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.

America's strange obsession with criminalizing abortion

A rather strange event has occurred in Indiana.  A severely unstable and pregnant woman attempted to commit suicide.  She survived, but her child died because of her actions.  Neither suicide nor abortion is illegal in the state of Indiana or in the USA; however, shortly after the incident, a state prosecutor charged the woman with murdering her fetus and attempted feticide.

The Guardian UK newspaper elaborates:

On 23 December 2010 Shuai became so depressed after she had been abandoned by her boyfriend – a married Chinese man who broke his promise to set up a family with her – that she decided to end her life. She consumed rat poison, and after confessing to friends was rushed to the Methodist hospital.

Doctors took steps to save her, but on 31 December there were signs that the baby, then at 33 weeks gestation, was in distress and a Caesarian was performed. On the second day of Angel's life the baby was found to have a massive brain hemorrhage and on 2 January was taken off life support.

Many countries in the world criminalize abortion.  Most Latin American countries routinely prosecute and incarcerate women who undergo treatment and doctors who perform abortions.  The moral argument is that a fetus is a person and subject to the same rights as an actual person.  However, by that same logic there is always two people involved in the gestation process: the mother and the child.  In the above case, we have a mentally unstable women who attempts to commit suicide and a child who was born prematurely but dies soon afterwards, because of the mother's actions.  The fetus was 32-weeks old when Shuai attempted suicide.

The Houston Chronicle reports that the woman's lawyers unsuccessfully attempted to have the charges overturned on the following basis.

Defense attorneys argued in court documents filed March 9 that prosecuting a woman based on the outcome of her pregnancy violates constitutional rights to due process and equal treatment and is cruel and unusual punishment.

Women's rights and legal groups have intervened in the case:

Several medical and women's rights groups, including the National Organization for Women and the National Alliance for Mental Illness, have filed friend-of-the-court briefs in support of Shuai, claiming that prosecuting Shuai could set a precedent under which pregnant women could be prosecuted for smoking or other behavior that might deemed a danger to their fetus. They said that could discourage women from seeking prenatal care.

The prosecution claims that they are only following the law and the three-judge appeals court stated that "Shuai had not proven that common-law immunity exists for pregnant women who harm their own fetuses".  So what does this really mean?

In America's southern and conservative states there has been an outbreak of prosecutions against mothers.  Rennie Gibbs of Mississippi was accused of murdering her unborn child.

Gibbs became pregnant aged 15, but lost the baby in December 2006 in a stillbirth when she was 36 weeks into the pregnancy. When prosecutors discovered that she had a cocaine habit – though there is no evidence that drug abuse had anything to do with the baby's death – they charged her with the "depraved-heart murder" of her child, which carries a mandatory life sentence.

In Alabama, Amanda Kimbrough a mother of three was was arrested at her home and charged with "chemical endangerment" of her unborn child.  Just prior she gave birth to a child that lived for nineteen minutes.  The basis of the prosecution was that she had taken drugs during the pregnancy; a claim she has denied.

"That shocked me, it really did," Kimbrough said. "I had lost a child, that was enough."
She now awaits an appeal ruling from the higher courts in Alabama, which if she loses will see her begin a 10-year sentence behind bars.

This bizarre infatuation of the religious and conservative right with women's reproductive organs and their individual liberties is appalling.  In Latin America, despite abortion's illegality, the abortion rate is higher than in either Western Europe or the United States.

In a region where there is little sex education and social taboos keep unmarried women from seeking contraception, criminalizing abortion has not made it rare, only dangerous. Rich women can go to private doctors. The rest rely on quacks or amateurs or do it themselves. Up to 5,000 women die each year from abortions in Latin America, and hundreds of thousands more are hospitalized.

If the objective of these prosecutoral zealots is to increase the welfare of newborns or reduce abortions, their mission will fail.  In the first case, anyone who thinks they may be subject to prosecution  just will simply get a legal abortion.  In the second case, as the evidence above shows, by creating legal barriers to abortion all you end up doing is forcing women into back alley clinics where their lives are jeopardized and where ultimately more deaths will occur due to a lack of proper medical supervision.

