White Rightists, King-Emperors, and the Führerprinzip

I'm not sure whether a coup is underway, but the outlines of one have taken shape. A powerful faction of the Ruling Clique, how large of one it is impossible to say, has issued a challenge and a series of threats to the out-group faction that won ("won") the election and is preparing to shift the ship of state onto an uncharted course of unbridled corruption, destruction and rapine.

There is no precedent for anything they are setting out to do. The consequences, if they are not stopped or controlled, intrinsically threaten the survival of the Republic (already on its last legs), and could result in an extinction level of harm to Americans and people around the world. (Again, not that such a fate hasn't been bruited about for a generation or more.)

Something must be done about it, and fast.

The agencies that have lined up in opposition to the imposition of Trumpivism on the nation and the world -- an opposition retailed as some kind of Russian interference in the election just past -- are not among the most highly regarded by the public. The CIA has one of the most wretched reputations for bad thinking, lies, and destructive conduct of any in US history. It has operated effectively as a shadow government since its formation after WWII. While there are few brakes on CIA activities abroad, it can assert a powerful influence on domestic government; it has the power to change who is in charge through various means, including the Kennedy Solution.

One messes with it and its affiliated agencies at one's peril.

Apparently Mr. Trump has chosen to mess with it.

OK then.

We'll see what happens. I'm not particularly sanguine that the opposition agencies will win the contest with Mr. Trump and his loyalists, but we'll see.

A way to understand what's going on is through the lens of White Supremacy and the White Rightist conception of how the United States and the world should be run.

I have no doubt whatever that Mr. Trump and his chief loyalists and followers are steeped in the belief system of White Supremacy. It's the foundation of their identity. We've been seeing a resurgence in White Supremacy, White Identity, and White Rightist and Nationalist political ideology throughout Western Europe and North America especially since the advent of the Obamas in the White House, but it has never not been a factor in the political economies of Western Europe and their colonial and post colonial enterprises around the world, including the United States and Canada of course. Let's not forget Russia as part of the White Rightist world.

White Supremacy and White Rightism is always there, but it has been submerged in very public efforts to be inclusive and promote ethnic, racial and cultural diversity within the context of White Supremacy.

The context doesn't change. Who gets to participate and to what extent does.

Once included, it's hard for formerly excluded groups and individuals to let go of their seat at the table, and that's part of why there is so much public anxiety about the advent of the Trumpist faction to power. He and his loyalists have made quite clear that the party's over for the inappropriately included (interpreted, I believe correctly, as non-white.) He has explicitly targeted numerous minority groups he regards as unworthy. Scapegoating is de rigueur. One almost has to be white (and preferably male) or be seen as a non-white acceptable to white men to be included in the Trumpist vision of the New America. Loyalty and obedience are the essential factors affecting inclusion; race and gender are subsidiary but crucial factors.

The Republic has been on its death bed for some time, the coup de grace administered by the Supreme Court decision handing the presidency the Busheviks in the interest of "equal protection." It was bullshit, unconstitutional, and it was a coup. Yet by and large, Americans accepted it with relatively minor protest and grumbling. What could they do? A lot more than they did do, but the Rules of Politeness and Patriotism were more important at the time than fighting for what was right.

It was clear from the outset that the Bush Regime would be catastrophic for Americans and peoples around the world, and so it was. We are still living with the consequences. My generation will never escape them.

The Obama regime mitigated some of the worst aspects of the Bushevik catastrophe but didn't really change any of its fundamentals. It was obvious from the beginning that his job assignment was to con and soothe the Rabble and prevent, channel, or crush any revolt -- while the looting and destruction continued with little let up.

Hillary was supposed to continue the program with some slight revisions in emphasis.

Trump has overturned the status quo in a way; in another way, he's announced his intention to shift the existing program of looting and destruction into hyperdrive. In other words, the current program isn't producing enough rewards for the worthy people and it produces too much reward for the unworthy. Priorities and targets for exploitation and destruction will change, the world will witness and tremble.

Among White Rightists, Nationalists and Supremacists, there is a near worshipful regard for Trump and extreme levels of hope for his commitment to restoring Whiteness to its rightful position of superiority over the lower orders. Cluestick: there has never been a time in the colonial and post-colonial era when Whiteness hasn't been privileged in the Western European/North American context. Never. But that doesn't register with white people who sense an existential threat to them from the very presence of non-whites.

This White Supremacist worship is being exploited by Trump and his cronies to the fullest extent they can without triggering too much of a response from the lower orders. One of the ways they exploit it is by assuming a quasi-royal mantle (the Busheviks were masters at it) by which the title of President serves as a stand in for what it really is --- modern day King-Emperor. After all, Trump summons his potential barons and earls to his gold-plated palaces for interviews (palaces that strangely and discordantly resemble Saddam's "Republican Palaces" most of which were destroyed in Bush's war of aggression, but some of which were preserved intact and are part of the American and Iraqi puppet presence there.)

It's a matter of style over substance, but there's little reason to doubt that Trump intends to rule as if he were a King-Emperor, and his loyalists and cronies are fully on board with it. Why not make explicit what has long been implicit, after all?

There's another element that seems obvious to me, but is otherwise widely unrecognized. It is the concept of Führerprinzip -- the "leader principle" -- commonly ascribed to the Nazi rule of the German Reich, but much more widely believed and exercised than merely during that episode of unpleasantness.

I pointed out that it was part of the belief system of Arnold Schwarzenegger as he assumed the mantle of California's governorship after defeating Gray Davis in that recall back in 2003. He strongly believed in his rightness and unbridled authority because of his personality, power and position. The fact was, like so many who have been raised to power over the years, he was incompetent and was unable to rule as he wished because of powerful forces aligned against him, and the ability of some of those forces to more and more easily influence his rule as they took his measure and exploited his many weaknesses. By the time his wife left him, he was little more than the tool of other interests.

I doubt that would happen with Trump. Not because he's competent. Not at all. But because he has carefully tended his authoritarianism and knows how to use it against rivals and enemies. This is part of his conman and gangster persona. He acts as an implicit -- and sometimes explicit -- threat to any disloyalty or disobedience. This in turn shapes the behavior of both his loyalists and opponents. These threats are clearly meant to be taken seriously. And for the most part they are.

The Führerprinzip presents the Leader as the center and source of all law, policy, and political action. This is of course totally at odds with the traditional power-relationships of the Republic, but the Republic has been on life-support for a long time. The transition to a hegemonic imperial state guided and ruled by a Leader is merely a detail in the march of progress, no? Call him a dictator, a king, an emperor, a president or Führer, it hardly matters. In the conception of many authoritarians, it doesn't matter. They're all essentially the same thing.

Trump may face opposition from Congress, the judiciary, and many elements of the security state and the military, but he seems to have convinced the private sector elites to go along with him at least for the time being.

After all, they're getting richer by the minute. What do they have to lose?

As for the Rabble, enough of them are happy enough to be ruled; and too many don't care. On the other hand, Their Betters care no a whit what happens to the Rabble. They are mostly surplus anyway.

Meanwhile, this is a dangerous and unstable situation. Those who manage and impose the rule of the government and take action for and against governments overseas are rationally alarmed at what might be coming, and Trump has gone out of his way to antagonize them.

How they will respond is anyone's guess at this point, but what's happened in the past is that the security state and the presidency have found accommodation with one another through  various forms of unpleasant negotiations. We'll see whether accommodation is found this time.

I'm not looking forward to the outcome.

