Mueller Wants To Testify In Private? A Non-Starter - We Need Men (Patriots), Not Mice

The hyper- cerebral, reserved Bob Mueller of today was a courageous FBI head who didn't dodge public hearings in the past.

"I think Robert Mueller is a little bit too concerned that his work could be interpreted politically.  You cannot take quite so much of the politics out of politics. ..While I certainly understand the idea that when you get put in front of a camera - given congress the way that it is - a lot of people are going to be grandstanding to create that one viral moment. 

Nevertheless the idea you don't do it because it could be politicized to the American people, I mean you're working for the American people.  So that doesn't quite add up to me".  Ezra Klein last night on 'Last Word With Lawrence O'Donnell'

The news that broke last night on MSNBC (out of the mouth of Jerrold Nadler), that Robert Mueller has agreed to testify before the House Judiciary Committee in private - but not in public -  left many Dems deflated as it would.   The Mueller news broke mere hours after we earlier learned that Trump has given William Barr unprecedented authority to access select information (e.g. on FBI secret warrants etc.) to declassify.   That gives Barr the total power to control the narrative on the origins of the Russia investigation and the gist of the Mueller report itself. Even more worrying, that this fecal administration - full of obsequious sycophants-  now intends to use the 1917 Espionage Act against Assange as a means to attack and subvert the press and 1st amendment. In the words of Rachel Maddow last night:

"The Justice Department today just put every journalistic institution in this country on Julian Assange's side of the ledger, which I know is unimaginable. But that is because the Trump government is now trying to assert this brand new right to criminally prosecute people for publishing secret stuff. But newspapers, magazine and investigative journalists and all sorts of different entities publish secret stuff all the time. That is the bread and butter of what we do.... This is now a novel, legal effort to punch a huge hole in the first amendment, by labeling it spying, labeling it criminal espionage to publish secret stuff."

Anyone with half a brain should clearly be able to see we are in the midst of a 4-alarm constitutional fire that elicits the question of which patriot or patriots will step forth to put it out. The relentless stonewalling by Trump and his minions of the congress' oversight duty, by blocking all subpoenas, have brought us here. But also Barr himself twisting the significance and findings of Mueller's report two months ago.   

All of which begs the question of whether the guy who spent two years investigating the Trump criminal enterprise (with over 38 indictments) is a man - by that I mean a true patriot in these most parlous times   - or a veritable mouse?  This must be asked because all of Mueller's reservations about not wishing to be a political spectacle aside, his country desperately needs his testicular fortitude right now. Given how many subpoenas have been blown off, Trump aides denied appearing for House hearings,  this is Mueller's time to come forward. This is his time and opportunity to speak to Americans with cameras rolling, like John Dean did 45 years ago. 

The narrative that Mueller is a quiet man of rectitude who opts not to be in the spotlight in the midst of a "political circus" (which we know House GOOPs would create), was also shattered last night.  This was compliments of former Massachusetts Governor Bill Weld (on MSNBCs 'Last  Word').  As Weld pointedly noted:

"I suspect he wants to avoid a circus. But he's testified many times before in high pressure situations with a lot of members from both parties from time to time being angry at the performance of the FBI. And he always stood there and took it. And he can do that again, believe me, he's a tough guy. I've worked shoulder to shoulder with him and he can more than hold his own."

Terrific that Mueller is - or was - a "tough guy"  and "could hold his own" in open hearings, but we need him to do that now in defense of the country, not just the FBI. As former Senator and Watergate prosecutor Elizabeth Holtzman has observed, Americans need to be educated about what's in the report, in open televised hearings such as with Watergate, not just be forced to read about it in an abstract format.  We, the American people, therefore need to see Mueller and hear his voice, not just read his answers on  transcripts! (Besides, as Marshall McLuhan once emphasized, "the medium is the message."  In this case, print simply doesn't carry the same punch as the voice, motions-emotions embodied in television.)


