'Snowden' - An Oliver Stone Film Every American Should See (Minor Spoilers)

Since I saw the first trailers  for the movie 'Snowden' five months ago, and also read the details (in NY Times magazine)  of how difficult a project it was for Oliver Stone, I've wanted to see this film.  The first thing that struck me from the Times piece was that no major studio would touch the film, take it on. This is really no surprise since the corporate matrix has close associations with the national security matrix as well as Neoliberal security statists (like Obama and Hillary) who would frown if they did a biopic on a guy considered a "traitor".   That left Oliver to do it with 'Open Road' Productions, and at first he felt somewhat chagrined, let down until someone reminded him they had produced last year's Best Picture, 'Spotlight'.

Many reviewers, such as Anne Hornady of the WaPo, also expressed wonder that Stone had turned his sights away from conspiracy fare, such as in JFK. But they appear to forget - or never processed in the first place- that the bases for the two films are radically different. In the case of 'JFK', even by the time Stone's movie came out in 1991,  there were still precious few files released, other than what the bastardized Warren Commission and the subsequent House Subcommittee on Assassinations (HSCA) wanted released. Thus, Oliver felt it incumbent upon him to "fill the information" hole with what he called a "counter myth" to the "Warren Commission myth" of the assassination."  Stone, in multiple interviews before the film's release (e.g. on CNN's 'Larry King Live') never claimed 'JFK' was factual, or historical.

But the corpora-media, so eager to reinforce Americans' somnolence, went nuts. Indeed, almost exactly four years ago I noted how the WaPo spinoff mag NEWSWEEK, in its Dec. 23, 1991 cover -  fairly screamed: The Twisted Truth of 'JFK': Why Oliver Stone's Film Can't Be Trusted'  

The actual article, bordering on the hysterical and penned by a Kenneth Auchincloss, lambasted Stone for attempting to "recreate history", and concluded that anything which does , "distorts history".  But time, and the release of millions of files under the JFK Records Act (in the wake of demands made in the aftermath of 'JFK') have proven Stone correct in many aspects. For example, on the existence and basis of National Security Action Memorandum 263. Hence, it was clear that Stone was spot -on correct in his prescient selection of at least one motive for the assassins.  Egg on the face? All over Auchinchloss and cohort.

In the case of Snowden, the how and where to do with  his feat of exposing  NSA's gargantuan bulk data collection program has been massively documented, as by The UK Guardian and The Washington Post. Much of this was already presented for the general viewer in the Oscar-winning documentary 'Citizen Four' by Laura Poitras, e.g.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2015/02/citizen-four-documentary-every-citizen.html

Referencing the blowback from Snowden's disclosures some six months after he made his way to Hong Kong, Federal Circuit Judge Richard Leon averred  that the mass collection of phone metadata, revealed by the Guardian in June, was "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary" in its scope.  He also wrote:

"The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979,"

The film itself opens with Snowden (incredibly played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt)  meeting up with 'Citizen Four' documentary producer Poitras and journalist Glenn Greenwald in his Hong Kong hotel room. There, after taking precautions from snoops, he meticulously relates his story and this is where we jump through the fact to fiction 'looking glass'. In the words of NY  Times critic A.O. Scott "it could be described as a fictional making of feature about Citizen Four."  A verdict with which I must wholeheartedly concur. Hence, the movie 'Snowden' is told via progressive  flashbacks as part of the 'Citizen Four' backstory.

For those unfamiliar with it Snowden's personal history then unfolds from ca. 2004 to the near present. It begins with his recounting why he joined the Army that year to fight against the "bad guys". Spurred by 9/11 he wanted to do something to help his country. His Army ambitions (Special forces)  came to a halt because of health issues and instead he ended up in the intelligence services, first working for the CIA, then for the NSA, and finally as a contract worker for the latter. The story follows him from his first intel post in Geneva, Switzerland, then to Tokyo, then Ft. Meade (NSA HQ near Columbia, MD) and finally the NSA operation base known as "the Tunnel" on Oahu.  All this time he is also trying to maintain a relationship with gf Lindsay Mills .played by Shailene Woodley (of 'Divergent' series fame).

