Educating TIME's Joe Klein On The Nature Of Rights & Privileges

As we move further into the Neoliberal world order, a number of efforts are being made by their elites to gut citizen thought via propaganda and language manipulation. In the past I had already cited the efforts to eviscerate all notions or memes associated with political conspiracy, i.e. by substituting the word 'scandal' for what had formerly been described as conspiracies. For example, the Watergate conspiracy is now the "Watergate scandal" and the Iran-Contra Conspiracy (as defined by then Counsel Lawrence Walsh in his Iran - Contra Report), is now the "Iran-Contra Scandal". (This was recently referenced in a segment on MSNBC by Andrea Mitchell noting how Nancy Reagan had sought to protect Reagan from the blowback from the "Iran-Contra Scandal". ) Thus as more and more hear this misuse they come gradually to accept it.

As the Elites attempt to gut all notions of political conspiracy by such language re-crafting, they are also painfully aware it cannot work completely until all of us with historical facts and memories pass away. Then, all that will be left is a mainly ahistorical, younger population that was never aware of the original terms - and probably doesn't care. In this way the future can be altered to the Elites' advantage based on reframing the events of the past.

Another domain ripe for manipulation, or what I call "mind fucking",  has to do with the nature of rights and privileges. In this case, because so few Americans understand or have been educated on the nuances of rights, and relation to privileges, they are susceptible to having their brains subtly or not so subtly exploited.

I bring this up to reference a recent column (March 14, p. 31)  by TIME's resident Neolib, Joe Klein, who wrote this in reference to Bernie Sanders's proposals:

"There is also the problem of 'rights' that Sanders claims for the people: health care is a right, not a privilege, free college education is a right - but these rights are granted without any reciprocal responsibilities. Surely, if we're going to give middle-class kids a four year college education they owe something in return- some form of service perhaps."

Clearly, like most Neoliberals, Klein regards health care and free public education as privileges not rights. But he is sadly mistaken.  Take health care. It is not a luxury item. . Rather, people are likely to need it most when their health is gravely compromised-say in a serious accident or a heart attack-  exactly the time it's most likely to be punitively expensive, or they're likely to be denied necessary care outright.

The fact that access to health care can determine life or death clearly means it falls within the purview of an unqualified RIGHT, not a privilege. On the other hand, driving a car is a privilege even if one needs a car to get to work. Hence, the recent TIME magazine cover to the effect that robot autos will soon take over and "all you have to do is give up your right to drive" is misplaced, You have no innate human right to drive. It's a myth. Nor do you have any innate rights to fast food, to ATMs, to home ownership or your own yacht.

Let's go back to health care and try to educate Klein and his Neolib cohort. In the first instance, health care can be regarded as a definite positive right under the “unenumerated rights of citizens" declared under the Ninth Amendment of the Bill of Rights. These are referred to as those rights 'not denied or disparaged' by the formally enumerated rights.

Alas, the whole concept of rights that can exist without being actually mentioned is something beyond the Neolibs' ken, or conception! Evidently, then, they never read the Constitution as carefully as they believed! In fact, as Prof. Garry Wills has pointed out  (A Necessary Evil-A History Of American Distrust Of Government, Simon & Schuster, 1999), the unenumerated rights are all those rights not already specifically declared or described in the existing document. The Founders thereby realized and understood there could exist rights in the future they hadn’t conceived of at the time of the Constitutional Convention. They thereby allowed those (then) undefined rights to become realized later under the provision of the Ninth Amendment. In other words, the rights allotted citizens are not limited to the rights actually and specifically delineated, i.e. in the Bill of Rights.

Apart from health care being a right under the 9th amendment, it is also a right by declaration of the U.S. government explicitly when it signed a (1994) UN Declaration mandating that health care is a universal right. (It can't be, clearly, if it is unaffordable or if accessing it in a desperate situation leads to bankruptcy).

Another example of  an unenumerated right is the right to privacy. This is covered under the 4th amendment, but because it's not spelled out in black and white most who read that amendment don't process it. The Fourth Amendment reads:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

So follow me now on this: Being “secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” implies PRIVACY! These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy was a myth then by all accounts being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter. Hell, let the whole freakin’ world see ‘em! This is why in a fascist dictatorship “personal effects” don’t exist. “Personal papers” has no meaning. The state has full monopoly, de facto ownership on whatever the person has, even his own body. Hence, in fascist dictatorships, such as existed in Nazi Germany, all personal effects, papers could be seized by the Nazis on a whim or remote suspicion - under the Reich Laws. A fundamental right to privacy, meanwhile, insists there exist bona fide entities that one can uniquely own, e.g. papers, effects – including photos or what not- that are private. Without this fundamental right, then, “personal papers, effects” has no meaning hence the 4th amendment is meaningless.

Let's now return to free public education. It can be argued this also is a universal right and which is why we have free public schooling in the U.S. The value placed on the education of citizens is implicit, else it would not exist. Extrapolating this, one can argue that granting free higher education is also a right, i.e. for those citizens who can maximize its use and contribute to the nation as a result. Klein mentions "giving something in return" but to me that is only attendant on whether the student is funded for higher elite education and in specific areas - like medicine.  In a public university it should not require anything more than the student performing to a sufficiently high academic standard. (As I pointed out three posts ago).

The "return on investment" will thereby come naturally when the graduate subsequently brings his learned skills to bear in the society, whether via the teaching profession, law, science, medicine, or in business. Hence, we acknowledge by contributing monies to the funding of qualified students' higher public education we as a nation are the ultimate winners- not losers.

Klein also carps about the "right of unwed mothers to food stamps". Again, implying that this is some kind of a privilege granted. But if we as a nation truly value life, new life in the womb  - and wish to make abortion less common - then it is incumbent on us to provide those food stamps to the unwed mother and her unborn. Not to do so is to act bestially and in an uncivilized manner, and to thereby vindicate all those who insist the anti-abortion Right only cares about protecting life in a restricted way.

Klein further asks if such mothers "don't owe us some standard of civic responsibility too"?  Yes, they do - that is to exercise intelligence and use family planning before engaging in sexual relations. Thereby, not placing an undue burden on the state.

Klein's questions and positions also elicit how the Neoliberal state and agenda has gutted job potential in the nation and created a vast unemployed (and underemployed) underclass. Given his position to do with the unwed mothers receiving food stamps with no strings, I am sure he would also demand "service" from those on welfare. (I.e. based on Clinton's wrong headed 'welfare to work') The first line victims of Neoliberal trade policies, including NAFTA. The answer is 'No'.

Charles Reich ('Opposing the System', pp. 125-26) correctly observes:

"The claim that government is free to reduce or cut off welfare and other forms of support for people in economic need is totally mistaken. Welfare is not a gift, nor is it, despite frequent assertions, a transfer from those who earn a living to those who are not.  Welfare is rather an obligation from society – and from those who are working- to those who have been deprived of work and the opportunity to earn a living. If we want to speak of transfers, it would be more accurate to say that those with a secure place in the economic system are enjoying a transfer of wealth from those who have been excluded from the economic system. Welfare then is partial compensation for a deprivation of livelihood that allows others to work"

In other words welfare,  seen in the proper context,  transcends even being a "right" to being an OBLIGATION from a basically rich society.  The latter, embracing  a perverted economic system, owes  a basic economic viability to those who have been deprived of work and are excluded.

Maybe a hard nut to swallow but there it is!