Barr has already made a mockery of Mueller's report, and his failure to render definitive judgments, leaving that to congress. But congress itself has now been hamstrung  in its investigatory oversight role by unilateral and pervasive stonewalling by Trump  - making the Constitution's separation of powers moribund, defeated and now almost irrelevant.

  We indeed are at a precipice where this Republic could find itself soon in a fascist maelstrom, as Trump and his cabal try to ramp up a pseudo investigation of the FBI ("investigate the investigators").  Oh, and use Julian Assange as a vehicle to attack press freedom, via the 1917 Espionage Act.  This move, especially if successful in getting Assange's extradition, would undermine first amendment protections for all citizens.  But especially those in the news media (e.g. NY Times) or those who circulate news ("divulging secrets") second hand that the Trump cabal doesn't want citizens to see - including bloggers like me.

Barely three weeks ago, NY Times columnist Maureen Dowd best summed up the predicament and Mueller's reticence to come to the aid of his country:

"The transformation of William Barr from respected establishment lawyer to evil genius outplaying and undermining his old friend Robert Mueller is a Grand Guignol spectacle.

At many of the most consequential moments in American history, I have watched officials bend over backward to be equitable, only to end up faltering and doing enormous damage to the Republic.

It is possible to be “fair” in a way that is not at all fair.

It’s simply bad judgment, ceding the ground to malevolent actors who use any means to achieve their ends, including flattening and sliming the proponents of “fairness.”

Ms. Dowd at the time was referencing Mueller's overwhelming reluctance to render definitive positions on Trump in his report. Indeed one NY Book Review take on it was that Mueller sought to be scrupulously  "fair".  Well, he was indeed that, to the point of folly and enabling the bad guys to get away with their evil deeds - and now put the good guys in their sights.

The same dynamic is at work  with this desire to do private testimony but with a slight variation: Mueller doesn't want the bright lights and cameras on him (like James Comey faced in 2017, courageously I might add) because it might have "political" fallout and repercussions. Hence, Mueller only wants to be questioned behind closed doors and what he says there released later in transcripts.  But this is the weasel's way out, because Mueller has to know Americans don't have the time or patience to read testimony in transcripts.  Hence, they need to see it live,  televised in real time on TV, for the impact to sink in - precisely Elizabeth Holtzman's point, as well as many other former Watergate staffers, i.e. Jill Wine-Banks.

As a case in point, though I took the time and trouble of excerpting Don McGahn's key testimony to Mueller's investigators - extracted verbatim from the full Mueller report- only 17 have read that Wednesday post up to now.   Not a very auspicious sign, though true, ten times more may read a Mueller transcript. 

This is why we need to hear and see Mueller in full disclosure mode, nothing held back, to do what John Dean did for the nation 45 years ago in his three days of Watergate hearings. We need that patriot to come forward, not the more recent "mouse" iteration who prefers to hide in the shadows - his words emitted second hand in filters. 

This is given how each hearings setback, each subpoena ignored,  is another win for Trump which he will use to beat our Republic into his own fascist autocracy.  The time is critical, and Mueller's testimony in the open now could pave the way for an impeachment inquiry  in the next few weeks

 More to the point, I suspect the Mueller who once had the courage to testify in public hearings - as told by Bill Weld - has since become  a victim of his  own self-perceived rectitude. Perhaps since being named special prosecutor, who knows?   This has engendered  his compulsive 'need' to err on the side of caution:  bending over too far backwards so as not to appear unfair. In the case of his own report, faced with the OLC  trope that "no president can be indicted" -  and Trump's refusal to show up to answer questions in person. Thus he reasoned he had no choice other than to punt. (Though Weld suggests that Barr threatened to kill any indictments if Mueller delivered them.)  Despite all that, as the now nearly 1000 plus former prosecutors attest - his report was an indictment in all but name.   Read it and you will agree as well!  Ah, but yeah, it's too much to read at 448 pages, and hell even a 22 page excerpt is too much to read when there's Fortnite to play and a holiday to enjoy.

