Reform the 'Patriot Act'? Of course!

Now that the federal appeals court ruling has come down that the main NSA surveillance program - based on the Patriot Act  - has been illegal, what should be the reaction of our congress critters? Well, total reform! But instead we see the usual lunatics on the Right saying it must be sustained. Mitch McConnell, not known for being the sharpest knife in the drawer, actually said that had the current  dragnet, mass surveillance program existed back in Sept. 2001 the attacks never would have occurred.

Of course, this is out and out blatant balderdash. But, as usual the 'pukes play on Americans' short term memories of events to exploit new fears. The facts? There was a surfeit of data available at the time that - had the Bushies paid the slightest attention - could have thwarted the attacks.

Nowhere do reepos like Marco Rubio or McConnell mention how FBI agent Coleen Rowley  and her Minneapolis FBI field office  nabbed "20th hijacker" Zaccharias Moussaou  just before 9/11- and detained him.  The Minneapolis FBI office immediately sought a criminal warrant to search his belongings  but were prevented from doing so. Management at the FBI dealing with the request threw up numerous obstacles to the agents, and even withheld information from them, including the now-infamous Phoenix Memo written by an agent in Arizona warning of terrorists training in flight schools for a possible upcoming attack. The request was denied and agents were prevented from searching Moussaoui's laptop, which contained information that would have tipped the FBI off to the 9/11 plot.

So the information was right there, suspect at hand and a critical search in the offing, but it was ignored!  Bush himself stands accused of the most blatant carelessness in not responding proactively  to the President's Daily Briefs (PDBs)  that came his way that August. If one goes to the official 9/11 Commission Report he will find the following, under the section: ‘The System was Blinking Red’

Page 254:

"Each PDB (President's Daily Brief) consists of a series of six to eight relatively short articles or briefs covering a broad array of topics; CIA staff decides which subjects are the most important on any given day. There were more than 40 intelligence articles in the PDBs from January 20 to September 10, 2001, that related to Bin Ladin. "

On page 255:

"In the spring of 2001, the level of reporting on terrorist threats and planned attacks increased dramatically to its highest level since the millennium alert. At the end of March, the intelligence community disseminated a terrorist threat advisory, indicating a heightened threat of Sunni extremist terrorist attacks against U.S. facilities, personnel, and other interests."

And further (ibid.):

"On March 23, in connection with discussions about possibly reopening Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House, Clarke warned National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice that domestic or foreign terrorists might use a truck bomb—their “weapon of choice”—on Pennsylvania Avenue. That would result, he said, in the destruction of the West Wing and parts of the residence. He also told her that he thought there were terrorist cells within the United States, including al Qaeda."

Further (ibid.):

"In May 2001, the drumbeat of reporting grew louder with reports to top officials that “Bin Ladin public profile may presage attack” and “Bin Ladin network’s plans advancing.” In early May, a walk-in to the FBI claimed there was a plan to launch attacks on London, Boston, and New York.

Attorney General John Ashcroft was briefed by the CIA on May 15 regarding al Qaeda generally and the current threat reporting specifically. The next day brought a report that a phone call to a U.S. embassy had warned that Bin Ladin supporters were planning an attack in the United States using “high explosives.”

Of course, the most sensational Daily Brief of all was that dated August 6, 2001 and headed: Bin Ladin Determined To Strike in US . Bush received this while at his Crawford, TX retreat. (He took more vacations than any other president in his first year alone.) And how did Bush respond to this? He gave a quick glance then went to clear some ....bush. But what ought to have made his eyeballs pop out was the short paragraph reading (p. 255-56):

"An Egyptian Islamic Jihad (EIJ) operative told an [—] service at the same time that Bin Ladin was planning to exploit the operative’s access to the US to mount a terrorist strike."

I also found it interesting to read through the communication exchanges as the hijackings became apparent, especially for American Flt. 11. According to the transcripts in the Report (page 20):

FAA: Hi. Boston Center TMU [Traffic Management Unit], we have a problem here.We have a hijacked aircraft headed towards New York, and we need you guys to,we need someone to scramble some F-16s or something up there, help us out.

NEADS: Is this real-world or exercise?

FAA: No, this is not an exercise, not a test.

The reaction of NEADS (National Emergency Air Defense System), i.e. asking “Is this real world or exercise?” is instructional. Evidently, as came out later, no less than five different military “exercises” were planned and underway, including:

‘Operation Vigilant Guardian’ which simulated hijacked planes in the northeast sector-corridor. This definitely contributed to the confused response on the given day, as evidenced after NORAD received a phone call from Boston Center about a hijacking and Lt. Col. Dawne Deskins responded “It must be part of the exercise”.

