek, in an article "Invasion of the Body Scanners," discusses the costs of installing these devices and the benefits, or lack thereof, of utilizing these high-end technologies against a determined, albeit in the latter case a fairly stupid, adversary.

The U.S. Transportation Security Administration, which has 40 scanners in place at 19 airports so far, has spent $25 million on 150 additional scanners and plans to buy 300 more. The devices, which are placed at security checkpoints, use radio waves or low-level X-rays to produce detailed images of passengers' bodies—and weapons or explosives beneath their clothes.

Despite objections from civil libertarians and a few members of congress, who have described the process as a "virtual strip search," Senate Homeland Security Committee Chairman, Joe Lieberman was asking, "Why isn’t whole-body-scanning technology that can detect explosives in wider use?"  Perhaps the answer lies in its life-cycle costs, overall utility, the fact that millions of people would be exposed to potentially cancer-causing ionizing radiation for no beneficial reason, or as in my personal case, wonder if my penis will look big enough for the security clerk glinting at my masculinity!  For example, in the image above of a female TSA employee undergoing a scan, the outline of her breasts, pelvis, and genitalia are clearly observable to any staff and government agency.  The TSA claims to be, "Addressing privacy fears [by] making sure scanners blur facial features and genitalia and deleting images after use."  However, given the government's penchant and demonstrable history of disinformation, dishonesty, and incompetence at managing confidential information, does anyone believe them?

In relation to the military-industrial complex, the BusinessWeek article outlines:

The biggest beneficiaries of a scanner boom will likely be L-3 Communications (LLL) of New York and Torrance (Calif.)-based Rapiscan Systems, part of OSI Systems. They're the only scanner makers approved so far by the TSA, which already has contracts with them that could top $100 million apiece. If the TSA decides to install the machines at all 2,100 security lanes in the U.S., that could produce total revenue of $300 million to $400 million. "The TSA is saying, 'Let's accelerate the process,' " says Richard Hoss, a senior research analyst with Roth Capital Partners. "It's likely to benefit these companies." The stocks of OSI and L-3 are up 29% and 2%, respectively, since Christmas Day.

The most obvious question, that few in government or in the commercial world seem keen on addressing, is whether any of this will improve passenger safety?  The American public has not been made aware of any cost-benefit analysis that asks whether similar funding should be given to bomb-sniffing dogs, improved terrorist database management, or better intelligence gathering procedures.  A four-year test of the efficacy and reliability of body scanners in detecting plastics, chemicals, or liquids upon passengers at London’s Heathrow airport, resulted in the decision to discontinue their use.  Bruce Schneier, chief security technology officer at BT Group, explains that "If we use full body scans, [terrorists] are going to do something else. This is a stupid game, and it's time we stop playing it."  Unfortunately for us poor tax-paying serfs, our dear leaders, like those bloviating charlatans in congress, don't really seem to care if the technology will work as required, but rather if said technology will enhance the profits of their friends in the military-industrial complex.

You Betcha!

CIA Screws Up Again?

Two things happened this week that let me return to the central thesis of Tim Weiner's book Legacy of Ashes: A History of the CIA, which states that the agency has a record of gross incompetence and failure, and officials and agents conduct themselves with a "swagger and hubris" that is disproportionate to their actual accomplishments.

The first incidence, was that of the underwear-bomber who set his genitals on fire aboard a trans-Atlantic flight from Amsterdam to Detroit.  According to ABC News, the accused  made a final telephone call to his father, who found the conversation so disturbing that he "approached Nigerian officials who took him directly to the CIA's station chief in the Nigerian capital."  The alert prompted, "Officials to put Abdulmutallab's name into a database of more than half a million others that the U.S. suspects of ties to terrorism, but they did not put him on the country's no-fly list."  On the day of Abdulmutallab’s departure, his $2,800 airline ticket was paid for with cash, with the accused having no luggage except a single backback.  The latter created no red-flags for either the airlines or US security.

The second incidence, involved a suicide bomber disguised as an Afghan soldier, who managed to kill seven CIA agents at the agency's base in Afghanistan.  The incident represents the agency’s worst loss of publicly-identified personnel since a 1983 attack in Lebanon conducted by Hezbollah guerrillas.  The Times of London reports that:

The bomber, claimed by the Taleban to be one of its members, entered Forward Operating Base Chapman and detonated explosives attached to his body in the compound’s gym. US officials said that the CIA had mounted an internal investigation into the security breach... Four other agents have been killed in Afghanistan since 2001, according to the CIA, though the secretive nature of its operations means that there may have been more.

The history of the agency has been noted as a colossal failure-after-failure and an extravagant waste of capital.  Their most recent misadventures involve torturing terrorist suspects across the globe, obtaining useless and counter-factual data from paid Iraqi agents, and their pre-911 intelligence gathering services were determined to be severely compromised by foreign agents.  Little appears to have changed and their gross incompetence, as far as we can discern, is insuring that America's efforts in its 'Global War on Terrorism' remains a fantastic failure.