Obama's Grades At The 6-Year Mark

Obama after his election in 2008. All things were possible then including straight A's

Time now to assess President Barack Obama's grades at the crucial 6-year mark. These assessments are based on examining his performance and decisions on multiple fronts, from peace diplomacy, to national security, defense of civil liberties, speech craft, environment, transparency, and executive leadership. Brief explanations will be given after each mark, and a lengthier one will follow the lone 'F' earned, for transparency. These objective assessments are more important than ever after watching some of the clips on Chris Hayes' 'All In' last night, featuring right wing crazies at public meetings with Rick Santorum yelping hysterically about Obama "gone crazy" and "destroying our country". Of course, any such jabber disqualifies these knuckle draggers from having any opinion worth consideration!

Now the marks:

Speech craft:   A minus

Based not only on his 'State of the Union' speeches but others given at various venues in the past six years.


Economy: A

Unemployment now down to 5.5 % and stock market at all time highs. What more can be said?


National Security:   A minus

Obama has done everything one can rationally expect on multiple threat fronts, from ISIS, to Iran. Only the crazies are dissatisfied with his approaches and want more wars- expending blood and treasure we cannot afford.

Environment:  B minus

His veto of the Keystone XL pipeline has gained many kudos from enviros, but this still hasn't damped disappointment with his support of fracking, intentions to do offshore drilling (off the east coast) and the export of low grade fossil fuels elsewhere (cf. The Denver Post, 'U.S. Exports Pollution, Offsets Advances' Dec. 9, p. 15A)

Peace Diplomacy:  B

Good, and again would be better if it hadn't been for the fact that he needed Russian help to ensure we didn't get into a Syrian debacle two years ago. Never mind, he seems to have found a backbone against neocon pressure for wars, for now. We need him to be especially alert he doesn't make any missteps by courting the neocons and assisting them against Russia in the Ukraine.


Executive Leadership:  B

While Obama began as a tepid leader, he's now become a "ball buster" with his executive orders and actions, including on immigration, health care and the environment. It gives the repukes fits but it warms the cockles of liberal hearts!


Defense of civil liberties: D

Let's see: his refusal to oust CIA head John Brennan after the CIA was busted for spying on the Senate, his pursuit and prosecution of whistle blowers under the 1917 "Espionage Act", his refusal to come to the defense of Edward Snowden when he exposed the NSA's awful overreach in the mass snatching of data - violating the Fourth Amendment. The only reason he avoided an 'F' is that he did (eventually) propose a review board for the NSA programs.


Transparency: F

Obama promised full transparency on his election and then promptly dropped the ball....or never wanted it in the first place. His going after gov't whistleblowers has already been noted, but the real wake up call for me was the failure to deliver archival records  (mainly from the CIA) on the JFK assassination in the 50th anniversary year of that event, e.g.
http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2012/06/national-archives-to-jfk-file-seekers.html

Those of us in the JFK assassination research community were severely disappointed given how many doors had already been opened under President Clinton's watch (when the JFK Records Act was passed.). By comparison it was a giant step backward under Obama.   We suspected that the CIA had notified Obama that they didn't want their 1960s "tradecraft" exposed, but really...seriously, that wouldn't be used any more anyway, including techniques such as: splicing the head of a patsy onto another's body (with a rifle), poison pens to kill witnesses, aerial imaging photography, i.e. frame by frame projection of a film to the rear of a glass screen with minute traces of paint added, then re-shot - which would have been used to alter specific frames in the Zapruder film.

In truth, the only reason NOT to disclose this antiquated tradecraft would have been to protect those actually involved in the conspiracy to kill JFK. After all, if the pertinent documents were released exposing it, then all and sundry would know it COULD be done and those knotheads that howl about "tin foil" hats and an implicit chuckle factor would be put down once and for all.

But while some may believe this National Archives' misstep to be unique, it's actually turned out to be part of a pattern. According to an article in yesterday's Denver Post ('Administration Sets Record For Withholding Documents', p. 11A):

"The Obama Administration set a record again for censoring government files or outright denying access to them last year under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, according to a new analysis of federal data by the Associated Press."

The article also noted:

- The gov't took longer to turn over files when it provided any

- More regularly stated it couldn't find any documents at all

-Refused a record number of times to turn over files quickly that might be newsworthy

- Acknowledged in nearly 1 of 3 cases the initial decision to withhold or censor records was illegal

Worse yet, the backlog of unanswered requests grew by nearly 55% by year's end.  This despite citizens, journalists, businesses and others having made nearly 714, 231 requests for information.

While some may respond with rolling eyes and smug smiles at the seriousness with which files are pursued by some citizens, they really do not get it. They don't get that alert citizens have a responsibility to hold their government (and President) to account. And if they fail to do that - irrespective of whether the issue is the assassination of a past President, drone kills, or NSA secret programs - they don't merit being called citizens.

Obama, fortunately, still has time to pick up the two low grades, but like a student far behind in Calculus or Physics, it will take a lot of sincere effort and plain old hard work.  I for one am confident he can do it - assuming he really wants to!

'Citizen Four': An Oscar-Winning Documentary Every Citizen Needs To See

Though it's been nearly two years, most alert and aware Americans still can recall the brouhaha that erupted after Edward Snowden exposed how we were all being tracked relentlessly by the NSA. Tracked using programs with cryptic names such as XKeyscore and PRISM. Tracked via our telephone calls, emails and our web wanderings - including even terms we'd googled and all the websites visited.  Of course, in the wake, the Neoliberal machine  and its 'evil sister' Neocon War-Security state,  exploded with self righteous indignation - questioning who exactly was this "traitor" (with only a high school education) that brought these things to light.

Those of us who are real Americans applauded Snowden's courage in outing the vile violators of our Constitution's Fourth Amendment, which reads:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Clearly showing that only individual warrants are acceptable and one cannot have mass warrants issued out of laziness, disrespect for the Constitution or mere expedience and efficiency provided by technology. Moreover, Snowden was ultimately vindicated when a  300-page report     was released last year by a commission appointed by Obama himself (who was finally backed into a corner after NSA spying on foreign heads of state was made public in one release)

All this came out at the time, but what is less known is the backstory on how Snowden accomplished his file access and then made contact with the journalists who he would entrust with the actual file release. That incudes documentary film maker Laura Poitras who - with Glenn Greenwald (then journalist for the UK Guardian) took home the Oscar for the Best Documentary Feature on Sunday night.

Watching the film last night on HBO, Janice and I were both spellbound as the movie - though totally factual - had the aura of a John Le Carre spy novel. We see the first encrypted messages between Poitras and Snowden and then the instructions she needs to follow to ensure the spooks aren't listening in. As I mentioned to Janice (barely one tenth of the way in), the guy may only have a high school degree but he's absolutely brilliant as well as skilled - something the idiot corporate media downplayed when they tried to make the story about him.

The scene in his Hong Kong hotel when he needs to upload a set of documents to Greenwald's laptop is intriguing in itself, including all the sundry precautions taken to ensure electronic spying eyes or ears don't compromise the transfer. Greenwald and another Guardian journalist are then charged with releasing the files using their best judgment since Snowden didn't want his personal bias reflected. He also wanted to delay his identity being outed so the story could be about what was done to his fellow Americans, as opposed to making him the story. (Which eventually happened thanks to our Neoliberal media elites.)

Two of the more appalling scenes which made us want to chew nails, showed NSA honcho Keith Alexander and then James Clapper lying through their teeth before congress when directly asked (by Sen. Ron Wyden, in the case of Clapper) if any  phone calls of ordinary Americans had been scooped up by the NSA. (After some prodding the turkey explained it might have been done "accidentally")

Clapper lying to congress.

In another scene that soon follows, where the NSA's mass surveillance of  (Verizon) phone records is being challenged,  we see a Justice Dept. lawyer trying to argue the federal court hearing the case has no real standing and besides, "national security would be affected" if the mass seizure of phone records was stopped.