Thus delaying critical response to the REAL attacks in NYC.

Then there was ‘Operation Northern Vigilance’ – planned months in advance of 9/11 (tracked to when the peak of terror warnings were being issued in May, as reported by the 9/11 Report) and for which jet fighters were removed from the east coast and sent to Alaska and Canada. Thereby, leaving a security hole at the precise date and region which would be most directly affected

As I learned more about these exercises, and the withdrawal of needed air security, the similarity to what transpired in the days before the Kennedy assassination was striking. Researchers learned only in the wake of that executive action that: 1) The Secret Service detail had been changed in the days leading up to the Dallas motorcade, with an inexperienced agent in Kennedy’s car, while the more experienced guy (Cliff Hill) protected LBJ, and 2) The usual Army security detail from Ft. Sam Houston, TX was removed so their presence was nowhere on Dallas’ streets on Nov. 22, 1963. Ordinarily they’d have had building oversight, ensuring no open windows and have had snipers posted themselves as a counter measure.

Were the 9/11 military exercises, planned in advance as a cover or distraction to make effective air defense response more unlikely? The basic answer is we don’t know, although the extent of withdrawn protection makes one suspicious.

Without wading into the morass of 9/11 conspiracy theories  - most of which I deem improbable - the main  point in context here (re: renewing of full Patriot Act) is there was: a) ample surveillance data present at the time to have stopped the attacks if proper response from authorities was forthcoming, and b) there were likely ample military resources to prevent the attacks had these not been displaced to a location where they became useless.

In effect, if a surfeit of data available then didn't stop the  9/11  attacks it is  logical to assert that vacuuming up massive amounts of data now won't make us any safer either. It will merely increase the 'haystack' in which the critical 'needle' must be found. Hence, we don't need the Patriot Act as it stands and it merely serves as an excuse to undermine civil liberties, nothing more.

As Sen. Ron Wyden put it this morning on MSNBC, citing the President's own Advisory Group  - (made up of "very conservative people with strong national security credentials") said on page 104 of their report:

"Collecting all of these phone records from law-abiding Americans with no connection to wrongdoing does not really advance the cause of fighting terror. That information can be obtained by  conventional means."

To his credit, Sen. Wyden made clear that if the fear mongers seek to go with a "short term extension" he plans to filibuster - unless there are reforms to the bulk collection program. Wyden stated he's "tired of extending a bad law".

Let's also recall that one of the original authors of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, has asserted that Section 215 was never intended to go as far as Bush and Obama have driven it. Writing in the Summer, 2014 issue of the ACLU Stand:

"Section 215 was intended to give the government the ability to secure 'any tangible thing' connected to specific terrorism investigations. As is now common knowledge, the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue. If we had known during any subsequent re-authorizations what we now know about Section 215's blatant misinterpretation, Congress would have allowed it to sunset.  And if it's not fixed by the 2015 re-authorization, Congress will.

The basic idea behind the American search and seizure law is that you can't investigate unless you can first provide at least some articulable reason to do so. Investigations just can't be arbitrary. The government's definition, on the other hand, is the very definition of arbitrary. "

Let us hope Congress processes that carefully, before taking any reckless action to approve this egregious law's extension or reinstatement.

Vanity Fair Poll Shows Most Americans Remain Brainwashed Idiots

"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 last July

"It is a fact that every democracy that's existed  has committed suicide." - John Adams


The recent Vanity Fair poll results on ethics, disclosed this morning on CBS Early Show, is enough to drive the true citizen into permanent depression. In one poll question, to do with Edward Snowden's ethics in disclosing NSA surveillance overreach, 54 percent asserted he was in the wrong, only 27 percent that he was right to do so. Meanwhile, even more atrocious, nearly one fifth of respondents (19%) said they "had never heard of Edward Snowden". That means a total of 54% + 19% = 73% of those polled are either dolts or brainwashed morons. That's essentially three-fourths of all Americans, assuming this sample is in any way representative, which I believe (from past polls) it is.

The VF hack who released the results on the air said it showed "Americans' opinions had evolved from when they first thought he was a hero."

No, that's not it at all. It shows these fools have been brainwashed by the steady,  anti-Snowden media portrayals and drumbeat! And the people were too damned dumb to see through it, and how their minds were being manipulated. Worse, a fifth of the morons were so detached from their responsibilities as citizens - to protect their 4th amendment rights - they didn't even know who Snowden was.  It boggles the rational mind to comprehend how a people who once valued liberty and had enough education to see through vapid media PR, now can't tell their asses from holes in the ground

Sickening! Do the people of this nation even deserve their civil liberties? I doubt it.

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..

