Again -- Patrick Lynch is All Butt-Hurt and Killer Kop Kompetition Comes to ABQ

What a week.

When James Blake, retired tennis pro, was ignominiously tackled by a wilding NYPD detective and trussed up like a roast while he waited for a ride to Flushing Meadows the other day there was something of an outcry about, oh I don't know, police brutality and excessive use of force. Yet again. NYPD has earned quite a reputation for targeting black and brown men for, shall we say, scrutiny, on the presumption of guilt just because. It's a quality of life issue, right?

At any rate, Blake was trussed up and left sitting there on the sidewalk while a plain clothes detective, who apparently did not identify himself to Blake at any time, went about his business of curbing identity theft or whatever assignment he was on until such time as another officer told him that he had collared the wrong man.

Oh.

Blake was let go. But he made one unholy stink about what had happened to him, and before you knew it, the Mayor and Police Commissioner of New York City were holding news conferences to say, "Ooops, sorry." Well, sort of.

The problem here is not that the wrong man was targeted and detained. Nor is it even institutional racism (although pretty obviously enters into it.) The problem is that anyone could have this happen to them at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, and most victims would never receive an apology, even one as tepid as Blake received. They would be treated as if they were criminals of the worst order, and they would be expected to accept this treatment as routine police practice. If they didn't like it, there were procedures they could follow to file a complaint, which more than likely would be ignored, or if not, it would be sent to a sham CRB which would find that the officer acted "within policy," ergo, the complaint would not be sustained.

This happens all the time all over the country. When there is an outcry, as there has been with the James Blake matter, there may be some public contrition or even a monetary payout, but little or nothing will change.

In this case, the public outcry included a scathing editorial in the New York Times which called for the firing of the officer involved and a complete overhaul of NYPD's practices. Oh my.

This led directly to today's statement by the PBA President Patrick Lynch, who never misses an opportunity to whine and kvetch about how misunderstood the brave and true officers of the NYPD are, so leave them alone!!!!!

What a whiny little pissant.

But then, that's what's come to be expected from police officer union heads. They cannot believe there are real problems with policing in this country, one of them being a first option resort to violence.

Speaking of, Albuquerque hosts the umpteenth annual Killer Kop Kompetititon this weekend.

Last year, there was a media firestorm about it. This year, not so much. In fact, I can't find anything online about it. Interesting. Well, helpfully, the NRA has an extended pdf (54 pages) providing all sorts of detail about the excitement soon to engulf the culture of violent policing.

There will be a march and protest at the hotel where the killer kops are staying this Saturday, sponsored and organized by the Peace and Justice Center. I'd like to think there will be a big turnout, but somehow I doubt it.

Once James Boyd's killers were charged and eventually, more than a year later, indicted (and are now out on their own recognizance until the trial next August, yet another year gone by) and once James Boyd's family settled their lawsuit against the city of Albuquerque the public anger level declined noticeably. The Albuquerque Police Department has instituted a number of reforms and has held off shooting suspects quite as often as they once did. Even though Albuquerque still hosts the Killer Kop Kompetition, the likelihood that APD will shoot and kill you has been severely curtailed.

As for those hundreds of other po-po gathering to get their kill on, who knows? The rate of police killings has actually increased this year, despite the fact that violent crime is at an all time low. Police forces all over the country have convinced themselves that the public is conducting a "war on police" -- a war for which there is no evidence at all, inasmuch as the likelihood of a cop being killed by a bad guy is close to nonexistent.

People know that Patrick Lynch has serious personal issues that should be addressed outside his duties.

But then that would be true of many cops, wouldn't it?

So Now Comes Word From the NYT

That there are all kinds of surveillance activities going on, not just the NSA, and Oh Gee, Isn't It A Shame?

Jeebus.

Gosh almighty. Ya think?

I seem to recall I was yapping quite some time back that the obsessive focus on NSA surveillance was a smokescreen covering up all the other surveillance activities going on, by both the public and private sectors, most of which was far-far closer to you'n'me than the NSA ever gets.

While everyone was keening and rending their garments over the NSA surveillance revealed in the Snowden docs, all the rest of it, from the FBI and the Post Office and Google -- and ALL the rest -- was utterly ignored, and anyone who pointed out these other more intrusive surveillance activities going on all the time was denounced or dismissed.