The FBI Mueller of recent history, it is true, would face the cameras and speak truth to power -  ally and foe alike. The new "special prosecutor"  Mueller is averse to public testimony because: 1) He doesn't want too many millions of Americans directly seeing and hearing what he said or concluded - because of the political heat he might take, and 2) he doesn't want to lock horns with his old pal and original "mentor" Barr.  But look, that cow escaped after the barn door was left ajar - not long after Barr issued his spurious summary of Mueller's report - when Mueller left that 'door' open to mischief.  I'd also affirm the politics escaped back then too, lest we forget.  

Not too happy about Barr's disingenuous presentation, Mueller wrote in the wake of its release: "There is now public confusion about critical aspects of the results of our investigation. This threatens to undermine a central purpose for which the Department appointed the Special Counsel to assure public confidence in the outcome of the investigations."

The letter in its totality,  according to The Washington Post, was described as laying out Mueller's concerns "in stark terms that shocked Justice Department officials".

So hey, the cat is already out of the bag that Mueller may not be a big fan of Barr's any more. It's long past time then to ditch the bromance and bring on the Brigadung, to use the Bajan parlance.    As Bill Weld put it last night, "believe me, he's a tough guy. I've worked shoulder to shoulder with him and he can more than hold his own."

Well, we will see, indeed whether he has the gumption to go live and in person like James Comey did.  With all the GOP-Trump stonewalling on legislative oversight, spitting on the Constitution in one former Watergate prosecutor's words, we need a patriot and hero to come forth. Someone with the moxie to unflinchingly face those cameras, like Dr. Christine Blasey Ford did back in October. Someone (we hope) who possesses the moral compass and cojones to speak truth no matter the lights, Reepo (or Trump) blowback,  and chaos that might ensue.

Bob Mueller, your country is calling you now! Are you up to it ?  Or will you opt to hide behind closed doors and deliver your testimony via a "transcript" that virtually no one will read?  A move that will only empower Trump further and allow Barr to distort your report even more - as he turns investigators on the investigators. It is time for good (and courageous!)men to come to the aid of their country, as my revolutionary war ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh did over 245 years ago.

If Mueller isn't courageous enough to don the patriot mantle, and disdains descending into the fray, then Jerrold Nadler has no choice but to issue a subpoena for him to testify publicly. No more "Mr. Nice Guy"!

See also:

Cody Fenwick

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Robert Mueller

Robert Mueller Is Acting like a Precious Flower. It’s a Huge Mistake.

Excerpt:

"Mueller doesn’t get to be the ultimate arbiter of what is and isn’t political. And he’s not a flower that will wilt with too much exposure."

And:

Impeachment

Is Impeachment Really Optional? Sometimes a Strong Offense Is the Only Defense

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And:

Donald Trump

Trump Is a Would-be Tyrant Surrounded by Henchmen. There’s Only One Solution.

Clapper & Spymasters Expose Trump As A Fool And A Fraud

"For a President not to be prepared to listen to the myriad of intelligence agencies - from defense intelligence to the CIA - is absolutely mindless" - VP Joe Biden yesterday.

Note the use of Biden's term "mindless" in the above quote which actually may be way too generous. It implies a person mentally vacant for a given task at hand, or job, say like an Alzheimer's victim. But there are many reasons to believe Donald J. Trump isn't mindless, he is simply using his mind in devious ways to undermine the intelligence community and security of this country.  Even if a person might originally have been tempted to give Trump the benefit of the doubt in terms of denying the veracity of intelligence reports the past few weeks, yesterday's Senate hearing ought to have quashed that once and for all.

In fact, DNI James Clapper and his fellow spymasters (the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence,  and Director of the National Security Agency) all delivered testimony basically revealing Trump as a fraud, a fool and in no way qualified to hold the office of dog catcher- far less leader of the world's most powerful nation.