What every citizen really needs to see, is the extent of spying shown on the assorted CIA, NSA screens that Snowden and cohort are privy too.   Let us acknowledge that some cinematic license is taken here in the interest of time compression, convenience and cinematography - but also acknowledge this does not detract from the basic truth of how the programs, systems worked. During one scene, where the young target had foolishly left her laptop web cam exposed, wifey turned to me and whispered: "See, that's why I always put solid tape over that web cam eye!"  The scene then unfolds as we watch the girl on the screen strip, and Snowden  - nicknamed 'Snow White' - could scarcely believe his eyes.

The images showing the bulk data phone collection and how just "three jumps" can lead to 2.5 million potential targets (most of them innocent) will also blow viewers' minds.  Not long after we see Snowden's NSA handler (Corbin O'Brian)  barking: "Americans don't want liberty, they want security!" Really? And what kind of Americans are those? Two year olds still in nappies and sucking on sippy cups?

It has also  been hilarious (and somewhat infuriating)  to read the offal that passes for some reviews, like this garbage from one at The Toronto Star:

"With his gripping new docudrama Snowden, which just had its world premiere at TIFF, Stone is totally on the side of Edward Snowden, painting the fugitive ex-CIA and National Security Agency whistleblower as an American patriot, not the evil “hacker” that U.S. President Obama dismissed Snowden as when it all blew open in 2013."

Let me say here that ANY genuine patriot or sentient being, cognizant of the extent to which the NSA grabbed data, on everyone, would also back Snowden. The very notion of "bias"  in a film producer would be incomprehensible. This is because the level of deceit and despicable overreach in grabbing records - especially across the globe- beggars the imagination and desecrates the moral temperament.  We are talking here of ALL the following information which had been fair game for collection without a warrant, including:

the e-mail addresses you send to and receive from, and the subject lines of those messages; the phone numbers you dial, the numbers that dial in to your line, and the durations of the calls; the Internet sites you visit and the keywords in your Web searches; the destinations of the airline tickets you buy; the amounts and locations of your ATM withdrawals; and the goods and services you purchase on credit cards

Are reviewers, a majority of Americans or others, really ok with this bullshit/? Seriously? Then they can't have any complaints if the spooks turn the planet into a real panopticon.

So maybe the Canuck reviewer can be excused on the ground the Canadians don't really care about specific warrants for searches, as embodied in our 4th amendment.  (After all,  they sided with the British in the Revolutionary War.) Other reviewers complained about  "taking liberties"  with reality but they also have it wrong. A more sober take is the one by NY Times film critic A.O. Scott referencing Stone "embellishing the record in the service of drama and suspense". The fictional aspects - such as Snowden's use of the Rubik cube to conceal the micro SD card with critical files on it (9.4 mb worth) -  was merely to enhance the drama of what is a film - not a documentary.

In other words, like all great story tellers Stone had the good sense to grasp if he told the Snowden story straight - no embellishments -  he'd send most of the audience to sleep within twenty minutes or so.  This is why I also have problems with nitpicking twaddle such as appeared at Slate.com, i.e. "Snowden is a bad movie, stuffed with myth, short on drama".. Don't believe this claptrap - likely penned by an NSA or CIA media hack - for a nanosecond.  Indeed, such balderdash immediately caused me to rank Slate alongside rag blogs like Politico. It also jaundiced me in respect of ever trusting the judgment of a review on Slate.com again. If they could get this so wrong, what about any other films?

Near the end of the film we see and hear former NSA and CIA director Michael V. Hayden predicting that Snowden will waste away in Moscow.  In any case, whatever small tribulations Snowden has to endure in Russia are nothing compared to the despicable spectacle he'd face (in a military, Kangaroo-rigged court) if he ever returned to the U.S. He'd also likely be found guilty and suffer an even worse fate than Bradley Manning. They'd probably keep him naked in a solitary cell, fed only bread & water,  and water-boarded every 6 hours-   so enraged they'd be at how he exposed the underbelly of the national security state. (Which recall had no compunctions about blowing JFK's brains out on a Dallas' street.)

We all owe Snowden a debt of gratitude and those who say otherwise or call him a "traitor"  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.