The only thing that mattered -- absolutely the ONLY thing -- was that the NSA was hoovering everyone's phone calls and internet searches and was storing them in some server farm in Utah.

But the surveillance is so much closer to ordinary folks than that, and it's so much more intrusive, and it is so much more likely to result in harm to ordinary people than almost anything the NSA does or has ever done.

To say so, though, is to risk being labeled a crank.

At least until now, when the New York Times announces its semi-official findings of, well, surveillance all the way down.

There was a recent story about surveillance by the Post Office that caused a bit of a ruckus, but that's only part of the surveillance they do. There is so much more. So very much more. But the media and public obsession with NSA surveillance overwhelmed any consideration of the surveillance conducted so widely by so many agencies and businesses.

It's as if it were by design.

Being the cynic I am, I think it was by design.

By focusing so much attention where nothing was ever likely to be done, and where very few individuals would be directly harmed by the surveillance, the other closer surveillance activities and agencies could consolidate and coordinate their effort far more closely and completely within a kind of protective cloak that would only be removed once the job was done.

That point seems to have been reached, now that the New York Times sees fit to print news of these Other Surveillance Activities.

"Oh and by the way..."

Sigh.

Oh Fer F@*k's Sake

(Via Willy Loman, which you ought to read if you want to know what's up with That Plane and all...;-)

Last week the NYT was all hopped up about the Evil That Is Iran, supposedly building a "non-functional mock up" of a Nimitz class aircraft carrier in their Gachin shipyard in the Persian Gulf. Oh. Noes. What could the perfidious Persians be up to now????

The Evil Non-Functional Aircraft Carrier of Doom!!!

The Times speculated that the Perfidious Ones would blow up the mock up for propaganda value!!!! Eeek!!!!!!. The EVIL!!!!!!

 This is just some of the hyperventilating included in the Times piece:

Navy officials responded that no drones had been shot down by enemy fire, although the Pentagon acknowledged at the time that it had lost a small number of ScanEagles, likely to engine malfunction.

Iranian Navy officials could not be immediately reached for comment as the country prepared to celebrate its New Year festivities on Friday. American intelligence officials cited a photograph taken on Feb. 22 in Bandar Abbas and a brief description in Persian of the vessel on a website for Iran’s Ministry of Industry, Mines and Trade.

For now, Navy analysts and American intelligence officials say they are not unduly concerned about the mock ship. But the fact that the Iranians are building it, presumably for some mysteriously bellicose purposes, contrasts with the fact that the Iranians stepped back from their typically heavy anti-American posture during a recent naval exercise in the gulf.

So. Proof. Proof I say! of Evil Intent. They want to blow it up!!!! For propaganda!!!!

More from the Times story (remember, this was in the New York M-F Times:)

“Based on our observations, this is not a functioning aircraft carrier; it’s a large barge built to look like an aircraft carrier,” said Cmdr. Jason Salata, a spokesman for the Navy’s Fifth Fleet in Bahrain, across the Persian Gulf from Iran. “We’re not sure what Iran hopes to gain by building this. If it is a big propaganda piece, to what end?”

Whatever the purpose, American officials acknowledged on Thursday that they wanted to reveal the existence of the vessel to get out ahead of the Iranians.

There you are. That's all you really need to know! Teh EVUL!!!!!

The bullshit was revealed somewhat later. Not by the NYT but by the EA Worldview news site.

The Non-functional Aircraft Carrier of Doom is a... movie prop. Oh. Well. I guess never mind then.

Well, the Iranian model is part of a drama, albeit not one that is supposedly worrying the Pentagon — and the story isn’t that much of a mystery.

If The New York Times had come to EA, rather than the Pentagon, we could have eased their minds while deflating their headline: the “aircraft carrier” is a movie prop — one that we have known about for almost a year. 

In April 2013, Iranian websites announced that a joint Iranian-Canadian production was going to tell the story of Iran Air 655, the civilian jet shot down in July 1988 by the USS Vincennes, killing all 290 passengers and crew. 

include Iranian and American actorsCo-directed by Nader Talebzadeh and Paxton Winters, the film would  include Iranian and American actors.