We also expect them to be informed enough to grasp the extent of NSA's unconstitutional mass data collection. And hence to realize that if NSA can snatch their email address books, Google searches and content, web browsing histories, Twitter messages, and cell phone calls as well as all telephone call logs, they are in the condition described by Kenneth Roth of Human Rights Watch, who described the NSA programs to the Guardian thusly:

"The Snowden revelations have made clear that there has been an intrusion on our right to privacy of unprecedented scope, yet the government is dismissing any complaints about our right to privacy as irrelevant."

Roth said: "I used to be a prosecutor – I used to put pen registers on people's phones, collecting the numbers that you dial – but I had to manually compile the numbers. It was very labor intensive, and hence self-limiting. Today, the computer can piece together your entire personal life in a matter of seconds."

These damned "Americans" who polled against Snowden make me want to puke. I also know they'd make my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh puke, and believe he'd wasted his blood fighting for independence and liberty. Why do it for a bunch of ninnies, sissies and parasites who'd give their freedom away for a song, just to feel "safe"?  They are a waste of space and remind me of the "good Germans" who looked the other way as their friends and neighbors were trotted into camps for criticizing Hitler, the Third Reich or harboring Jews. Those "good Germans", after WWII. had to be dragged into the concentration camps to be shown first hand what their passive compliance engendered during Hitler's reign.

So really, Americans ought to be getting on their damned knees and THANKING Snowden for revealing what he has about the disgusting trampling of their 4th amendment rights.

Sadly, this farce shows how easily people in this country can be led by the nose, and I warrant it's mainly because they don't read enough. They don't read history, don't read economics or politics, or even the news. They certainly don't go to the next level in separating what's sold them via PR, from facts. No, it's easier to stay mired in the vapid, solipsistic virtual "friend" world of Facebook, or Twitter.

They remind me of the same buffoons and passive nincompoops who willingly allowed their polling to be gamed and "moved" via media propaganda back in 2003 - ultimately allowing Bush Jr. to launch the Iraq War, and our congress critters to meekly agree (so terrified were they of the polling).

These "Americans" are a disgrace, and don't warrant the appellation of citizen!

See also:

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/tom-engelhardt/57357/the-fourth-branch-the-rise-to-power-of-the-national-security-state

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!

Is No One Prepared to Collar the NSA and Its Zealous Overeach?

Edward Snowden, a true patriot, receives his ACLU card from Anthony Romero.

Does the NSA even understand the meaning of the 4th amendment? Does Congress? Especially the weasel rats that signed onto the FISA Amendments Act of 2008  which ratified and expanded the warrantless surveillance program originating under Bush Jr. But rather than adhering to their sworn oaths to protect and defend the Constitution , these vermin rats legalized Bush's transgressions - thereby setting the stage for the latest outrages.

For those who may not have been paying attention, a 4-month investigation by the WaPo has found that ordinary Internet users, American and non-American alike, far outnumber legally targeted foreigners in the communications intercepted by the National Security Agency from U.S. digital networks. In other words, the so-called protective surveillance is merely an extended fishing expedition that often scarfs up incidental private material of average Americans.

Most pertinent: Nine of 10 internet account holders found in a large cache of intercepted conversations, which former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided in full to The Post, were not the intended surveillance targets but were caught in a net the agency had cast for somebody else.

What sort of stuff was caught? According to the Post:


"Medical records sent from one family member to another, résumés from job hunters and academic transcripts of schoolchildren. In one photo, a young girl in religious dress beams at a camera outside a mosque.   Scores of pictures show infants and toddlers in bathtubs, on swings, sprawled on their backs and kissed by their mothers. In some photos, men show off their physiques. In others, women model lingerie, leaning suggestively into a webcam or striking risque poses in shorts and bikini tops."

Can this even be believed? I mean, this is insight into an agency gone rogue and even crazy!

Taken together, the files offer an unprecedented vantage point on the changes wrought by Section 702 of the FISA amendments, which enabled the NSA to make freer use of methods that for 30 years had required probable cause and a warrant from a judge. One program, code-named PRISM, extracts content stored in user accounts at Yahoo, Microsoft, Facebook, Google and five other leading Internet companies. Another, known inside the NSA as Upstream, intercepts data on the move as it crosses the U.S. junctions of global voice and data networks. According to the Post:

"No government oversight body, including the Justice Department, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, intelligence committees in Congress or the president’s Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, has delved into a comparably large sample of what the NSA actually collects — not only from its targets but also from people who may cross a target’s path."

Let's also reference here the basis of how this crap evolved, and make reference here to Jim Sensenbrenner who co-authored the Patriot Act (with Patrick Leahy). In the Summer 2014 issue of the ACLU STAND magazine, Sensenbrenner writes:

"Section 215 was intended to give the government the ability to secure 'any tangible thing' connected to specific terrorism investigations. As is now common knowledge, the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue. If we had known during any subsequent re-authorizations what we now know about Section 215's blatant misinterpretation, Congress would have allowed it to sunset.  And if it's not fixed by the 2015 re-authorization, Congress will.

