The Roadrunner At Ernie Pyle's Place In Albuquerque

Postcard, c. 1945

Yesterday, we had some time on our hands between errands in town (Abq) so we decided to divert over to Ernie Pyle's place on a little height above the University.

Ernie and his wife "That Girl" built the small, simple and very pleasant house then on the edge of Albuquerque in 1940, the only house they ever owned as a couple apparently, and they lived there for a month or more each year while Ernie was working first as a Traveling Columnist for Scripps-Howard, then as a War Correspondent for Scripps-Howard. His wife Jerry was also traveling and writing during the same period.

It was in his latter capacity as War Correspondent that Ernie gained his largest audience. Americans followed his war dispatches from both the European and Pacific Theatres eagerly. He was the writer, after all, who created the character and coined the still-current sobriquet "G.I. Joe" to represent the ordinary American caught up in the patriotic fervor and wartime mechanism that swept the country just before and during WWII, fervor and mechanisms that were kept going through various strategies long after it ended.

It was in his latter capacity that Ernie was killed on some god-forsaken island in the Pacific just weeks before the end of the War in the Pacific. Ever since, he's been iconicised as the quintessential American war correspondent. In my view, it's a very well deserved accolade. The man could write, passionately, emotionally, and truthfully. And not only about the horrors and triumphs of warriors in field and foxhole, either.

There's a small collection of Pyle's works (one of them signed by himself) in the glass case in our library at home as my father was quite fond of his works and apparently had the opportunity to meet him at some point during the War. It took me a while to appreciate Pyle, but then, that's the way it is with kids.

The City of Albuquerque acquired the Pyle home from his estate in 1948 and decided on one of the most unique and appropriate courses they could have done for it. They decided to preserve it as a house and as a memorial to Pyle, and to operate it as the first branch library in town.

To this day the city has maintained this objective and promise, and it's wonderful.

The Albuquerque Hurricane

On the radio this morning, they were comparing the Friday storm in Albuquerque to a hurricane, though the high winds were not sustained long enough for there to be any "official" determination that it actually was a hurricane.

Wait. How far is Albuquerque from the ocean? Let's see. Albuquerque to Santa Monica Beach: 806 miles via (what's left of) Route 66. Albuquerque to (say) Corpus Christi: 890 miles. In other words, Albuquerque is nowhere near an ocean, no matter how you figure distances.

A hurricane in the middle of the continent, along the Rio Grande Rift Valley? Has anybody heard of such a thing before?

No. Actually not. No one has heard of such a thing, and the weather service was both surprised and perplexed. They still haven't figured out exactly what happened, though the news video below attempts to describe it.



A number of local storms coalesced over the Rio Grande and proceeded along the river valley at a brisk but rather stately pace, dumping huge amounts of rainfall. The winds blew at near-hurricane speeds at least briefly.

Damage was much more extensive than initially reported or believed. Thousands of people were caught out in the open at concerts at the Biopark Zoo and at the Isleta Casino Amphitheatre and at the baseball game about to begin at the Isotopes Park. The video at the top of this post is of a few seconds of the storm at the Biopark Zoo.

There was extensive flooding throughout the Rio Grande Valley. Corrales was particularly hard hit when rivers of mud cascaded through the village leaving huge mounds of sand and mud in people's yards, on village streets, and in practically every exposed corner of an ordinarily placid and very expensive semi-rural enclave in the Albuquerque metro area.

Out here in the Estancia Valley, the rains came after the storm in Albuquerque had passed down the Rio Grande Valley into Los Lunas and Belen and points south. The rain was hard and steady here, but there was high wind only at the outset of the storm; later on, there was a steady wind from the north, maybe 25-30 miles an hour. The rains lasted for hours here, though the storm was over in a little more than an hour in Albuquerque.

There have been a number of "microburst" events in Albuquerque and around the area during this monsoon season. There has been a lot of damage because of them -- downed trees and power lines mostly -- but Friday's storm was orders of magnitude worse. No one had ever seen anything like it.

What I noticed while watching the storm coverage on the teevee as it happened was that the worst of the storm was staying quite closely along the Rio Grande. I've never seen a storm follow a river valley so closely, though when it got closer to Socorro it spread out -- the Rio Grande Rift Valley spreads out in the vicinity of Socorro and points south.

Many people are ambivalent about this weather. First, there is a welcoming of the rain, for it is desperately needed, even in the giant amounts that have been falling lately. Better to have it than not. The storm damage is no fun, of course, but even that is tolerable in reasonable amounts. People are used to cleaning up and making repairs after storms.

The Pronghorn Principle

Pronghorns grazing the Llano Alto

As we've traveled around New Mexico sightseeing with our visitor from California, we've passed by a number of stands and herds of the ubiquitous but elusive pronghorn, the North American antelope-mimic that people can spend a lifetime Out West never outwitting or even seeing.

In our area, they graze with the cattle as the sun goes down in the late afternoon and early evening, trying to blend in as it were, passing for dappled calves you might say, though we have seen them in the fields at high noon as well. They get through the barbed wire fences with ease, the cattle seem to enjoy their somewhat skittish company, and the grazing land seems only lightly touched by their presence.

Yesterday, as we passed by the grazing herds of cattle and pronghorn on our way to a literary evening at the IAIA south of Santa Fe, we noticed the antelope were all keeping approximately the same distance from the road, about 800 to 1000 yards, just beyond the distance it was easy to see them or a rifle shot might reach, and I thought, "How wise. These animals are very sharp." Indeed.

A Literary Life... Or Not. D. H. Lawrence, Mabel Dodge, and Some Others In New Mexico When Time Was and Today

Give me the moon at my feet.
Set my feet upon the crescent like a Lord,
O let my ankles be bathed in moonlight,
That I may go sure and moon-shod,
Cool and bright-footed toward my goal.

A late in life poem titled "Prayer" by D. H. Lawrence, read by Mrs. Merriam Golden at Lawrence's memorial dedication ceremony in Taos, NM, September 15, 1935.

The little snippet above is from his later work, I believe it's called "Apocalypse,"  and I've taken it from the book about Lawrence called "D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico, the Time is Different There" by Arthur J. Bachrach, a slim but quite wonderful volume of tales and truths of D. H. and Frieda Lawrence, Dorothy Brett, Mabel Dodge and Tony Luhan (Lujan) -- among others -- at their ranches in and away from Taos and elsewhere back in the day. It was a time long gone, a time most different to be sure, a time few of us remember, but if we've read or otherwise absorbed the pertinent works by the pertinent people, a time we cannot forget, a time that lives still in Taos and round about.

Who were these people? What did they think they were doing?

The premise of "Utopian Vistas, the Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture" by Lois Palkin Rudnick (like "D. H. Lawrence in New Mexico," published by UNM Press) is that all these Anglo ex-patriots came out to New Mexico after the First World War, many at the behest of Mabel Dodge Stearne (as she was when first she came to New Mexico in 1917, later after marrying a Taos Pueblo Indian, Antonio Lujan, she became Mabel Dodge Luhan), and here they created a counter-culture community based on the primacy and originality of the Native Indians and the Spanish settlers, the ultimate truth of art, and the purpose and primal beauty of the new community they themselves could -- and did -- create. They were said to have given up on the America they'd been taught to believe in and love and came to the realization that the true artistic spirit of the continent could be found in New Mexico, perhaps only in New Mexico, this vast and quirky, almost empty frontier land, where much has never changed in eons.

This is the place.

Rain, Glorious Rain; or Too Much of a Good Thing

We went up to Cuba yesterday for lunch -- a 230 mile round trip to be sure, but it is one of the most scenic drives in New Mexico, among so many scenic drives, and the weather was beautiful for such an adventure.

We saw dark clouds gathering on the Jemez Mountains, and we could locate where the rain was falling in the draws and ravines and side canyons. There was none near the road or our destinations, but parts of the high ramparts of the mountains looked to be getting well soaked. Good. Cut down on the fires, break some of the drought.

When we got back to Albuquerque in the afternoon, the sky in the north was still very dark, but the storm, if that's what it was, seemed to be stationary. We stopped at the Sandia Casino to look around and play a bit -- we hadn't been there since its expansion more than ten years ago (I think) -- and when we chatted with some of the staff, they said there had been torrential rains in the late afternoon, early evening for days, and they were worried it would happen again. Little did they -- or we -- know.