Why are Americans such Assholes? Part-III

Some Americans have a rather an unusual definition of liberty and freedom: you are free to do what you are told.

Say you decide to visit the sunshine state of Florida, like so many Canadians every year.  In fact, it is approximated that as many as 3.1-million Canadians visit the state every year.  According to news sources:

Canada is Florida’s single largest international tourism market, accounting for three per cent of visitors. Americans make up 88 per cent, while other international visitors contribute nine per cent. Tourists spend more than $60 billion in the state each year.

So you would think that the locals would be very keen on making as receptive a welcome to persons from outside the state as possible.  Of course, if you think this, you've never been anywhere in the American south.  Consider the following news bulletin posted about a rather unstable but not unusual character assaulting a set of Canadian tourists.

Floridian sicks police on "terrorist"

"What's that, some kind of foreign licence plate? Yeah, that guy's definitely a terrorist."

That's what Joseph Tarochione thought when he spotted a set of white-and-blue Ontario plates on a car in Florida, apparently.

On January 31, the 73-year-old Homosassa, Florida man dialed police, said he was with the Department of Defense and asked them to inspect a vehicle belonging to a Canadian tourist for bombs, reports News 13.

Tarochione had used his own vehicle to force the Ontario car off the road and into the parking lot of a strip club, where he held the, um, suspects until officers arrived.

Problem is, Tarochione is not actually with the Department of Defense. And the tourists were not terrorists. Just Canadians. No bombs.

That doesn't mean firepower wasn't involved. When police searched Tarochione's car, they found a .22 Magnum handgun, a .22 long rifle revolver, a 16-gauge shotgun and ammunition.

Good thing he didn't try to use any of them during his "arrest." No one was harmed during the incident.

Tarochione was later arrested and jailed for impersonating a law enforcement officer.

This is what a decade of bogus furore and incendiary political machinations aimed at those who happen not to pray to ole' glory and pontificate on a daily basis the virtues of the American hedgemon produces. Given that only one third of Americans even own a passport, it isn't surprising that the nation is filled with xenophobes.  What I find appalling about these assholes, is their use of violence against anyone they consider remotely different than themselves.

Again, it's just another example of how Americans view themselves and rest of the world.

Fighting for the liberation of mankind: Egypt 2011

John Boehner, keeping it classy.

Republican congressman, John Boehner (R-OH) has been sworn in as the Speaker of the House of Representatives.  As all Republicans, he is committed to keeping it classy, just as it was when he was a regular congressmen and dispensing tobacco lobbyist checks to his fellow congressmen on the house floor.

Consider what Matt Taibbi, at Rolling Stone magazine, had to say about this indolent corporate shill and cocksucker:

Boehner suggested that by voting for Obamacare, [Steve] Driehaus "may be a dead man" and "can't go home to the west side of Cincinnati" because "the Catholics will run him out of town," Driehaus began receiving death threats, and a right-wing website published directions to his house. Driehaus says he approached Boehner on the floor and confronted him.

"I didn't think it was funny at all," Driehaus says. "I've got three little kids and a wife. I said to him, 'John, this is bullshit, and way out of bounds. For you to say something like that is wildly irresponsible.'"

Driehaus is quick to point out that he doesn't think Boehner meant to urge anyone to violence. "But it's not about what he intended — it's about how the least rational person in my district takes it. We run into some crazy people in this line of work."

Driehaus says Boehner was "taken aback" when confronted on the floor, but never actually said he was sorry: "He said something along the lines of, 'You know that's not what I meant.' But he didn't apologize"...

(h/t Brad DeLong's blog)

Personal Accountability, the American right wing edition.

So this is what's left of the American political landscape?

Six dead, including a federal judge, a Pastor, three senior citizens, and a nine year old child.  A member of congress in critical condition, recovering from an attack that sent a bullet through her head and across her brain.  And another fourteen wounded.

Unlike those members of the mainstream media (MSM), who profit from the endless vitriol of the Republican party and unbalanced right-wing demagoguery as illustrated above in Caribou Barbie (aka Sarah Palin), reasonable and educated people are aware of the diminution of decency in the theater of American politics and the impact of that endless stream of vituperative speech on the nation as a whole.  Consider what Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik, had to say on this matter.