The documentary then follows Snowden's crisis after his name is released, and we see here this is what he wanted as he didn't wish to be perceived sneaking around "in the shadows".  From the CNN broadcasts the media learns he's holed up in a Hong Kong hotel and it soon becomes clear he needs to leave or risk possible extradition. He's then helped by Julian Assange and his group to make it to Russia and we see only occasional communications with Poitras keyboarded onto the screen - he's obviously taking great precautions.

The issue of the sort of justice Snowden might face (if he returned to the U.S.)  then comes up for discussion and it's noted he'd be prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act as a spy, just like other whistleblowers. There would be no comeback and no fair trial because the court and jury proceedings would be entirely weighted ab initio for Snowden's guilt as a spy.  The preservation of the amendments of the Constitution would be totally irrelevant. All of which points up the fact that those yahoos who yelp about Snowden returning and "facing justice" are idiots.

This segment also had our heads ready to explode given that Obama is a former Constitutional lawyer and essentially betrayed all his (early) promises of governmental  "transparency". What makes it even more wretched is how those doing the truth telling,  whistle -blowing have been put behind bars while the torturers and Constitutional violators have been allowed to roam free and even appear on TVs .... as opposed to being shot or turned over to the International Court in the Hague.

The segments dealing with the NSA's overstretch in spying on Brazilian leaders is also gripping, with Greenwald delivering testimony in Portuegese before the Brazilian parliament. And then William Binney, former NSA technical director, testifying before the German parliament to do with NSA's mass  spying on Germans.

The final scenes show Snowden and his girlfriend (American, who joined him in July, 2014) seen through the window of their Moscow apartment.

Leave out Oscars' host  Neil Patrick Harris' idiot snipe about 'treason'(after the award), most real Americans know that Snowden is a hero, a Constitutional protector and defender, and if this film doesn't convince you (assuming you don't believe it currently) well,  you need to admit you're just like the Good Germans. That lot who were quite happy to have the Gestapo looking over their shoulders, and were more than elated to turn their neighbors in on the slightest pretext.

Another Mathematician Responds to the NSA Mass Surveillance

Having already discussed at length the reaction of a former NSA mathematician, Keith Devlin of Stanford University - appearing in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Vol. 61, No. 6, p. 624)-  to the Edward Snowden leaks on NSA overreach, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/07/stanford-mathematician-calls-out-nsa-on.html

It is interesting to examine another, this one appearing in Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Vol. 61, No. 8, p. 902.) The author, William Binney, is a former NSA Technical Director, now retired.   After giving his considerable background, including co-founder of the Signals Intelligence Automation Research Center (SARC), he notes that what made it possible to "smartly select data" was none other than "building relationships between entities".

In other words, the persistent protection of sound professional relationships was the cornerstone to smart collection and storage of data - ensuring there was no problem of maximum overload - and hence - adding more and more 'hay' to find the proverbial "needle in the haystack".

What is most telling, are Binney's takes on what's going on now with the indiscriminate NSA surveillance as revealed by whistle blower Ed Snowden. He makes specific reference to the formidable technological power now at the hands of the NSA as he writes (p. 903):

"Unfortunately, all this power to capture data, graph social networks, and index collected data to the relationships in the graph was directed initially inward, toward U.S. citizens. This automatically produced a profile of the activity of everyone. This profile was available on request from analysts. Also in the process, the NSA removed the privacy protections for U.S. citizens and decided to collect and store as much data as it could ingest. No one has privacy from the government anymore,

I, of course, objected, as in my mind these actions were at a minimum, a violation of the First, Fourth and Fifth Amendments to our Constitution."

And, of course, he's absolutely correct as can be ascertained by anyone who reads the words of the referenced amendments. Prof. Binney clearly has since he explains where each violation occurs, e.g.

First Amendment:

This is violated because "the graphing of social networks (enhanced by other knowledge bases) would show the people you are associated with. The First Amendment says you have the right to peaceably assemble, and the Supreme Court has held (in NAACP vs. Alabama) that the government does not have the right to know with whom you are assembling.

Fourth Amendment:

"The collection of your email, chatter and phone calls (recorded or transcribed) is a violation of the Fourth Amendment right to be secure in you affairs."

One can validate this take simply by reading the statement of the 4th amendment itself:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

What we see then is that the NSA mass surveillance, mass warrants that Ed Snowden revealed, discloses a rejection not only of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy but any right to be secure in one’s person, papers, effects.

Fifth Amendment:

"Using content data to search for criminal activity can also be a violation of the Fifth Amendment, which gives the right not to be a witness against yourself. An example of this is the 'parallel construction' techniques used by the FBI and the DEA's Special Operations Division, to find evidence to submit in court proceedings when they use data collected by the NSA."

Thus does Prof. Binney make a sound case of how the Constitution is being violated. He also has words for those who have the naïve impression all this NSA data grabbing is innocuous:

"Some have claimed the NSA collection is innocuous  because for those who are not terrorist suspects or associates, the NSA collects only metadata- such as phone numbers, the date, time and duration of calls. Evidence that this claim is untrue can be found, for example, in the testimony of two NSA transcribers who worked at Fort Gordon in Georgia: Adrienne Kinne and David Murfee Falk, They have testified that after the invasion of Iraq, they transcribed in full, calls made by U.S. citizens in the Green Zone- members of the military, NGOs, journalists etc.  Kinne and Murfee were disturbed at having to transcribe these intimate, personal conversations between family members. This transcribing was done without warrant and thereby violated both USSID -18 and FISA - and of course, the Constitution."


He doesn't mention that subsequently, a rat-faced bunch of congressional weasels ok'd the warrantless wiretapping, and thereby saved them the trouble of prosecuting the Bushies who initiated it. The same congress then made the unlawful, lawful in a re-interpreted FISA law - which most of us 4th amendment "zealots" take as bogus.

Sad, but if this doesn't get every citizen off his or her butt and screaming, I don't know what will.

Stanford Mathematician Calls Out NSA on "Betrayal of Trust"

After having found out in the past week (thanks to a WaPo investigation) that nine of ten ordinary internet account holders were targets of the NSA mass surveillance,  but not the intended surveillance targets,  has justifiably amped up criticism of the super secret agency. Even before this latest incident, voices (including the authors of the Patriot Act). have called out for the NSA to back off and for congress to do something about the overreach.

One of the best recent articles - though not in the mainstream media - appeared in the Notices of the American Mathematical Society (Vol. 61, No. 6, p. 624). Entitled 'The NSA: A Betrayal of Trust - by Keith Devlin of Stanford University - it basically summarized in an articulate and coherent manner why so many of us object to the mass collection called "data mining".  Thus, in his piece, Devlin concentrates on the  indiscriminate  vacuuming up of personal information that Edward Snowden released.

Devlin's own background entailed examining the problem of data mining in depth and whether dragnet surveillance that required  "mass" warrants was really effective and justified. Thus, from early 2002 to 2006, he worked on a Defense Department research project called NIMD (Novel Intelligence from Massive Data, e.g.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Novel_Intelligence_from_Massive_Data

funded by the Advanced Research and Development agency.

Devlin undertook this work under a contract to Veridian Inc. and the project was non-classified (he never sought or had security clearance - but his group was asked not to make public statements about its involvement. He acknowledged at the time he was "happy to go along with it".