Double Helping of Ick

Last night I had more on my mind than listening to a double helping of Ick on the television. Maya Angelou was dead, and I was more moved by her passing than I thought I would be. In trying to compose something of a memorial, many memories were triggered, both of her and of times gone by. She represented something that had the power of good, I think. A curative, even a cleansing power.

But then the teevee was dominated last night not by thoughts or memories of Maya Angelou, not by any mention of her come to think of it -- though there must have been and I missed it -- but by two rather bizarre appearances or apparitions, one on Charlie Rose of the execrable Victoria Nuland-Kagan, in which she went on and on about all the "opportunities" Russia has "missed" to join "the community of nations," the other, of Edward Snowden canoodling with Brian Williams in Moscow (cameo by Glenn Greenwald) that seemed like yet another scripted sales pitch -- or training lecture -- from this man.

I found I was not able to listen to either of them closely. Their words and their bearing struck me as false from the get-go, in Nuland's case partly because of her artificially courtly "diplo-speak" and her distracting hand movements and her constant pushing/catapulting the propaganda; in Snowden's case because of his apparent forthrightness that I've seen too often among government types, a forthrightness that masks layers of lies, deceptions and sub-rosa threats. I said at one point to Ms Ché, "I find I don't believe a word this man is saying."

Both had foils. Nuland's was not Charlie Rose, who was on vacation or something, but the New Yorker's David Remnik who actually comes at the topic of Ukraine and Russia from a position of (some) knowledge, having been the Washington Post's Moscow Bureau Chief during the dissolution of the Soviet Union, understanding and speaking Russian, and personally knowing some of the players on the current Russian/Ukrainian stage including Vladimir Vladimirovich. Remnick wasn't necessarily gentle with Nuland-Kagan. He challenged a few of her daft notions about Ukraine and Poroshenko and Russia's "invasion." She was able to parry by fluttering her hands and arching her brow at his temerity, but as I say, he knows something about what's going on and who the players are. She can't bullshit him the way she can bamboozle Congressmembers, for example. But when he had the advantage over her, he didn't pursue it, no doubt in order to preserve Charlie Rose's access to her and her ilk in the future. Challenging her lies last night was not worth upsetting that applecart.

Brian Williams and NBC had been shamelessly teasing and promoting last night's apparition of Young Snowden for a week, the final tease before the reveal being the statement by Snowden that he was "trained as a spy" by the CIA. Something that has been disputed by former CIA operatives, one of whom is featured in the video clip I posted yesterday. "Everybody" is supposed to have been talking about Snowden last night, at least according to Williams and NBC, as if somehow this hasn't (quite) become a stale story, its sell-by date having long passed.

I was rude last year by calling it a "Summer Shark and Missing White Boy" Story, not really "news" at all, more an entertainment for those so inclined to fill the summer news hole. It was marketed exactly like every other Summer Shark story had been for years, and its content was almost as slight. We knew about the presence of sharks in the water -- and most of us knew it was fairly rare for anyone to be bitten. We knew that people, mostly white and mostly women, went missing sometimes, and finding them or finding out what happened to them was constant summer news fare (remember Chandra Levy?)

We knew too, or at least we should have, that there was a vast and growing corporate-government surveillance state that could and did track our lives online, in intimate detail. Many of us knew that "assurances of privacy" were bullshit on stilts. Not that necessarily anyone in a position to do anything about it cared a whit about what you were doing or saying online.

We knew, or we should have, that cell-phones were essentially radio transmitters and communications via cell-phone are easy for government and corporate droogs to intercept and analyze if they should care to.

We knew, or we should have, that elements of the corporate sector and the government keep voluminous dossiers on every single one of us they can find.

The Snowden Trove offered up some of the details of how the NSA, seemingly in a vacuum, accomplishes some of this domestic and overseas surveillance, and as I pointed out over and over again, the NSA is hardly the most important or pervasive factor in domestic surveillance, that we are being watched by layers and layers of corporate and government surveillance entities (there is often no difference), and the obsessive focus on the NSA alone is and was counterproductive -- assuming anyone actually wanted to do anything about domestic surveillance overreach. Initially, but for a few voices on the margins, there was no mention at all of the intricate interweb of surveillance we are subject to. It was all NSA, all the time.

Later, as the summer faded and the story seemed to languish, mention now and then was made of the way Google and Facebook and other corporate players collect and analyze mountains of data on users and non-users alike -- and how they share this information with the government. When Omidyar entered the picture, there came some stories about how he and his companies, especially eBay and PayPal, are intimately interconnected with government and law enforcement, how he is personally no stranger to the White House, and how his companies' surveillance of users and their data is interlinked with government surveillance activities.

It took quite a while, but eventually, it was pointed out in the mass media that the surveillance state is pervasive, and surveillance data is widely shared between all kinds of public and private agencies and interests, not solely by law enforcement, either.

So here's Young Snowden in a sit-down at an Unnamed Moscow Hotel with Brian Williams, flogging the NSA story once again, and supplementing it with his personal saga of a man on a mission, still working for the US Government, and a patriot to the core.

Of course, Greenwald has a book out, and that seems to be the impetus to a whole lot of these stories, but Greenwald -- though his book was flogged briefly during a segment -- was definitely the bit player in this drama. He was barely there at all.

I found myself not listening to Snowden much of the time, in part because his delivery is so artificial and scripted. I recognized the style of his presentation right off, back in the Summer Shark period, as that of a government trainer, which Snowden says he had been for the DIA (a fact that wasn't widely known until recently). As a trainer, you learn -- or you read -- a training script and you deliver it the same way every time. Pausing for questions, you answer carefully, conscious that what you say needs to reinforce rather than refute the script, and if the script is factually in error, you make note of it and pass that on to your superiors, you do not make an issue of it with the trainees, and certainly not with the public.

That was his initial style, that is his current style. I call it a sales pitch because in essence, that's what it is. As a government trainer you are selling a product: the correct way to do things according to the standards and procedures of your agency.

The fact that Snowden adheres to this style of presentation rigorously despite the fact that he is supposedly this great and amazing whistleblower has always disconcerted me. It's as if there is no "real" person there at all, almost as if he's a robot of some sort -- which in fact he has been during some of his presentations. What he has to say is almost identical in every apparition, there is no deviation from the script, and his personal narrative has been cobbled together and is maintained with great rigor. That as they say is that. Who knows whether any of that narrative Snowden presents is true or not? Much of it is disputed by those who ought to know, but they're in a strange position vis a vis Snowden in that they may "know" but they can't truthfully "say." There is little dispute over the veracity of the material from the NSA trove that's been released so far, though interpretations may vary somewhat. But the tale Snowden tells of himself -- which is a big part of the narrative -- is murky at best.

For his part, Brian Williams was soft-balling the entire time, following a script of his own. It was almost as if the whole encounter had been carefully rehearsed beforehand. Maybe it was, I don't know. But Williams broke no new ground, and he did not challenge Snowden's narrative.  In fact, he constantly reinforced it.

Perhaps the worst thing about both the Nuland-Kagan and Snowden appearances last night is the "normalization" factor. They were conditioning exercises -- among so many we're subjected to these days. They weren't illuminating, they were normalizing a kind of monstrousness. Monstrousness in terms of American international relations with Russia, Europe, and the Ukraine. Monstrousness in terms of the Surveillance State which we're immersed in and which Snowden says he wants to "improve."

The media served the role of courtier in both interviews, more so in the case of Snowden. At least Remnik challenged some of Nuland's bullshit. Williams never challenged Snowden's -- or Greenwald's for that matter.

We the Rabble are just supposed to believe, I guess, and henceforward never question unless given leave to do so by our betters.

Sickening. And more than a little bit frightening...

What Have I Been Saying?