Out in the Estancia Valley, we'd been getting a little bit of light rain now and again, but nothing memorable since the first day of monsoon rain on June 30. There was rain every day for about 2 weeks, then scattered infrequent showers except along the mountain sides where the rains were sometimes measured in inches per hour -- or seemed to be. We didn't realize the rains had been so severe or so frequent in Albuquerque lately.

When we left the casino around 5:30pm or so, the sky was pretty dark in the north, and there appeared to be some showers falling on the Sandias, but not a lot and not extensively. As we drove along Tramway there was no rain at all, and it was dry going through the Tijeras Canyon. The clouds in the east were lit up gloriously by the early evening sun, just beautiful piles and piles of brilliant white, like the fanciest vanilla ice cream scoops in the sky.

After we got back to our place, we did our usual futzing about, and I said I'd go into town (locally) to pick up mail (we don't have home delivery) and rustle up some grub for dinner at the rib joint. When I got there, the place was hopping. It was after all Friday Night Cruise Night, and we were on Route 66 in summer time, so what do you expect?  Nice cars! Big line for ribs and chicken and stuff, so I had a fairly long wait. Checked out the vehicles, chatted with neighbors and other folks, and all of us watched the darkening skies in the north. Deep, deep dark grays and purples lit here and there with pink and orange fringes from the setting sun, and now and then flashes of silver from the lightning inside the clouds.

"Oh shit. This is going to be a bad one," someone said out on the patio. "Nah, ya think? Really?"

"Yah, look a that," pointing to the massive black cloud looming ever closer. "It's gonna be hell."

"Nah, we'll be lucky if it drops anything."

"Just you wait. I say, take cover, and better get these cars under wraps, too."

Slight Hiatus

A friend is visiting from California for the next few days, and quite a lot of sightseeing and such like is planned during her stay here. Posting will be light or non-existent for the duration. There's Spanish Market in Santa Fe, endless events in Abq, several widely scattered restaurants to visit, people to connect with, and on and on. May even have to head up to Taos for the D. H. Lawrence vibe or Abiquiu for a moment of O'Keefe zen. Having a visitor in New Mexico can turn into quite a production.

[The rain yesterday was amazing, steady but not drenching, for hours and hours. The drought may not be quite broken yet, but it's inching towards some relief. Yay!

Meanwhile, they tell me we're still under surveillance, though all New Mexico's reps voted to "de-fund" NSA. Even the Dems.]

How To Control the So-Called "Debate"

[Note: It doesn't matter what the "debate" happens to be; we could be talking about the Summer Story of Century -- the NSA Surveillance Thing -- or closing a neighborhood school or building a new WalMart; the tactics are the same.]

I've written quite a lot about propaganda and its relative success in shaping and controlling people's perceptions of the world and those around them. We are immersed in propaganda 24/7, and having been born and grown up in the Post WWII Baby Boom generation, I know that has been true my entire life.

Discussing perception management with my parents (my father born in 1901, my mother born in 1911), I realized they, too, spent their entire lives being propagandized to believe certain things and to "know" certain things that I -- in the Ultimate Wisdom of the Adolescent in the latter half of the 1960's -- knew were manifestly untrue. In hashing these things out, though, they considered me to be the victim of propaganda, specifically of Communist propaganda designed to undermine my patriotism and ultimately to conquer the USofA.

When I told them that that was propaganda, it became clear to me that we were all immersed in the same stew of lies, half-truths, misdirection, and fabrications, and finding our way out of it -- if there was one -- could be a full-time job.

It was clear to me in studying history and journalism in this country that there has never been a time when most of the media was not the propaganda wing of the government and its corporate sector patrons. Never. Not even during Watergate, that Great Gate that famously brought down a President.

Radical and alternative publications have always had a place in the American media environment, but even when they are honest and wise and true (often incompatible objectives to be sure), they cannot be separated from their political and ideological perspectives or those of their publishers, and whatever truth one may find in alternative media must still be approached with skepticism and critical thinking, just as one must approach the often more blatant propaganda of the Major Mass Media.

Not even Ramparts (c. 1962 - c. 1975, RIP) was immune from the general propaganda of its era nor was it free of the urge to propagandize on behalf of its own objectives. (/s)

The use of propaganda by government was supposedly illegal until very recently, but any sentient being  should long ago have realized that the government is just as adept at using propaganda tactics on the People as any other institution in our lives, and it has never ceased doing so. A key to understanding the use of propaganda by government and the media is their institutional nature.

We all want media we can trust. We want a government we can trust. The horror is... there isn't any.

Propaganda, Divide and Rule, Deliberate Dissonance and Managed Dissent

We, the Rabble, are highly vulnerable to tactics of Propaganda, Divide and Rule, Deliberate Dissonance and Managed Dissent. We certainly have seen them all employed in the current frenetic Summer Story of the NSA Spying On Everyone In The Whole Wide World!!!!™ But these tactics are widely employed throughout the sometimes strained relations between the People and Media, the People and Corporations, and the People and Government.

Sigmund Freud's nephew, Edward Bernays, played a major role in developing the science of popular opinion shaping and control during the 20th Century, as was incisively described by Adam Curtis in his award winning BBC documentary, The Century of the Self. It is long and detailed, but well worth four hours of one's time to sit through it all. It lays the historical and psychological foundation for understanding why and how We, the Rabble, are so thoroughly propagandized and our beliefs -- and often our actions -- are so completely manipulated by those in power and those who would wish to be in power.

It is very difficult to break free.

There is a certain level of marketing science involved in the control and manipulation of the masses; for example, the principle that fear sells is at the root of many, many product and political campaigns. But there is more to it than that. It's no longer simply or mostly a matter of marketing. The control and manipulation is more for straightforward political objectives -- naked power -- these days, more so than at any time since WWII, when the War Effort overwhelmed every other popular interest at all. But WWII, like practically every other war in history, wasn't a war the People chose; it was one the Power Elites had to have in order to sort out world dominance, Once And For All. Again.

Well, at least for the next several generations. And with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the transformation of "Red" China into the global state capitalist industrial and commercial center, the sorting out has reached a kind of climax.

Who will rule, and how will that rule be exercised over the entire globe?

For that's what's underlying so much of the struggle we see today, between governments and corporations, and between them both and the People.

In this context, the notion of "preserving" the 4th (or any other) amendment is quaint to say the least.

We, the Rabble, are heavily propagandized, we are hopelessly divided, and we face constant onslaughts of cognitive dissonance and managed dissent all in a (so far) successful effort to keep us tame while Our Betters pursue their Glorious Path to Total Global, Final Domination, Forever and Ever, Amen.

The question is who will dominate, that's all.

Home Place

Cathedral Basilica of San Francisco de Assisi, Santa Fe, NM (click to go to Guardian's pics of NM)

Thanks to its Summertime NSA Spy Story, the Guardian has acquired the kind of immediacy and daily traffic some other media outlets are green with envy over. Well of course. Why not? It's all a competitive corporate game for the attention of the masses, after all.

The Guardian, however, showed itself to be an appallingly shameless tool of power during its miserable coverage of the Egyptian coup and the bloodly aftermath, for which it continually failed to call things by their "right names." Instead, they presented almost continuous and almost unadulterated pro-military propaganda. This shameful display was one of the most neo-lib friendly of any media outlet deigning to cover the uproar in Cairo and elsewhere in The Two Lands and it literally put the lie to the Guardian's growing reputation for Speaking Truth to Power. No, the Graun, like all corporate media, is part of the Power Game, and "Speaking Truth" is a matter of positioning within the Power Structure at any given moment.

Compiling Some Hastings Thing Things

This Corbett Report compilation aired on July 6; it gives a good overview of what was/is known and unknown about Michael Hastings and his untimely demise.



We should recall that there was immediate pushback on the notion that Richard Clarke put out there that yes, indeed, cars could be 'easily' hacked and control, including brakes, steering, and acceleration, could be remotely controlled. Clarke, it was said, was deliberately spreading disinfo in order to cover up.... something... for... someone.

Then here's the interview with the witness that is referenced in the Corbett video but not shown:



His testimony is slightly different than what he said in broken English to the Loud Labs guy who talked to him at the scene of the crash shortly after it happened, but it's essentially the same. What is striking to me is that he said the car was burning -- or at least there were sparks coming from beneath it -- as it crossed Melrose a couple of hundred feet before it crashed.

In this extended interview, he says he was never interviewed by LAPD. Typical. The only witness to the entire crash, and the LAPD doesn't see fit to ask for his statement.

