"Democracy Is At Risk"- John Dean's Take On Trump Is Terrifying - Except for the Trumpists

"Remember, Donald, we have the photos of you with our beautiful Russian whores!"

Former Nixon legal advisor John Dean definitely got Chris Hayes' attention on 'All In' last night in terms of the threat Trump poses to democratic institutions in the country. Dean's appearance was instructive, given his testimony helped bring down one of the worst state presidential criminals in history: Richard Milhous Nixon.

For those not aware at the time, it is incumbent to get hold of the Nixon Whitehouse tapes, which ultimately did the bastard in. It was those tapes, replayed in parts during the Watergate hearings in 1973 that incriminated Tricky Dick. Hostile to those arrayed against him, Nixon created his own "enemies list" and then weaponized branches of the government -including the FBI, IRS - to go after those enemies (such as Daniel Ellsberg).   The Watergate break-in itself was Tricky Dick's final undoing.

But at least at that time, enough of Nixon's own party had the integrity to "read him the Riot Act". Thus, four GOP members of congress went to tell Nixon he had no choice other than to resign, and resign he did. In addition, the robust press at the time - namely The Washington Post with its Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward- did true investigative reporting to get at the bottom of this conspiracy.

Dean pointedly noted the same checking forces are now much weaker, and not likely to put a halt to Trump's overreach - where he will basically wield more power than any other previous holder of the office. For example, today the members of a party (GOP) prepared to condemn the actions of Trump can be reduced to one finger of one hand. (Rand Paul refused to vote for repeal of the ACA)

In addition, the media today is only a weak sister of what it was in the Watergate era. As papers have been sold off or merged, and support of true investigative journalism pulled back, PR has now come to dominate. The alert reader need only scan through the pages of his local newspaper to behold all the sources that are either PR outfits, or think tanks - with the mandate to bend the news and readers' perceptions.

The absence of these cornerstones for scrutiny is important given the Trump program is orders of magnitude worse than anything Nixon conceived. For starters, Trump's enemies list will probably contain most of the nation's Left bloggers, as well as those organizations (like the SPLC) that inveigh against racism - especially calling fellow humans "apes" as a replacement euphemism for the N-word.

Also, while the damage inflicted by Nixon was mainly from his inner circle, the devastation wrought by Trump's derelicts will be vast given it will include rabid enclaves laden with Alt-Right Nazis, KKK, Aryans and the like. Some, under the "Bikers for Trump" helm, have vowed to crack open heads and harass anti-Trump protesters present on Inauguration Day.  I suggest that any protesters encountering them have their own cans of Mace and solid helmets on for protection.

In similar fashion, Dean pointed out the only way a fascist Trump agenda might be stopped is from the bottom up - in other word, enraged citizens venting their furor, especially to state Senators, congress critters. As Dean observed, once their own re-elections are threatened they will see no point in blindly backing Trump.

But at the same time, Dean emphasized that nearly 63 million of our fellow citizens will never lift a finger or  say anything because they actually applaud what Trump is doing, i.e. to tear down the establishment. Or so they've been told. What I want to see is what they do when Trump and his acolytes take a sledge hammer to their health care, veterans' benefits and even Social Security.

Against this background, it was heart warming to learn that in the coming days more than 1 million people in 32 nations and 51 states plan to protest against the illegitimate Trump ascension.  The problem is that these protests cannot be a one off. No they instead must be used as a basis for a massive networking of a Trump resistance.  That resistance will be in charge of national strikes, boycotts, as well as new, energized voter registration efforts.

The message of a new resistance -protest movement will be "Take Down Trump By 2018!" Of course, that most likely will be via the 25th Amendment route which will be invoked as Trump shows clearly he's unfit to lead, likely because of a serious mental disorder (intermittent explosive disorder and schizoid behavior)

That will be important, as any Trump reign lasting overly long will likely mean the end of this country as we know it. Ever seen the film 'Idiocracy'? You should!

Will You Soon Be Classified as a “Terrorist”? Marianne Williamson’s Concerns – And Mine!

"I know the capacity that is there to make tyranny total in America. And we must see to it that this agency and all agencies that possess this technology operate within the law and under proper supervision so that we never cross that abyss. That is the abyss from which there is no return.” - Sen. Frank Church, referencing the NSA in 1975.

 

Marianne Williamson is absolutely spot -on correct when she was quoted in a recent Los Angeles Magazine (June, p. 110) as noting her major worries included “diminishing civil liberties, expanding corporate influence, political corruption and the rise of domestic surveillance.” All those were given as reasons she planned to run for congress in California. (Whether she wins or loses, her voice will have been heard and her concerns are legitimate.)