This video interview with Mike Lofgren and Bill Moyers has been making the rounds for a few days now. It's a superficial examination of the Deep State which actually rules us and has been raising havoc around the world.

There are few details, of course, because it's all secret (shhh), but in fact Lofgren has been saying pretty much what he does here for years, and one might note that he touches on talking points and references the Tea Party for some unknown reason for "getting this one right."

In other words, dude is a player in the very Deep State he is so generously exposing.

Wouldn't be the first one.

Lofgren's essay is longer, but it's not much more detailed. Plowing well-furrowed ground, he is, but the fact is that for many people, all of this is still "news."

And his exposé ignores those parts of the Deep State that are practically in our laps, just as nearly every other hand-waver does.

They rarely want to say anything about the local police and FBI surveillance apparat and all the rest of it going on day in and day out.

At least he mentioned the symbiosis between Silicon Valley and the Surveillance State. Of course he exaggerated how much the Surveillance Valley (h/t Yasha Levine) wants to "distance itself" from its own behavior and its collaborative relationship with the Deep State from the beginning.

Further confirming that he's a player.

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Note that both Greenwald and Snowden are now saying essentially what Naomi Wolf was excoriated for pointing out: Knowledge of the surveillance apparatus is sufficient to modify behavior. The more you know about it, the more you "voluntarily" curb your enthusiasm for stepping out of line. And Naomi asked whether that might be the reason for telling the World so much about the level of surveillance we're all under. Her basic question: Who benefits? And the answer is obvious: The police state benefits from the widespread knowledge that the Surveillance apparat is vast, growing, and could be spying on you!  Or as George Orwell is quoted by Greenwald:

Which thence he annotated: "Note: Key to 1984 wasn't that everybody was always being watched; the knowledge one could be is what imposed fear." (Dec 7, 2013 via Twitter; original image from Jon Schwartz (@tinyrevolution).

For saying what she said, Naomi Wolf  was trashed back in June. She hasn't had anything to say about Snowden, Greenwald, et al, since then. Now, of course, those who so eagerly trashed her have nothing to say about Greenwald and Snowden saying essentially the same thing.

And the questions she posed remain obscured and unanswered. See how that works?

A Good Explanation of Why the Focus on Snowden and the NSA Doesn't Tell Us Much About the National Surveillance/Security State

Tom Englehardt at The Nation.

The Public Had A Right

I'm listening to Young Snowden's ARD interview for German television that was posted at Cryptome the other day. It's kind of repetitive given the multiplicity of stories already aired and published about NSA surveillance and the Security State, but it is one of the few times that Young Snowden himself has been seen/heard from in all the HooHah.

I watched a few minutes of the video of the interview and noted with interest that it seemed to be conducted in a very luxurious Russian hotel suite or possibly in a suite of rooms in an expensive new dacha, perhaps just outside of Moscow.

Regardless of whether it's a hotel or a dacha, if that is where Young Snowden is now being housed, rather than a place selected specifically for the interview, I wouldn't agree that he has "given up" much comfort in his (likely temporary) exile. It appears, in fact, that he is living in high style -- and very expensively -- in Russia. Moscow, after all, is one of the most expensive cities on Earth. It was pointed out that when he was supposedly trapped at Sheremetyevo Airport, the cost of one of the roomettes he was believed to be occupying while there was on the order of $600 a day (given that they rent by the hour), and people were wondering then who was paying for his upkeep.

Even in Hong Kong, where stories now suggest he was for weeks or even a month, he was staying in a very luxurious hotel at considerable expense -- for someone. Initially it was said that he was paying his own freight from his savings from his employment, but if you can sort through the confusing timelines that have been aired/published, each slightly different and some rather remarkably different, you see he had a rather spotty employment record, at least "officially." How long he was actually employed in his various contracted and in house positions (with the CIA, NSA, Dell, and Booz Allen, among apparently others) is something of a mystery. His postings were apparently scattered widely -- among them Switzerland, CONUS, and eventually Hawaii -- but none of them seem to have been for very long. A few months or a year tops.

There's nothing particularly amiss with that kind of record in the Federal Service. That's how they generally hire; employment is frequently intermittent, and it may be with a contractor rather than with the government itself. One's assignment, status, employer of record and posting location can change quite suddenly. It's not unusual to stay on this irregular status for years. This practice keeps the total number of FTE Federal employees lower -- following a Congressional mandate.

As I listen to Young Snowden speaking to the German interviewer, I'm reminded, very strongly, of some of the training personnel I worked with during my time in the Federal Service. It is as if he is conducting a training session to his interlocutor, and for a moment I wonder -- was that his actual job? Was he responsible for training staff to accomplish various spytech tasks, and is that a reason why his work was fairly intermittent and his employer of record went back and forth between agencies and contractors? I have no way of knowing, of course, but from what I've seen and read (and based on my own experience), I wouldn't be surprised. It would also help explain how he manages to "know" so much and yet... not.

Knowledge is compartmentalized in government and among its many contractors. While various low-level individuals (as Snowden apparently was) may have extensive knowledge of a wide range of programs and activities, as a rule, their knowledge is incomplete. They only know what they need to know for a particular assignment. Some of what they may see or have irregular access to as part of that assignment is likely to be incomprehensible because it's not something they have been briefed or trained on. That may be a reason why Young Snowden doesn't want to be responsible for releasing information about Surveillance/Security State programs and operations -- because he cannot "know" for sure what these slides and other information actually contain. So he (supposedly) leaves it up to journalists to vet it and make sense of it -- in consultation with... government. Yes, it's important to remember, as has been repeated fairly often, that every story that has been published or aired about these programs and operations has been done in "consultation with" government agencies and officials. Exactly what that means has never been clarified, of course, nor will it be. But given the repeated references to "legal" issues and potential "legal" jeopardy that reporters and Snowden may be in if they don't tread a very fine line (notwithstanding all the charges that have already been leveled at Young Snowden, though not -- so far -- at Greenwald or any of the other reporters and publications involved)  in releasing these top secret and other elements of the Snowden Trove, it seems to me that there is an ad hoc collaboration between the government and the publications and individuals involved in the stories to, let's say, limit the damage all around.

This is quite different than the situation with the Manning Trove and WikiLeaks, though there may be a superficial resemblance. Clearly, the participants learned from the mistakes made in that one, though so far as I could tell, there was actually nothing in the Manning Trove that was actually damaging to the government. Not even the "Collateral Murder" gun camera video. What the War Logs and Cables showed was military and State Department business as usual, much of which had already been reported, some of it extensively. What was odd  to me about it was that so many people -- literally millions -- had almost unimpeded access to the full trove, just as Manning did, and the Defense Department waited months before doing anything substantive to restrict access. (State, on the other hand, acted almost immediately). To me, this was bizarre behavior. A breach of this sort, had it happened in my agency, would have been acted on and plugged within hours. I had some experience with relatively minor security breaches in my agency and know how they were handled. It was nothing like the situation with the Manning breach. Nothing at all.

With the Snowden Breach, it's not entirely clear what has and has not been done by the NSA in response. There's apparently been a series of ongoing investigations, but beyond that -- and the "consultations" which take place before airing or publication of any story about NSA programs and operations -- I don't know.

I notice, as well, that Young Snowden refuses categorically to reveal any new classified information in this interview, referring to his preference that journalists do that. This is clearly part of the legal line he must toe -- but why, exactly? According to his legal advisers, and the DoJ, he's been charged under the Espionage Act, which strictly and severely limits the defenses he can utilize.

But wait. He is a guest of the Russian Federation, and doesn't actually need legal defenses against the United States in Russia. So what's going on?