[Note: I wouldn't have been able to sleep for weeks either if I'd witnessed something like that. Sheesh. Now imagine what it is like for our overseas victims who witness the sudden annihilation brought on by our Imperial Drone Squadrons.]

Here's a description of what was recorded by a video surveillance camera at the pizza restaurant at the corner of Melrose and Highland. For some reason the video itself has not been released, nor, so far as I know, have any of the surveillance videos taken along Highland that early morning been released. It being Hollywood, there must be many of them. Yet nothing has shown up on the tubes.

Hastings remains were apparently sent to be cremated by the LA Coroner, against the family's wishes, but this story, though widespread, has not been confirmed by Hastings' wife, who is said to be working on completion of his final project (she's a journalist, too). But she was also National Security Council Spokesperson from 2008-2009 and served as speechwriter for Condoleezza Rice in the Bush Admin. Let's not fool ourselves here. In other words, she seems to be pretty keyed in to the RW/Bushevik/Cheneyite Apparat. Which may have some bearing on what's going on.

Given the timing of this incident, shortly after the beginning of the Snowden Thing, but quite a while after the start of the Obama Triple-Scandal Thing -- and its subsequent unraveling, though Michael was still pushing the Benghazi Thing and the IRS Thing almost up to the moment of his death -- it would be irresponsible not to speculate (as Peg Noonan used to say) about whether there are any dots to be connected here beyond the obvious ones about Michael having a target on his back for the Stanley McChrystal Thing.

Just who or what is running this pop stand, anyway?

At This Point, There Is No "Fight"

I've been seeing a lot of hoohah on the InterTubes about this big ol' fight we're in to restore or preserve the 4th Amendment from all the big meanies that are trying to take it from us, and it seems so perfectly out of touch to me.

At this point, there is no fight. There's a lot of complaining and hyperventilating, a lot of relatively impracticable notions about how to circumvent the spy-bots, and a lot of rox-sux bloviating about who's the Bestest and who's the Worstest, but no "fight" to speak of at all.

In part, I maintain, this is because what is being highlighted in the media this summer -- and this is a Summer Shark Story as well as a Missing White Boy Story, make no mistake -- has no discernible effect on most people. That's not to defend NSA or any of the other surveillance agencies or the surveillance industry as a whole. It is to try to point out that the NSA Story, the Only One we are supposed to be paying attention to, is one that has -- as yet -- no on the ground victims except in the abstract, as in "Everyone."

But then when everyone is a victim, no one is. Literally, we're all in the same boat.

Cold Global Warming

Well. Here we sit in central New Mexico, on the east side of the Central Mountain Chain, and it's darned near freezing, well, close enough, 60° at 7:45pm.  

According to the "news" the whole rest of the country is roasting in high heat and humidity, and I checked some of the places we know well for temps right now (7:45ish PM MDT):

77° in Sacramento
74° in Los Angeles
81° in Seattle
63° in San Francisco
84° in Chicago
87° in New York
74° in Sarasota
91° in Baltimore
62° in Flagstaff
67° in Albuquerque
66° in Anchorage

It's seems we're in the coldest place in the country at the moment. The sky is cloudy, there are individual drops of rain from time to time, but no real storm. The wind was high for a little while today, but not like some days when the dust rolls in (we've had a couple of major dust storm incidents the past couple of days). The weather people say the weather we're having now is part of a storm over Texas, moving into New Mexico slowly overnight, fed by moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, and it would be "Classic Monsoon" except that the weather is rotating in the wrong direction. Very strange.

We've had rain most days since June 30, and some people say it's almost enough to break the drought, but I don't think so. Despite the rain, we still have to irrigate some of the plants. It can be hot and very dry in the daytime. The sunflowers sometimes take the heat and daytime dryness particularly hard. But the last couple of days have been very mild and now it's almost cold. They say there will probably be heavy rain during the night, and more tomorrow. Cool or moderate temperatures to continue through the rest of the week and into the weekend. Amazing.

On The Question of Exemptions From Security State Scrutiny

During the past month or so, we've seen an explosion of interest in the National Security/Surveillance State apparatus, and we've learned about its vast reach around the world and its apparent ability to spy on anyone at any time. How such spywork product is used is still somewhat murky, as we really have no idea which Americans have been spied on by the NSA (leave aside for the moment the question of foreign targets) and to what object if any. There have been suggestions, however, that when the NSA "targets" an American it is for the purpose of domestic law enforcement or active terrorist investigation, and that essentially all the NSA provides in such cases is raw digital data that may or may not be useful in the investigation. But we don't know that. We don't know a lot of things about how our rulers keep tabs on us or what they do with the information.

What we do know is that a number of individuals and institutions have demanded to be exempt from the sort of blanket scrutiny everyone else is under, starting with "the press."

There was, after all, something of a trial balloon on the topic of uncalled for domestic surveillance when the AP Thing (ABQ Journal story; if not a subscriber, you will need to answer a marketing question) broke back in May (was it? doG, it seems so long ago.)  The issue then was slightly different in that phone calling records of AP reporters were sought and looked at by DoJ in connection with an investigation of a leak of high level information to the press. Sound familiar? Sure. The upshot was that not only was the AP marching around in High Dudgeon over this "Chilling of Freedom of the Press," they would demand and have essentially received an exemption from this kind of surveillance scrutiny going forward. Whoo-hoo!

As I pointed out at the time the story was making headlines, though, EVERYONE was subject to the kind of surveillance AP was demanding an exemption from, and the real issue was the intrusive/invasive that was probing everyone's phone records and doG knows what-all with or without warrants. This was in May, remember, a solid month before the NSA story broke in the Guardian. We knew -- or at least "anyone who was paying attention" knew -- that we rabble and proles were being spied on by Our Betters in both the government and the corporate sectors the government serves, and many of us knew how that information was being used, too. Anyone who was or is involved in Occupy, for example has more direct knowledge of the National Surveillance State than most other Americans by far, but America's Muslim community has had much more ongoing negative experiences with it, and black and brown communities in general have been its targets for generations.

At some point though -- variously dated to 2001 (prior to or almost immediately after the installation of the Bushevik regime) or 2005 (when certain devices were installed)  -- the surveillance started including everyone, all phone calls and other telecommunications, at home and abroad, and for a time -- maybe still -- there was someone assigned to surveil every physical address in the country. It was long ago out of control, and the NSA wasn't the chief culprit.

The principal base-line culprit all along has been the corporate entities that collect information on all of us, that analyze and store it, and that share it for a price or in trade with one another and with government agencies. That's where the data-haul comes from for the most part, and quite willingly, too, despite the lies and the denials of many of the corporate culprits.

So comes the AP Thing in May, and AP is demanding an exemption, because of the First Amendment. Never mind the Fourth Amendment because invoking that would mean everyone would be exempt from blanket surveillance, and what's the fun of that?

AP got their exemption in July as the link above describes. After the AP story broke, a FOX "news" reporter was revealed to be under similar surveillance due to another leak investigation, and wah-lah, FOX, too, was given the same exemption as AP. In fact, all "legitimate" so-called news orgs were given the same exemption in the DoJ announcement. Determining who or what is "legitimate" became an issue, but it's clear enough from the announcement that bloggers and independent media are not considered "legitimate" by the corporate media or the DoJ. So at least we know that not everyone who practices journalism is considered "legitimate" -- and we can be pretty sure where that will lead, too.

Needless to say, despite a rather full court press by various media, including much of New Media, Blobosphere and all, the story of surveillance of the AP (and later of FOX) and their demands for exemptions on Constitutional grounds failed to catch the mood of the country, I think because people wondered why should they be exempt while everyone else is being watched all the time?  Constitution? Feh.

On the other hand, when the NSA story broke in June, just about a month after the AP story broke, all holy hell broke loose because, surprise, the upshot of the initial few stories was that EVERYONE was under surveillance by the NSA, and there was really nothing anybody could do about it -- that is if they chose to live in the Modern World.

Oh. Well. What a surprise. "We didn't know..." And we demand....? Going from knowledge of surveillance to the Ask has been something of a rocky road to say the least. Just what is it Snowden, Greenwald and the rest have in mind as the goal as it were? We don't know. They initially said all they wanted was a "debate" about the surveillance they were revealing; then Greenwald the other day in his Argentine interview said that they wanted people to know that certain software was being employed to hoover up all phone and other electronic communications pretty much everywhere and suggested that by knowing this people could take precautions and even elude the hoover. But whatever the case, at no point have Greenwald or Snowden suggested ending the Surveillance State. They haven't even called for the repeal of the legal underpinnings (like AUMF, NDAA, PA, and FAA) that have enabled it and encouraged its metastasis.