Mincing no words, National Intelligence Director James Clapper bluntly stated: "There’s a difference between skepticism and disparagement,”  skewering the Trumpian nonsense that his hesitance to accept the intelligence community's findings was mere "skepticism".

Clapper told a Senate Armed Service Committee hearing into foreign cyber-threats (headed  by Sen. John McCain)  to the US  that intelligence analysts “stand more resolutely” than ever behind their conclusion of “Russian interference in our electoral process”.

The testimony was delivered before Clapper and the heads of the CIA, NSA and FBI are expected to present their findings on Russian election interference to Trump today, in his Trump Tower redoubt. Asked by Lindsey Graham if he was ready to take on Trump  today, Clapper didn't hesitate, saying "Absolutely!".

The meet with the clown Trump, who has repeatedly scoffed at the hacking claims from the intelligence community, is likely to be highly charged. How can it not be given that Trump the  tweeting troll has all but left the nation's spymasters incredulous at the spectacle of his sheer foolish claims including "I know things other people don't know about hacking".   Thereby leaving the intel community not only in disbelief but hung out to dry with his off the cuff BS and dismissive tweets. (Which VP Biden admonished him to cease saying "Grow up, Donald!")

Indeed, this lout and loon has publicly derided the agencies on the hacking issue.  Also, as reported yesterday (MSNBC) the spymasters are so worried that Trump won't accept their final report that they called members of congress asking them for public support.  They are also clearly worried that Trump this week actually cited a denial by Julian Assange of WikiLeaks that his source for Democratic party emails released during the election was the Russian government or “a state party”.

In the wake of such unfathomable disparagement of their work,  both Clapper and Admiral Michael Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency, expressed concerns about intelligence analysts’ morale with Rogers suggesting some may quit.  Many in private have confided that having to deal with such a soon to be leader of the putative free world, has shaken them to their core.

And why not? They will within 2 weeks be under the control of a totally unqualified buffoon who has no more regard for this country than the quality of the crap he sells in the assorted boutiques of Trump Tower.

As 'Exhibit A' one can cite Trump’s confidence in WikiLeaks which has shocked and angered intelligence analysts, who consider Assange at minimum a dupe, and at most a willing tool of Putin. Clapper and Rogers testified they believe Assange has no credibility. “I don’t think those of us in the intelligence community have a whole lot of respect for him,” said Clapper. Then On Thursday morning, Trump denied he was “in agreement” with Assange, tweeting: “I simply state what he states, it is for the people to make up their own minds as to the truth.”    But this is too clever by half, and way too coy, even for a president- elect with the impulse control of a three year old.

For one thing, if he took the intelligence community seriously he would not be dignifying the words of a person regarded as a hostile actor or used actor by most intel insiders. The very fact he would state what Assange states discloses he places Assange's words on a par with that of James Clapper and the intel directors. What's wrong with this picture? Well, everything!

If one trusts and accepts the reports - including daily briefs - of the intelligence analysts, then that must be mutually exclusive with accepting the words of a person they consider a hostile actor. Trump like any three year old merely tries to show he wants to have his cake and eat it too.

Asked about morale within the intelligence agencies in the wake of Trump’s comments, Clapper said: “I haven’t done a climate survey, but I hardly think it helps it.” Rogers said the “confidence of our leaders” helps motivate intelligence officers, “and without that confidence, I just don’t want a situation where our workforce decides to walk, because that’s not a good place for us to be”.

Even more sobering, according to the Wall Street Journal, which first reported the proposal, Trump is considering diminishing the director of national intelligence and even getting rid of it. This move, according to the head of the 9/11 Commission, would leave this nation even more vulnerable to outside attacks by hostiles, including terrorists.

Does Trump care? I seriously doubt it. He likely cares more about kickbacks and money coming in from foreign visitors to his Trump Hotel in D.C.