Is this a case in which he adhering to an agreement he supposedly has with the Russian Federation not to provide any information that can harm the United States while he is a guest of the RF? I don't know. None of these supposed agreements he's made have been detailed for the public.

What he has detailed, however,  and what the various news organizations that have aired and published this stuff have reinforced, is that the various national and international surveillance agencies of the global security state (let's call it what it is) have the capability to "watch you" in real time, no matter who you are, wherever you are, and whatever you are doing. This capability is frightening.

Be Afraid.

Be Very Afraid.

The Government Is Watching You!!!!!!

Except that over and over again, it's pointed out and acknowledged that the government is (probably) not watching you at all, but in fact, private commercial interests are. They're not just watching, they're tracking and recording and monetizing everything you do, all the time. That is, they're doing it if they have access to you, which they do if you are using any kind of electronic communications.

Young Snowden is intent on letting us know that the government is surveiling one's activities, but he dismisses, with an airy wave of his hand, the fact that commercial interests are the major culprits in this more and more universal surveillance regime because he claims -- wrongly -- that commercial interests don't have the power of government to execute or incarcerate you. Either he's grossly ignorant or he is deliberately deceiving (as so many who make this bogus claim are). Private interests and corporation power more and more are indistinguishable from government power. Surely Young Snowden knows that. Later in the interview, he acknowledges that private companies -- like Booz -- should not be doing the kinds of surveillance and security activities that are properly a function of government. But they do.

Just to be clear, the government maintains massive databases on every one of us; they can, should they want to, discover just about anything on just about anyone, either through their own data collection or by purchasing data from commercial interests -- or just by using the Google, for criminy sakes. We are constantly under surveillance by government and private interests, almost without exception.

There is no doubt in my mind that the public has a right  to know these things. The question is whether they have a right to do anything about it. I think they do, but that makes me a troublemaker at the very least. Doing anything about the all encompassing and pervasive surveillance we are under means fugging up and taking down whole systems, and that is something Young Snowden has repeatedly claimed he has no interest in doing. What he has said over and over is that he wants the public in the United States and abroad to have enough information about the NSA's surveillance programs and operations to make informed decisions about their appropriateness and continuation. Apparently, he assumes that an informed public has any real say in these matters. Or... maybe he's assuming something else. That, as he's said and others have pointed out, the knowledge of this surveillance is sufficient to control people's behavior.

I got this notice in my email, about the February 11, "Day We Fight Back" demonstration,  and I have to ask, "Just what do they expect to accomplish?"

Aaron Swartz lost his life in pursuit of something bigger than himself, on behalf of open access to information people need or even might need in their lives.  The Day We Fight Back is supposed to be in honor of Aaron Swartz and his work to make information a common currency not the exclusive property of a handful of institutions.

I'm all for what he was trying to do -- and his death so shamed JSTOR that most of their millions of documents are now available for the public to read online for no charge as opposed to their previous practice of charging individuals and institutions a veritable fortune for access to almost any of their document trove.

If there were some substantive reforms of -- or preferably abolition of  -- the Surveillance/Security State as a result of the Snowden Revelations, then I would be all for it. So far, I have seen little or nothing to encourage me on that front.

But I have seen some people who realize they are being "watched" curb their activities.

That's worrisome. There are many ways around the surveillance/security apparat, but they seem to be the purview of a tiny fragment of the public. How will the general public come to understand and use them? Or is that not a matter we should be concerned with?

People will do what they will do, and no surveillance regime will keep them in check forever.

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UPDATE: There is now a Vimeo video of the interview. One doesn't have to download a zip file. But according to Jonathan Turley, YouTube video versions, and apparently some other video versions are being taken down. According to him it is a concerted government action. I suspect it has more to do with ARD making copyright complaints, but that would be too unconspiratorial of me... heh.



UPDATE: And sure enough, the Vimeo video of the interview is now gone. Government plot? Ohhhhh... if Turley says it is, it must be, right?

The complete interview transcript is apparently available at the German NDR site. But the embedded video doesn't work for me, and it may be blocked in the US.

Strange...

Greenwald has said (December, 2013, via his very active Twitter account) that the purpose for the knowledge of the panopticon which he and Young Snowden and the others have been at some pains to reveal to the shocked and disbelieving world is to ensure and enforce conformity.... as was pointed out by George Orwell in "1984" and which was what Naomi Wolf said back in June of last year was her instinct about why the these revelations were being made in the way they were. She was pilloried for daring to raise questions about the motives and methods of those who were so prominent in this story and for pointing out the obviousness of some of it. To quote Wolf in June, 2013:

d) It is actually in the Police State’s interest to let everyone know that everything you write or say everywhere is being surveilled, and that awful things happen to people who challenge this. Which is why I am not surprised that now he is on UK no-fly lists – I assume the end of this story is that we will all have a lesson in terrible things that happen to whistleblowers. That could be because he is a real guy who gets in trouble; but it would be as useful to the police state if he is a fake guy who gets in ‘trouble.’

 Further, there have been recent headlines regarding the urge some outspoken members of the "intelligence" community (sometimes an oxymoron) have to "put a bullet" in Snowden's head. This recent headline grabbing exactly parallels the ArsTechnica examination of Snowden's online persona prior to his revelatory reconception.

Now that the President Has Spoken regarding "reform" of the NSA, and it is obvious to all sentient beings that there will and can be no substantive reforms of such an agency, it appears that the "debate" Snowden, Greenwald, et al, wished to instigate has concluded.

Those who questioned were correct. But it doesn't matter. Nothing (much) has changed, but now we know with perfect certainty that we can be watched at any time by those Machines of Loving Grace... and so, if we know what's good for us, we will conform and behave. Which is the whole point of letting us know about the watching and the watchers.

Those who denounced the questioners are left to ponder what's next on the agenda...

Let Us Reason Together -- Year End Edition (1)

This has been quite an exciting year, hasn't it?

Nothing quite like it has come down the pike in quite a long time, and how all the various elements fit together, providing they do, is yet to be seen.

The highest profile "news" story was of course the Summer Splash of the Snowden Thing. Pssst: The NSA is spying on you..." Yes, it is. Well, maybe not on you personally, but then again, maybe yes, on you.  Personally.

We already knew that practically anything we did on the Internet was an open book to spooks and marketers, we've known it for years. Sometimes we've even made use of that knowledge to freak out both the spooks and the marketeers, sometimes with hilarious results. So it was passing strange, in my book, that the Summer Story of the Century became such a cause célèbre throughout the latter half of the year. Of course, the drama of it all, the cat-and-mouse, the jajaja, the personalities of the players, and the government response all made for an excellent narrative, and that's what media sells these days, so it will probably continue for quite a little while to come.

The entry of "Pierre" Omidyar into the fray, by setting up a high profile media shop specifically for Greenwald's continued... erm... pleasure ... added a whole other layer to the frolic and frenzy. (I should note that I use "Pierre" in air quotes because of a wonderful interview (the interview has been reclassified "unlisted," so sharing is discouraged) Alexa O'Brien did with Stanley Cohen regarding the PayPal 14, who plead out on really nasty charges brought by "Pierre's" PayPal against them for interfering with their work product.  Or something. Cohen uses air quotes throughout when mentioning "Pierre" and given the fact that the man himself doesn't have much of a public persona or profile, it seems appropriate to follow in the tradition...)

This media firestorm (which I indelicately called a "Summer Shark and Missing White Boy Story" throughout its summertime incarnation) led to a rather remarkable Study Group and Report by insiders commissioned by the White House and released the day after the President invited the highest ranks of the Silicon Valley nobility to meet with him and reason together on what should be done now with regard to the Surveillance/Security State under which we are all privileged to live. Praise Be and Bow Down.