I find that rather curious myself. No, all they say they want is the "debate" and for people to have knowledge that they are being surveilled.

All righty then. Implied is the notion that some people should be exempt from blanket surveillance, starting with technically adept people, for example, who know what to do to elude the surveillance bots through strategic technical gamesmanship. I've seen some of them post instructions on how to do it, and it's mostly gobbledygook, useless for everyday people, and probably non-functional in any case due to coding and other errors, whether accidental or deliberate. The fact is many geeks are not inclined to ensure that you are free of surveillance, only that they themselves are. Liberty!

Meanwhile, when the NSA domestic surveillance story was still somewhat new, Congresscritters held hearings and demanded of the spooks giving testimony that they, sitting Congresscritters, be exempted from surveillance, and they were assured that they were indeed exempt. I don't think many of them believed it though, as some of their colleagues had been clearly and obviously surveilled over the past many years, and some of them seem to be convinced that prosecution and blackmail are not unheard of in the Hallowed Halls due to findings of the surveillance bots.

Of course the press and media (well, that part which is "legitimate") demanded -- and got -- their exemption.

Anybody else seeking exemption from general surveillance? You would think the corporate board rooms and bankers' counting rooms would be automatically exempt. That is where Power is concentrated, yes? Can't have random spooks snooping around among the Highest of the Mighty, can we? In fact, corporate board rooms and bankers' counting rooms are where much of the snoopery of the rest of us originates, or at least where the plots and plans for it are laid and implemented. Let's not fool ourselves into believing it's any other way.

Of course, people in Greenwald's somewhat... interesting... position would naturally want their own exemption (albeit, he hasn't asked for one specifically for his ownself, not that I know of anyway). Expat world traveler journalist/polemicist/propagandist/provocateurs such as he might actually want to avoid the security/surveillance state for some reason, I don't know what, but he has never indicated that he's suffered personally in any particular or general way from the surveillance he must -- I mean MUST -- be under... hm. How does that work, I wonder? Is he surveilled but exempted from consequences? Or is he not surveilled at all? Or...? Is it something else?

Well, we don't know, and we're unlikely to ever find out, either. Wheels within wheels, don'tchaknow. It is quite an interesting game being played by individuals and institutions seeking to perfect their power relationships with one another, if you will. That much is obvious to me. Their rivalries and controversies have little to do with us, after all. This is a reason why the NSA/Snowden Thing strikes me as a bit overwrought given their apparently top-level at 40,000 feet overlook position, not generally one that affects individuals, nor necessarily does it affect contending institutions in their power plays. Or does it?

What exactly does the NSA do that interferes with the machinations of the Highest of the Mighty? We get some clue now and then when we hear dark rumblings of intellectual property piracy and unauthorized sharing of corporate marketing and other plans through some sort of spy network, but it is a murky tale at best and rarely told with any clarity at all. Is the NSA the lead agency in these matters? Mmm. Could be.

If as may be the corporate boardrooms and the R&D departments are the real playgrounds of the NSA and other spooks, despite denials (who really believes them, anyway?) then the demands for exemption that are background noise right now may have more to do with the nature of the NSA controversy/"scandal" than we know, and once that's worked out to mutual satisfaction, this Thing will settle right down.

We've been living in an era of institutional failure and collapse. Practically everything we've relied on for social, political, and economic stability in our lifetimes has proved to be worthless or has collapsed in failure. Yet wealth and power are ever more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands, and more and more authoritarian and exploitative rule is being imposed on the masses. In the overall context of institutional collapse and failure and the general imposition of authority and exploitation of the masses, the spook stories and consequent impotent rage they inspire is very useful for the interests who seek to consolidate power over the rest of us.

To me, that's the reason why the NSA story is being played to such a high level of public exposure this Shark Season. Nothing will be done about curbing domestic/international surveillance of the masses, though the masses will be whipped to a frenzy of anger about it. As Naomi Wolf pointed out, the Surveillance State is useless for controlling the masses if they don't know about it. Now they know. They have had an opportunity to vent about it, but their venting results in nothing. Nothing changes. It's the way of the world.

Behind the curtain, however, in that Deep State which actually rules us (oh yes, the Turks have nothing on US), there are many adjustments going on, both here and abroad, and fierce contests are under way over which surviving institutions will hold the primary reins of power. Make no mistake, Greenwald, the Guardian, and more than likely Snowden, are Players in that game. What role they have on the chessboard is an open question, but they are clearly not uninvolved observers and dispassionate Truth Tellers. They are obviously working on behalf of something greater than themselves, but exactly what that might be is still murky -- I have called them Corporate Libertarians, but that doesn't describe their actual roles and goals.

Nor does it reveal where all this is headed. On the surface, it's just another summer shark story, another missing white woman, for the rabble to fret over. But go a bit deeper, and ponder who and what is being "exempted," from scrutiny by the surveillance state, as power is consolidated on behalf of surviving institutions in this era of institutional collapse, and we can start forming a pretty good picture of how the story may play out.

We'll see.

The Trayvon Martin Thing

From my somewhat legalist and jaundiced point of view, it would have been almost impossible for any jury following the law and their instructions from the court to convict George Zimmerman of murder. It would have been difficult to convict him of manslaughter. The point is that given exigent circumstances as presented at trial, while he was clearly guilty of homicide, he apparently was not guilty of breaking any law against it.

Unfortunate, but not unusual in our system of injustice often called "the best in the world."

All the other matters matter quite a bit less than the law and the court's instructions to the jury at trial in cases such as this.

Social and political issues are obvious. The way this case is being used so effectively to keep the rabble divided -- against their own interests -- is despicable, but it's working rather well. So long as it is seen purely as yet another example of racism in America, or the impunity of white folks, or what have you, people who should be on the same side against the oligarchs and plutocrats will be fighting it out with one another to prevail in the argument over this case.

We see the same phenomenon in the Snowden Thing, where prevailing in the argument -- whichever one is priority at the moment -- is far, far more important than actually doing anything about domestic surveillance.

It's shark season...

Meaning to add...

[There would have been more, but we spent yesterday adventuring in town with some Indians (aka "Induns") determined to engage the Powers That Be, and later with a long treasured teller of tales, Nasario Garcia, whose books and stories open many avenues of unique insight into what was not so long ago a strong and surprising cultural survival hidden in plain sight. It's one of the aspects of New Mexico's past and present I'm eager to learn more about. This is the world you are joining...]

The Silly Season is fully upon us now.

So somehow Greenwald managed to make the Snowden story about him again when he gave an interview to La Nacion in Argentina. I don't know whether the interview was conducted in Spanish or English, but of course, it was published in Spanish, and as picked up and reported by Reuters, it's a doozy in that Greenwald goes far beyond any previous demands and threats and denunciations into realms that are either playing to an audience or meant to raise eyebrows and hackles in the United States, and not merely the hackles of government drones (which has taken on quite a new meaning of late, hasn't it?) and agents.

In the interview, Greenwald is quoted by Reuters as saying:

"Snowden has enough information to cause harm to the U.S. government in a single minute than any other person has ever had," Greenwald said in an interview in Rio de Janeiro with the Argentinean daily La Nacion.

"The U.S. government should be on its knees every day begging that nothing happen to Snowden, because if something does happen to him, all the information will be revealed and it could be its worst nightmare."

This is the original Spanish of the passages in question:

 "Snowden tiene suficiente información como para causar más daño al gobierno estadounidense él solo en un minuto del que cualquier otra persona haya tenido jamás en la historia de Estados Unidos"...

El gobierno estadounidense debe estar de rodillas todos los días rogando que nada le ocurra a Snowden, porque si algo le llega a suceder, toda la información será revelada y ésa sería su peor pesadilla.

Yes. Well. Greenwald is nothing if not a hyperbolic polemicist and propagandist on behalf of his cause. In this instance, he appears to be deliberately offering up a direct threat to the United States Government. There might-could be some repercussions. Ya think?

Well, some of Greenwald's critics started storming around and ranting about Greenwald's contempt and his implied and direct threats in this interview shortly after the Reuters article appeared.