See also:

http://www.progressive.org/news/2016/09/188945/oliver-stone%E2%80%99s-snowden-hero-ages

And:

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jun/05/edward-snowden-one-year-surveillance-debate-begins-future-privacy

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!

Edward Snowden Was Right to Crow!

As the embedded Neolib hacks and security statists screech in 'hair on fire' form about Edward Snowden's recent WaPo interview (2 days ago) and  his declaring "I have already won", let us bear in mind that he really has - never mind what the Constitutional traitors claim (including that he must return and face prosecution for his "crimes".) No,  he committed no crimes, what he did was to EXPOSE crimes committed by a national security state on combined crack, steroids and PCP!

Judge Richard Leon, in a 68 -page ruling issued in Washington last Monday, vindicated Snowden by arguing that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the US 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 on Monday.

Again, does anyone seriously believe we'd even be having this conversation, or know one damned thing about the NSA's run amuck global mass surveillance - extending to the Israeli PM, the German Chancellor as well as charitable aid workers working abroad - had Snowden not performed his constitutional duty and exposed these rats? Think about that!  As even Obama himself proclaimed:

"Just because you CAN do it doesn't mean you should!"

Well, fuckin' DUH! Of course not! 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').  In other words, we're pouring  tens of BILLIONS each year into bullshit to protect us from a bogeyman while these fuckers rip our rights away! Then add to that Rachel Maddow's analysis (2 yrs. ago)  that disclosed bin Laden's strategy was always to bankrupt us into spending insanity i.e.

http://brane-space.blogspot.com/2011/05/rachel-maddows-analysis-terrifying.html

So, Snowden was spot on,  and before anyone cites any "oaths" he took,  let us remind people his oath to the Constitution comes first. Even during the Nuremberg War Crimes trials, the Nazi scum were reminded that they had a higher duty to their consciences over and above any "oaths" taken to Hitler or the Reich laws. (This later became part of the Nuremberg Laws.)

Snowden put it supremely well in his WaPo interview:

“The oath of allegiance is not an oath of secrecy,” he said. “That is an oath to the Constitution. That is the oath that I kept that Keith Alexander and James Clapper did not.”

Let's also bear in mind it was Clapper who lied before a Senate hearing months before Snowden's leaks, telling everyone - in response to a direct and specific question - there was "no mass eollection of data". So how can we trust this scumball at all?

Snowden noted that those who accuse him of disloyalty, mistake his purpose. He said:

“I am not trying to bring down the NSA, I am working to improve the NSA, I am still working for the NSA right now. They are the only ones who don’t realize it.”

When he was asked who elected him to take on any responsibility he was blunt:

“Dianne Feinstein elected me when she asked softball questions( in committee hearings). Mike Rogers elected me when he kept these programs hidden. . . . The FISA court elected me when they decided to legislate from the bench on things that were far beyond the mandate of what that court was ever intended to do. The system failed comprehensively, and each level of oversight, each level of responsibility that should have addressed this, abdicated their responsibility.”

Contrary to the NSA's denials and lies,  Snowden,  beginning in October 2012, brought his misgivings to two superiors in the NSA’s Technology Directorate and two more in the NSA Threat Operations Center’s regional base in Hawaii. For each of them, and 15 other co-workers, Snowden said he opened a data query tool called BOUNDLESSINFORMANT, which used color-coded “heat maps” to depict the volume of data ingested by NSA taps.

His colleagues were often “astonished to learn we are collecting more in the United States on Americans than we are on Russians in Russia,”

Snowden elaborated:

“I asked these people, ‘What do you think the public would do if this was on the front page?’ ”

He noted that critics have accused him of bypassing internal channels of dissent. “How is that not reporting it? How is that not raising it?”

NSA spokeswoman Vanee Vines sent a prepared statement to The Post declaring there was no evidence that supported Snowden's contentions about going to higher ups. But WHY would there be? Is she daft enough to believe that the superiors Snowden went to would write up notes about it and file them? Or leave in place any scintilla of a computer file? What planet is she living on? Obviously, to preserve plausible deniability (and their jobs) - and especially if they even remotely suspected Snowden might act on matters himself -  they'd shut the fuck up and also ensure no paper trails existed. Hell, that's basic Spookery 101!