When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government... The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on this country is getting to be outrageous and unfortunately Arizona has become sort of the capital. We have become the Mecca for prejudice and bigotry.

He did not say that this was the act of one deranged lunatic.  Rather, he cast a wide net on the media, the vast array of bigoted and self-serving members of the political establishment, and those who support these debased opportunists in the general public.

The vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business ... This has not become the nice United States that most of us grew up in.

As others have pointed out, this is the standard model for conservatives when they are not in power.  Kevin Drum of MotherJones magazine describes the counter-cyclical response of the conservative electoral base during these periods:

If you elect a liberal Democratic president, you get this kind of reaction from middle class conservatives. In FDR's day you got the Liberty League. JFK inspired the growth of the John Birch Society. Clinton got the conspiracy-minded talk radio crowd. And Obama has the tea parties...

In the 30s it was opposition to the New Deal. For the Birchers it was communism. For the Clinton-haters it was the culture wars... while today's is the deficits/socialism message.

While it is true that in each period there was a distinct reaction to the policies of liberals and the Democratic party, the current regularity and pervasiveness of these attacks, which do not emanate from fringe groups, but from mainstream corporate sponsors, Republican party members across the nation, and prominent media personalities, indicates that the nation has moved into a political atmosphere that so toxic with rancor and lies, that it cannot be dismissed or quelled.

Let's review a few of those hyper-patriots who are so fond of  invoking Jefferson's "The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants" quote.

• Homeland Security Secretary, Janet Napolitano (D), recently was the recipient of an incendiary package
• Governor Martin O'Malley (D) of Maryland, was also the intended recipient of two packages that detonated at a federal postal center injuring some workers.
• Nevada Senatorial candidate and Tea Party favorite, Sharron Angle, stated that the public had the option of dealing with an out-of-control Congress through "Second Amendment remedies."  The terminology is right-wing code for the assassination and murder of federal officials.
• Several other Republican candidates declared that the "violent overthrow" of the US government may be necessary in the event that they did not win the 2010 midterm elections.
• Byron Williams, a former felon, planned "to target individuals at liberal nonprofit the Tides Foundation and the ACLU."    He injured two police officers in a highway shoot-out, when police attempted to apprehend him for erratic driving.  In interviews after his arrest, Williams claims that he was directly inspired by Glenn Beck, Fox news celebrity, to seek retribution.
• Gregory Giusti pleaded guilty to repeatedly threatening House Speaker Nancy Pelosi -- including threatening to destroy her California home -- because he was "upset with her passing the health care law."  The perpetrator's mother indicates that he was motivated by friends and Fox News.
• President Obama has seen a 400% increase in death threats from the public compared to George W. Bush. According to reports, America's first black President "is the target of more than 30 potential death threats a day and is being protected by an increasingly over-stretched and under-resourced Secret Service"
• July 2009, Neo-Nazi James von Brunn, launched an attack on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum that killed security guard Stephen Tyrone Johns
• May 2009, Minuteman off-shoot group leader, Shawna Forde, murdered a 9-year old girl and her father in Arizona, in an attempt to finance their militia operations.
• May 2009, Abortion provider, Dr. George Tiller was murdered at his Church by an anti-abortion activist, who had belonged to an anti-government militia group that believed that virtually all existing modalities of government in the USA were illegitimate.  Dr. Tiller was shot point-blank in the head.  He had been a subject of violent militant and religious fanaticism since 1998.
• April 2009, a local Florida man killed and wounded several Chilean students involved in a foreign exchange program.  The killer was an active member of the Republican party who had espoused murdering immigrants to his neighbours.
• February 2009, in a suicide attack aimed directly against the IRS, a Texan man flew a single engine plane into the side of an Austin, Texas IRS building.  The incident led to the killing a of a single IRS employee and injury of several others.
• Tennessee white supremacists planned to murder then Presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008 and engage in the mass murder of black people.
• July 2008, a lone gunman attacked Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church in Tennessee, killing two patrons and injuring another seven.  The gunman, Jim David Adkisson, stated: "he had targeted the church because of its liberal teachings and his belief that all liberals should be killed because they were ruining the country, and that he felt that the Democrats had tied his country's hands in the war on terror and they had ruined every institution in America with the aid of major media outlets."
• Eric Robert Rudolph, a right-wing Christian militant was responsible for the 1996 Atlantic Olympic bombings, the bombing of a Georgia abortion clinic, the bombing of lesbian nightclub in Atlanta, and a second abortion clinic bombing in Alabama, which killed a policeman working as a security guard and seriously injured nurse Emily Lyons.  Rudolph was assisted by like-minded sympathizers, who facilitated his evasion of police for more than five years.
• April 1995, the Oklahoma city bombing was conducted by right-wing militants Timoty McVeigh, Terry Nichols, and Michael Fortier, who were seeking retribution against the federal government for their involvement in the 1990's FBI sieges of Ruby Ridge and Waco, Texas. According to Wikipedia, the blast claimed 168 lives and injured more than 680 people. The blast destroyed or damaged 324 buildings within a sixteen-block radius, destroyed or burned 86 cars, and shattered glass in 258 nearby buildings. The bomb was estimated to have caused at least $652 million worth of damage.