After reading the Report, I came to the conclusion that much of it had been pre-prepared and that the upshot of it all is to move the discomforting aspects of mass surveillance out of the purview of the NSA and put them into other cubby-holes where they can be better monitored or at least left to fester. Or something . 

Whatever the case, there is no indication whatsoever that any of the powers usurped by the Surveillance/Security State will be curtailed let alone abolished. 

Now it should be noted that in all the firestorm and frenzy over the Snowden Thing, there has never been even a hint of interest by the principals, Snowden, Greenwald, Poitras, et al, of loosening the grip of the Surveillance/Security State on the masses. Hardly. All they EVER wanted, they have said over and over, was an "informed debate" over the issue of mass surveillance, and having now had that debate, Snowden now asserts his goal has been accomplished. 

All righty then.

That was quick and efficient, wasn't it? Don't you feel better? I sure do. /s

Whew!


"One Nation, Under Surveillance...." ♫That's America to Meeeeeee....♬

Surveillance of the whole population is not going away, no matter what; who controls it and what is done with the data will be adjusted to better comport with the interests and desires of the SV nobility. You -- and I -- will have nothing substantive to say about it. Have a nice day. Terms and conditions apply.☺

Assuming for the moment that I am correct and the Surveillance/Security State will not be compromised or go away in our lifetimes, but that it will be reconfigured for the comfort and convenience of Our Betters -- as all things always are -- how would one prefer to be surveilled? Would you prefer surveillance conducted by and for the government or by and for corporate interests?

That's the choice, the only real choice, we're being offered.

Myself, I don't much care for either alternative, but as in the case of elections, we don't really have an option, and unlike elections, we can't really opt out -- without completely altering one's lifestyle and location, and essentially disappearing. Well, that may be the option many choose in the not too distant future, but so far, we're not quite there yet.

The upshot of the Snowden Thing, it seems to me, is that in the near-term surveillance of the Rabble will be undertaken by and on behalf of corporate interests (and let's not forget that "Pierre's" eBay and PayPal are huge and global players in this endeavor) with ever greater restrictions put in place on government access to this data. Basically, the idea will be that the private sector will track and compile data on everyone (as they do now) and that only when the private sector interests suspect evildoing by an individual will their data be turned over to government for pursuit and prosecution. This is pretty much the current eBay/PayPal model as it is, though according to Mark Ames, eBay/PayPal is quite amenable to turning over user data when governments suspect the evildoing by users. It's all very merry. And according to some eBay/PayPal users, part of the business model for these outfits is routine closure of accounts and theft of assets. Oh my! Could it be? Apparently it is, but my accounts with PayPal have long been empty, so I wouldn't exactly know.

Now I say that "no surveillance" is the correct approach, at least as an interim measure, but my Betters tell me that is not on the table for consideration. The only thing we get to choose from is whether the dominant party in the Surveillance/Security State shall be the "government" or corporate interests. With the intent of diminishing "government" participation to the extent possible, to be involved only at the beck and occasional call of the corporate sector.

As handmaidens to corporations, we already know how useless to the People our governments have become. There is no sign at all that this will change, and there is no sign at all that either Snowden, Greenwald, or "Pierre" have any interest in changing it. If anything, the signs are they wish to ensure the continued diminution of "government" in the face of corporate power. 

So.... what do we do about it?

That question will have to wait for the New Year for deeper consideration...

Byzantium

They Might Be Giants - Istanbul (Not Constantinople) from They Might Be Giants on Vimeo.

Complex systems and the need to stampede...

As I got near the conclusion of "The Report," visions of the Nature of Government began swirling in my brain, and the very Byzantine nature of the Intelligence Community was most definitely highlighted.

If the various elements of the National Security/Surveillance State have been running roughshod and rogue, it's plain to see why. It is in the nature of the beast. Without appropriate and rigorously enforced restraints, they will run wild, there is no way around it.

After 9/11 what minimal restraints they had been under were released, and we now live with the consequences. Reining them back in may prove to be more difficult and problematic than even the panelists on the Review Committee, all of whom have plenty of Deep State experience, recognize.

The key recommendation of The Report is the overhaul and reform of the NSA, essentially re-creating it from the ground up.

Clearly, from this recommendation alone, it's obvious that the Agency has seriously overstepped its bounds and authorities. What Snowden revealed, which seems now to be barely the tip of a very deep bottomed iceberg, barely scratched the surface of what this rogue agency has involved itself in. From the evidence in The Report, it appears that the NSA has violated the trust of the highest levels of the Government itself, and thus must face the consequences.

Seemingly it got that way almost by accident, but it was driven by ethos of the Cheney Faction within government, a faction that recognizes no bounds to its authority in law and custom and which seeks to impose as complete a system of quasi-dictatorial rule as possible. It would appear that the NSA has been seeing itself as the lead agency in that quest. This ethos, such as it is, all goes back to Nixon. Sigh. Will we never be free of it?

But make no mistake. It is in the nature of governmental systems to be this way, especially the more complex they become. It's almost unavoidable. Thus, of course, the key recommendation is to break up the NSA, to curb its tendency to overreach and to apply more rational control over its activities.

A good thing, right?

In a sense, sure. The problem is that once a system like the NSA is allowed to run free as it apparently has been for more than a decade, and once that system has developed extensive tentacles into both the government and the private sectors, as apparently the NSA has, it becomes nearly impossible to reform or remove it without affecting and perhaps damaging the rest of government.

The Report provides a roadmap forward, but it may not actually be possible to follow through. This is due in part to institutional inertia which can become self-perpetuating. Barring a serious and potentially devastating power play within the government (which may indeed be taking place), it may be too late to intervene in the metastasizing Surveillance State.

We may be stuck with what we've got.

I have a few more pages to go before get to the end of The Report, but I'm neither reassured nor hopeful given what I've read so far.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 This logo/graphic appears on page 269 and 270, Appendix B, "Overview of NSA Privacy Protections under FAA 702/EO 12333"

As an aside, could the Target hack be related to the NSA lashing out at the idea of being curbed? Ohhhhhh......

Continuing to Slog Through "The Report"

I realize I'm not offering up commentary on specific recommendations or details of The Report at this point. It's partly due to the structure of The Report itself, heavy on conclusions at the outset, then quite dense (for this kind of thing) with details to back them up. What I've been trying to do is understand the subtext that flows through the whole thing and get a better idea of what's (perhaps) really going on.

The Snowden Thing is obviously the trigger mechanism for this Report, but where Snowden fits in the whole assembly is still somewhat obscure. I've had my doubts about the "genuineness," shall we say, of his whistle blowing from the outset of the summertime media frenzy over the story mainly because of the way it was being packaged and marketed and due to the rather surprising reluctance of the any of the participants to get into anything particularly substantive regarding the omnipresent Surveillance/Security State they were supposedly exposing.

The story had the earmarks of a Limited Hangout, purposely engineered by a faction within the Security State in order to hamstring or undermine some other faction.

Focusing almost exclusively on the NSA when there are dozens if not hundreds of elements to the overall apparat of surveillance and security in this country alone, most of them much, much closer to the day-to-day lives of individuals and affecting them much more immediately and stringently, was a "tell" for me that this set of revelations and the summertime media frenzy it engendered was not what it seemed and was being sold as.

There was clearly a background and backchannel within the government itself that was directing this story.

I saw it as a likely contest between the CIA and the NSA for Security State Pre-eminence, and I mentioned several times that there was a curiously silent Spook in all of this, one John Brennan, recently selected head of the CIA -- the very agency Snowden came out of before going to the NSA (or so the story went.)