Which brings us to why he's now gone into print. According to Devlin (ibid.):

"The only reason I am putting these words down now is the feeling of intense betrayal I suffered when I learned that my government and the leadership of my intelligence community took the work I and others did over many years with a genuine desire to prevent another 9/11 attack, and subverted it in ways that run totally counter to the founding principles of the United States, that cause huge harm to the U.S. economy, and that moreover almost certainly weaken our ability to defend ourselves"

(Devlin goes on to emphasize that "what my words express below is my considered and informed opinion that I never had, nor do I now have, any information beyond what is publicly available." Which is a justified aside to make, given how Obama & Co. have used the 1917  "Espionage Act" against those revealing anything)

Leaving out all the details I will just touch on several of Devlin's most important points and findings:

- The "significant human part" of the decision chain tends to be totally overlooked when intelligence leaders and politicians talk in glowing terms about the massive data processing of huge trawls of information.

- Data mining systems don't identify and take out terrorist groups, people do. And those people require not only accurate information but sufficient meta-information to have confidence in any decision that make. ('Meta-information' is information concerning the quality of the information -or lack thereof)

- The bigger you make the dataset, the wider the information trawl, the more unlikely it will lead to an effective counter measure. (Thus, not only did NIMD fail to meet its goal, but as the data collection grew the more inaccessible the goal became.)

- The methods and tools developed via NIMD could be of real benefit if used in a highly targeted way.  Hence the real NIMD message: Use of the search and analysis methods should be narrow and deep.

- The best way to identify the high likelihood targets is via HUMINT (human intelligence). This is not only the most effective way known but "it does not require breaking laws and trampling on the U.S. Constitution. You get a court order and proceed lawfully, it's supposed to be the American way."

The last is a point I've echoed in multiple blog posts since July last year, to the point it's damned near a refrain. The point is what the NSA has now done, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2014/07/is-there-no-one-prepared-to-collar-nsa.html

has veered into totally Un-American ways, more emblematic of what the Gestapo used during the brief reign of the Third Reich. The American way, by contrast, respects the rights of citizens enshrined in the founding document - the Constitution and specifically, the Bill of Rights.  It doesn't "go rogue" because technology allows facile snatching of data and personal info. Oh, and it doesn't go ape shit nuts and hyper-fascist because a true patriot called the misbegotten methods used out via file release to selected media.

Devlin's most telling statement echoes those I have also repeatedly made, in regard to the extend to which freedom should be compromised for a temporary security:

"Personally, I would not trade freedom in order to prevent terrorist attacks, even if they were more frequent than the current de facto frequency of every ten years or so. If you do that, the terrorists have won."

Indeed, because the 'bad guys' have manipulated the so-called "protectors" to do to us what they could not: gut our civil liberties and make a mockery of American freedom and rights aspirations. This is exactly why the contest between security and liberty must err on the side of the latter, no matter what. NO matter if ISIS poses a big threat to us, or al Qaeda in Yemen comes back strong, or Iran gets a new bomb...or whatever. All of those threats are insignificant to the preservation of American founding principles.

Once we allow the spooks to gut everything, snatch everything they want with bogus warrants under a bogus FISA law,  we will cease to be the nation founded on the Constitution and the one my ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh fought for. We become instead a fascist mutation.

Devlin leaves his most stinging remark for last:

"As things currently stand, I would not collaborate further with any of the U.S. intelligence services. They have betrayed all of us who were glad to do what we could for the benefit of the free world and have used our work to trample over the Fourth Amendment, to do immense harm to U.S. economic competitiveness, to weaken the Internet on which modern society depends, and to expose us to increased danger from our enemies.

I urge all my fellow citizens to make a similar stand."

 Alas, his final statement requires we stand up as truly free citizens, and reject the 'security blankets' offered us by the security state. "Live free or die" - the motto of one of our states (I believe New Hampshire) - should be our personal motto too!

Snowden Gets His Say And the Traitors, Weasels and Neolib Cowards Go Nuts

WHO are you gonna believe? A patriot defending your 4th amendment rights like Ed Snowden, or a weasel and cowardly 4th amendment traitor like 'Lurch' Kerry?

"Those who would sacrifice an essential liberty for the purpose of a temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." - Benjamin Franklin

"In every government on earth is some trace of human weakness, some germ of corruption and degeneracy, which cunning will discover and wickedness insensibly open." - Thomas Jefferson, in 'Notes on Virginia'.

Last night, Edward Snowden finally had his say on network American TV ('Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden', NBC) in a prime time interview by Brian Williams. Even before the interview aired, Williams - on NBC Nightly News - in previewing the interview, noted many viewers had written the network expressing their disgust and they may never watch it again. They also labeled him a "traitor".

My reaction? These are mock Americans who don’t  deserve liberty. These are what I call sheeple as opposed to free-thinking people. (Brian Williams at the end of his interview said:  "Many Americans are upset at Snowden because they can no longer sleep soundly at night" - on account of terrorists now getting the better of us.  Awwww....boo hoo hoo, poor little babies! Give 'em a sippy cup and a change of diapers!) They’ve meekly followed and imbibed the propaganda spewed by the corpora-media and the security state which is the real culprit in terms of trashing the 4th amendment. As Snowden pointed out to Williams,  in a real democracy we ought not be tolerating any "security state" - the two are mutually exclusive. So again, as Ben Franklin posed it - do we want liberty or security?

Anyway, it's the whining,  infantilized wusses who’ve followed the lead of the American puppet media by making Snowden and his travails, asylum seeking and persecution the story instead of the vile overreach he disclosed – which as others have pointed out – leads the way to tyranny (especially via the COG program).


What does that make these mock Americans? In my book it makes them “Good Germans”. Go back to the end of World War II and the American occupation of Germany in the years after 1945. We assailed the “weak” German people and mocked them for not standing up to the growing metastasis of Hitler’s Reich which they obviously saw but did nothing about. These vermin actually praised the Gestapo and helped rat out their neighbors to them, usually for speaking against Hitler or hiding Jews.

Who would have believed 80 years later, a coterie of weak-blooded, meek, pseudo-patriot,  pussified "Americans" (and I use that term very loosely - hence the scare quotes) would emulate the Gestapo-loving Germans of the 1930s? But there it is!

Then there was the weasel, coward and 4th amendment traitor John Kerry, mouthing off on the same news segment and bellowing about the "damage" Snowden caused (he likely meant more the embarrassment at being caught out) and calling him a "coward and traitor".  Imagine Kerry's nerve calling Snowden a "coward" when he essentially burned all his bridges to leave a comfortable life behind to alert too many underserving 'Muricans what was being done in their name.

Meanwhile, the real coward is Kerry, who in the 2004 Presidential election ran with his tail between his legs - instead of standing and fighting - when the 'Swift Boat Veterans for Truth' unloaded on him.  Then, after the violations of voting rights were disclosed in Ohio (including suppressing minority voters by limiting polling places and making many use "provisional" ballots), this weasel never followed up and demanded a full -on investigation. He just punked out like the punk he is.

Kerry is also a hypocrite and 4th amendment traitor. Recall back in March Lurch's boffo performance in actually claiming:

"It is really a stunning, willful choice by President Putin to invade another country,” Kerry said on Face the Nation.

Kerry clearly displayed  NO historical memory at all.  In a blog post at the time I had to give this delusional chump a hint about this nation's  "willful choice to invade another country" and using a "completely trumped up pretext" as in "WMD" to do a shock and awe in Iraq. A "war" and invasion which was illegal from the get go.