When it comes to the demented actions and words of right-wingers, they can never be held responsible, because in their mind they are the victims.  Like Palin and the propagandists at Fox news, they are never to blame for the climate of fear, hate, and ignorance that has arisen.  It's those dirty, hippie liberals, who are out to undermine the "real Americans," which are to blame.

***

UPDATE: Conservatives have already criticized and asked for the resignation of Sheriff Clarence Dupnik for his castigation of conservative rhetoric and theatrics.  As usual, the right-wing is ramping up the propaganda by saying that it is the amoral liberal press that is painting them - the same people who have been marching around the country attending presidential speeches, congressional rallies, and health care debates with handguns and publicly attacking anyone who may disagree with them for the past two years- as the bad guys!

BofA forecloses despite not a single payment missed!

The illegal and criminal machinations of the American banking industry continues to be exposed on a daily basis.  Consider this latest hor d'oeuvres that the media has overlooked.

[Bank of America] earlier this month notified Shock Baitch and his wife Lisa (Friedman) Baitch that foreclosure action will start today – Christmas eve – unless the couple agrees to put their home up for a forced sale. As of Thursday night Bank Of America has not backed down from its foreclosure threat.

Why?

Because another unit of Bank of America erroneously reported to credit agencies that the family was seeking a loan modification, ruining their credit rating and as the result putting their mortgage into default.

All this is happening even though the bank – after admitting it erred and sent a letter of apology in September – handed this case to a special unit at Bank of America that is charged with dealing with severe customer issues. It promised to notify the credit reporting agencies that the couple were not deadbeats, but were good credit risks.

This isn't some South Florida wasteland, where automated robosigners operating 24/7 are churning out bogus legal documents without any oversight.  The case in example is in Hartford, Connecticut, the historic international center of the insurance industry and thus a city and state steeped in the rigors of proper accounting and legal procedures.  As Barry Ritholtz of the "Big Picture" blog stated on this subject:

This is not about keeping deadbeats in their homes, as a few idiots and liars have asserted. The corporate sympathizers who are too busy fellating the bank to recognize what is going should be ignored. This is about fundamental property rights and the Rule of Law in the United States — nothing less.

Listen to what the homeowners in this particular case have to say about the useless bags of corrupt corporate shit that is Bank of America:

“Bank of America lied and submitted fraudulent information to the credit bureaus and now I am literally and financially paying for it,” Baitch said. “I looked into help with a consumer counseling service, but we can’t participate because our income is too low to meet the payment requirement. I looked into bankruptcy, but we have too much equity in the house. I cannot meet the minimum payments now on the credit cards and may have to default. I am in a situation that I should have never been in since [the bank] destroyed our credit and ability to refinance. All our debt should have been consolidated and I should have positive cash flow monthly not negative.”

Where is the great socialist Barack Obama on this matter? According to the press, the Obama administration is very, very mad at the perceived fraud undertaken by the banks, but on the other hand "the administration had yet to find anything fundamentally flawed in how large banks securitized home loans or how they foreclosed on them."