The overall point of the stories was clearly to diminish the powers and authorities of the NSA -- some of which it had arrogated to itself contrary to law and custom  -- but not to get rid of them altogether. Instead, the idea seemed to be to put those elements elsewhere, either in other agencies or in the private sector.

This is clearly the intent and upshot of the recommendations in The Report. In no way that I can discern are the powers and authorities of the Surveillance/Security State diminished by the recommendations, nor are their validity and utility disputed within the detailed narrative. Their application by the NSA is, however, clearly recognized as a problem. Time after time, the NSA is singled out for criticism for overstepping its authorities, violating court orders, lying to oversight bodies and so on. If this is not a "rogue agency," I don't know what is.

On the other hand, there is no sign I've found in The Report that the powers and authorities that the S/S State holds should be diminished or removed. They should merely be better monitored by courts and "policymakers" (which is a whole other kettle of fish) and -- importantly -- should be redistributed among extant agencies (mostly unnamed).

The Report does take pains to point out that the NSA is only one aspect of the S/S State, and that it is not the primary element in many ways (though obviously it would like to be). This is something that the media (in the person of Greenwald) nearly completely ignores, but it is something that more and more other media have come to recognize -- slowly and timidly, but still....

The Report also goes into great, almost exhaustive, detail about some of the Programs that have caused so much heartburn during the past six months, much more detail about them than appeared in the media. For The Report to be so open about the Programs -- when the Agency has a history of being so secretive, and even the Snowden Revelations didn't get into such a level of granularity about them -- indicates to me that there has long been some kind of urge within the S/S State to reveal itself as fully and clearly as possible, an urge which heretofore, the NSA has opposed and resisted.

Well, they can't do it now.

An internal shake-up is underway.

But will it be more the cosmetics? Time will tell.

Progress? Has the Time Come?

Having spent the better part of the day yesterday on The Report (see post below), I'm still plowing through it today, but so far, my initial impressions are confirmed rather fully. The whole thing is an argument -- essentially a legal brief -- for reigning in and enhancing oversight of the NSA, almost exactly along the lines of Snowden's and Greenwald's objections to NSA domestic (and foreign, but I haven't got to that part yet) surveillance as highlighted in the series of Bombshell Revelations over the summer.

Isn't that interesting?

Well, it should be.

The composition of the panel that did the review and came up with the Report (Richard Clarke,  Michael Morell, Geoffrey Stone, Cass Sunstein and Peter Swire) was fiercely criticized by Snowden/Greenwald fans for including a former CIA acting director and Cass Sunstein,  (aka: The Devil Incarnate) as well as a number of  other usual suspects. It was expected that the panel would therefore whitewash the NSA's programs and recommend post facto legalizing everything they've been doing. But it turns out not to be that way at all.

In fact, the panel uses the opportunity presented by the Snowden/Greenwald revelations and the presidential directive to "review" intelligence operations to dig relatively deep into the Intelligence community as a whole -- not just the NSA -- and make observations and recommendations regarding the way that community behaves in the Post 9/11 world. Its observations and recommendations are aligned almost exactly with the perceptions and demands of Snowden and Greenwald. In other words, the panel seems to see the revelations over the summer as a means to engage the administration and the public in a discussion of "proper" reform of these agencies which have been out of control for most of the years since 9/11.

The time has come.

Now of course I'm not a reformist when it comes to the intelligence community. I don't believe it can be "reformed" -- due to its intrinsic nature. It may be possible to abolish and reconstitute it, but even then, the abusive nature of the enterprise is bound to reassert itself, especially if -- as now -- the intelligence community is so deeply intertwined with corporate interests as opposed to the public interest.

I haven't got far enough into the report to suss out just how much the recommendations serve the private sector corporate interests which have always had a strong hand within and  over the intelligence community, but I have little doubt that the Report skews heavily toward those interests -- while calling them the 'public interest.'

Unfortunately for the public, this seems to be the direction Snowden/Greenwald want "reform" to go, by institutionalizing the primacy of corporate interest over the public interest as expressed through government.

But there is still quite a lot of the report I haven't read. I am not a speed reader, and I'm trying to find dots which may ultimately be connected to understand what this whole hoo-hah as been about.

Been Reading the Report

You know, this one. (308 page pdf)

Interesting to say the least, and hardly what one might have expected given the hoop-lah and hoo-hah over the summertime.

At least from the cursory view that I've been able to give it so far, it appears to be a nearly complete capitulation to the Snowden Faction among Our Rulers.

Very interesting indeed.

Well, I intend to read it more closely and will evaluate my initial impression anon.

"[He] shall not seek and [he] will not accept..."

The histrionics surrounding the spitballed notion that Young Snowden might receive amnesty in order for the Spooks (of which he is one, let's not forget) to persuade him to return to this country with the "rest" of his hoard of NSA secrets is interesting.

When the notion was first floated on the CBS Evening News last Friday, few seemed to notice. If I hadn't seen the "60 Minutes" segment which was presented on the CBS Evening News during which the idea was floated, I doubt I would have known about it until Monday, as I've sworn off "60 Minutes" for cause.

It's a fairly radical idea coming from the desk of someone charged with dealing with the Problem of Snowden and His Hoard, but there you are. We live in interesting times. The discredited leaders of the Agency are all in a dither over it, running around with their hair on fire denouncing the Very Idear as nonsense and perfidy and a terrible precedent, yadda, yadda. Which I'm sure it is, but at this point -- unless arrangements that we know not of have already been made -- it's an "idea" being run up the flagpole to see what the response will be, it is not an offer.

Outside the Agency, the keening and garment rending is just as strong, especially on Team Greenwald's bench where the idea is being met with fierce resistance and denunciations. Of course if Snowden counter-defects back to the USofA, it could be interpreted as a slap in Greenwald's face for so crassly cashing in on the Hoard. Which leads me to wonder. Has a deal been attempted? In other words, are Spooks in contact with Snowden directly? Oh my goodness if they are. Would he be willing to follow through with the request of his father's (I believe it was) that he be granted legal amnesty in order to return to the USofA and escape from the clutches of the Putin Security State, and not be prosecuted at home?

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.

“Forget it Jake. It’s Chinatown.”

Yes. Well. Isn't that the truth.

Young Ezra sort of let the cat out of the bag the other day with his joking headline, "Does Edward Snowden Even Exist?"

So far as we know, Young Snowden has still not been seen in Moscow by any verifiable witness, nor, so far as I'm able to suss out from the numerous disordered and disorienting reports, was he actually seen on the flight from Hong Kong by other passengers. He has not been in communication with the media, either. As Bad Ezra has suggested, Snowden may not exist at all (of course he says he's joking, ha ha, but after a while, the absence of the major player in this drama does become the central fact of the story... "Waiting for Godot" anyone?)

There has been speculation that Greenwald and the Guardian have been had, on the premise that somehow they are too naive to realize when The Powers That Be are pulling a fast one for their own nefarious purposes. What those purposes are, we are not to know, at least not now, though there's a good deal of nasty business on tap, and having some kind of Big Terrible Sharks-in-the-Water Summertime "News" Distraction -- like the NSA IS SPYING ON EVERYONE!!!!1 -- is tailor-made for the summer news hole.

Who this Snowden actually is -- and who or what he's serving -- has become fodder for the Conspiracy Community such as we haven't seen for quite a long time, and the revelation of what are purported to be Snowden's chat logs from a few years back, though still largely under the media radar, give a remarkably different picture of the man than he has been presenting to the world since his Big Reveal and his subsequent disappearance.  Instead of a principled whistle blower, ever speaking Truth to Power, we see a Libertarian asshole fully wrapped up in and defending the National Security/Surveillance State.