Of course, it wouldn't be unusual for  NSA's and other interested parties' scourbots to alert on the story for inspection and review for potential further action. I mean this is how your government and its many corporate partners work, and it's not pretty. Step out of line, the man come and take you away. More to the point, however, the man will make your life a living hell beforehand. The fact that Greenwald has been able to do his thing on an international basis without molestation (that we know of anyway) for all these years despite his, shall we say, provocations, is one of the indications that he is an asset on one of the teams contending for power over us, and until and unless he actually goes rogue, they're not going to do anything to him. Nor is the Evil, Perfidious, and All-Powerful Government going to do so. He's too valuable as a contrarian thorn in the side. (Yes, actually, there is value for the Powers That Be in having people like Greenwald around; it's a form of channeling and managing dissent, the more hyperbolically the better. After all, I go back to the days of Jerry Rubin.

 

While I loved Jerry's antics and theatrics and I saw him as a brilliant agitator and critic of the Establishment (and happened to meet him a couple of times -- he was so tiny!)  he was also adopted by that Establishment, and his seamless transition from firebrand to multi-level marketeer was all but foregone. When he had a product -- like his books or his radicalism -- he packaged, marketed and sold them like liver sausage. Why not? This is America. The Marketeers' Paradise.

Or at least it used to be. For some, it still is.

I've read Greenwald's interview in both Spanish and auto-translate versions, and it seems to me that his critics are pointing to legitimate factors in the interview which appear to be intended to play to his Argentine audience and to raise hackles in the USofA -- while at the same time his critics are falling into the trap of the provocateur. This is among the reasons why he thinks his critics are teh stoopit. They are so often so easily waylayed by Greenwald's polemics and provocations. Too bad, suckers! (Rubin did this too; he was a master at it. Much better, in my view, than Greenwald.)

The issue is supposedly wanting "the United States on its knees" and threats that if anything (untoward) happens to Snowden, all his scary revelations about the Surveillance State will be released in a torrent. Yes, well. Sure.

Greenwald put up a post at the Guardian shortly after the alert went out about the Reuters piece, deflecting, denouncing and falsely denying the way he does, accusing his critics of stupidity and political revanchism and whatnot, as if any of that mattered. It doesn't, not really.

All that really matters in this latest hoohah is keeping the argument alive, because ultimately it's all about the argument and one-upping and besting one's opponent in the argument.

The odd thing is that this uproar was generated immediately after Snowden's appearance at Sheremetyevo, an appearance that had been orchestrated by WikiLeaks and the Russian government -- eagerly, almost desperately awaited by the global media -- in which Snowden essentially pleaded with Russian human rights representatives to intervene with the Putin regime to obtain temporary political asylum in Russia while he awaits safe passage assurances from Unnamed Western European and North American governments so that he may travel to his exile in Latin America.

Greenwald accuses Reuters of being a tool of the US Government, but good doG, Reuters is an international news agency, and it was Reuters journalists who were slaughtered in the infamous Collateral Murder gun camera video. Reuters reported on the interview in La Nacion because it's an international story of interest, and Reuters did not mischaracterize what Greenwald said.

The Greenwald attack on Reuters is uncalled for in any rational sense, but it takes attention away from Snowden's plight in Russia, a plight which seems to be genuine. He can't move. He's trapped at the airport, and as far as I can tell, that wasn't part of the Plan. His WikiLeaks handlers seem to be somewhat at a loss.

At any rate, the saga will continue for as long as it does.

That summertime news-hole has got to be filled with something.

The Utter Confusion of Snowden's Asylum Search

Edith Piaf - Non,  je ne regrette rien by bebepanda

There's been some news from Moscow.

Edward J. Snowden has received many offers of political asylum and he announced that he has accepted all of them, but for reasons that aren't entirely clear, he claims he is unable to "enjoy" these offers because he cannot travel within Russia nor can he legally leave the transit zone of the airport where he has apparently been housed at the capsule hotel since he arrived from Hong Kong. So, as far as I can puzzle out from the rather elaborate legalese of his statements, he is once again requesting asylum in Russia (which request he previously withdrew due to unacceptable conditions placed on his asylum by Vladimir Putin) so that he may travel in country until such time as external travel arrangements can be made and safe conduct assured for his eventual departure to Latin America.

Where in Latin America is not exactly clear as a number of Latin American countries have granted him asylum including Venezuela, Nicaragua, Bolivia, and Ecuador -- or maybe not. Exactly what has been offered and by whom is quite as murky as Snowden's whereabouts and activities during his weeks-long disappearance before his brief semi-public presence at the meeting with human rights organization and legal representatives in Moscow today.

Snowden took the opportunity to denounce the United States and unnamed European governments for acting lawlessly to prevent him from "enjoying" asylum, and for their despicable acts in forcing down the airplane of a sovereign nation's head of state in order to search the plane for his presence.

It's not exactly clear what he is demanding. If I were trying to help him, I'd have no idea what he wanted me to do.

His main complaint seems to be that he is not allowed to travel legally from the transit zone because his passport was canceled by the US State Department, an arrest warrant has been issued for his apprehension, and he's afraid that the United States Government will not treat him well if he is apprehended.

Yet others have already pointed out that he can travel within Russia -- say from the airport to an embassy -- in a diplomatic car without a problem, and any nation that grants him asylum (as several have done) can also provide him with valid travel documents for his journey, wherever he wishes to go.

Nevertheless, he says he is trapped in the airport until... what?

What I gather from the statements he's made and the statements made on his behalf by WikiLeaks and the Guardian is that he seeks a status equivalent to diplomatic immunity from some country, whether Russia or some other, and a complete cessation of efforts by the government of the United States to extradite and apprehend him -- so that he may freely travel to some third country to enjoy their grant of asylum.

This is not as strange as it may sound -- of course, to his partisans, nothing he says or is said on his behalf sounds strange, but that's another topic for another day. Clearly he's been handled by WikiLeaks at least since his departure from Hong Kong, and WikiLeaks' posture has been that of a nation-state contending with other nation-states. WikiLeaks personnel have come close to demanding diplomatic immunity for themselves from other nation-states. Of course it is not granted, but they keep demanding.

Though Snowden is not a WikiLeaks factotum -- at least not so far as we know -- it appears that he is under the care and feeding of his WikiLeaks handler in Moscow, and much of what he is purported to have said or written himself since arriving in Moscow is widely believed to have been the product of WikiLeaks, or even of Julian himself. There have been reports that WikiLeaks is paying at least some of his expenses while he is on the run (or stationary in Moscow as the case may be).

His argument is so legally muddled, however, and is so compromised by propaganda and ritualized denunciations of the United States and its European handmaidens that interpretations of what he is saying and what he means and wants are required. They aren't much clearer than his own statements and those made on his behalf.

I've long believed that WikiLeaks was likely being run as a honeypot to attract would-be whistle blowers and extract whatever information they might have before turning them over to the appropriate authorities ("sorry about that!"). In that context, I saw Julian as an agency asset who went rogue when he got above himself and said he was going to release the bank docs that had come his way. All holy hell broke lose at that moment, and he became  a real fugitive and WikiLeaks was effectively neutered. Those promised bank docs were never released. Its revelations since that time have been minimal at best. But during its hey-day, WikiLeaks and Julian were media giants. Now, they're closer to pariahs as far as most of the media is concerned.

The advent of Young Snowden injected new life into Julian and WikiLeaks, though it didn't gain them much respect from People Who Mattered, respect that was largely pissed away some time ago. While Julian might be an asset that went rogue, the question has been, if he is an asset, for whom? We might be able to sort that out given the way the Snowden Thing has devolved.

It's obvious (to me) that Snowden is an asset, and it's not certain that he has actually gone rogue, but he may well be a limited hangout or even a mole. If so, there has been some speculation that he is an asset for the CIA out doing a number on the rival NSA -- and its partners. If so, that may be why, even now, the government has been somewhat reticent about rounding him up. The government is as factionalized as any other aspect of American life, and when powerful agencies and their corporate partners contend with one another for primacy, the fireworks show can be entertaining -- but very confusing. In these circumstances, we're not meant to know what's going on, and we usually don't.

I don't know what's going on here, but I doubt that little of what we're being told about it is true.

G9 -- Snowden Appears In Russia Amid the Hoohah Over Microsoft Revelations (Ride The Tiger)

Yes. Well. The Prodigal Returns -- or at least he reappears. It will be interesting to see how his saga plays out from this point given yesterday's bombshell Guardian story regarding Microsoft's willing participation in the National Spy Games.