 

Ms. Williamson went on to note that – added together – “these threats constitute such a powerful force of darkness that it could put American democracy in a death spiral” from which we may never recover.  Indeed, it may already be too late. Especially when one beholds the sheer mass of lily-livered “citizens” railing against Ed Snowden – after his recent interview- one even calling it an “infomercial for traitors” - as some dumb shit yahoo did on the Denver Post site, while others insisted he must "come home and face the music”. Yeah, right! A Kangaroo court where as Snowden observed in his Brian Williams interview,  no exculpatory evidence would be permitted on the grounds it is “classified”. Gimme a break! As Pentagon Papers hero Daniel Ellsberg pointed out on 'Andrea Mitchell Reports': "Snowden isn't running from justice, he's fleeing from INJUSTICE!"

 Williamson’s fear is reasonable, but  while she named the U.S. government (“We’re cool as American people, but it’s the U.S. government that’s bringing us down”) she might also want to have a look at some of the goobers that pass for citizens who are ALSO bringing us down because they’re playing right into the security state’s shameless exploitation of terrorism to destroy civil liberties.

As Snowden, as well as his lawyer (featured on Steve Kornacki’s ‘UP’ on Sunday), pointed out, there isn’t one scintilla of evidence the gov’t has presented – despite all its histrionics (or should I say, John Kerry’s hysterics),  that any real harm has come to anyone from Snowden’s leaks.  Oh lots of embarrassment – of course! But let’s not conflate embarrassment with actual harm. (And if you're going to jump on this "harm" bandwagon, you better also have the decency and consistency to put the five Taliban commanders - just released from Gitmo in exchange for Bowe Bergdahl - on the same radar.)

 
Now, skip to the latest disclosed NSA outrage (one must wonder how many more are needed to get our consumers…..errrr citizens to sit up and take note).  That is that the National Security Agency is collecting “millions of images per day” from photos shared online for use in its advanced facial recognition programs. The New York Times reports that the agency culls millions of faces from “emails, text messages, social media, video conferences and other communications,” gaining “tremendous untapped potential” to track intelligence targets throughout the world. 

In other words, let me spell it out for you. They take your Facebook, instagram, and text message et al  photos and compile them into nefarious “facial recognition” programs for which you lack even clue one on the collateral uses (and abuses) that could metastasize.

What if they are putting them all into the COG template – then what? Recall COG (continuity of government) allows authorities to identify as “domestic terrorists” all those assembled under its provisos. In regard to the last, the definition of "terrorist" was expanded to "domestic terrorist" by congress in 2001, to include:

"“activities that involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; appear to be intended to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States"


According to the ACLU, “this definition is broad enough to encompass the activities of…prominent activists, campaigns and organizations.”  That includes Occupy Wall Streeters and anyone who protests the Keystone XL pipeline, GMO foods or any fracking well drilled near their home!

Think I’m exaggerating? According to one 2010 document, cited and quoted by the Times.

“It’s not just the traditional communications we’re after: It’s taking a full-arsenal approach that digitally exploits the clues a target leaves behind in their regular activities on the net to compile biographic and biometric information that can help implement precision targeting,”

But you’re just a noble citizen ‘good guy’ so you got nothing to fear. Okay, fair enough, let's go with that myth. So let’s say for argument’s sake that a frack rig goes up near your home, e.g.

 The noise is ear splitting and the pollution god-awful. Half the night you’re choking on dust and your kids are getting rashes that won’t heal. Worse, your water can be lit on fire coming out of the tap and you dare not drink it. Finally pissed, you summon the backbone to take to the streets,  joining a protest on Main St. and lo and behold some scurvy little bum from a national or local security outfit is there taking photos of all protesting  n’er do wells. The photos are compiled and then compared to facial recognition captures made from FB, instagram, emails and so on.

Bingo! You’re ID’d and you, Mr. "Good Guy" , are a domestic terrorist! Now, you officially graduated to the Main Core database! According to investigator Christopher Ketcham who first exposed it:

"the database is sometimes referred to by the code name Main Core. One knowledgeable source claims that 8 million Americans are now listed in Main Core as potentially suspect. In the event of a national emergency, these people could be subject to everything from heightened surveillance and tracking to direct questioning and possibly even detention.”

Meanwhile, the spooks are working overtime to assuage fears from skeptics and cynics - including those like me, and even Marianne Williamson. One NSA spokesperson told the Times:

“the N.S.A. would be required to get court approval for imagery of Americans collected through its surveillance programs, just as it must to read their emails or eavesdrop on their phone conversations.”


But let’s bear in mind getting permission for such intrusions would be no biggie, not since the 1978 FISA law was “updated” to become basically a rubber stamping joke with nothing barred. So in reality, none of the new FISA courts will refuse anything. More than anything else, however, the revelations are a reminder of our increased vulnerability to being tracked online by any number of interested parties.  Snowden's lawyer appearing on Kornacki's  'UP' last Sunday, also noted how many clients of the NSA (seeking private information on citizens) are corporate sources. Of course, this is despicable.