But Kerry's treachery, as well as that of most of congress, inheres in changing the law (the 1978 FISA law) originally there to protect us from overweening surveillance, following the exposure of illegal wiretapping by Bush. The latter was then rendered "legal" via a revised FISA law,  effectively  gutting the 4th amendment and paving the way for dragnet NSA surveillance.  As Robert Scheer noted in a June 25, 2013 blog post on smirkingchimp.com, ‘The Good Germans in Government’:


"Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation”

How important is that individual conscience in terms of ethics? At the Nuremberg War Crimes trials we informed the Nazis it trumped all else, even government regulations, laws and orders! The operating Principle (VI) came to be known as the Nuremberg Code and clearly states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to orders of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

Note this Principle’s injunction is exactly analogous to what Edward Snowden followed. He had allegedly binding orders and “oaths” by which the government found it expedient to limit his actions, but he saw (as the U.S. military leaders did at Nuremberg) that the option of a higher moral choice dictated he inform the American people – whose liberties were at stake and threatened – of what was being done in their name.

Moreover, Snowden has since been vindicated. Judge Richard Leon, in a 68 -page ruling issued in Washington December 17, 2013, vindicated Snowden by arguing that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the U.S. constitution,  Judge Leon also declared that the mass collection of metadata probably violates the fourth amendment, which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures, and was "almost Orwellian" in its scope. In a judgment replete with literary swipes against the NSA, he said James Madison, the architect of the US constitution, would be "aghast" at the scope of the agency’s collection of Americans' communications data.

This remark alone shows Snowden is not the villain the Neolib traitors make him out to be but a fuckin' HERO!  Now, add to that - if that wasn't enough -  the issuance of  a  300-page report  by a commission appointed by Obama himself - not any screwball, terror loving commie symps. The report made 46 recommendations including that the NSA be stripped of its power to collect phone records in bulk.  In addition, the panel advised that the NSA be banned from attempting to undermine the security of the internet- themes pounded by tech companies when they met with Obama last December. (Which makes a mockery of what one talking head "national security" specialist said on CBS' Early Show this morning, i.e. Snowden "hurting tech companies" - when he in fact revealed how the NSA had done so, by unraveling their security systems!)

Even Jim Sensenbrenner, who helped write the Patriot Act, declared that the intent of the law was never to allow the NSA the latitude of mass surveillance that Snowden revealed.  I was also delighted to see Colorado Senator Mark Udall, a leading critic of the NSA overreach who said - in his own words:

"The  (Leon) ruling underscores what I have argued for years: [that] the bulk collection of Americans' phone records conflicts with Americans' privacy rights under the US constitution and has failed to make us safer,"

The problem with the NSA and its troglodytes is they think that because they have the techno tools to spy into every nook and cranny of the world, they are mandated to do it, 'cause otherwise them 'thar terrorists win! Which is utter horse pockey.  You can't use the terrorist bogeyman as an all encompassing excuse to rob people of their rights.

Besides which, the odds of any such attack are slim and none.   Gideon Rachman in a Financial Times piece two years ago, i.e.
observed that the number of Americans killed by terrorists since 1960 is "about the same as the number killed over the same period in deer accidents".

 He also  showed "the average American had only a one in 500,000 chance of being killed in a terrorist attack".  By way of comparison, the chance of dying in an airline crash is one in 346,000 and the chance of being annihilated by a large asteroid (> 0.5 km dia.) in its collision with Earth, is the same, according to Sir Martin Rees ('Our Final Hour'). 

So why have so many of our compatriots mindlessly branded him a traitor? Because those forlorn consumers have lost track of their rights as well as obligations as citizens, and basically surrendered them to the state. They may also be deliriously ignorant of the warp and woof of the rights inherent in the Fourth Amendment - and we know that polls taken after 9/11 disclose 3 of 5 Americans couldn't name three of the Bill of Rights. The 4th amendment is VERY clear that specific warrants must be issued, not mass warrants! I don't give a fuck how "inconvenient" it is or how long and arduous that process might be. Tough shit! Either adhere to the principles or admit you're traitors to your constitutional oaths. People can read the words of the Fourth for themselves below:

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Read it slowly and carefully, especially the emphasized portions over again. Clearly, the NSA MASS-grabbing of data embodied in PRISM, 'Boundless Informant', XKeyscore, etc.  directly violate the 4th amendment, and yeah, I'm as much a stickler about the 4th as the gun people are about the 2nd.

Am I a civil liberties “extremist”? Damned right if that means a citizen who understands that the Constitution is not just “a piece of paper” (as Bush once called it) and that the rights inherent in the Bill of Rights are real, apply to individuals, and not mere “compromise abstractions” but rather hold the key to American identity – what truly sets us apart. And once those rights are gone, believe me they won’t be coming back! Once they are gone we will cease to be the nation my ancestor,  Conrad Brumbaugh,  envisaged and fought for in the Revolutionary War as one of the Pennsylvania Regiment.

We all owe Snowden a debt of gratitude and those who say otherwise have no business calling themselves patriots or Americans. They belong to the same class of vermin as Joseph Goebbels, Herman Goering, and the other Nazi scum who used (via the Gestapo) their own extensive methods to grab up power more than 70 years ago.

As for 'Lurch' Kerry, he isn't even fit to lick the bottom of Snowden's shoes. Kerry, a Neolib punk who wouldn't even stand up for himself against a torrent of abuse in an election - doesn't  belong in the same room with a real patriot and hero.  The fact Kerry could brand Snowden a "fugitive" and demand he "man up" (to turn himself in and face Kangaroo court justice) shows how little he grasps of the core issues at stake here. But if this fool, tool and hypocrite couldn't even grasp that the U.S. violated international law when it illegally invaded Iraq (while branding Russia the bad guy for occupying Crimea) then we see what a poseur he is. It's Neoliberal weasels like John Kerry who will spell the end of this Republic, not red-blooded American heroes like Edward Snowden!

-----------
Footnote: The NSA claims it's only been able to recover "one email" of Snowden's to the effect he made any effort to bring his concerns to the attention of higher ups. Now, if anyone really believes that this is all the spooks could really turn up, well, I have some prime beach front property in Barbados to sell you for a song!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/alfredo-lopez/56122/usa-freedom-act-has-nothing-to-do-with-freedom-phone-surveillance-reform-bill-passed-by-the-house-is-

http://www.salon.com/2014/05/29/watch_highlights_from_edward_snowdens_interview_with_brian_williams/

WaPo Neocons Despise the Pulitzer Prize and Snowden's Role - Can You Believe It?

Ordinarily in the realm of human affairs and especially journalistic achievement, a media source or newspaper would have all its denizens aboard giving resounding accolades for its win. Such was supposed to be the case earlier this week as the Pulitzer Prize for Public Service was awarded to the Washington Post and the Guardian newspaper for disclosing the NSA transgressions of the Fourth Amendment.  Alas, not all the little scribes of the WaPo are on board with the award. Some have rebelled and even "staged their own demonstrations" against the award, if you can believe it.

One such malcontent is Post columnist Marc Thiessen who on Wednesday, pitched a hissy fit about the Post getting the award and Snowden being responsible. Thiessen, who writes a weekly online column for The Post, hosted an event at the American Enterprise Institute devoted in large part to denouncing the Guardian, The Post and the Pulitzer committee for their actions.

All you need to know here is that Thiessen is also an AEI "fellow". And we know AEI is a rat's nest for neocons as well as for liars about climate change. Recall that AEI sponsored a propaganda program a few years back whereby any "researchers" would be awarded $10,000 each for writing anti-climate change articles and getting them into major newspapers. I counted at least 12 who got success in this dubious outcome, once more causing delays for action. 

Anyway, in terms of the recent Pulitzers, this little rat Thiessen said journalists at The Post — “my newspaper,” as he put it — "should not have published the articles and had done something incredibly damaging to national security."

Thiessen had previously written that The Post’s actions "broke the law"  (if you regard the existing law that legalized the Bushie illegal wiretaps as a proper law), . Meanwhile, Thiessen’s guest, British member of Parliament Liam Fox, went further.