Well, Mr. Obama, I have for you a very real and obvious case of how the banks foreclosure process is fundamentally flawed and illegal. So while critics bloviate about the man's so-called socialist policies, he continues to carry water for the banks and refuses to hold his biggest corporate donors accountable for the their illegal behavior.

Obama, bagman for Bush's torture adventures

McClatchy Press has an excellent summary, through Wikileaks, of the Machiavellian maneuvers made by the Obama White House to undermine both international law and justice.

This blog has in the past described how the administration of Barack Obama over the past two years, has given "support and comfort" to the torturers and fiends of the Bush junta (here, here, and here). A number of prominent political and legal commentators have equally concluded that Obama, his AG, and members of his administration are now as culpable as their predecessors in concealing acts of torture, manipulating foreign governments to forsake investigations of American criminality, and failing to vigorously uphold constitutional prerogatives in prosecuting those who have violated domestic laws and international treaties, to which America is signature to.

In 2009, the Obama administration sent Republican Senator Mel Martinez to Spain to cajole the Spanish judiciary into abandoning investigations lead by Spanish magistrate, Baltasar Garzón into six Bush lawyers who laid, "the foundation for abuse of detainees in the months following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks." The Spanish investigations concerned Alberto Gonzales, who described parts of the Geneva conventions "quant" and "obsolete" after 9-11; Bush lawyers John Yoo and Jay Bybee; David Addington, Vice President Dick Cheney's counsel; William "Jim" Haynes, Defense Department General Counsel; and Doug Feith, a Pentagon undersecretary who handled policy issues for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The Spaniards were not swayed and told Martinez and the American ambassador to Spain, that "The independence of the judiciary and the process must be respected.''  Michael Ratner, a civil rights attorney affiliated with the Center for Constitutional Rights, states that "The U.S. prides itself on our own independent judiciary... But here you have the hypocrisy of the U.S. government trying to influence an independent judicial system to bend its laws and own rules.''

The timeline of the above diplomatic maneuvers coincides with Obama's attempt to marginalize Bush's crimes:

But by the time Spain's Association for the Dignity of Prisoners filed the torture complaint that U.S. diplomatic circles found so troubling, the Obama White House was resisting calls to set up a Truth Commission or assign a special prosecutor to examine the legal framework that set up Guantánamo and permitted "enhanced interrogation techniques'' that included waterboarding high-value detainees.

"Generally speaking, I'm more interested in looking forward than I am in looking backwards," Obama said on Feb. 9, 2009.

How Mr. Obama, a man who taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago, could become protector and defender of his predecessor's criminality, will be an issue that historians will grapple with for decades.  The emotional cheers of "change you can believe in" lie exposed as election based propaganda, told by the architects of Empire to confuse the guilible masses into believing that their opinion actually matters.

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.

War Crime Allegations Threaten to Harm America's Image

Der Spiegel International has a good description and analysis of the Afghan war crimes incident, that I wrote about yesterday, in which American soldiers have been charged with murdering civilians and extracting trophy body parts during active duty.

The article outlines what is at stake:

It involves more than a court imposing a just penalty for brutal murders, and more than compliance with the military code of honor and the Geneva Conventions. At stake is the reputation of a country that, after eight years under the administration of former President George W. Bush, had set out to liberate itself from charges of moral failure. Indeed, the Seattle case raises the question of whether the United States has really turned its back on the days when it gambled away its reputation with images of naked Iraqis forced to form human pyramids in Abu Ghraib prison.

It discusses how this situation will make mockery of the entire narrative under the Obama administration that there has been a clean break from the sordid eight years under George W. Bush.

They allegedly fired at their victims with gusto, collecting trophies that included finger and toe bones, and even a tooth. The charges outline senseless, horrific acts reminiscent of a former America, an America of waterboarding, torture scandals and Guantanamo Bay. They also raise the question of what exactly has changed since the election campaign in which then-candidate Barack Obama promised so much, including a more responsible approach to warfare and the closing of the military prison in Cuba, an important symbol of America's moral failings under former President George W. Bush.