Julian got into his fine pickle, recall, almost immediately after he mentioned that WikiLeaks was going to release internal communications from some bank's (thought to be BofA) executive suites. Until that moment he'd been something of a gadfly and clown as far as the Powers That Be  were concerned, and his big releases were media chum and money makers. Afterwards, he was a wanted fugitive denounced and deplored by practically every living government or private sector personality suckling at the corporate teat. So he sits, fuming, in the Ecuadoran embassy in London, run to ground. WikiLeaks has been largely neutered.

The situation is somewhat different with regard to Snowden, Greenwald (et al) and the Guardian. The leaked material is being vetted with US government representatives prior to publication by the Guardian. You'll notice that almost nothing that's being published is bylined Greenwald alone -- and that I would say is a safety factor in all the hoohah. Snowden essentially disappeared after he made the video interview in Hong Kong, and reports of his travels and whereabouts and struggles had to be taken with a grain of salt because there were no witnesses and no proof that any of it was accurate or true. Now he has appeared, apparently in Moscow at the airport where he has apparently been staying since he arrived from Hong Kong, but video of this appearance has been forbidden, and practically all news of it is coming from tweets from inside the meeting room and interviews outside it  -- interviews not with Snowden.

His safety at the airport -- if not his comfort and convenience -- is supposedly assured as he or his handlers work out the details of asylum somewhere, eventually.

The Microsoft story yesterday was really the first time that the releases had touched upon how willingly cooperative the NSA's corporate partners have been on behalf of the National Surveillance State, and that struck me as the "BofA" moment for this saga.  Once that door is opened, it can never be shut again. Because it directly affects the international power and profits of behemoth corporate entities, it is seen as the same kind of existential threat to those behemoths that Julian's BofA threat-comment did, thus, you would think that the full force and power of the corporate-state would be unleashed against... what?

Julian threatened to release sensitive and confidential information about banks; Snowden provided information to the Guardian and the Guardian has released sensitive and confidential information about Microsoft's cooperative relationship with the NSA, and Snowden has now "appeared" in Moscow (at least for a moment) and, apart from some boilerplate denials and fudges, Microsoft and the government with which it functions in symbiosis have been remarkably silent, remarkably restrained -- despite claims of a Global Manhunt and all the rest of the spectacle that's been made of the saga, including the downing of the Bolivian president's plane in Vienna.

Of course both the government and Microsoft had foreknowledge of what was to be published and so it seems to be throughout this story, such foreknowledge has calmed some of the expected hysteria, something that was not necessarily the case with Julian and WikiLeaks -- though until the third rail of banking docs was touched, there was little effort to silence Julian or stanch the flow of leaks through WikiLeaks.

So far as I can tell from the very limited amount of information acquired by the Guardian at the Snowden Appearance in Moscow, the only "news" was that he is applying for asylum and will stay at the airport until it is granted and he is able to safely make his way elsewhere. Or maybe he'll stay in Russia.

OK. The tiger is mounted; let's see if it can be ridden.

holio ‏@holiode 

#Snowden pic.twitter.com/rhiz2eqpg8

Ponder It. There Is A Lesson To Be Learned

From yesterday's NYT. Given what I posted earlier about the Guardian, and given the general state of the media these days, including especially the New York Times, I look at stories like this with a skeptical and critical eye. One has to. One never knows whether what is chosen for publication is true, "truthy," or false, and one doesn't necessarily know what the underlying motivation for these stories is. That said, this one is... interesting. Don't think such things couldn't happen, and haven't already happened, here...

Sudden Improvements in Egypt Suggest a Campaign to Undermine Morsi

By BEN HUBBARD and DAVID D. KIRKPATRICK

Published: July 10, 2013

CAIRO — The streets seethe with protests and government ministers are on the run or in jail, but since the military ousted President Mohamed Morsi, life has somehow gotten better for many people across Egypt: Gas lines have disappeared, power cuts have stopped and the police have returned to the street.

Related

• Egypt’s Government Broadens Its Accusations Against Islamists (July 11, 2013)

• Egypt Is Arena for Influence of Arab Rivals (July 11, 2013)

• The Lede: Egyptian Journalist Was Killed by Army Sniper He Filmed, Family Says (July 10, 2013)

• The Lede: New Video Appears to Show How Predawn Raid Unfolded in Cairo (July 9, 2013)

As crime and traffic worsened under President Mohamed Morsi, the police refused to respond, hurting the quality of life and the economy. Since his ouster last week, officers have returned to patrols.

The apparently miraculous end to the crippling energy shortages, and the re-emergence of the police, seems to show that the legions of personnel left in place after former President Hosni Mubarak was ousted in 2011 played a significant role — intentionally or not — in undermining the overall quality of life under the Islamist administration of Mr. Morsi. 

And as the interim government struggles to unite a divided nation, the Muslim Brotherhood and Mr. Morsi’s supporters say the sudden turnaround proves that their opponents conspired to make Mr. Morsi fail. Not only did police officers seem to disappear, but the state agencies responsible for providing electricity and ensuring gas supplies failed so fundamentally that gas lines and rolling blackouts fed widespread anger and frustration. 

“This was preparing for the coup,” said Naser el-Farash, who served as the spokesman for the Ministry of Supply and Internal Trade under Mr. Morsi. “Different circles in the state, from the storage facilities to the cars that transport petrol products to the gas stations, all participated in creating the crisis.”

Read the rest at the link.

The corporatist fascists are determined to lord over all, everywhere around the world, and they will let nothing and no one stand in their way. They will cheerfully undermine, subvert, and co-opt the legitimate complaints of peoples everywhere in order to institute even harsher and more exploitative rule, they will seize control of revolutions, they will sadistically murder and torture, they will destroy whole nations when it pleases them.

Without the countering force of something like the Soviet Union, why shouldn't they do whatever they want? It's not like there is anything standing in their way. One might think that "Red" China would be a bulwark against the predations of the globalist capitalist fascists, but no. China's leadership seems to be all in with the program, perhaps with some ulterior motive, but whatever it is, it doesn't include rescuing the masses from the socio and psychopaths running roughshod over the hopes and aspirations of billions of people day in and day out.

I've thought a bit more about the problem of Corporate Defenders, as I ran into another one at dKos in bobswern's post on the march -- and essential triumph -- of "Inverted Totalitarianism" in the USofA. It's a topic I've dealt with myself from time to time, though not as directly as bobswern does. At any rate, among the comments were some by one called "dumbo" who manned up to defend the digital data corps -- the "partners" in the PRISM data hoovering program -- as poor set upon innocents who will lose all kinds of business overseas because no one will trust them now, and they, poor things, are the victims of government coercion and blackmail, and oh isn't it awful; tears, rended garments, covering with ashes.

No. Apparently it doesn't occur to "dumbo" that these corps are paid handsomely for their services (whether actually coerced or not remains to be seen, but I for one doubt the stories of coercion given the lies and the marketing ploys they all pull on users every day. They may be crying "coercion" but it's not believable.) 

Just to make matters worse for Corporate Defenders, the Guardian's latest "blockbuster revelation" is that Microsoft, everybody's favorite whipping boy anyway, has been all in on the surveillance racket from the get-go. Yes? Well, how does anybody think these companies all over Silicon Valley and the world came into being in the first place, for cripes' sake? Personal computing and the internet and all these digital/electronic devices we're so addicted to and every single thing surrounding them came out of the Defense Department -- "evil government" -- either directly or indirectly, and the digital data companies, big and small, are all tied together in symbiosis with government. 

The integration of a wide range of corporate partners (not just in the digital data field) with government agencies is so commonplace these days as to be taken completely for granted. The agency I worked for carried out projects on behalf of some of these partners and vice versa. The integration of personnel wasn't quite as complete, but it wasn't unusual for there to be corporate sponsored workers on site.

So they can stop with the whining and crying and breast beating about how they've been kidnapped and blackmailed and raped by All-Powerful Zapper Wielding Bureaucrats. It's absurd.

The companies are paid very well by their government partners. Very well indeed.

Your tax money at work!

The Guardian's Shameful Coverage of The Egypt Thing

 [Oops. The issue of the Guardian's shameful coverage of the Egypt Thing was omitted from the previous post, which I, failing to review the it after it was posted, didn't notice. Well, there are no editors in the blobosphere....;~D]

One of the features of the post-modern media environment has been the apparently chaotic -- or even non-existent -- editorial department of various publications, particularly newspapers. [Editorial note: they must be emulating blogs in order to capture more market share!]  What gets covered and what gets published appear to be part of a free-for-all rather a coordinated effort to inform the public. There is less and less real news, more and more fluff in practically all media, but within the context of what passes for Real News there are more and more outright lies and deceptions, less and less reliable information (after all, "facts have a liberal bias" and we can't have that!) and far too much "he said, she said" reporting when plain facts are staring reporters and editors in the face.