Maybe the capper on the whole sordid interlude is that the Russkies were evidently elated by the Trump win, see e.g.

[U.S. intercepts capture senior Russian officials celebrating Trump win ]

Something that ought to make every American cringe is that two top intelligence officials, as reported last night on NBC, have revealed Russian cyber attacks against not only the DNC, but the White House, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the State Department and even American companies.   Translation: We are soon to be in the maw of an administration that is friendly with the foreign entity responsible and with a "fellow traveler" holding the top position in the nation.

Instead of seriously dealing with the findings of the report, Trump blabbered in a tweet 'Who gave them this report? Politics!"  Actually no, reality!   But this is the sort of response one might expect from a fellow traveler.The better question is HOW does Trump know things about this recent hacking that no other sources do?  Does he therefore have inside information on how the hack of the DNC was done? Is it really a "fat man on a bed in New Jersey"? Or, maybe Trump himself?

Evan McMullen, former CIA analyst put it in blunt terms on MSNBC 'All In' last night, after Alabama GOOP Rep. Mo Brooks couldn't answer a simple question on whether it was more important to believe Julian Assange or  U.S. Intelligence professionals:

"It's absolutely unfathomable to me that we even have a question about whether we trust our intelligence professionals over an anti-American activist supported by Russia"

Unfathomable though it may be, it is even more so that Trump's followers and voters will likely see absolutely nothing wrong with anything he's done. The "banality of evil" as I referred to Hanna Arendt's perspective in yesterday's post.

Separating Paranoid Balderdash From Rational Conspiracy Thinking

It is no secret that in certain nations governed by the Neoliberal security meme,  any conspiracy thinking is regarded as - if not a specific pathology - at least a minor mental aberration ("tin foil hat" syndrome). This actually makes eminent logical sense given the leaders of a Neoliberal,  security -based government must - by definition- be on the lookout for anyone who might inveigh against their hard-earned agenda for which any disclosures are  unwelcome.  This is especially so with the JFK assassination, superbly exposed in Col. John Hughes-Wilson's recent book, JFK - An American Coup d'Etat.

No surprise then that a long time Neoliberal columnist, David Brooks, wrote in a recent NY Times Op-Ed ('The Epidemic Of Worry'):

"It is a well-established fact that people who experience social exclusion have a tendency to slide toward superstitious and conspiratorial thinking"

But is this really so?

To a degree, yes, but it must be clarified. By "social exclusion" Brooks doesn't necessarily mean the affected people live like hermits or outright recluses. He means, rather, they are outside the loop of the elite political class, outside the knowledge -based enterprises. He means, in general: i) those with the least advanced education, ii) those without the economic freedom to enable choices to enhance their knowledge of the system (taken to mean the Neoliberal system), and iii) those whose employment is not knowledge, information based but rather tied to muscle, hence again divorced from the knowledge loop. Often in two ways, first because their work precludes admission, and second because their work leaves them too taxed to investigate on their own.

For this lot, one of the few options is to hitch their fortunes and futures to a person - a de facto "voice" - who apparently has all the answers.  In this case, he may suggest the whole system is "rigged" including the media, without giving particulars. Never mind, it saves the "excluded" from having to put forth individual efforts of their own. So they adopt his way of thinking, which often also entails conspiracies, i.e. the opposition campaign is the beneficiary of a "global network of elites".

In other words, the conspiracies latched onto translate to a sense of powerlessness.  This would fit into the template Dr. Pat Bannister once invoked to describe a "conspiracy culture", thereby to distinguish it from "conspiracy research community". The latter she envisaged as the province of mature, rational, educated adults. The former was the realm of the semi-literate or poorly educated who fancied themselves adults but really weren't.   They were more like overgrown children playing elaborate paranoid games. Irrationalists like the indiscriminate conspiracy monger, Alex Jones, e.g.