Before anyone castigates Snowden let's also recall how his disclosure of the NSA's  MUSCULAR project enraged and galvanized U.S. technology executives (who went to see Obama last Monday and demanded changes). They believed the NSA had lawful access to their front doors — and had broken down the back doors anyway.

Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith took to his company’s blog and called the NSA an “advanced persistent threat” — the worst of all fighting words in U.S. cybersecurity circles, generally reserved for Chinese state-sponsored hackers and sophisticated criminal enterprises. In other words, Smith portrayed our own spooks as the ENEMY.  They are, in his blog portrayal, the enemy within.

 

So in so many way, on so many levels, yes Snowden has already won. (In any case, I take his statement to be a direct snub of TIME in not choosing him as 'Person of the Year' as I wrote on in a previous blog post. As charismatic and decent a man as Pope Francis is, he simply didn't have the effect on global events that Snowden has.)

 

 

 
Most gratifying in Snowden's interview is how he bears no malice toward his peeved asshole detractors In the hope of keeping focus on the NSA, Snowden has ignored attacks on himself. He stated:

“Let them say what they want. It’s not about me.”

 

For example, former NSA and CIA director Michael V. Hayden predicted that Snowden will waste away in Moscow as an alcoholic, "like other defectors.” To this, Snowden shrugged. He does not drink at all. Never has., he said.  In any case, whatever small tribulations Snowden has to endure in Russia are nothing compared to the despicable spectacle he'd face (in a military, Kangaroo-rigged court) if he ever returned to the U.S. He'd also likely be found guilty and suffer an even worse fate than Bradley Manning. They'd probably keep him naked in a solitary cell, fed only bread & water,  and water-boarded every 6 hours-   so enraged they'd be at how he exposed the underbelly of the national security state. (Which recall had no compunctions about blowing JFK's brains out on a Dallas' street.)

 

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.

Edward Snowden Vindicated by Judge's Ruling That NSA Dragnet Program is Unconstitutional

"I have little doubt the author of our Constitution, James Madison,  would be aghast"

"The government does not cite a single instance where the program actually stopped an imminent attack"

 - Federal Circuit Judge Richard Leon ruling against NSA super dragnet spying yesterday.

Richard Leon is another hero and defender of the Constitution irrespective of whether or not his momentous ruling on the NSA monster spy programs are overturned on appeal. We know it only takes one voice, even in the minority, to espouse truth and constitutional principles even if liars, reprobates and traitors are arrayed against them - to the extent of re-doing earlier laws (like the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) to render the illegal, legal.

Judge Leon, in a 68 -page ruling issued in Washington on Monday, argued that the bulk collection of Americans’ telephone records by the National Security Agency is likely to violate the US constitution, in the most significant legal setback for the agency since the publication of the first surveillance disclosures by whistleblower  and constitutional hero, Edward Snowden.

Judge Leon 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.

You have nailed it, Judge Leon, and I already noted this in many previous posts. 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 violates directly the 4th amendment, and yeah, I'm as much a stickler about the 4th as the gun people are about the 2nd.

As I noted before, "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.

It is clear to me that Judge Leon recognizes this, even if neoliberal coward and administration mouthpiece Jay Carney (calling for Snowden's return and prosecution) doesn't. Will Carney ever pull his head out of his ass? Probably never!

But what do you expect from Carney? The ruling, by the US district court for the District of Columbia, is a blow to the Obama administration, and sets up a legal battle that will drag on for months, almost certainly destined to end up in the Supreme Court. It was welcomed by campaigners pressing to rein in the NSA, and by Snowden, who issued a rare public statement saying it had vindicated his disclosures. It is also likely to influence other legal challenges to the NSA, currently working their way through federal courts.

Judge Leon expressed doubt about the central rationale for the program cited by the NSA: that it is necessary for preventing terrorist attacks. “The government does not cite a single case in which analysis of the NSA’s bulk metadata collection actually stopped an imminent terrorist attack".