“What sort of world do we live in where that gets a Pulitzer Prize for public service?”

he asked the AEI audience.

“An award for public service for possibly the greatest betrayal of our national secrets of all time strikes me as quite bizarre. . . . I do think that there is a real danger of a very cozy media world patting itself on the back without fully understanding the consequences.”

Of course this is irredeemable rubbish. The so-called "national secrets" were in fact illegal mass searches that violated the much more fundamental law of the land embodied in the U.S. Constitution. The heart of which is putatively the 4th amendment with its proscription on the use of mass warrants and mass searches without cause. That this Brit doesn't get that is perhaps understandable, as he's not an American, but then the AEI ought not have had him bloviate about national secrets and bogus laws. But then Fox himself doesn't seem to be able to tell dog shit from chocolate.  Fox didn’t seem to know much about the Snowden dispute on this side of the Atlantic — at one point he actually  confused The Washington Post and the New York Times — and, in any event, he was much more aggrieved by what Glenn Greenwald and the Guardian had done than anything else. Clearly, the dope probably never even read the words of the Fourth Amendment - so why should he give two shits about preserving its basis?


The two miscreants then kicked around the idea that journalists "might be to blame" for future terrorist attacks. Thiessen actually asked:

“If there is another 9/11, another London subway bombing, how is this debate going to look in retrospect?”

His nincompoop Brit pal  Fox then babbled:

“The next time you get a bomb going off in the subway or a marathon, when someone’ s child is abducted by a pedophile ring, you might want to thank those who made it easier for those people to do those things.”

Oh please! Put a freakin' sock in it! The sober realist could retort here that we have tens of thousands of deaths by gun each year and basically snooze about it, and maybe we prevented 50 deaths from terrorists - if that- and yet we go batshit crazy and extirpate all our 4th amendment rights on the possibility of an attack that may take barely a tenth of the lives?

These wimps - Fox and Thiessen - need to get a life, and a pair of balls! If we can tolerate thousands of gun deaths each year and do squatto about it, I say we can tolerate huge risks to preserve our precious liberties. Journalist Robert Scheer in a blog last summer (‘The Terror Con’) has referred to “threat inflation” by which the security state keeps weak-kneed "citizens" panting for more protection like screaming school girls petrified of spiders. They will dangle any kind of threat out to try to scare the bejeezus out of wimpy Americans, the better to make them give up their 4th amendment rights.

Scheer also referenced a June 11, 2013 column by Thomas Friedman  with similar fear overtones to the shtick of Fox and Thiessen. Friedman warned that if there was a second 9/11-type attack, "we would lose all of our civil liberties, so we should be grateful for this trade-off".

WHY lose our civil liberties? Because a bunch of zealots take out maybe thousands of lives? Fucking LESS than lost each year to gun violence! Shit, we who lived through the 1962 Cuban Missile crisis – minutes from nuclear annihilation - find this preposterous! That a nation priding itself on freedom could give up all rights like a bunch of screaming sissies just because of a limited attack! NY Times columnist Bill Keller also seemed to support the “Screaming sissy” hypothesis as when he writes:

“Tom’s important point was that the gravest threat to our civil liberties is not the NSA but another 9/11-scale catastrophe that could leave a panicky public willing to ratchet up the security state, even beyond the war-on-terror excesses that followed the last big attack.”

A panicky public? How about a bunch of pusillanimous pussies that don’t deserve freedom? A bunch that really wants their asses kicked to wake them from their scarified terrorist-bogeyman coma....which has repercussions on the rest of us (real citizens - not consumers) who value liberty over security! But maybe Fox and Thiessen - like Keller and Friedman - are on to something as when Friedman wrote on June 11:

“I believe that if there is one more 9/11—or worse, an attack involving nuclear material—it could lead to the end of the open society as we know it,”

Yeah, so the deep politics citizen must ask: What isn’t he saying?  Maybe that he knows COG (continuity of government)  will come into play and under its mandates, martial law will be permanent and we’ ll inhabit a full Nazified police state. How quickly that freedom went! Barely lasting 230- odd years!

As Scheer puts it:

“No nation in history has ever possessed such an imbalance of military superiority and the ability to ward off foreign threats without sacrificing its core values. Never has this country been as vulnerable to foreign attacks as when the founders approved our Constitution with its Fourth Amendment and other protections of individual sovereignty against an intrusive government. They did so out of the conviction that individual freedom makes us stronger rather than weaker as a nation. In short, they trusted in the essential wisdom of the people as opposed to the pundits who deride it.”


But evidently, as soon as too many citizens became mostly consumers they devolved into crying infants and fucking babies who needed the Pappy Spy State’s protections.

"WAAAAHHHHH! Please Gen. Alexander, hold me widdo hands! I don't wanna die from dem dere  t'errists!"

More important to get that new X-box, Ipad or Notebook than to tend to one’s liberties, after all. Gotta make the country safe for shopping! In this case it may be too late, and the nonchalance evident now amongst the 48 percent will mutate into memory loss of the seventy percent in another few months, evoking Bradley Manning’s and Edward Snowden’s greatest fears: that their leaks won’t have made a difference at all.

Fortunately for us, most other sensible WaPo columnists believe Thiessen is an asshole, which he is. But then anyone ensconced at a place like the American Enterprise Institute has to be at least part asshole.

Then there is Thiessen's female counterpart, a harridan and Neolib tool and fool named Ruth Marcus who I've raked over the coals before, e.g. http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/12/of-tweets-and-twaddle.html

 Evidently, she's none too pleased about the attention Snowden has received, and had to spout off in one of her columns about it, writing:

" Time has not deflated Edward Snowden’s messianic sense of self-importance. Nor has living in an actual police state given the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower any greater appreciation of the actual freedoms that Americans enjoy.

Insufferable is the first adjective evoked by Snowden’s recent interview with Barton Gellman in The Post, but it has numerous cousins: smug, self-righteous, egotistical, disingenuous, megalomaniacal, overwrought.

The Snowden of Gellman’s interview is seized with infuriating certitude about the righteousness of his cause. Not for Snowden any anxiety about the implications for national security of his theft of government secrets, any regrets about his violations of a duty of secrecy."

Why should he have regrets?  And how in hell can this overpaid harpy dare say Snowden lacks " any greater appreciation of the actual freedoms that Americans enjoy" ? Obviously, if he leaked files on how American freedoms were being undermined, violated and devalued he had more than ample appreciation!  The other fact to which Miss Marcus is oblivious is that the U.S. was a signatory and primary defender of the Nuremberg Principles (first laid out after the Nuremberg War Crimes trials). The U.S. insisted (given all the Nazis in the dock had "followed orders")  that violating a government order was mandated by Nuremberg Principle VI that clearly states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to orders of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him."

Note this Principle’s injunction is exactly analogous to what Edward Snowden followed. He had allegedly binding orders and “oaths” by which the government found it expedient to limit his actions, but he saw (as the U.S. military leaders did at Nuremberg) that the option of a higher moral choice dictated he inform the American people – whose liberties were at stake and threatened – of what was being done in their name. As Robert Scheer noted in his June 25, 2013 blog: ‘The Good Germans in Government’):

Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation.

Marcus, the NSA toady, is also oblivious to the fact that Snowden didn't "steal government secrets" but rather exposed Government misdeeds and violations of the 4th amendment. But then, such a narrow-minded little toady wouldn't see that anyway - hence she is the classic "Good German". In the Nazi era she'd have easily been one of the millions who reported on those fellow citizens hiding Jews  and she'd have been the first in line to volunteer on providing the Gestapo any information on her neighbors. Oh, she'd also have been amongst the first to declare she knew nothing about any concentration camps.