I mean, Jeezus, trading on terror hysteria to sustain  and justify intrusive systems that raid citizen information for private, corporate consumption.  How low can  you go? See more from the Times:

Civil-liberties advocates and other critics are concerned that the power of the improving technology, used by government and industry, and they should be! According to Alessandro Acquisti, a researcher on facial recognition technology at Carnegie Mellon University:

  “Facial recognition can be very invasive. There are still technical limitations on it, but the computational power keeps growing, and the databases keep growing, and the algorithms keep improving.”

As if that’s not enough, state and local law enforcement agencies are relying more and more on a wide range of databases of facial imagery, including driver’s licenses and Facebook, to identify suspects. The F.B.I. is developing what it calls its “next generation identification” project to combine its automated fingerprint identification system with facial imagery and other biometric data.


The State Department has what several outside experts say could be the largest facial imagery database in the federal government, storing hundreds of millions of photographs of American passport holders and foreign visa applicants. And the Department of Homeland Security is funding pilot projects at police departments around the country to match suspects against faces in a crowd.

The N.S.A., though, is unique in its ability to match images with huge troves of private communications.  So why the continual dismissive tone and naïvete regarding NSA programs? Because people - too many -  have regressed into consumers as opposed to active, skeptical citizens who ought to be keeping government on a short leash. Back in the day, like ca. 1975, there still existed a majority of real citizens instead of pretend ones, and so a Senator like Frank Church could articulate genuine fears on the NSA's powers even then (see quote at the top). 

Today, too many have become poppets, simple-minded consumers, so accept everything the gov't tells them like they accept everything companies tell them about their illustrious products. This regression also explains how a useful tool like Bill Scher ("Liberal oasis") could actually believe these intrusive, mass dragnet NSA programs are beneficial and "doing good". (As he did on Kornacki's show on Sunday.) Is Scher THAT terrified of a bunch of ragtag idiots he'd prepared to sacrifice most civil liberties? Evidently he is, at least from the claptrap he spouted against Snowden last Sunday morning.

Be afraid. Be very afraid. And whether you consider Marianne Williamson a ‘flake’ or not you ought to seriously consider her words when she describes such indiscriminate mass surveillance as a “lack of basic respect” for citizens and the addiction to doing it “sociopathic”.

Why Do The War Mongers Want to 'Kill' Manning The Millennial Messenger?

Nazi defendants wait to be tried at Nuremberg. Why haven’t the Bushie terrorists who launched the unprovoked Iraq War met the same fate – as opposed to Pfc. Bradley Manning?

“A nation that is afraid to let its people judge the truth and falsehood in an open market is a nation that is afraid of its people. “ - John Fitzgerald Kennedy


In an earlier blog I harped on the pathetic Milliennial Abby Huntsman who appeared on Bill Maher's REAL TIME show woefully unprepared and basically giving a good emulation of a moron. I also added that I didn't believe all Millennials fit this mold. Some undoubtedly had courage - lots of it- and were invested in the truth because they grasped this was what democracy was all about. This is also why Pfc. Bradley Manning, a Millennial (but not to be confused with Abby Huntsman) merits commendations for seeking to help his fellow citizens out as opposed to being kept in the dark - regarding the "wars" raging in their name.

Manning, as readers may know, is being tried on trumped up charges of "treason" and "aiding the enemy" which is about the biggest laugh there is given the fact Manning has released no more critical files than Beltway  Über hack Bob Woodward. As blogger-columnist Glenn Greenwald has pointed out  : "Let’s apply the government's theory in the Manning case to one of the most revered journalists in Washington: Bob Woodward, who has become one of America’s richest reporters, if not the richest, by obtaining and publishing classified information far more sensitive than anything WikiLeaks has ever published ". 

Greenwald also noted, parallel to the Army prosecutor's claim in the Manning case, that Osama Bin Laden was "one of Woodward's most enthusiastic readers."  But then Woodward is the darling of the Beltway's Neoliberal hacks and corporate -bankster warmongers so can't be touched. Not like a little 26-year old Millennial whose only shroud of protection is democracy or democratic principles. You remember those?

For clarity one may also invoke the proposition put forward earlier by blogger Amy Davidson to the effect that: "If it is aiding the enemy 'to expose war crimes committed by American forces or lies told by the American government,' then in reality 'who is aiding the enemy' -- the whistleblower or the perpetrators themselves?” The answer seems fairly obvious if one isn't brain dead.


When the deceptive operation of the warfare state can’t stand the light of day, truth-tellers are a constant threat and the powers-that-be will have a yen to squelch them. Thus, culpability must stay turned on its head. So now I can get this straight: Bushie vermin who launched a pre-emptive war (against Iraq) violating the war crimes article (VI) of the Nuremberg Laws walk away scot free while Manning gets prosecuted to the hilt? WTF is going on here? Has this nation totally lost its mind, moorings, moral ballast?