Leon added:

“Given the limited record before me at this point in the litigation – most notably, the utter lack of evidence that a terrorist attack has ever been prevented because searching the NSA database was faster than other investigative tactics – I have serious doubts about the efficacy of the metadata collection program as a means of conducting time-sensitive investigations in cases involving imminent threats of terrorism.”

If such instances  of actual success - based specifically on the dragnet programs - are not cited, then obviously we can't ascertain if the protection of the program is all based on some BS smokescreen  or not. Telling us that to provide the information would "risk national security" is horse patootey and insults our intelligence. It also gives cover to the spooks to do whatever the hell they want.

Leon’s opinion also contained stern and repeated warnings that he was inclined to rule that the metadata collection performed by the NSA – and defended vigorously by the NSA director Keith Alexander on CBS on Sunday night – was unconstitutional. (Alexander, treating us all like untutored children or idiots insisted he saw no other way to do the collection other than by mass dragnet - as one cheeky Denver Post letter writer put it, he could as well "put us all in prison then he can see and hear what we're doing and when any time he wants.")

Leon added:

“Plaintiffs have a substantial likelihood of showing that their privacy interests outweigh the government’s interest in collecting and analysing bulk telephony metadata and therefore the NSA’s bulk collection program is indeed an unreasonable search under the fourth amendment,”

Leon also said that the mass collection of phone metadata, revealed by the Guardian in June, was "indiscriminate" and "arbitrary" in its scope.  He also wrote:

"The almost-Orwellian technology that enables the government to store and analyze the phone metadata of every telephone user in the United States is unlike anything that could have been conceived in 1979,"

Referring to the year in which the US Supreme Court ruled on a fourth amendment case upon which the NSA now relies to justify the bulk records program. But he also implied that the later revision of that law was the main outrage: since it was done after the Bushies perpetrated warrantless wiretaps after 2005.  The pusillanimous punk traitor congress- instead of holding Bush to account and impeaching his sorry ass - let him get away with it by changing the 1978 FISA law to make mass warrantless wiretapping legal. It is amazing how few know about this and that all appeals to the later revised "law" are bogus.

Meanwhile, in a statement released subsequent to the ruling (related to Glenn Greenwald), Snowden said:

“I acted on my belief that the NSA's mass surveillance programs would not withstand a constitutional challenge, and that the American public deserved a chance to see these issues determined by open courts. Today, a secret program authorized by a secret court was, when exposed to the light of day, found to violate Americans’ rights. It is the first of many.”

We can only hope and trust this is the case, and that if and when it ends up at the Supreme Court they will perform their constitutional duty irrespective of their ideology.

Lastly, I was delighted to see Colorado Senator Mark Udall, a leading critic of the dragnet collection, welcomed the judgment.  In his words:

"The 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,"


Maybe one of these days, Mr. Obama - a  constitutional scholar at one time - will begin to see that.

Supporting the Bollocks of Corporate "Free Speech Rights"

Warnings like this are essential. Besides, no smoker is having a gun placed to his head and being forced to read them!


The recent decision of a federal judge to block a U.S. government plan that requires graphic warnings on cigarette packages, is a travesty. According to this misguided and foolish judge (WSJ today, p. A6), Richard Leon of the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, the "government was violating the free speech rights" of the Tobacco companies "by requiring them to display the images of diseased lungs and a body on an autopsy table".

Are you effing kidding me? "Violating their free speech rights"? THEY are commercial artifacts! They have no free speech rights! Hence, there are no constitutional grounds on which this rests, and never mind the spurious past rulings, such as the 1886 Santa Clara U.S. Surpeme court farce which first found for "corporate personhood" or the 2009 'Citizens United' ruling that allowed for "unlimited infusion of cash into political campaigns" to be treated as "free speech"..

ALL of these rulings are outright abominations, that in effect elevate corporations to super-citizen level, which means the rest of us as flesh and blood citizens must become vassals or slaves.

Consider: Unlike the normal fleshly person-citizen, these legal artifacts are able to live forever, or as close to that sublime state as de-regulating laws allow. They can live in multiple places at once (branch offices), and even transmogrify themselves via mergers, etc. or 'amputate' themselves into smaller companies bearing the same overall identity, and run by a single interlocking directorate.