These are not contradictory positions, by the way. Libertarians tend to be highly protective of (their) power and privilege. A primary way to maintain it is through a very strong security and surveillance state. Neither Glenn nor Snowden have suggested undoing the Security/Surveillance apparat in any case. All they want, they've said, is The Debate. But time was, Younger Snowden had no need to "debate" it. He wanted summary punishment for leakers. Shooting in the balls. That sort of thing.

The Conspiracy Community has come up with all sorts of elaborate explanations of this Snowden fellow's actions, most of which revolve around him continuing to serve the security/surveillance state undercover. In other words, he is still an agent, still on duty, still serving the state, though appearing to be a rebel on the lam. Webster Tarpley suggested the whole thing is a "limited hangout" to help enable... or prevent... what?

The revelations have certainly shaken up official complacency about domestic surveillance and have exposed all kinds of lying by public officials in the United States and around the world. Generally speaking, officials don't like that, and in the United States some of the embarrassment has been acute. The scurrying among them, particularly by Feinstein and Clapper, has been provocative but not particularly illuminating.

Note who isn't scurrying, however. Um. That would include the White House.

There's a clue to where the factional lines are drawn, and at least in outline, we should be able to tell who the factional players are. And with a moment's reflection, we should be able to figure out what the point of all this hullabaloo is.

As many have already noted, none of this is actually doing any damage to the Security/Surveillance Apparat. What it's doing is introducing pervasiveness of surveillance to the public in as dramatic a vehicle as possible, pointing out that there is no escape from it, and focusing the mind's eye on submission to it. Outrage may be widespread but it is futile -- at least for the rabble.

Certain categories of people and institutions, however, are loudly claiming an exemption from blanket surveillance. That would include the compliant and/or useful media, the major corporations, and elected and top-ranking appointed officials -- at a minimum. Others could be included in surveillance exemptions, one assumes, provided they prove their loyalty and pledge undying fealty to their betters. On the other hand, maybe not.

The end game is to use the surveillance and security apparat to keep the rabble in check forever. Re-read your 1984 and/or Brave New World to see how it's done. Surveillance does not serve the State as a weapon for suppression if the proles don't know it's going on, if they don't fear being watched, listened to, and caught.

The series of revelations about surveillance in the Guardian and elsewhere has served as fair notice, you might say, and thus it has served the State.

Even so, I get a strong sense of an Inner Party factional dispute playing out here.

It's not about the surveillance, and it's certainly not about the 4th Amendment -- which was largely mooted nearly a century ago when Americans went through their first Red Scare. A case can be made that the 1st, 4th and 5th Amendments have been only sporadically operative at best for much longer than that.  Ask labor and civil rights leaders and historians.

Factional players in this drama have certain goals, of course. Some of them seem to want, more than anything, to discredit, indeed to destroy, the Obama Administration in particular and the "Democrat" Party in general. The level of vein popping Obama Hate on view would be unbelievable if it weren't for the fact that it's been present in some quarters since before he won the presidency. But there are other very powerful interests that are much more interested and preserving, protecting, and defending Our First Black President. Not so much because he is black as it is because he is slick. If you intend to keep the rabble in line, it is essential to keep up appearances, and so far, Obama seems to be handling that responsibility with remarkable ease. Does he know something we don't? Of course.

Meanwhile, the wheels are turning, turning, turning, implementing more and more and ever more of the neo-liberal/neo-conservative/neo-fascist corporate state, even while all eyes are on "Where's Edwardo?" and whatever TwitWar Greenwald is engaged in now. Those who rule us always look at crisis and catastrophe as opportunity to further extend their power and implement their programs.

This one is no less useful.

"Chinatown" indeed.

------------------------------------------------
More murk.

Guardian Editors on Charlie Rose last night:

 http://www.charlierose.com/ (link will change by tomorrow, search on "Guardian editors Alan Rusbridger and Janine Gibson" for clip.)

Repost of "On Appeals to Orwell"

About three years ago, I did a series of posts under the title "On Appeals to Orwell," based in part on what I thought was a serious -- and likely deliberate -- misapprehension of Orwell's thoughts and politics among a cadre of Libertarians and their fellow travelers who had adopted him as One of Their Own. The triggering issue was what I saw as the misuse of the term "tribalism" to refer to "mindless loyalty" which was being justified by reference to Orwell's "Notes on Nationalism" -- which never mentions tribalism, and in my view is not meant in any way to confuse tribalism with nationalism.

However, there is much more to Orwell and his perspectives as expressed in his writing, including his dismay at the march of totalitarian nationalism in his lifetime, including the many elements of it found in supposed western democracies. He was anti-imperial, anti-totalitarian, anti-surveillance, and anti-conformity. Yet he was, he said, politically a Democratic Socialist, far from the Libertarian Hero he's been made out to be.

He came to his highly negative views of totalitarianism and nationalism and their march throughout the western world, including Britain, from his grim personal experience in British Imperial Service in Burmah, and as a propagandist with the BBC during World War II, among many other experiences in his life.

I initially wrote this series of posts in response to what I saw as the misuse of his legacy as a means to promote ideas and an ideology that were quite contrary to his point of view. But looking over them again, I see they may have some utility again as we realize just how comprehensive the American -- and by extension, global -- surveillance state has become, something we might say Orwell was in on the ground floor of developing and implementing, and which he came to reject utterly.

So. Here are links to the series. Make of them what you will. I am quite fond of the early BBC kinescope of "1984" that is embedded in one of them!

On Appeals to Orwell, June 26, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- furthermore, June 28, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- furthermore II, June 28, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- UpSide Down, InSide Out, Round and Round, June 29, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- Attacking the Weak, Flattering the Strong and Evaluating Every Contact on the Basis of Advancement, June 30, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- The -Isms on the Home Stretch July 1, 2010

 

On Appeals to Orwell -- The Wrap Up and a New Day Dawning July 1, 2010

Trying To Find Some Insight Into The Appalling Death of Michael Hastings

Without much luck so far.

The spectacular wreck of Michael Hastings' new Mercedes at 4:15 in the morning in the Hancock Park section of Los Angeles on Tuesday came as a real shock to his many admirers in the journalist world.

What was he doing at that time in the morning driving around LA? Not that it's all that unusual... except that it is. The city never sleeps, of course, and there is always a story for an intrepid journalist like Hastings in the deepest bowels of Los Angeles. We all know about Hollywood Confidential. We've seen "Chinatown" and "The Two Jakes" or like me, we lived there, and we know there are many untold stories percolating just below the surface, many of which probably shouldn't be told, but some of which must be.

What was he working on? Was he working when he was out driving at 4:15 in the morning? Or was it something else? And why was he driving where he was?

Highland is a long street that goes up into the Hollywood Hills, where all sorts of dazzling mischief takes place routinely. According to witnesses, Michael Hastings was driving south on Highland, which would mean he was coming down from the Hollywood Hills if he had stayed on Highland, but there is no firm evidence that I've seen yet that demonstrates where he was driving from. As he crossed Melrose, down in the flatlands, traveling at a very high speed going south -- again according to witnesses -- he apparently lost control of the car and slammed into a palm tree in the median less than a block from the intersection of Melrose. The car burst into flames. This is the tree, from Teh Goggle street view:

A palm tree on Highland Ave near Melrose in Los Angeles

It's a tony residential/commercial area, but Highland and Melrose are both very busy streets in the daytime and well into the night, so it's not someplace I would want to live. People who live there, though, live there because of the proximity to Hollywood, and Hollywood is, after all, where dreams are made.