Truth be told Manning’s release of so-called classified files to do with clear criminal war crimes committed in Iraq, Afghanistan by U.S. troops was no worse than Daniel Ellsberg’'s release of the Pentagon Papers  and the hidden rot and abominations underscoring the Vietnam War. Those Ellsberg revelations set a moral tone about what a morally responsible nation does, as opposed to kowtowing to a crazed military culture that is all about waging perma-war. JFK himself warned in his June 4, 1963 speech at American University about the dangers of “Pax Americana” – that is, imposing an American version of peace on the world using American weapons of war.  Long before JFK's words, President John Quincy Adams  warned that America "goes not abroad in search of monsters to destroy". Somehow that message has been lost as we're a nation burdened by military overstretch - the same syndrome that brought down Rome.

JFK  further understood that the war state also had to be controlled to secure any kind of future for ourselves and our offspring or it would control us and suck up everything of value.  This is why he did several notable things, including: signing the August, 1963 Nuclear Test Ban treaty, and initiating rapprochement with Castro’s Cuba in early 1963 as well as softening positions toward the then Soviet Union (mostly done with Nikita Khruschchev behind the scenes.)


Of course, the crazed warmongers – led by Gen. Curtis LeMay- weren’t able to handle this, so they saw to it Kennedy met an untimely demise. The violent head shot in the center of a major American city (Dallas) sending Kennedy’s bloody brains spattering all over Elm Street in Dealey Plaza sent a message to all future presidents to heave to, obey the war state – or suffer similar consequences. This is why all American presidents since Kennedy have demonstrated cowardly, compromised behavior that has enabled war mongering and virulent Pax Americana – whether Reagan in his war on the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, or Clinton in his cruise missile attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory producing anti-malaria drugs (believed at the time to be an al Qaeda hangout) to Bush Jr. invading Iraq on false pretenses causing the deaths of 600,000 Iraqis, to Obama and his drone killings as well as continuing a U.S. presence in Afghanistan that is only causing more alienation and blowback.


While Obama promised transparency on being elected, he has gone after whistle blowers with ferocity, as well as clamping down on files with directed over-classification. One major example has to do with the JFK assassination files which the National Archives now has refused to release in this 50th anniversary year. Key among those files are the CIA activities of agent George Joannides – suspected in manipulating Lee Oswald to be the patsy. If we can’t see the files, how are we to ever assess the final truth? (See also: http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/national-archives-to-jfk-file-seekers.html )


But maybe we can't have the final truth because for one thing it would mean the U.S. gov’t finally admitting after 50 years that its relentless defense of the Warren Commission was all wrong.  Given the same government likely had major roles in altering files (as documented by John Newman in his 'Oswald and the CIA') as well as suppressing other evidence or altering it, why would they be invested in the truth now?


In terms of kowtowing to the military-industrial spy state many of us are still prepared to give Obama the benefit of the doubt- that he accedes to the secrecy wishes of the mammoth military state (including prosecuting Bradley Manning to the hilt) because of the fear of experiencing Kennedy’s end. Kennedy crossed the MIC with his National Security Action memorandum 263 to pull all personnel out of Vietnam by 1965, and look what happened to him. Perhaps Obama fears a similar end if he courageously ceases all drone strikes and pulls immediately out of Afghanistan – which would be no more detrimental than if we leave in another year and a half. At least if this is the case one can assuage doubts that a former constitutional law professor would deliberately prosecute a leaker and ignore the real war criminals – most of whom ought to have been hung by now.

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Manning is charged with crimes for sending hundreds of thousands of classified files, documents and videos, including the "Collateral Murder" video, the "Iraq War Logs," the "Afghan War Logs" and State Department cables to Wikileaks. Many of the things he transmitted contain evidence of war crimes.  The "Collateral Murder" video depicts a US Apache attack helicopter killing 12 civilians and wounding two children on the ground in Baghdad in 2007. The helicopter then fired on and killed the people trying to rescue the wounded. Finally, a US tank drove over one of the bodies, cutting the man in half. These acts constitute three separate war crimes.

Manning fulfilled his legal duty to report war crimes. He complied with his legal duty to obey lawful orders but also his legal duty to disobey unlawful orders. He also complied with Nuremburg Article VI to report war crimes, something the Nazis were tried for in Nuremburg (see photo).

Section 499 of the Army Field Manual states, "Every violation of the law of war is a war crime." The law of war is contained in the Geneva Conventions.

But perhaps, as in the case of the Senate post-hoc altering the wiretap surveillance laws to conform with lawlessness, after the Bushies broke them, we are no longer a nation of laws or morality. In that case Bradley Manning has not much to look forward to, other than a life sentence.