These 'corporate persons' were (over time) also able to access a host of special rights and privileges - not afforded ordinary flesh and blood citizens. These included: special tax-write offs, government and state subsidies, as well as deductions.

They also use special tax gimmicks, and often the gov't abets these, for example, by not demanding that the profits repatriated from overseas operations are taxed. Meanwhile, while the on-paper tax rate is 35% the actual amount paid by the typical corporation is 12 1/2 percent according to a recent report in TIME (Feb. 20, p. 16).

Part of the reason for this aberration is that Uncle Sam himself "has allowed companies the right to write off 100% of the purchase price of new equipment in 2010 and 2011". This was done to theoretically "spur investment and create jobs". One wonders then how come these companies are still sitting on almost $1.5 trillion while job growth barely ekes in at 240,000 a month or barely double the population replacement level.

Whatever the reason, the engineered corporate tax avoidance has had a dunning effect on our society along with the top 1% escaping their own fair tax assessments. According to TIME, corporations in toto now account for only 9% of the nation's tax bill compared to 40% in 1943. That means citizens are now left to make up that difference, and the ones who are happen to be in the lower quintiles of income - even as the upper 5% have seen their wealth soar.

Corporate tax perks are even more deleterious to our civil society because the money saved from not paying taxes is used to mount specious lobbying efforts, or pay for toxic super PAC political ads, or devise blatantly wrong legal cases....such as those which the Tobacco companies have used to make this federal judge believe there is a "substantial likelihood of winning any case".

Thus, the untaxed corporate money goes to enhance corporate privilege even as it adds another specious veneer to "corporate speech" rights at the expense of the rest of us.

According to this same Judge Leon, the proposed labels (ibid.):

"go beyond purely factual and uncontroversial disclosure"

And:

"The graphic images are designed to neither protect the consumer from confusion or deception, nor to increase consumer awareness of smoking risks, rather they were crafted to effect a stronge emotional response calculated to provoke the viewer to quit or never start smoking."

Of course, the good Judge misses several key points in this faux ruling:

1) No smoker is forced to read any warning! A "consumer" can just purchase his death pack, light up and smoke to his heart's or lung's content and never glance at the warning no matter how garish. No one is putting a .44 magnum to his cranium to force eyeballs to the warning label!

What the Judge is asserting is that people are no more than automatons - even more chattel than the corps believe. If they pick up a pack of cigs, their willpower is overcome and they must focus on the colorful warning just like droog Alex was forced to watch - with eyelids pinned open - the parade of horrors during his special treatments in the flick 'Clockwork Orange'. They have no choice, they MUST read the labels and warnings and start crying and yelping: "Oh ....ooooh....I dare not buy that or this will happen to moi!"

Bollocks!

2) The Judge disses over 3 decades of firm medical support for the variety -severity of diseases that occur to lungs from smoking. If he were to see actual autopsy images of diseased lungs he might not be so cavalier.

3) Obviously, given a 2.5 sq. inch space one cannot produce a reasoned tract with statistics to support the label! (Can you see the eyes closing?) Thus, the only alternative is a much abbreviated, high- impact message ....but what's the big deal?

Such messages are all over our TV's at the behest of corporations! From the latest drug sex aids like Cialis to ....you name it! If those bear intrinsic "high emotional content" then why can't the government use its own forms to offset corporate influence toward a negative end?

4) Legal precedents already established in Europe have no issue with such warnings and have also been successful especially in reducing the smoking -disease rates of the young! But of course, in an established corporatocracy like ours, the citizen has few protections and rights. Thus, even as Europeans protect their citizens with "emotive" warnings allowed on tobacco products, they also protect citizens' rights to privacy - hence prohibit trading on their personal information such as bank accounts, social security numbers and other invasions which are somehow allowed in the US of A.

Why allowed? Obviously because we are vassals to a corporate oligarchy that feels they can do whatever the hell they wish.

Just one question for the Judge:

Will you then stand for Obama's Affordable Health Plan, now that you've approved millions of new lung diseased citizens who likely won't be able to get insurance to treate their lung cancers, COPD and emphesema anyplace else?

If not, and you issue a ruling against the "Nanny state" you are nothing but a flat out hypocrite.