Jones is notorious for whacky conspiracy ideation such as confecting the off the wall bunkum that the Sandy Hook/Newtown massacre was a federal "false flag" operation. Those twenty  kids weren't really slain, they were merely actors- as well as the teachers- in an elaborate script to befuddle the public and make them demand gun confiscation across the land.

In one of his more recent outbursts, Jones fulminated on Tuesday about a crypto Jewish conspiracy afoot in the country:

“I mean it’s not that Jews are bad; it’s just they are the head of the Jewish Mafia in the United States. They run Uber. They run the health care. They’re going to scam you. They’re going to hurt you.” 

Really, Alex? And where is the hard data, documents for that claim? Or is it merely the brain fart from a ruptured psychotic embolism in your amygdala?  The word "tin foil" had not yet achieved wide currency by the time of Dr. Pat Bannister's work, but I've no doubt she would have applied it to the spurious neural eruptions of crazy loons like Alex Jones.

Donald Trump is roughly in the same balmy,  nutso camp as Jones with his "rigged election" conspiracy balderdash. Like many loons he believes that merely repeating unsupported claims makes them so. Thus his incessant references to this election being "rigged", or "stolen" as through "voter fraud".  But how is that happening if states control the electoral process and 31 of the 50 states are run by Republican governors. Is Trump saying that even the governors of his own party are rigging the election? (John Kasich, of Ohio, dismissed that notion last Thursday morning on CBS as total idiotic nonsense.)

Now, what about a different perspective, such as advanced by Wikileaks' Julian Assange (a former physicist) , who in one 6-page  blog article ('Conspiracy as Governance')  advanced a meta-theory of conspiracy, i.e. as inherent to the very nature and workings of Neoliberal governance.

The essay tied together authoritarian governments, corporations, certain terrorist organizations and even political parties as fundamentally organizational  "conspiracies"- defined as groups that conceal and hoard secret information to win a competitive advantage over the general public. This advantage would seek to either: a) keep them in the dark as to deals or laws that would be to the public's detriment, or b) activities that over time undermine democracy, privacy and liberty - though on the surface the media assists in a continuing whitewash.

The classic historical case is the JFK assassination, which saw a nascent, genuinely liberal Presidency removed by force in a coup d'état to make way for a Neoliberal security state able to gradually foreclose citizen knowledge of its workings while eroding civil liberties. See e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2016/08/one-of-top-ten-books-on-jfk.html

But given we already exist within the security state germinated since that critical event, it behooves us to examine what that state has managed to hide from us, but which by diligent effort has been exposed.  A lot of this arrived in 2013 with Edward Snowden's whistle blowing on NSA programs like MUSCULAR, Xkeyscore, etc, that trampled on citizens' 4th amendment rights.

Years before Snowden's release of files showing NSA mass spying, Assange in his treatise argued that leaks cut the "conspiracies" open like a double-edged knife, empowering the public with privileged information while spreading confusion among the conspirators themselves ("Who let that cat out of the bag?", "Who released that FOIA document?", "Who leaked that info!?")

Further, if constant leakage was the rule, as opposed to the exception, Assange argued that conspiratorial organizations would be gripped by destructive, internecine paranoia leaving only transparent groups and governments to flourish.

While at first blush Assange's treatise sounds as cracked as one of Jones' radio rants, one must take care not to jump to conclusions and instead investigate history for such a basis. If one is intelligent and diligent enough he will find that in the early operations of Edward Bernays.

Bernays began his career in Woodrow Wilson's Committee on Public Information. The objective was to drumbeat millions of recalcitrants into seeing the need for War. War to 'make the world safe for democracy' - in the words forged by Bernays first PR hacks. Later, much later - PR firms and sales-marketing departments would use the CPI as a template for their own efforts to mold the American mass mind.

Bernays left much more of a foundation for manipulative deceit than merely the CPI. For example, in 1923 he published what became the official manifesto of all future public relations 'Crystallizing Public Opinion'. As the title implies, the basic goal was to drumbeat the maximum number of 'the masses' into a homogeneous and consistent consent. But do it without their awareness.