The basic idea behind the American search and seizure law is that you can't investigate unless you can first provide at least some articulable reason to do so. Investigations just can't be arbitrary. The government's definition, on the other hand, is the very definition of arbitrary. "

Thus Snowden's revelations have consistently shown the extent of overreach by the NSA in its illegal mass surveillance, via assorted programs including PRISM, XKeyscore and MUSCULAR. Congress refuses to act in a substantial and coherent way (with the exception of the USA Freedom Act- which trolls like Feinstein have vowed to gut) because they see an advantage in looking the other way. Besides, most are cowards and don't want to be criticized as "unpatriotic" by the FOXite orbit.

By law, the NSA may “target” only foreign nationals located overseas unless it obtains a warrant based on probable cause from a special surveillance court. For collection under PRISM and Upstream rules, analysts must state a reasonable belief that the target has information of value about a foreign government, a terrorist organization or the spread of nonconventional weapons.

But the indiscriminate NSA net discloses "warrants based on probable cause" are mostly a contrived fiction. Most  of the people caught up in those programs were not the targets and would not lawfully qualify as such. “Incidental collection” of third-party communications is inevitable in many forms of surveillance, but in other contexts the U.S. government works harder to limit and discard irrelevant data. In criminal wiretaps, for example, the FBI is supposed to stop listening to a call if a suspect’s wife or child is using the phone. Why does the NSA get a pass or take a pass? Because as Sensenbrenner notes: "the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue".


Worse, many congress critters and Senators have since signed on to this perfidy and encouraged even stronger surveillance.  Recall back in November, Feinstein tabled her own bill to counter the USA Freedom Act of Sensenbrenner and Leahy. It basically codified the ability of the National Security Agency to search its troves of foreign phone and email communications for Americans’ information, and permit law enforcement agencies to search the vast databases as well. In effect, it would both make permanent a loophole permitting the NSA to search for Americans’ identifying information without a warrant – and, formalize an ambiguity that might allow the FBI, the DEA and other law enforcement agencies to do the same thing.

In other words, it's surveillance on PCP plus crack. Multiplied "warrants" issued, all without proper cause, since such cause (under the 4th) must be attached to individual warrants. You simply cannot extract individual cause or guilt from mass, warrantless search. Once you cross that boundary you go over the precipice and become - if not already - a fascist surveillance state.  According to Michelle Richardson, the surveillance lobbyist for the ACLU:

"For the first time, the statute would explicitly allow the government to proactively search through the NSA data troves of information without a warrant.   It may also expand current practices by allowing law enforcement to directly access US person information that was nominally collected for foreign intelligence purposes. This fourth amendment back door needs to be closed, not written into stone.”

And yet, fellow citizens, that is what we are on the verge of, unless courageous people dedicated to the Constitution act and stand up on principle.

The problem is that as the hysteria over the ISIS group in Iraq increases, and "national security" again instills fear in too many, more congress critters may prefer to opt for "security" than civil liberty. In other words, another round of terrorist fear may well spark even more draconian national security dragnets with more Americans caught up in the web.

Obviously, many Americans are simply too lame or dumb to care.  And probably see nothing wrong in the Post's revelations. Wives picked up in skimpy Victoria's Secret lingerie  posing on their beds, or toddlers frolicking in bathtubs? No problem! These mock  'Muricans will simply lay down like dogs and say 'I  just wanna  be made safe from Baghdadi and ISIS, so do it some more!"   Which shows they have no grasp of the 4th amendment and probably don't deserve liberty in any case. They are an affront to what my Revolutionary War ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh fought for.

Worse, they are like the 'good Germans' who looked the other way as Hitler's Gestapo collected information on all their friends and neighbors - and they even provided extra help. Sadly, we have to share the country with these security lap dogs, as we do Neoliberal traitors to the Constitution like Dianna Feinstein and Lindsey Graham.

The true citizen can only hope that at some stage a real patriot -  or preferably patriots - stands with Edward Snowden to help collar the NSA nuts gone wild, and steer this nation back to surveillance sobriety and temperance. If not, the last vestiges of privacy will soon be a long lost memory never to be resurrected again. We will then be on our way to mutating to a full fascist state.
  