They know where you are: adventures in domestic spying

It was easy to put the black hat on the evil-doers of the Bush Imperium, with their full-throttle propaganda declaring the triumphalism of good over evil and the virtues of the military fighting for the freedom of Halliburton overseas, while the government was curtailing civil liberties domestically. With the ascent of Barack Obama, there was a short-lived belief that the worst transgressions against individual civil rights, as exemplified in the Patriot Act, would come to an end. They did not.


Part I- Background

Earlier this year reports were made public of continued violations of federal laws that constrained the domestic surveillance of American citizens by the NSA (National Security Agency); a secretive intelligence agency that operates out of a black cube-shaped building outside Baltimore, MD. The violations were an extension of the massive data sweeps initiated by the Bush Administration and executed in part by the telecommunications companies on behalf of the state. The reported violations involve data on tens of millions of domestic phone calls and emails, providing the agency with the ability to conduct “data-mining” operations that yield extensive intelligence on large numbers of Americans. The government furthermore, was forced to admit that the NSA had operational plans of spying on select congressmen who were visiting overseas.

The persisting conceit that America is this shinning beacon of freedom and liberty is a complete myth. The criminal excesses of the executive branch and intelligence community against its own citizens, members of the legislative branch, and the press throughout this past decade are in display for all to view. Last year the "FISA Amendment Act essentially provided congressional sanction for the secret and illegal warrantless wiretapping program initiated by the Bush administration in 2001." Then Senator Barack Obama, left the campaign trail to cast his vote in support of this unconstitutional legislation and provide "support and comfort" for the American police state and its henchmen.

The act, approved with the support of the entire Democratic leadership in the House and nearly half of the Democratic senators, overturned even the limited restraints on government spying that existed under the FISA law passed in 1978, in the wake of revelations of gross abuses of power by the White House and the intelligence agencies under the Nixon administration.

Mr. Obama's Justice Department, mimicking their predecessor's penchant for statist philosophy, made the claim to the courts adjudicating individual cases brought against the government on the matter of domestic wiretapping violations, that 'the government enjoys “sovereign immunity,” meaning that no citizen can sue the government.'

The Obama administration’s uncompromising defense of illegal domestic spying under the Bush White House is not only an attempt to prevent anyone from being held accountable for these crimes and to bar the American people from learning the extent of the surveillance conducted against them. It is also a defense of the continuation of these same essential practices today, hidden behind a wall of secrecy.

Part II- GPS Tracking

Scott Horton over at Harper's Magazine's blog has recently come across an even more invasive practice conducted by the NSA and the telecom companies. Apparently in one situation, Sprint Nextel has been providing law enforcement agencies in America with the GPS coordinates of its cell phone customers (some eight million times per year); without any of the customers providing consent or either knowing anything about it. Sprint Manager of Electronic Surveillance Paul Taylor revealed the government monitoring technology at an industry conference

We turned it on the web interface for law enforcement about one year ago last month, and we just passed 8 million requests. So there is no way on earth my team could have handled 8 million requests from law enforcement, just for GPS alone. So the tool has just really caught on fire with law enforcement. They also love that it is extremely inexpensive to operate and easy.

So, not only has the American police state decided they do not require warrants to read or listen to your personal communications, they can and will track you or any other person within American territory, just like an inmate released on day-parole, with the use of your own cell phone.

American Fascism brought to you by the letters 'W' and 'O'.

The Torture Debate: Making comparisons

NY Times Editorial column comes down hard on the cowardice that has become the legal system in America when it comes to addressing the high crimes of the Bush junta. It makes the comparison between the Maher Arar case that was recently dismissed in American courts versus the verdict issued last week against CIA operatives in Italy regarding the extraordinary rendition of an Islamic cleric. Again and again as the editorial elaborates, the US judiciary dismisses these cases of gross institutional criminality on the basis of fatuous "state secrets" claims or punts the claimant's to higher courts.

***

NYT: A National Disgrace

Two courts, one in Italy and one in the United States, ruled recently on the Bush administration’s practice of extraordinary rendition, which is the kidnapping of people and sending them to other countries for interrogation — and torture. The Italian court got it right. The American court got it miserably wrong.

In Italy, a judge ruled that a station chief for the Central Intelligence Agency and 22 other Americans broke the law in the 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, a Muslim cleric who ended up in Egypt, where he said he was tortured.

Two days earlier, a federal appeals court in Manhattan brushed off a lawsuit by Maher Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen who was seized in an American airport by federal agents acting on bad information from Canadian officials. He was held incommunicado and harshly interrogated before being sent to Syria, where he was tortured. He spent almost a year in a grave-size underground cell before the Syrians let him go.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit decided that none of that entitled Mr. Arar to a day in court.

In Mr. Nasr’s case, authorities said that they had reason to suspect he was involved in recruiting militants to go to Iraq. It has long been established that Mr. Arar was not guilty of anything. Canada admitted that it had supplied false information to American authorities, and in 2007, it apologized and offered Mr. Arar $10 million in damages. Neither the Bush nor Obama administrations followed suit, leaving Mr. Arar to pursue litigation.