By now the groundwork for control of the public mind, as well as hoarding secret information to enable its facile manipulation, was well underway. Five years later came Bernays' definitive work 'Propaganda' - whose principles were to be later adopted wholesale by Goebbels and Reifenstahl. It was in this book that the master betrayed his intents - if ever there was any doubt before:

"The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government, which is the true ruling power of our country."

And here we see for the first time the term 'invisible government'. This Bernays equated to 'the true ruling power of the country'. In effect, he had taken the Bill of Rights and smashed it into a thousand pieces, giving authority for governance to a presumed intellectual and political elite.

So we see the seeds for the governance that Assange postulated had actually arrived by 1923, and had been consolidated by 1928.  Fast forward now to the present, if Assange's arguments have any heft then we'd need to see some kind further evidence, beyond Snowden's file releases, unearthed by careful, assiduous sleuthing in the real world. As it turns out a number of findngs have manifested in recent weeks from different sources including:

- That the Trans Pacific Partnership deal is a "Trojan Horse" with a provisions written in for "Investor-State Dispute Settlement" suits.  This basically means foreign corporations and investors can trump U.S. appellate courts and instead bring lawsuits via private tribunals against citizens or communities deemed guilty of blocking say...their fracking operations, oil pipelines or food processing methods. (Cf. 'Free Trade's Trojan Horse' in Sierra magazine, Nov-Dec., p. 45)

Also, see:

http://smirkingchimp.com/thread/dave-johnson/69588/tpp-partner-jails-human-rights-blogger



- Project Censored's number one censored story for the year that US. military forces are now in 147 of the world's 195 nations, an 80 percent increase since 2010.  In 135 nations a secret war is being conducted. See e.g.

www.tinyurl.com/CSI-Censor-1


-  Another Project Censored hitherto concealed story: A Cybersecurity Sharing Act or CISA,  which had originally been blocked by the Senate through a 56-40 vote, has since been signed into law by Obama as part of a revised 2,000 - page Omnibus spending bill - with total media silence.  The Act:

"Authorizes the creation of a system for corporate informants to provide customers' data to the Department of Homeland Security which - in turn - can share this information with other federal agencies, including: the NSA, the FBI, Internal Revenue Service and others - without privacy protecting safeguards or special warrants. "

As one of the few alert media sources (The UK Guardian) reported,  civil liberties experts were dismayed with the passage of the bill whose most invasive components "made a mockery of the democratic process".

From all these perspectives it appears, therefore, that Assange's "conspiracy as governance" postulate carries vastly more weight than any of Alex Jones' off the cuff paranoid  ideations, and certainly Trump's rigged election nonsense . We have no concrete evidence to support such nutso blather, but we do have evidence of hoarding information - often to citizens' detriment - by the Neoliberal security statists (and their media apparatchiks - see the Project Censored link at the very end of this post.)

We may conclude from this, and I am sure Pat Bannister (if she were alive) would agree, that Assange's 6-page discourse comes closest to actual,  rational conspiracy thinking - and serious research- while Alex Jones demonstrates more paranoid balderdash: useless spoutings that serve no point or purpose other than to fill Jones' air time on his 'Infowars'.

Are the Neoliberals  ensconced in our government really out to get us? I believe it would be more accurate to say they want to keep us in the dark as much as possible concerning critical matters that affect our future welfare.  If they can do so then they can advance their bid for consolidating power. The "conspiracy" then, isn't so much a single coherent plan carried out via meetings in secret enclaves but more a zeitgeist or central conviction shared by all, which unifies their goals. Hence provides a means by which they can ultimately expedite disparate actions all oriented to attainment of a defined agenda - in this case a worldwide Neoliberal economy. Of course, to assure such a vision, military force must often be used, and that is implemented under a pretext that the "governance" agrees upon.