See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/robert-scheer/56797/hillary-clinton-flaunts-her-surveillance-state-baggage

A Day for All Americans to Be More Aware of Their 4th Amendment Rights- And How They've Been Eroded

Above, Edward Snowden receives his ACLU membership card from Anthony Romero, head of the ACLU

As Americans fire up their grills and barbecue pits today, and quaff gallons of beer, one hopes they also give a thought to what the day is really about. Hint: It's not just about entertainment and eats, but also about history.  What was the War of Independence fought over anyway? Do most people today even know? Did they ever study it or track relatives who participated in it?

Fortunately, I hail from a family that's documented much of the associated history. (Which my wife has excavated via ancestry.com and discussions with cousins, other relatives discovered in her genealogical searches)  My great grandmother, Eliza Brumbaugh Stahl,  also had many occasions to regale grandson, Curtis Jr. (my dad), regarding the exploits of ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh - who fought with the Pennsylvania Regiment in the War of Independence. Like many of the colonists, Conrad was enraged by the Stamp Act of 1765 (which imposed stamp taxes on all publications originating in the colonies) but his greatest ire was reserved for the Writs of Assistance. This was one of the outrages in the 1770s that led directly to the Revolutionary War and involved the use of indiscriminate mass warrants.  The British used the Writs to defy and besmirch any concept of the "personal" and smashed into colonists' homes on any pretext- tearing them apart.

By the 1770s the British use of the Writs of Assistance had become widespread and enraged all those affected. As one academic site explained:

"Most notably, the writs allowed officials to enter and ransack private homes without proving probable cause for suspicion, a traditional prerequisite to a search."

The Writs then provided the 'fuel' for the Revolution but the pamphlet 'Common Sense' -  by Thomas Paine, provided the spark to ignite it.  Make no mistake the pamphlet is an unapologetic polemic and I would recommend that readers unfamiliar with it at least read this key chapter:
http://www.bartleby.com/133/3.html

Try to put yourself back in the shoes of the colonists at the time, and imagine how Paine's words would spur them to action.

Now come forward 238 years and look at today's situation. What do you see? How would Conrad Brumbaugh react if informed of the changes in 4th amendment rights since he shed blood for those rights?  In writing the 4th amendment, the framers were motivated more than anything by the excesses of the Writs of Assistance.  This is why they deliberately singled out the need for authorities to obtain specific or individual warrants - mass warrants were anathema. The framers wanted no repeat of the outrages that launched the Revolution.

Yet that is exactly what's transpired! The Writs of Assistance bear perfect analogy to what the NSA is getting away with today using the mass warrants and its PRISM, Xkeyscore and MUSCULAR programs. And who today would be the new Thomas Paine? None other than Edward Snowden! In his recent interview (ACLU Stand, Summer 2014) with Anthony Romero of the ACLU (after being presented with his new ACLU membership card) Snowden was asked what he wanted to come out of all the turmoil and disruption to his life.  Also what he aspired to. He responded:

"My main purpose was simply to allow the average American to understand the policies of his government, that he wasn't asked about. And to allow us, as a civil body, to decide if this was the right thing and the direction we want to continue in.....there's a danger when the government is drafting and implementing policies in the dark, without the input of the voting public. Even the full body of congress wasn't aware of these programs"

Asked then about the relevance of the Fourth amendment today in relation to the past, Snowden answered:

"I think the 21st century Fourth Amendment can actually be the same as the 20th century version, and the 19th century version and the 18th century version because it's written in such clear terms that it doesn't need to be rewritten. It's couched in language like "unreasonable search and seizure", right?  If we have a specific reason - if we have an oath or affirmation that there is probable cause to peel back and intrude upon the civil rights of a target individual. That's the traditional purpose of investigative authorities, whether it's a law enforcement or intelligence investigation.

But the two parts of which we have to keep in the 21st century are not only that unreasonable searches are prohibited - where the NSA can't go in and look at someone's information in the first place unless they have a suspicion for doing so.

It's not reasonable for the NSA to collect every phone call of every American...without  suspicion justifying it."

Co-author of the Patriot Act, Jim Sensenbrenner, supports Snowden's take, pertaining to Sec. 215 enfolded into the "FISA Amendments Act of 2008"  which ratified and expanded the warrantless surveillance program originating under Bush Jr. Sensenbrenner, in the same issue (op. cit. 'I Wrote the Patriot Act - Now Let's Fix It', p. 10) writes:

"Section 215 was intended to give the government the ability to secure "any tangible thing" connected to specific terrorism investigations. As is now common knowledge, the Bush and Obama administrations took the limited power Congress intended and went rogue. If we had known during any subsequent re-authorizations what we now know about Section 215's blatant misinterpretation, Congress would have allowed it to sunset.  And if it's not fixed by the 2015 re-authorization, Congress will.