In June 2008, a three-judge panel of the same court dismissed Mr. Arar’s civil rights suit on flimsy grounds. The court then took a rare step, scheduling a rehearing before all of the court’s active members before an appeal was filed. Sadly, the full court’s decision is even more insensitive to the violation of his rights and the courts’ duty to hold government accountable for breaches of the law.

Written by Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs, the 59-page majority opinion held that no civil damages remedy exists for the horrors visited on Mr. Arar. To “decide how to implement extraordinary rendition,” he wrote, is “for the elected members of Congress — and not for us as judges.” Allowing suits against policy makers for rendition and torture would “affect diplomacy, foreign policy and the security of the nation,” Judge Jacobs said.

The ruling distorts precedent and the Constitutional separation of powers to deny justice to Mr. Arar and give officials a pass for egregious misconduct. The overt disregard for the central role of judges in policing executive branch excesses has frightening implications for safeguarding civil liberties, as four judges suggested in dissenting opinions.

It is painful to recall that this is the same federal circuit court that declared in 1980 that even foreigners accused of torture in foreign countries can be called to account in American courts.

The torturer is the “enemy of all mankind,” the Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit declared back then. One of the dissenters, Judge Guido Calabresi, said that “when the history of this distinguished court is written, today’s majority decision will be viewed with dismay.”

The damage to Mr. Arar, America’s reputation and the rule of law is already quite plain. The Supreme Court should reverse this ruling.

Taxi Drivers to the Dark Side Convicted

In common law, rendition "is a transfer of persons from one jurisdiction to another, and the act of handing over, both after legal proceedings and according to law." Whereas, extraordinary rendition is a rendition, which is illegal and exists outside the bounds of international law. Although the practice has existed for some time, according to the ACLU, it was refined during the Clinton administration by CIA officials in the mid-1990s who were trying to track down and dismantle militant Islamic organizations throughout the Middle East. What came next under the watchful eye of the Bush junta and its own clandestine services, has come to exemplify the reckless cowboy-like swagger and irresponsibility of both the policies and people tasked to execute those orders.

Canadians are well versed in the tawdry details involved with the Mahar Arar extraordinary rendition case. As summarized in Wikipedia:

Arar, a Syrian-born dual Syrian and Canadian citizen, was detained at Kennedy International Airport on 26 September 2002, by US Immigration and Naturalization Service officials. He was heading home to Canada after a family holiday in Tunisia. After almost two weeks, enduring hours of interrogation chained, he was sent, shackled and bound, in a private jet to Jordan and then Syria, instead of being extradited to Canada. There, he was interrogated and tortured by Syrian intelligence. Maher Arar was eventually released a year later. He told the BBC that he was repeatedly tortured during 10 months' detention in Syria — often whipped on the palms of his hands with metal cables. Syrian intelligence officers forced him to sign a confession linking him to Al Qaeda. He was finally released following intervention by the Canadian government.

These illegal embarrassments, when revealed, have been completely ignored by the American judiciary and investigations into criminal activities committed by the Executive under George W. Bush have been scuttled by the Obama administration. However, not all countries consider the principles of justice to be malleable and subordinate to governmental abuse. After years legal blockage, an Italian judge has sentenced 23 Americans in absentia to up to eight years in prison on Wednesday for the abduction and extraordinary rendition of a Muslim cleric.

The case surrounds the actions of CIA agents, who were tasked with "the secret kidnapping of a radical Muslim cleric off the streets of Milan in early 2003, his transport via US airbases in Italy and Germany to Egypt, and there, evidently with the CIA station chief for Italy riding shotgun, directly into the hands of Egyptian torturers." The problem with the whole affair was that their actions were anything but secret. Believing they were immune from all prosecution and international law, the agents were observed by Italian police publicly talking on their cell phones, running up huge expenses at luxury hotels, and were caught in their rental cars by local traffic cameras "as they drove illegally through pedestrian walkways." Obviously not being able to watch the Bourne Ultimatum in cinema, they were completely unaware of how clandestine operations were to be conducted.

According to the NY Times,

The heaviest sentence -- eight years in prison -- was handed down to the former head of the CIA's Milan station, Robert Seldon Lady, while 21 other former agents got five years each. U.S. Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Romano was also sentenced to five years, despite a request from the Pentagon that the case should be tried by U.S. courts. [Judge] Magi dropped the case against three Americans, including a former CIA Rome station chief, because of diplomatic immunity. Charges were also dropped against five Italians, including the former head of the Sismi military intelligence service, Nicolo Pollari, because evidence against them violated state secrecy rules. However, the judge sentenced two more junior Sismi agents to three years in prison as accomplices, indicating Italian authorities were aware of the abduction.

Instead of having foreign governments with an independent judiciary prosecute the criminal activities of the CIA and members of the Bush administration, the Democratic led Congress and Presidency should be reaffirming constitutional law and prosecuting those persons, agencies, and officials who violated America's treaty obligations and casually prescribed kidnapping, murder, and torture as America's new modus operandi in fighting terrorism. Then again, that would entail caring about anything other than just being elected.