She'd also have been among the first to be led by the neck to the scene of the camps, by a U.S. military escort - to have her nose rubbed in it, lest she miss it. 

But Marcus isn't content to provide us with clues that she's the ultimate "Good German" in American guise, she sets out to prove it by writing:


" The whistleblower personality is rarely an attractive one. Whistleblowers tend to be the difficult ones, the sort who tend to feel freer to speak out precisely because they don’t fit in. So perhaps it is not a surprise that the biggest whistleblower of all time has an unpleasant personality to match. And personality would not matter — at least it would not be so grating — if Snowden’s behavior were more upstanding and his actions more justified.

On behavior, if Snowden is such a believer in the Constitution, why didn’t he stick around to test the system the Constitution created and deal with the consequences of his actions? "

Of course, we know and have learned from history - especially the German experience-  that whistle blowers are indeed a special type. But this is understandable to those of us who have personalities that "don't fit in" - because we are enabled the opportunity to perceive things from without, by altering our perspective, which our compatriots seem unable to do. Because we can do this, we are more apt to detect things that are amiss and hence feel obliged to report them. But that doesn't mean Snowden has an "unpleasant personality" as Marcus portrays it, only that she - as a toady 'Good German' type, can't abide it. Can't abide his forthright moral honesty and adherence to higher principles, which she is so prepared to sacrifice (as a paid propagandist) at the drop of a hat.

As for her ridiculous question about Snowden not sticking around to "test the Constitution" - well obviously because given what he unearthed he knew the Constitution had been perverted by a gangster state - prepared to undermine basic principles to achieve its own lawless outcomes.  Hence, he wouldn't be able to properly defend himself or his principles. (At least until the Constitutional principles are restored - which was the purpose of his leaks.)

He would be in an analogous position to a whistle blower German -exposing the Nazi riff raff- brought before the Reich Courts - which also had twisted the (Weimar) laws to fit their agendas.  But recall that in the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, it was those Reich Courts and Reich laws, that were on trial as well.

What we learn from the likes of Ruth Marcus and Marc Thiessen is that the archetype of the Good German lives on in the modern U.S. of A. These people will easily don the garb of patriotism, just like the Nazis of old did, but we know it's all a sham designed to advance their own despicable agendas. After all, patriotism is the "last refuge of scoundrels" in the words of Doctor Samuel  Johnson.

 

What Was This Federal Judge Thinking?

Reading back through the history of Third Reich Germany it became increasingly apparent how the whole basis of law was subverted, usually by courts taken over by the Nazis. While once there had been real laws, ennobling citizens, i.e. of the Weimar Republic, the laws had now been gutted and misshapen through corruption, fear and violence.

It all began on March 23, 1933, as the newly elected members of the German Parliament (the Reichstag) met in the Kroll Opera House in Berlin to consider passing Hitler's Enabling Act- which was officially called the 'Law for Removing the Distress of the People and the Reich.' (Think of it in neo-Orwellian language terms, like "the Patriot Act")

 Once passed, it effectively meant the end of democracy: no more labor unions, end of voting, free speech and a free press in Germany and establishing the legal dictatorship of Adolf Hitler. The vote,  441 for, only 84, (the Social Democrats), against, achieved what Hitler had wanted for years - to tear down the German Democratic Republic legally and end democracy, thus paving the way for a complete Nazi takeover of Germany.

The point?  “Laws” can be implemented as abominations! Just because we are told mass spying is "lawful" or "legal" doesn't make it so - not if the original law was altered to make it conform to lawlessness. Once proper courts are taken over whether by fear, intimidation or violence, then all law goes out the window because it is no longer based on founding principles - but perversions of them,

In this way, the Enabling Act led the way for further perversions of German law as embodied in the Reich laws, which conferred sweeping powers on Reich courts to enable the Nazi government to do whatever it wanted: have neighbors spy on neighbors, get Gestapo to collect people in the middle of the night, halt all contrarian news articles or editorials as "threats to the state" and prevent any dissemination of why this was happening on the basis of "national security."

We have seen the same genesis for the disruption of law and the Constitution in our own country using the Patriot Act in ways never intended. It began with the illegal wiretapping of citizens under the Bush administration and was then compounded when a pathetic congress legalized the lawless wiretaps rather than bringing the Bush bunch up on charges. This marked the original violation and subversion of law.

It then continued when the perverted law came up for extension in 2011 and a perverted traitor congress again passed it, much like the 441 cowards in the Reichstag passed the Enabling Act. Rather than set the legal and Constitutional basis straight, it became warped once more.  To the point of validating extreme and lawless measures to fight "terrorism", e.g.

http://www.counterpunch.org/2008/03/31/the-showdown/

Voices have since fought to expose this perversion and subversion, starting with Edward Snowden's exposure of its extent. Then, more recently we had the original Patriot Act authors (Patrick Leahy and Jim Sensenbrenner) calling foul and asserting the Act was never intended to go so far as Snowden revealed. A new law  (USA Freedom Act) was proposed to steer us back onto a path of sanity, i.e.  http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-10-31/usa-freedom-act-would-leash-the-national-security-agency

However, it is being fought tooth and nail by the current crop of neo- 'Enabling Act' pawns of the national security state.  Fighting back have been other voices, as well as one federal  judge, Richard J. Leon of Federal District Court for the District of Columbia. Judge Leon said the program most likely violated the Fourth Amendment. As part of the ruling, Judge Leon ordered the government to stop collecting data on two plaintiffs who brought the case against the government.

 

In his ruling, Judge Leon said that the program “infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment,” which prohibits unreasonable searches and seizures.

 

Rather than live with that ruling, the government has appealed and we now behold another federal judge aligning with the Spooks and their pawns - much like the lower German courts were intimidated into aligning with the Reich courts.  In this case,, Judge William H. Pauley III, of the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York, granted a motion filed by the federal government to dismiss a challenge to the program brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, which had tried to halt the program.   

    

Incredibly Judge Pauley's excuse was that protections under the Fourth Amendment do not apply to records held by third parties, like phone companies.   Fair enough, but then you cannot give those records to the NSA unless they have a proper SPECIFIC warrant - individualized  - as per the wording of the 4th amendment! You cannot cede the records en masse, based on mass warrants!

 

 Pauley added:

"The ACLU argues that the category at issue – all telephony metadata – is too broad and contains too much irrelevant information. That argument has no traction here. Because without all the data points, the government cannot be certain it is connecting the pertinent ones.......This blunt tool only works because it collects everything,”

 

  Right! So by that logic if I have to get rid of a hornet's nest on my house I will need to get hold of a flame thrower and an AK-47.

 

Does this judge have any idea how ignorant he sounds? He compounds that with this additional twaddle:

     

“While robust discussions are underway across the nation, in Congress and at the White House, the question for this court is whether the government’s bulk telephony metadata program is lawful. This court finds it is,”

At the same time, and in contradictory fashion, Pauley acknowledged that his ruling did not mean it was right to continue with the program, which he acknowledged was a “blunt tool” that “imperils the civil liberties of every citizen” if unchecked. And yet despite this acknowledgement of threat - reinforcing Judge Leon's take - he approved it. Cognitive dissonance anyone?

This sad excuse for a federal judge, alas, has no concept of what the 4th amendment is all about and has no business sitting on any bench.  If he'd acted consonant with the Constitution he'd have validated Judge Leon's earlier ruling and definitely not found the dragnet approach lawful. That is talking out of both sides of one's mouth, especially after admitting the threat to civil liberties.

 

What we can say, is that Hitler would have welcomed him with open arms on his Reich Courts!