The basic idea behind the American search and seizure law is that you can't investigate unless you can first provide at least some articulable reason to do so. Investigations just can't be arbitrary. The government's definition, on the other hand, is the very definition of arbitrary. "

Indeed, Snowden's revelations have shown us the extent of the NSA mass surveillance,  the arbitrary use of mass warrants and  discloses a rejection not only of citizens’ fundamental right to privacy but any right to be secure in one’s person, papers, effects.  Conrad Brumbaugh and all of his cohort would be outraged and want to take up arms again if presented with Snowden's findings.  He would assert there's little difference between the current excesses and the British Writs of Assistance.

Incredibly, despite this, the most recent insult is the finding by a recent report — produced by a five-person panel picked by the president  that the Section 702 program was important and "narrowly legal".  This, after the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board had more than 100 facts declassified, whereupon board chairman David Medine boasted at a press conference, for its report on NSA’s Internet surveillance program and how it used Section 702 of the "FISA Amendments Act". (Again, which validated the illegal warrantless surveillance of the Bushies)

Before anyone congratulates Medine, let's bear in mind that the PCLOB relied heavily on a report written by NSA’s privacy officer that purported to provide new information; even when NSA released the report in April, however, that report stopped short of reporting all the known details about the 702 program and as such read like a press release. Compounding this 'fox helping the henhouse' meme is the fact that Medine did not say what those newly declassified facts included, but there are a number of footnotes that refer to and describe still-redacted parts of at least one previously released report.   In addition, in recent days, the government has released a transparency report admitting that the government collected 89,138 targets under the Section 702 program, and released a report to Sen. Ron Wyden providing the numbers of “back door searches” various agencies conducted last year.

Anyone paying attention? Americans should be, especially now as the hysteria over the ISIS punks and wannabe jihadists ramps up, and which will likely be used for even more warrantless searches. All done to keep us "safe" of course.

But let's recognize that PCLOB's finding has been limited by the government’s own desire to pretend nothing Snowden released has been released. (Got that?) Given that there’s a copy in the public domain, there’s really little excuse for the government to hide the most current procedures (except, perhaps, to make court challenges to the program more difficult).

"NSA programs narrowly legal?' ROTFL! What discredits the PCLOB report are its claims that both Americans and non-Americans will be protected by a requirement the government tell criminal defendants if it uses Section 702-derived information against them. In fact, the government had never complied with this requirement until last year, simply ignoring that requirement of the law for five years. Worse still, when the ACLU tried to challenge Section 702, DOJ falsely told the Supreme Court it had been "complying with that requirement".  But it still hasn’t corrected that false claim. While true,  the government has started giving a few defendants the required notice, it has not given notice to all known defendants caught using Section 702. In fact, the two people named in its report (and one named in their earlier report) as having been identified using Section 702 never got such notice.

It is public and unclassified information that the government has not complied with a crucial aspect of the law. Not only did PCLOB not consider that non-compliance in its assessment of the program’s legality and constitutionality. But it claimed it had found no instance of deliberate non-compliance. 1984 anyone?  Where is Emmanuel Goldstein and his Newspeak expose when we need him?

It is long past time, given Snowden's revelations, Americans sit up and take notice on how their precious 4th amendment rights have been eaten away, especially on a day dedicated to American Independence.

Are Americans truly independent? Or are they ever more dependent on a metastasizing, national security "Pappy" state to keep them out of harm's way from them nasty jihadists....while their most basic rights become redundant?

Supreme Court's Decision on Cell Phone Searches Also Has Implications for NSA Mass Surveillance

"The fundamental reason for the conversion of the state into a gigantic spy apparatus is the nature of deeply destructive domestic and foreign policies which the government has so forcefully pursued. The vast expansion of the police state apparatus is not a response to the terror attack of 9/11. The geometrical growth of spies, secret police budgets, and the vast intrusion into all citizen communications coincides with the wars across the globe. The decisions to militarize US global policy requires vast budgetary re-allocation , slashing social spending to fund empire-building. 

Mass spying is designed to identify all citizens who oppose both imperial wars and destruction of domestic welfare." -  James Petras, in an August, 2012 article on American loss of civil liberties.


The Supreme Court's 9-0 decision yesterday,  declaring that any cell phone searches by cops (who stop motor vehicles)  requires individual warrants  should not have been any surprise to defenders of the Constitution and specifically 4th amendment rights.  That it was a victory for citizen privacy rights embodied in the 4th amendment is an understatement. Let us reprise and re-read that amendment again, which forms the cornerstone of what makes this nation different from all others:

“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.”

The Justices' unanimous, broadly written and emphatic decision vindicated this amendment and also laid waste to the Obama administration's ludicrous analogy that cell phones were "like wallets". Such constitutional deafness may also explain why the Obama-ites see no problem in NSA mass surveillance and why they regard Edward Snowden as a criminal instead of a whistleblowing patriot as most of us who respect the Constitution do.