The article also reviews the fact that Soviet forces in their earlier conflict with the Afghan population, also engaged in horrendous criminality:

Feeling helpless in their inability to counter the resistance of the Afghans, Moscow's troops turned to drugs and alcohol. Having lost their inhibitions, they committed atrocities they would never forget. In September 1982, a group of Russian soldiers burned 105 villagers alive in an irrigation canal south of Kabul. Women were thrown naked from helicopters. In a particularly horrific incident, soldiers doused a boy in kerosene and set him on fire in front of his parents

Quote of the Day: Sullivan on Obama

Andrew Sullivan is one of the few persons who has constantly and unequivocally condemned Republicans and Democrats, under the Bush junta and the Obama administration, of condoning and actively participating in the torture and murder of war on terrorism detainees.  In a blog entry that addresses the Machiavellian undercurrent to American politics, he condemns Mr. Obama for his recent cowardliness in preventing those who have been wrongly "extraordinary renditioned" and tortured by American forces to seek redress in court.

Aggressively trying to prevent torture victims from having their day in court merely using unclassified evidence is active complicity in the war crimes of the past. And such complicity is itself a war crime. Either we live under the rule of law and the Geneva Conventions, or we don't. And when Obama says we don't - as he unmistakably is - the precedent he is setting all but ensures that torture will come again, that there will never be consequences for it, and that the national security state can cloak itself in such a way that the citizenry has no way of penetrating its power. Bush and Cheney remain the real culprits here; but watching Obama essentially surrendering to their trap is a betrayal of a core rationale for his candidacy.

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.

Quote of the Day: New Labour is a Parasite!

George Monbiot in yesterday's Guardian UK describes why Gordon Brown's new Labour cannot be trusted any longer:

There's a parasite called Toxoplasma gondii that colonises the brains of rats, altering their behaviour to attract them to the scent of their predators. The rats seek out cats and get eaten, allowing the parasite to keep circulating. This is New Labour. It has colonised a movement that fought for social justice, distribution and decency, rewired its brain and delivered it to the fat cats who were once its enemies.

He challenges the voters in the UK to admonish the most right-wing government in the UK since 1945.  The party that once claimed to support working class people, introduced legislation that criminalized public protest, eviscerated civil liberty laws, engaged in torture, subordinated national defense and international affairs to Washington's Imperial whims, and turned the nation into a quasi-police state, with more CCTV cameras than anywhere in the world and a 41% increase of prisoners since Labour took office.

You may Not Patent my Genes!

In a decisive blow to the fraud-mongers in the biotech industry and US Patent office, U.S. District Court Judge Robert Sweet in New York State invalidated part of seven patents granted to Myriad on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are two alleles or variants of a tumour suppressor gene that is found in all humans and responsible, under normal situations, in removing malignancies that may arise. The BRCA1/2 mutational variants substantially increase the risk of a carrier developing breast, ovarian, prostate, pancreatic, colon, and other cancers. Based on current data, females carrying either of these two mutations, will encounter lifetime risks above normal for developing ovarian cancer at 10-20% for BRCA-2 mutations and 40-60% for BRCA-1 mutations.

USA Today outlines the discovery process of BRCA1/2:

The genes for both BRCA1 and BRCA2 were first patented by geneticist and Myriad founder Mark Skolnick, who in the 1990s began looking at detailed family histories to zero in on the genetic basis for breast cancer. Family histories helped him figure out which genes probably carried the mutations. Using gene sequencing, he found exactly where on the genes the mutations occur.

For the past twenty years, due to legal gimmickry, the biotech industry has been able to wage a concerted racket against patients and scientific advancement.

A case was filed against Myriad Genetics by the ACLU and the New York-based Public Patent Foundation on behalf of doctors, patients and several medical groups, including the Association for Molecular Pathology and the American College of Medical Genetics. To the surprise of both legal analysts and the biotech industry, Judge Sweet effectively told Myriad as described by Stanford Law Professor Hank Greely, “You didn't invent this, you didn't make it, and you shouldn't get a patent on it!"