American Zombots Get Brain-Jacked by the Corporate Media to Be Against Snowden

"America has become amnesiac - a country in which forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated. The United States has degenerated into a social order that is awash in public stupidity and views critical thought as both a liability and a threat"- blogger writing on SmirkingChimp yesterday.


Even as Americans appear to be growing more fearful of their use of the internet on account of NSA scoop -up surveillance - to the point of closing down Facebook pages, limiting emails, and phone calls while using alternative search engines like Ixquick-  their brains (many of them) and common sense appear to have degenerated in the past month and come out more in favor of the NSA spookathon and less for Ed Snowden. At least according to a recent Washington Post- ABC News poll. According to the poll's finding:

"The American people, who once defended Edward Snowden’s leaks of sensitive intelligence information gathered by the U.S. government, are starting to turn against him."


If we take common sense for granted in this sampled population (and that is not a foregone conclusion by any means) then one would expect people who are reasonably educated to be aware that their privacy rights are bound up intimately with their 4th amendment rights - to be free of lawless search and seizure. As I noted in previous blogs to do with this issue, while the specific right to privacy isn’t specifically listed in the Constitution,  the Founders understood that as time went on new rights would emerge which they might not be able to think of (e.g. to health care), hence bundled these into the unenumerated rights under the 9th amendment..

 In terms of privacy, however, it is clear the language of the 4th amendment:

"The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized."

Presupposes privacy as a necessary condition, hence the Founders saw no need to elaborate it as a separate right. Hence, use of the descriptor “personal” applied to papers, effects etc. naturally means private! Even if one for some reason disputed the argument, he’d still be left with the fact of the unenumerated rights under the Ninth amendment.

Now, track to the  Washington Post-ABC News poll   poll. It shows that a majority of Americans — 53 percent — now say that Edward Snowden should be charged with a crime for his leaks. That’s up from 43 percent less than a month ago. Meanwhile, over that same time span, the percentage saying Snowden should not be charged has dropped from 48 percent to 36 percent. These are significant differences!

 This elicits the question of why the anti-Snowden numbers are up, and the pro-Snowden are down?

The realistic answer rests on media observations over the past 4 weeks, disclosing is there has been a uniform drumbeat to turn Americans once again into zombots, passive morons and sheeple, as was done to them in 2003, to drive up support for the Iraqi invasion. Recall that in October, 2002, barely 1 in 3 had approved interference in Iraq or invasion, but that had mutated to nearly 2 in 3 by March, thanks to the disgusting involvement of the corporate media (including the NY Times). Thus, in one of  the more vile episodes of propaganda in Amerikkan history, the supposed "fourth estate"  was converted into brazen cheerleaders for the war state. Much the same is true here.

The sad insight here is too many Americans are unable or unwilling to think for themselves but would rather be buffeted by the winds of pundit opinion on FOX, ABC, CBS and even MSNBC (where only Chris Hayes stands out as a true independent thinker on the Snowden issue). Hence, they lack common sense or even basic intelligence into the nature of the war -surveillance state they inhabit.

Moving on: it is perhaps not at all surprising that much of the movement has come from conservatives and moderates, who are now more likely to say Snowden should be charged with a crime. Among conservatives, 56 percent believe he should be charged, and 40 percent feel “strongly” about it. Why is this not surprising?

First, conservatives (look at their stances on climate change-global warming, female reproduction, abortion) have amply demonstrated they lack even basic insights into science, or how to evaluate issues using critical thought. Second, conservatives are as ill-informed about the economy, failing to recognize the current low aggregate demand environment as they champion spending cuts and more tax cuts - the very things that will make matter worse! (See, e.g. http://www.brane-space.blogspot.com/2013/07/austerity-economics-is-triggering.html  )  Hence, it's not surprising they'd be zombots and willing sheep-tools in succoring a massive surevillance state as well. After all, they've also historically been the most adamant pro-war spenders!

"Moderates" to me are merely half-informed middle of the roaders, and as Jim Hightower once observed: "The only things in the middle of the road are yellow lines and roadkill". He said it, I didn't. But I agree.

Moderates are also more likely to be satisfied Neoliberals, who don't want to rock the boat, make waves or anger the war state. We've also seen a parade of them emerging now on MSNBC, including Melissa Harris Perry, Rachel Maddow, Lawrence O'Donnell and Ed Schultz. What one once believed to be die hard liberals or 'progressives' have emerged as vanilla echo boards for the war-surveillance state. A shorter term? Propagandists-  not much better than Leni Reifenstahl for the Third Reich. (Google her!)

The most worrisome aspects of the poll which show the complete absence of any common sense - in terms of grasping the Constitution or the nature of personal rights - are that a full 74% actually believe the NSA dragnet surveillance is more directed at "some Americans" (they most likely think Muslims) and that 49% believe it's directed at 'my privacy rights'. I have news for these inveterate bozos: any such thing as massive, indiscriminate scoop up surveillance done by approval of secret, rubber stamping courts and without any specific (search) warrants being served, definitely violates YOUR rights too!

Most reprehensible of all, and showing me these zombot yahoo tools (I refuse to even call them Americans)  don't deserve liberty or security (see my July 4 blog), is the finding that 57% have no objection to the NSA mass surveillance, even if it violates their privacy rights, while only 39% believe their privacy rights ought to be respected. The disparity (which could grow even more in coming months)  shows that we've basically lost this nation to the spooks, and the pro-Police state fascists. The "Good Germans", if you will, the same lot that watched as the Nazis plundered what remained of the Weimar Republic and converted it to the most devastating spy state in history. At least until the Amerkkans recruited former Nazis to run their own spy state!

Well, only the 39% have it right. The 57% need to move to an even more totalitarian state, say like China. Moreso because most of them are likely capitalists and China is now the capitalist nation supreme.

Meanwhile, debate is due to begin this afternoon on an amendment tabled by congressman Justin Amash, a two-term libertarian Republican from Michigan, that would prevent the NSA from collecting bulk phone records on millions of Americans. We're informed that: "The White House, Congress and the National Security Agency were bracing for a pivotal and unpredictable vote.

This may be the one shot in a while to cut back on the surveillance excesses, but it isn't a given that there will be enough with the courage to vote against it. Especially as the lobbynig efforts by the WH and Spy state have been ferocious. This is the first court challenge since the Snowden revelations, and the ACLU believes it has a strong case because of the publication by The UK Guardian of a secret court order authorising the bulk collection of Verizon records, and because it is a Verizon customer.


Meanwhile, "the Obama administration, the intelligence community, and its legislative allies were battling what has become known as the Amash amendment, portraying it as recklessly ending a longstanding, secret surveillance activity they consider vital for national security".  But this is bollocks. As former NSA code breaker Bill Binney commented on Keith Alexander's NSA spying testimony 4 weeks, ago: "I don’t understand this being bamboozled into thinking that you have to do this to find bad guys. That’s false. There’s very simple principles you can use to find out who is the bad guy and who isn’t and you can do this without violating anybody’s privacy”.  

But, of course, with a run amuck Empire, the expedient usually trumps the slower, judicious and correct way.  Interestingly, this legislative fight is "the rare Washington battle that does not divide along partisan lines, but between civil liberties supporters in both parties and security hawks in both parties." 

Count me in on the liberties supporters, because hey - once they're lost, they ain't coming back. And you can "resurrect" all the Founders you can, but it is not going to happen.   No surprise the usual Neoliberal spokesmen of the war-profit state have insisted that if the Amash amendment is rejected, they will  "develop appropriate additional protections" for Americans' privacy over their phone records.    But it's unclear what those would be, and if you believe that codswallop you're a bigger moron than the one depicted looking at himself in the mirror at top.