I mean think about it,  for god's sake! Cell phones  - LIKE one's home computer - carry everything about a person' identity, life and transactions,, including: photographs, email, banking records, medical records. Why would grabbing a person's cell not be a violation of the 4th? Only a person or group blind to the amendment and what it states would be oblivious to that and regard it only like a "wallet" which has a few credit cards perhaps and an ID, but not the contents of one's personal life.

As Justice Roberts declared as part of his opinion:

"Sensitive personal information can form a revealing montage of a user's life and the same cannot be said of a photograph or two tucked inside a wallet"

Surely now, it can't be only me that sees ramifications to NSA mass surveillance on the indiscriminate scope revealed by Snowden. Specifically, in the same way cops can no longer  rummage through your cell phone on a de facto fishing expedition the NSA shouldn't be able to do the same with your computer (laptop, etc.) files...OR your cell phone.

In other words, if the Justices' ruling applies to over eager cops, it also needs to apply to an over eager NSA. They also need to obtain specific warrants as opposed to the 4th amendment violation mass warrants issued under a revised 2011 FISA law that debased and undermined the original.

The same arguments that apply with such force to cell phones, must also apply to any other devices that hold one's personal life profiles, including desktops, laptops, notebooks, smart phones etc.  Note, “secure in one’s person, house, papers, effects” implies PRIVACY! And it applies not only to your home but everything in it containing sensitive personal information. These are after all MY private papers, my private effects, my house, etc. If an inherent right to privacy under the 4th was a myth then being secure in one’s person, papers, effects wouldn’t matter.

Hell, the SC Justices could have ruled to let the whole freakin’ world see ‘em on anyone's cell! They didn't because they understood the language of the 4th is ironclad.  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.

Readers also might wish to recall or reference that one of the key outrages in the 1770s that led to the Revolutionary War (which my ancestor Conrad Brumbaugh fought in) was the British use of mass warrants.  They defied any concepts of "personal" and smashed into colonists' homes on any pretext- tearing it apart.   This applied to the infamous Writs of Assistance which was the vehicle used to justify smashing into homes to find smuggled goods. By the 1770s the use of the Writs of Assistance had become totally indiscriminate. As one academic site explained:

"Most notably, the writs allowed officials to enter and ransack private homes without proving probable cause for suspicion, a traditional prerequisite to a search."

This bears perfect analogy to what the NSA is getting away with today using the mass warrants and its PRISM, Xkeyscore and MUSCULAR programs.  Notes and letters gleaned from colonists of the time revealed total outrage and it is no exaggeration to say that it sparked the first shots of the Revolutionary War.

In writing the 4th amendment, the framers were motivated more than anything by the excesses of the Writs of Assistance.  This is why they deliberately singled out the need for authorities to obtain specific or individual warrants - mass warrants were anathema. The framers wanted no repeat of the outrages that launched the Revolution.

While no specific "right" to privacy is listed in the Bill of Rights,  it is clear the language of the 4th amendment shows that privacy is presumed hence the Founders saw no need to elaborate it as a separate right. Hence, use of the descriptor “personal” applied to papers, effects etc. and naturally meant 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.  The Ninth Amendment states that “the people retain unenumerated rights” "The people:" here refers to flesh and blood citizens, not to a bunch of contractual abstractions (states), or to corporations. .As Prof. Garry Wills emphasizes and underscores (A Necessary Evil: A History Of American Distrust of Government’, Simon & Schuster, 1999, p. 108):

“The states have no natural rights. Their powers are artificial, not natural – they are things made by contract.”

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

The Justices' ruling on restricting seizure and grabbing of cell phones must therefore apply with equal force to personal information on any and all computers!   Justice Roberts, in a footnote, seemed to take issue with that, observing that “these  (cell phone) cases do not implicate the question whether the collection or inspection of aggregated digital information amounts to a search under other circumstances.”  However, it is clear that rigorous adherence to the language of the 4th shows that it does. So that "aggregated accumulation and inspection of digital information" is really no different from the indiscriminate searches done under the British Writs of Assistance that led directly to the Revolutionary War!

Let us hope that the Right wing court soon gets on the same page, and its cell phone ruling is  formalized to another more sweeping judgment very soon!

See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/tom-engelhardt/56598/tomgram-peter-van-buren-what-weve-lost-since-9-11-part-2

and:

http://www.salon.com/2014/06/26/john_roberts_channels_aclu_why_right_wing_court_saved_cellphone_privacy/

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

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

 

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

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


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

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

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

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

‘Hope’ Is for Dummies and Sissies – What We Need Is Courage

Let’s get real: hope is like a drug that turns the critical centers of most human brains off and dispatches them to ‘La-la’ land. But this is precisely why shameless politicos will go on using it, dragging it out from their duffel bags of political detritus whenever they suspect it might be useful.