US officials and analysts forgot or were unaware of all this — or were confident that Schmitt would not discover the truth as they put out their scarier tale:

“It is not surprising that Iranian military forces might use a variety of tactics — including military deception tactics — to strategically communicate and possibly demonstrate their resolve in the region,” said an American official who has closely followed the construction of the mock-up….

“The system is often too opaque to understand who hatched this idea, and whether it was endorsed at the highest levels,” said Karim Sadjadpour, an Iran expert at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

Schmitt wrote of his efforts to check the US claims, “Iranian Navy officials could not be immediately reached for comment as the country prepared to celebrate its New Year festivities.” 

Schmitt did not say if he had tried to confirm the story with The Times’ Tehran correspondent, Thomas Erdbrink. 

Other US media raced to get Washington’s officials and politicians for their own versions of the story. Representative Eliot Engel told USA Today, “We don’t really know what it means, but I for sure don’t trust the Iranians. It’s some kind of a ruse and whatever they are up to, it’s no good.” 

CNN announced that it had “commercial satellite images” and brought out its unnamed US official to declare, “While the purpose of the fake carrier is unknown, Iran may be planning to destroy it in a propaganda move.” 

Meanwhile, Iranian outlets — some of whom have long been noted for their propaganda and scare stories — reveled in The Times’ conversion of the movie ship into a menace. 

Mashregh News laughed at the “quandary of America’s security and intelligence officials”. Alef put on a more serious face:

The issue has turned into a good excuse for another wave of hype against Iran. Without any proof or real basis, the western media have jumped again to paint a negative picture of Iran.

The Times and Schmitt — and their Pentagon and intelligence sources — don’t seem bothered, however. They have not stepped back from their original story:

This is exactly the kind of lie routinely propagated by US and EU media, on their own or by military and government impetus, propaganda that keeps international tensions at a feverish level.

If it's in the Times, of course, it must be true. (Forget about Judith Miller and Michael Gordon and Curveball and all the rest for the moment, these are different times.)

Nevertheless, the debunking of this little bit of hoo-hah is somewhat delicious...

I Guess Nobody Has Heard That The NYT Has Long Been a Direct Conduit For The CIA (WaPo, too, for that Matter)

This would be bizarre if it weren't typical.

Yesterday, there was a grand and glorious Hoo-Hah when it was announced by the Guardian and the NYT that the two publications had a mutual agreement to publish matters pertaining to the now rather crusty leak of documents by the redoubtable Edward Snowden currently at an undisclosed location somewhere in the Soviet Union, er, the Russian Federation, er, Russia.

The New York Times!!!! Yay!

Yes, well.

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!

What WikiLeaks' American Media Partner Has Done With the Documents

During the past week, I've been in some fairly contentious argument over at Glenn's Place regarding the nature of Julian Assange's relationship with the New York Times, his American business partner in the publication and interpretation of the leaked American military field reports concerning both Iraq and Afghanistan.

I've been uneasy about WikiLeaks, Julian, and the intense amount of hype surrounding the leaks that have been published by the Times (and a number of other outlets in other countries.)

My unease has to do, in part, with the fact that Julian has partnered with the New York Times, the leading American media cheerleader for war and empire. The Times, indeed, has been running interference for Julian and WikiLeaks. A very odd situation to say the least.

The excuse for this business partnership that I hear all the time is that the Times' circulation guarantees the widest distribution of the field reports in this country, and it was a perfectly acceptable decision by Julian to partner with them. It's self evident.

Except it isn't. The Times' circulation guarantees that their interpretation of the documents will be widely disseminated and will become (has already become) the Standard Narrative in this country regarding what's in the documents. That, to me, is the most obvious upshot of this strange partnership. Yet it is apparently a completely new thought to many who encounter it, and it is very difficult for them to accept.

The public for the most part won't read the documents themselves. I've given it a shot with what WikiLeaks has posted, and it's a hard slog. For their part, the Times hasn't actually published the documents themselves; they've selected some of them to highlight and interpret, but you have to go to WikiLeaks or one of the overseas sites to get the full doc dump. And enormous volume of these reports, numbering in the hundreds of thousands, guarantees that no one (sane) is going to read them all. Not gonna happen.