See also:

http://projectcensored.org/category/the-top-censored-stories-of-2015-2016/

'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.

Let's Not Get Punked By The Neoliberals Again - With the "Trans-Pacific Partnership"

Someone asked maybe a month ago, in an unpublished comment, why I always depict the Neoliberals like a mutant bat-rat type creature with feral eyes, grasping a pile of money. Well, because that is how I image these types: money-grubbing, feral ratty bats that could give a damn about the rest of us, so long as they get the corner on their mythical "free market". (Which is in fact a coercive market for the 99%)

And, of course, one must always keep one eye open for these rats - say like the 'Fix the Debt' bunch, and any new initiative they try to slink by us. Since they're rats, they will try anything ....from bamboozling bollocks about "benefits" to over the top PR (such as applies to fracking). They never miss a beat.

Now, thanks to  Wikileaks (why not our precious mainstream media? ) we have learned about the TPP or Trans-Pacific Partnership, another way to screw with us like the earlier GATT and NAFTA.

According to the Guardian, WikiLeaks has released the draft text of a chapter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) agreement, a multilateral free-trade treaty currently being negotiated in secret by 12 Pacific Rim nations. The full agreement covers a number of areas, but the chapter published by WikiLeaks focuses on intellectual property rights, an area of law which has effects in areas as diverse as pharmaceuticals and civil liberties.

Negotiations for the TPP have included representatives from the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Mexico, Malaysia, Chile, Singapore, Peru, Vietnam, and Brunei, but have been conducted behind closed doors. Even members of the US Congress were only allowed to view selected portions of the documents under supervision. Peter Bradwell, policy director of the London-based Open Rights Group says:

"We're really worried about a process which is so difficult for those who take an interest in these agreements to deal with. We rely on leaks like these to know what people are talking about,"

He adds:


"Lots of people in civil society have stressed that being more transparent, and talking about the text on the table, is crucial to give treaties like this any legitimacy. We shouldn't have to rely on leaks to start a debate about what's in then."

Indeed.

The 30,000 word intellectual property chapter contains proposals to increase the term of patents, including medical patents, beyond 20 years, and lower global standards for patentability. It also pushes for aggressive measures to prevent hackers breaking copyright protection, although that comes with some exceptions: protection can be broken in the course of "lawfully authorized activities carried out by government employees, agents, or contractors for the purpose of law enforcement, intelligence, essential security, or similar governmental purposes".


WikiLeaks claims that the text shows America attempting to enforce its highly restrictive vision of intellectual property on the world – and on itself. "The US administration is aggressively pushing the TPP through the US legislative process on the sly," says Julian Assange, the founder and editor-in-chief of WikiLeaks, who is living in the Ecuadorean embassy in London

Is this Assange torqued because he has to hole up in an embassy in London? Is he just venting because of the extent to which his operation has been downsized?  Not so fast.

Thomas Hartmann, writing on the smirkingchimp.com blog today observes:

" This week, Americans got a peek behind the curtain of the Trans Pacific Partnership, and what we found is frightening. On Thursday, Wikileaks published a complete draft of the “intellectual property rights” chapter of the TPP, and it poses a serious risk to free speech and information access. The document contains proposals that would change copyright and patent laws, so-called fair use practices, and the liabilities for alleged violations.

The provisions would stifle innovation, creativity, and information sharing, all under the guise of protecting intellectual property. And, many of the proposed changes are being suggested by US negotiators. Opposition to these restrictive policies is coming from other nations, like Canada, Chile, Malaysia, and New Zealand."

If an informed citizenry is the basis for democracy, why are we being kept in the dark? Perhaps because we no longer have a democracy  but a corporatocracy! If we really are a democracy then we need to heed Hartmann's words:

"Unions, civil rights advocates, environmental activists, and many other groups are demanding that the details of the TPP are made public. Before this massive trade deal is signed, Americans have the right to know what it contains, and the right to demand that our elected leaders say “No” to the TPP. -"