 

We already know how Obama played the ‘Hope’ card back in 2008, and by deftly using it brought into play an unlikely coalition of youthful idealists, hard core union guys, tree huggers, anti-War advocates, religiously conservative blacks and Catholics, and far left anti-capitalists (like moi.)  The result was a resounding victory with one of the biggest election margins a Democrat ever mustered.

 

The problem is that despite the Hope card, our hopes were mainly dashed. Guantanamo remained open (still is),  Iraq wound down – but Afghanistan was ramped up – and Obama wants us to remain until 2024, the middle class is still drowning in debt – especially college students and the wealthier are richer than ever. Worse, Obama even dared to put the most sacrosanct Middle class benefit – in Social Security – on the table for a cut (though he didn’t call it that – but realists know it was.)  Meanwhile, the guy instead of being the epitome of hope and change also professed steadfast opposition to all whistle blowers and endorsed NSA mass surveillance.

 

In this historical setting,  Obama’s words from the keynote speech of the 2004 Democratic Convention certainly ring hollow:

 

“The audacity of hope echoes the best of the American spirit. – the audacity to believe despite all evidence to the contrary.”

 

Well, I can tell you one thing, given all the “evidence to the contrary” – let me say I am not about to believe that: Obama will pull out of Afghanistan before his 2^nd term ends, shutter Guantanamo, repeal NSA mass surveillance, or stop his drone kills and siege of whistle blowers. I’m not even prepared to believe he won’t approve the Keystone pipeline – after the November elections, of course, when it no longer matters to him politically.

 

To invoke the words of Professor of Philosophy, Simon Critchley (NY Times, April 20):

 

“It is precisely this type of hope that I think we should try to give up. It is not audacious, but mendacious.”

 

He goes on to observe that it is exactly this type of baseless hope that permeates the national psyche, and as it does – blinds us to the reality of the world we inhabit. This then gives rise to a stupor or paralysis of action, fueled by a sentimental complacency that prevents us from seeing things aright and "protesting against this administration’s moral and political lapses and those of other administrations.”

 

Thus, the  center Left (mainly) doesn’t want to criticize Obama (despite the fact he’s earned it on multiple fronts as I noted above),  if the Repukes are already doing it. The meme seems to be: “Look,  okay he’s not doing everything right but we don’t want to pile onto the guy!” And so the way is prepped for the forlorn Obamabot to “hear no evil, see no evil and speak no evil”.

 

The same sick apathy prevents Dems from ferociously going after LBJ, who not only launched a massive war on a pretext, but also likely masterminded JFK’s assassination. But oh no, we don’t wanna go there because-  after all - the guy signed into law the Civil Rights Bill, the Voting Rights Act and blah, blah, blah.  And people wonder why our political system doesn’t change for the better?  How can it when most of us are prepared to give a pass to constitutional violations as well as outright treachery (assisting in the assassination of one’s President)?

 

No surprise then I side with Prof. Critchley when he declares that what we need in the face of what Nietzsche called “a strict, had factuality” isn't  hope but “courage in the face of reality.” Hope then is merely a form of moral cowardice that “allows us to escape from reality and prolong human suffering.”

 

When democracy goes astray, say under pressure from the national security state, or my state of Colorado turns totally into a fracking nightmare, “hope” will not save the day. Hope will not cause the NSA’s PRISM or MUSCULAR programs to be disbanded, nor will it halt the NSA’s grabbing up of emails, texts and phone lists. However, if states acted on their own to pass legislation to deny NSA centers the resources they need, say water to cool their giant computers, then real change could be brought to bear. But that takes courage for the states to act in that bold capacity – without caving in to the screams of the security fetishists, e.g. “Traitors!”.

 

In like manner, hope will not save Colorado homeowners from the wrath of the frackers after the next election. (Many of these homeowners looking out from the north side of Denver can see frack derricks for as far as the eye can see).  But courageous action in helping Colorado Dem Jared Polis get a law passed to turn control of fracking – including its regulation or banning – over to local communities, will.

 

Aeschylus in  “Prometheus Bound” describes the agony of the chained super hero who is interrogated by the chorus and asked whether Prometheus gave humans anything else but fire. His response?

 

“I sowed in them blind hopes.”

 See also:
http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/william-boardman/55716/msnbc-can-be-trusted-by-the-established-order-thats-a-problem

and:
http://www.salon.com/2014/05/03/93_countries_that_have_flip_flopped_on_obama_partner/