What has happened, though, is that the New York Times, being the sole US media partner for WikiLeaks, has determined what is and is not important to know from these reports and has focused its coverage there. And their coverage has formed the basis of the coverage by all other American media. For most of them, the New York Times interpretation of the documents is the Standard Narrative.

These are the headlines of the stories the Times has printed on the Iraq War Logs:

WikiLeaks Founder on the Run, Chased by Turmoil

Growing Use of Contractors Added to War's Chaos

Mix of Trust and Despair Helped Turn the Tide in Iraq

Tensions Remain High Along Kurdish-Arab Line

Deadly Day in Iraq

Archive Offers Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths

Detainees Suffered Most in Iraqi Custody, U.S. Logs Say

Iran's Role in Aiding Iraqi Militias Is Detailed in Reports

Of course the story on Julian himself has garnered the most attention -- at least from the Blogosphere -- and it has caused a firestorm led by Glenn Greenwald, whose polemical attacks on the Times and writer John Burns for "smearing" Julian (by reporting some of the well-known accusations against him) border on the hysterical and ludicrous.

The stories about what's in the documents have so far been largely ignored by the US Blogosphere. Other US media has been mostly concerned with Julian, his antics, or following the Pentagon line that there's "nothing new" in the documents, and condemning WikiLeaks for releasing them.

The Times' selection of stories to published based on the leaked reports (as opposed to their profile of Julian) is interesting, and I argue that they are essentially making two points: Iran must be destroyed, and Our Glorious Empire must endure forever because the gibbering Natives are incapable of governing themselves according to civilized norms.

And in this context, the Times story of Contractor Chaos in Iraq perfectly complements the broader notion that "Natives" -- that is, apparently, anyone who is not a member of the elites, in this case, mercenaries employed by Our Glorious Empire because there aren't enough Glorious Troops to Do The Job -- are incapable of governing themselves and behaving according to civilized norms. They are, at best, all of them, children. Give us some of that old White Man's Burden, eh?

The story of the Tide Turning is a story of gibbering Natives, perfidious Persians, and Glorious Americans, particularly His Imperial Divinity Gen. David Petraeus, who single handedly rescued the pitiful survivors of "sectarian strife" from their own worst impulses.

In the story of High Tension between Arabs and Kurds in northern Iraq, we find even more gibbering Natives and the Glorious Imperial Troops finding themselves between many rocks and hard places trying to keep the peace. Mediation, yay!

"A Deadly Day in Iraq" is an interactive map that shows us all the killings and violence in Baghdad during the height of what's called the "cleansing" -- when bodies were turning up everywhere, bombs were going off, and neighborhoods were systematically patrolled by roving death squads and expulsion teams. At no point is it even hinted that Americans shared any responsibility for what was going on. They were merely observers documenting the atrocities. No, according to the Times, the killing and cleansing stopped when the Glorious Surge Arrived, yay!

More gibbering Natives incapable of governing themselves are described in the Grim Portrait of Civilian Deaths article. For the most part, of course, the Deaths resulted from Native-on-Native action in the passion of the moment, but some were due to unfortunate accidents like when Glorious American Troops accidentally fired (repeatedly) on approaching civilian vehicles at checkpoints. As they so often did. Accidentally.

Of course the story of detainee torture in Native hands is well-known by now. Clearly, the Iraqis were and no doubt are far worse with their torture than Americans could ever hope to be. This is proved by the documents.

The story of the Perfidious Persians has probably gotten the widest play of any of the Times' stories derived from the leaked reports. Time after time, Glorious Americans find themselves threatened or accosted by Persians or gibbering Iraqi Natives who have been trained and equipped by the Persians. The Greeks at Marathon did not face a more brutal and organized Persian threat than Americans faced in Iraq. Persia delenda est!!!!

So this is what is being disseminated by Julian Assange's American Media Partner, this is the story that is being told in America. There is no consciousness, at all, that The United States (and needless to say, the New York Times) precipitated the tragedy that is Iraq, and that this Imperial Project is in any way misbegotten.

I have said, and I will say again, Julian had to know this would happen when he partnered with the Times. My question is, If he didn't want this to happen, why did he partner with them?

There are other, more trustworthy choices in this country. Well, at least for the time being.

Something just isn't right...