The Judge overturned all the patent claims held by the defendant, based on the fact that they cover products of nature and abstract ideas. In his decision, Judge Sweet wrote:

The resolution of these motions is based upon long recognized principles of molecular biology and genetics: DNA represents the physical embodiment of biological information, distinct in its essential characteristics from any other chemical found in nature. It is concluded that DNA’s existence in an “isolated” form alters neither this fundamental quality of DNA as it exists in the body nor the information it encodes. Therefore, the patents at issue directed to “isolated DNA” containing sequences found in nature are unsustainable as a matter of law and are deemed unpatentable subject matter under 35 U.S.C. § 101.

Beyond the legal arguments, there exists the practical dimension that these patents impinge on necessary scientific research, inhibit patients from effectively ascertaining their genetic profiles and evaluating treatment options, and gouge consumers with excessive charges. In the latter case, Myriad Genetics charged patients $3,000 to assess whether they were carriers of the BRCA1 or 2 alleles. Patients like Lisbeth Ceriani, who was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer in both of her breasts, had to wait a year and a half to find out if she needed to have her ovaries also removed, because Myriad Genetics refused to deal with her insurance company (Massachusetts MediAid), due to the low reimbursement rate provided.

The Economist magazine discussess a report published by Duke University researchers, which concludes that gene patenting and its monopoly granting status prevents access to these critical tests for many poor Americans, prevents diagnostic accountability from the monopoly providers, and hampers business innovation in the field of medical diagnostics.

Again and again, the typical business model in America is to put the profits of individual corporations over the collective needs and in this case the lives of ordinary people. My genes, your genes, or that of any organism on this planet are not for sale, nor is it the ownership of crooked scientists who have sold their souls to profit on the exploitation of the genetic commons.

Why African leaders can't be taken seriously: Part III

Last month, if one can imagine, race relations in South Africa hit a new low.

On April 3rd 2010, Eugene TerreBlanche, the country's leading white supremacist, was murdered by two of his farm workers.  Supporters of his said they would seek vengeance on greater South Africa for his murder and have warned nations not to send their athletes to the upcoming 2010 World Cup Football Games to be held there.

In the context of the murder, Mr. Julius Malema, the controversial leader of the ANC's youth league and potential future leader of the ANC party, attempted to seek short-term political gain by repeating in public an old ANC song; which if taken literally, calls for the killing of Afrikaners.  Since the end of apartheid in 1994, more than 3,000 white farmers are estimated to have been murdered.  South African courts have ruled that the song is an incitement to violence and illegal.

Malema then visited Harare, Zimbabwae, where he linked arms with Robert Mugabe, the country’s incompetent and bigoted dictator, and declared his own demands for nationalizing South Africa's mining industry and confiscating the land of white farmers, just as Mugabe had done.

 

South Africa's problems with this dunce do not end there.  In an interview with International journalists at ANC headquarters in Johannesburg, Malema publicly accusing BBC reporter, Jonah Fisher, of exhibiting "white tendency" then calling him a "bastard", "bloody agent" and "small boy".  The BBC reporter was then told by Malema to leave the press conference.

According to the Guardian UK newspaper, the dispute between Mr. Malema and the reporter began when:

Malema, who has just returned from Zimbabwe, praised Robert Mugabe's Zanu-PF party and poured scorn on the "Mickey Mouse" opposition. He mocked exiles linked to the Movement for Democratic Change, led by Zimbabwe's prime minister, Morgan Tsvangirai, for using offices in Sandton, a wealthy suburb of Johannesburg.

Current South African President, Jacob Zuma, who I have ridiculed for his corruption and incompetence (here), was forced to publicly rebuke his unstable lieutenant; although in the meekest of terms.  Feckless ANC leaders condemned Zuma for merely saying that leaders must “think before they speak, as their utterances have wider implications for the country.”  Bloomberg news service is reporting,

Malema’s supporters will tell Zuma at an ANC national working committee meeting scheduled for April 19 that he was wrong to reprimand Malema in public... The ANC is divided on the issue and Zuma’s actions will be defended by the party’s military veterans association and the ANC Women’s League president, it said.

What future can South Africa have, when such flamboyantly idiotic and incompetent leaders are posed to seize control of the nation?

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.

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