So it has been with coverage of the uprising, coup, and subsequent violence in Egypt. The Guardian has a particularly shameful record in that regard. A grotesque record when it comes to the bloody violence inflicted on protesters against the military coup and particularly with regard to the massacre of Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo the other day. A massacre which the Guardian can't quite bring itself to call a massacre, but instead uses the shameful tactic of asserting that "some people say" there was a "massacre." Even going so far as to headline the "alleged shooting" at the Republican Guard Club.

What's odd about this is that the Guardian has had no problem reporting on the number of deaths and injuries in that morning's incidents -- more than fifty dead, hundreds and hundreds injured by gunfire from the troops and police -- but cannot bring itself to call it a massacre in part, it seems, because the Muslim Brotherhood calls it a massacre and the Egyptian Army disputes it, saying it was "self-defense."

Clue to Guardian "news" people: it literally doesn't matter whether a massacre has occurred in "self-defense" or not. It is still a massacre.

mas·sa·cre  

/ˈmasikər/

Noun An indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of people: "the attack was described as a cold-blooded massacre".

Verb Deliberately and violently kill (a large number of people).

Synonyms noun.   slaughter - carnage - butchery - bloodshed verb.   slaughter - butcher - murder - slay - kill

You're welcome.

The reports I've seen elsewhere of what happened that morning in Cairo are doGawful, truly grotesque, murderous and bloodthirsty, deeply, deeply infuriating and tragic -- for the victims. Victims which include at least one police officer killed by the military in their frenzy to murder fleeing citizens. Not reported in the Guardian. I don't know whether it is true or not, but there have been some claims that all the police and military casualties (a few killed, somewhat more wounded) were due to friendly fire. Again, not reported in the Guardian. There were Army snipers firing into the crowds, fusillades fired from fixed positions at the crowds, there were chases through the streets and summary executions of unarmed citizens, housing was shot up, people were rounded up at random, and on and on. Little or none of it was reported in the Guardian.

Most of the Guardian's coverage was confined to official announcements and official reaction to charges by the MB, as well as ample coverage of denunciations of the MB by various well placed individuals. And the arched-eyebrow reactions of reporters to comprehensive eyewitness accounts of the mayhem and bloodshed.

It was typical of the kind of partisan reporting that passes for "news" these days, meant not to inform but to propagandize on behalf of a particular political interest or team, in the Guardian's case, on behalf of the Egyptian military and its supporters, who in turn are on the International Finance Team.

The headlines -- all of them -- should have said: "The Guardian Backs Military Coup In Egypt and Bloody Suppression of Dissent."  It would at least have been honest.

It's obvious as sin what the Egyptian coup is all about, given the swift placement of Mubarak retreads and international finance figures into positions of authority and power in the so-called "transitional government." It's bloodier but not politically any different than the replacement of elected governments in Greece and Italy with lackeys to international finance. "Technocrats," I believe they are called.

It was called Gleichschaltung in the original German. Only now it is far more sophisticated and, if resisted, suppression is quite openly brutal. In the case of Egypt, suppression is murderous.

Back in the day a lot of Americans bridled at this kind of reportorial nonsense when it came from the New York Times or the Washington Post in support of the looming War of Aggression in Iraq. Many of us knew quite well that we were being propagandized with lies and deceptions from the government and in the media continually; it was plain as day. And yet strangely, many of the same people who clearly saw through the barrage of propaganda back then continued to rely on the NYT and the WaPo for authoritative news in the traditional sense, as they do today. If it's reported in the Times, or on the pages of WaPo apparently, it is a priori reliable and true. Unless what is reported is not in line with the current "progressive" position, in which case it is "obviously" propaganda.

The dissonance is striking.

When I've pointed out that it's better to be skeptical of everything in the Times and WaPo because their role is to propagandize on behalf of factional players in the game, the idea is met with outrage and derision. No, one has to pick and choose what one believes, and one should trust most of what appears in the Times and WaPo, because where else are you going to get accurate reporting and truthful news? Hm?

Now some of people who have come to rely on the Guardian for News That Is True are finding that in fact the Guardian is a factional player as well, and that what they publish is not necessarily true in any thorough or objective sense at all, any more than what is published in the New York Times is. [Besides, they're British, and the British media have long played games with the their readers and the truth, offering up falsehoods on a routine basis and telling tales, shall we say, rather than reporting truth, on a daily basis. It's part of the media culture in Britain that Americans tend not to be aware of.]

I've been skeptical of the Guardian's NSA series from the beginning, but their grossly distorted coverage of the Egypt Thing, particularly the massacre the other day, should be a clue to what is really going on in their newsrooms, and it should alert every reader to be skeptical of everything that appears on the Guardian's pages and at its website.

We'll see...

The Egypt Thing As Analysed by Anti-Imperialist Trotskyites at WSWS -- And the Guardian's Shameful Coverage

From the outset of the latest Egyptian Uprising, it was clear enough to me that the political, social and economic contest in Egypt had devolved into class war (something that was never far from the surface to begin with) and that a great deal of the Anti-Morsi animus that was being whipped to a frenzy in Tahrir Square recently was class-based rejection of the authority of the lower class Muslim Brotherhood government by an indignant Egyptian bourgeoisie. It was plain as day.

How did I know? Simple: everyone in Tahrir who was interviewed for the American and British TeeVee "news" was well groomed, spoke fluent, colloquial English, and in general was light-skinned. On the other hand, every pro-Morsi individual I saw on the TeeVee was poorly dressed, dark skinned, often snaggle-toothed, and all spoke either only Arabic or extremely halting English.

How much more obvious could it get?

The Egyptian upper and middle classes believed that "their" revolution had been stolen (in free and fair elections) by the peasants, and they wanted their property back. They would get it back through the reconstitution of the military dictatorship of the past which would be allowed and required to perpetrate a coup to depose the Peasant Morsi and install someone "better suited" to the office and position of Leader in the Presidential Palace.

So it ever was, so it is to be now.(To paraphrase the Late Great Yul Brynner.)

Well. Here we are. The script was practically pre-written.

Our friends at World Socialist Website, some of the sharpest political, social and economic analysts on the face of the earth (no hyperbole there, they are that good) have done their scrutiny of the latest Egyptian "revolution" and come up with this:

Egyptian military regime plans sharp attack on working class

Yes. Well. Isn't that the plain truth of the matter?

When has there ever been a bourgeois uprising without an attack on the working class and lower orders, I ask you.

To quote:

The day after carrying out a bloody massacre killing 51 supporters of ousted Muslim Brotherhood (MB) President Mohamed Mursi, the newly-installed Egyptian army junta issued a constitutional decree vesting unlimited powers in the military-backed president. It also named free-market economist Hazem El-Beblawi as prime minister, signaling plans for a sharp attack on the working class.

These events confirm that last Wednesday’s military coup against Mursi’s Muslim Brotherhood (MB) did not represent the aspirations to democracy and social equality that drove masses of workers and youth to protest against Mursi last week. Rather, with the support of liberal and pseudo-left forces that joined the Tamarod (“rebel”) coalition, the coup aimed to forcibly pre-empt rising political opposition in the working class before it turned into a revolutionary struggle against the entire ruling class.

Indeed.

This analysis is nuanced by the fact that the writer recognizes divergent currents in the uprising, legitimate aspirations for democracy and social equality that had been denied by the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as the so far successful effort of neo-liberal pseudo-left forces to take control of the discontent and transform it into a restoration of the status quo ante.

More:

Like last Wednesday’s coup, the new constitutional declaration enjoys Washington’s support. Egypt’s Al Ahram daily cited anonymous US officials who praised the declaration for having “laid out a plan for the path forward.” They added, however, that Washington would “react with some caution” to the plan, as it was issued only one day after the bloody massacre of MB protesters outside the Republican Guard barracks in Cairo.

Mansour’s naming of El-Beblawi as prime minister is a signal to the major international banks and the Persian Gulf oil sheikhdoms that the junta will carry out deep attacks on the working class.

El-Beblawi is founding member of Egypt’s Social-Democratic Party, having done a Ph.D. in economics at the University of Paris and worked as a UN official. He is widely known as an advocate of cuts to state subsidies for grain and fuel prices, on which millions of workers in Egypt depend. He laid these views out in an interview with Daily News Egypt on June 29, the day before protests began against Mursi.

He said, “We must create a clear understanding for the public that the level of subsidies in Egypt is unsustainable, and the situation is critical. Subsidies have exceeded reasonable limits, and take more than 25 percent of the budget … People must understand that they must accept some of the consequences: the cancelling of subsidies requires sacrifices from the public and therefore necessitates their acceptance.”

The New York Times praised El-Beblawi’s nomination as a “signal that the military-led transitional government intends to move forward with economic reforms and restructuring, including reductions in the country’s vast public subsidies.”

It could not be any clearer what this is all about, could it?

The poor and the underclass generally is to be made to pay for the resurgence of selected segments of Their Betters and the Lower Orders must be made to accept it. Period. End of discussion.

Morsi's rule and that of the Brotherhood was fraught with failings in part because of its emphasis on serving the Lesser People of Egypt -- which led to all kinds of economic sanctions from the Powers That Be who were intent on establishing the now nearly universal program of extractions from the working classes for the purpose of supporting an ever more bloated financier class and a subservient professional class. This has become the universal ruling program since the evaporation of the Soviet Union, may its shadow rest in peace.)

Morsi and the Brotherhood followed a different model, one that was based in service to the underclass, but which was rigid and which was undermined by its rivals and opponents from the beginning. It was almost inevitable that it would collapse or be deposed.

And so it has been.

The march of Neo-Liberal economic "reform" will not be stopped. Not in Egypt, not in Syria, not anywhere.

And the bloodied masses will be made to pay for it:

It will not be long before the army turns the methods of mass killing and provocation against opposition in the working class to El-Beblawi’s reactionary social agenda.

Tensions are still running high in Egypt, amid the junta’s continuing crackdown on MB members. Though Monday’s massacre of pro-MB protesters outside the Republican Guard barracks in Cairo was provoked by the army, prosecutors are now preparing charges including murder, thuggery, and undermining general security against 650 pro-MB protesters who survived the massacre.

Corporate Defenders: Are They Necessary? And What -- Ultimately -- Do They Want Anyway?

In the recently released second segment of Glenn Greenwald's interview with Edward Snowden, recorded in Hong Kong in June, Snowden used a couple of locutions that I found instructive as to his motivations.

Quoting from the interview, Snowden says:

(3:03)…they [the government] are applying it [surveillance authority] to the whole society by basically subverting the corporate partnership…

(3:57) …US Government co-opts corporate power to its own ends…

[My emphasis]

I alerted on this kind of talk immediately because it's the kind of thing you hear from Libertarians and their fellow travelers all the time, and this particular way of speaking about the relationship between corporations and government -- that is, "subverted" and "co-opted corporate power" -- may as well be from the Koch Cookbook for Corporate Liberation. 

When I posted about this here and elsewhere, I made the point that he's got it completely backward, essentially inverting reality. The government -- Our So-Called Government -- serves corporate interests and is the creature of its corporate partners, not the other way around. The Government of the United States has long been effectively a wholly owned subsidiary of extremely powerful transnational corporations, and none of us are ever allowed to forget it.

"Step out of line, the man come and take you away..."

Make no mistake, Our Government was serving corporate interests then (in 1968), nearly as much as it is now, as anyone who was aware of the profits being made on the meatgrinder of the Vietnam War knew.

And yet here we see that in SnowdenWorld, it's just the opposite, The All-Powerful Government makes the corporations its bitches and slaves by "subverting" them and "co-opting" their power. That view, in my view, is seriously warped, but it gives us an insight into what's motivating Snowden and what his objectives may be. Snowden's views are aligned with those of Greenwald, who showed himself to be a Corporate Libertarian quite some time ago with his awkward and ham-handed defense of Citizens United and corporate personhood, and -- I would come to learn -- Snowden is aligned with quite a few other Corporate Defenders on the internet and in the digital data industry who apparently really do see themselves and their companies as "subverted" and "co-opted" by government, rather like kidnap or rape victims forced to engage in icky behaviors they otherwise wouldn't do if not for the coercion and imposition of authority upon them by nasty, evil government.

I see.

No. Wait.

This notion of government-evil/corporation-good is bullshit. Complete, utter bullshit. Corporate interests run governments at every level, top to bottom, practically everywhere around the world. There hasn't been an era of greater consolidated corporate control of government in history. Nothing even close to it has been encountered in this country since the Gilded Age, yet here's Snowden and other Corporate Defenders claiming against plain evidence to the contrary that corporate partners don't have enough independence and power, and that they are forced, somehow, to abide by icky government command and control, indeed that they are subverted and co-opted to the will of this Alien Government Thing, and here's proof!

Dude needs to get a grip.

He appears to be caught up in a Corporate Libertarian mindset -- and fantasy -- that I'm surprised to find is shared by so many otherwise rational and even progressive individuals who apparently see government as a kind of Ultimate Evil and corporations -- to the extent they "exist" at all -- as Benign Entities who would Rule Over Us with Loving Grace -- if only they were allowed to do so without the interference of ... (ewww!) government. [And that's only a little bit of hyperbole.]

In arguing these points at FDL yesterday, the Corporate Libertarian separation from reality became quite clear to me, as did the underlying authoritarianism of those who hold this viewpoint.

As I frequently ask of Libertarians: "Liberty for whom? To do what?" They never have an answer, because if they start answering it, the real repugnance and ugliness of their ideals would be revealed. Based on my own experience with Libertarians and their fellow travelers over many years, it has always been part of the Libertarian program to obfuscate and deny their real intentions and to propagandize the ignorant masses into believing in and acting on ideals of "liberty" and policies contrary to their own best interests.

My version of the Libertarian Motto: "I demand the liberty to impose my authority on you."

But this post is not about that. I have written many others that are. This post is about what I see as the end game of Corporate Libertarians, and what is driving Snowden in particular. This post is about the objectives of Corporate Defenders and whether their ideal world is really the world we want to live in now or in  the future.

Greenwald and Snowden said all they wanted was a debate about the kind of world we want to live in; their partisans have ordered the rest of us to confine that debate to the issue of the NSA's surveillance, which has -- not surprisingly -- almost nothing to do with the real debate we need to have.  Which is not to defend NSA's domestic surveillance activities in any way. It is merely to point out that NSA's surveillance activities are hardly the most important matter in the debate over the kind of world we want to live in.

I would say unfettered corporate control of that world is a far more important matter in the debate we should be having, and that is the debate that Corporate Defenders and Corporate Libertarians are anxious to avoid or prevent.

Instead, they aver that there is too much government control of corporations, and that NSA's domestic surveillance activity is the case in point.

In fact, for all intents and purposes, the US Government particularly, and governments throughout the world generally, are the creatures and the servants of corporate interests -- to the exclusion of the public interest at almost all times, almost everywhere.  This is a main reason why so many people are so enraged and rebellious in so many places so much of the time. Hello?

There is not too much government control of corporations, if anything there is far too little. Corporate interest runs roughshod over the public. Corporate interest is the principal business of most governments most of the time. Corporate interest comes first and foremost, and we are near the point where corporate interest is the only interest of government.

But, but, but, but Secret FISA COURT ORDERS!!!! Ayiee! Snowden proved it, did he not?

As I and others have pointed out, FISA court orders to companies providing data to the Surveillance System are functionally eyewash and ass covers for those companies to immunize them from lawsuits by the public for ongoing privacy violations and violations of terms of service.

And here it's important to realize that the Surveillance System is a joint partnership operation by an essentially fused corporate-government. It is not something that has been imposed on an innocent corporate sector by an evil government despite the arguments of Corporate Defenders to the contrary.

So with the Corporate Defenders' premise (of too much government control of corporations) undermined, what is the point of all this hoohah, anyway?

It is, in my view, to so diminish the power and authority of "government" that it literally ceases to exist as an independent entity and becomes entirely -- not substantially, but entirely -- the creature of a global, implacable, and unassailable Corporate-State.

In other words, the end-game, as I see it, is the full privatization of government everywhere around the world, in perpetuity, without let or hindrance, forever and ever, world without end, amen.

And the contest, such as it is, is over which corporate interests will have control of this ideal privatized government, and to some extent how soon it can and will be implemented, with the digital companies demanding primacy and the liberty to extend their reach and power immediately and indefinitely.

That's what this is all about. Nothing more. Nothing less.

Is the coming Corporate World, masterminded and controlled by a handful of digital Super-Corps the kind of world we want to live in?

Let's have that debate.

"All watched over by machines of loving grace."