Apparently the crash was powerful enough to burst the water mains in the median strip, for in the video I posted previously, there is a gusher of water coming from near the crash site, a gusher which contrasts strikingly with the flames engulfing what remains of the car. The tree, however, appears to be almost undamaged from the crash. Palm trees can be delicate and yet remarkably sturdy, and this one certainly showed its mettle.

One witness quoted on KTLA stated that she heard what sounded like a bomb.

That sounds right to me. There have been any number of car crashes near where I've lived in the past (I don't know how to explain it....! ;-), and one of the most spectacular took out several olive trees and a fence at the front of our property. The crash sounded very much like a massive explosion. It shook the house. When we went out to inspect the situation, the twisted remains of a Camaro (as I recall) lay upside down amidst the fence and tree debris. Three full-grown olive trees looked like they had exploded from the impact. One was more or less intact though on its side; the others were in pieces scattered in the street and on the yard. The fence was toppled but not badly damaged. As we reached the car, its occupant managed to crawl out somehow. He did not appear to be badly injured, though there was a bit of blood on his face from a cut at his hairline, and he complained of an ache in his arm. He walked a few paces from the car and sat down on the remains of an olive tree to await the arrival of Emergency Services. We'd called before we went to examine the wreckage.

The Camaro -- or what was left of it -- was upside down, smoking and steaming in our front yard. A wheel had come off of it, as well as many pieces of chrome and fender and whatnot, and neighbors were collecting them from the street and managing traffic around the debris. The car did not catch fire. It was, however, completely demolished, strongly resembling one of those flattened former autos that come out of the scrapyards. It's amazing that the driver survived. He was apparently drunk, though I can't say for sure; he was pretty incoherent, and the police said he and the car smelled of alcohol, so I took it for what it was worth. How they could tell, I'm not so sure. From the sound of the wreck, I estimated that the car was going more than 70 miles an hour when the driver lost control, and reported as much to the police.

We lived on a curve of a busy street, and there were frequent wrecks at our place as drivers came around the curve at too high a speed, but nothing like this particular wreck had happened before, nor would anything happen like it afterwards so long as we lived there.

The section of Highland Avenue where Michael Hastings wrecked, however, was quite straight; there are no curves on Highland once it emerges from the Hills. Witness reports were that the car was traveling very fast, "maybe 100 miles an hour," as it sped south on Highland, and if he was maneuvering through the intersection at Melrose without stopping for the light at such speed, it would hardly be surprising he lost control of the car.  The wreck happened a few hundred feet from the intersection.

One witness seemed to be saying that he saw the car on fire as it crossed Melrose, but I have seen no confirmation, and the witness's English was poor, so I may have misunderstood him or that may not have been what he meant to say. But if the car was on fire before the crash, I think that might be a significant data point.

I would imagine there was surveillance video taken from several angles from the businesses at the intersection of Melrose and Highland. There may be some surveillance videos from closer to the scene of the crash as well. People in Hollywood are into cameras for some reason... So it should be possible to determine with certainty whether the car was on fire when it sped through the intersection.

Many people have remarked about the fact that Hastings' car burned at all, and I detailed a similar crash that happened in our front yard years ago in part to make the point that I have personally witnessed a similar sort of crash in which there was no fire, and indeed the driver walked away, injured to be sure, but whole.

Hastings was apparently burned beyond recognition.

Others have pointed out that cars often do burst into flame when they crash, so what happened in this case was not unusual. Since we've been in New Mexico we've seen many instances as well of automobiles -- relatively new ones, too -- seemingly spontaneously bursting into flames on the freeways or side streets. It's practically a daily occurrance.

According to what I read this morning, Hastings was in LA working on a story about Barrett Brown. Cenk Uygur posted this video on Current TV:



I don't know what to make of this story as Cenk seems to be all over the map in it. On the other hand, he's been dogging this story, unlike most of the media, so he may be on to something.

Earlier Cenk ran this piece:



Of course, it is all interrelated to the National Surveillance State that has been on the minds of many of the public and in the media since the reports of the surveillance of AP reporters, a FOX reporter, and latterly, of everyone under the rubric of "keeping us safe from terrorism."

Of course that's a crock. That is not why the surveillance is going on as anyone with half a brain should be able to tell. The surveillance is going on to keep control of a potentially restive population as more and more neo-liberal economic policies and neo-conservative warrior policies are introduced and implemented. It's obvious as sin. The knowledge that one is being surveilled is very effective at suppressing dissent and revolt. That's the point of it.

Michael Hastings apparently was worried -- even somewhat paranoid -- about being surveilled by the FBI or who knows what other agencies, and it's at least plausible to me that he could have been speeding down Highland at 4:00 am because he thought he was being tailed by some flatfoot agent of the Surveillance State and he was trying to escape or lose the tail. There are those who claim he was probably drunk or on some prescription like Ambien, and it's possible, but in either case, it doesn't really explain the speed he was driving at on a heavily utilized city street in Los Angeles at 4:00am. Even if he was drunk, that kind of speed under those circumstances would be unusual, unless... well, we don't know, and it is unlikely that whatever the Official Story turns out to be, that we'll find out any time soon.

Rest in peace, Michael.

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UPDATE: There is another video from Loudlabs that apparently shows the Hastings car blowing through a red light at Highland and Santa Monica Blvd seconds before the crash on southbound Highland just south of Melrose. Apparently one of the Loudlabs camera cars had pulled into a service station at Santa Monica and Highland and left the camera running while attending to other matters. He was not aware that he had captured the Hastings car running the red light at Santa Monica Blvd.

My speculation was that Hastings ran a red light at Melrose too, and may have had to swerve to avoid traffic, leading to loss of control of the car and the subsequent crash. Nevertheless, that doesn't explain the explosion.

Video allegedly showing Hastings running a red light on Highland at Santa Monica Blvd just before the crash:




If this was Hastings' car (and there is no reason to think it isn't at this point) then it wasn't ablaze when it went through the red light at Santa Monica Blvd shortly before the crash. However, Santa Monica Blvd is about 4 and a half long blocks north of the crash site, or about half a mile. At 60 miles an hour (which was one estimate of the speed of the car) it would have been about 30 seconds before the crash.

What I want to know is where are the surveillance videos from the businesses along the route, especially at the corner of Melrose and Highland? There should be an abundance of evidence from them, but so far... not a lot has shown up.

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LA Weekly is on it. 

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Some questions so far unanswered:

What was Hastings doing in LA? [Barrett Brown is being held in Texas. I thought Hastings lived in New York.][[LA Times says Hastings had opened Buzzfeed's LA bureau last fall.]]

What was he doing driving so fast through Hollywood at 4:00am? [Not unheardof, but still...]

What about this brand new Mercedes C250? [Not the most expensive car on the lot, but was Hastings earning enough to buy one? ]

Was he drinking and/or abusing prescription drugs again? Who can verify?

Where was he coming from and where was he going? [There is a report, apparently sourced to Russia, that he was on his way to the Israeli Consulate when his car was droned; Death From Above and all that. Why he would be going to the Israeli Consulate is unclear, but if that's what he was trying to do, he was way off the mark, as it is located far to the west, on Wilshire Blvd. The easier way to get there would be via Santa Monica Blvd, but he blew through the red light at Santa Monica and stayed on Highland which stubs out at Wilshire, but it is miles from the Israeli Consulate.]

How did the car explode?

Let's not forget that LAPD and the LA Coroner are doing the investigation. Neither has a sterling reputation for truth telling, competence, and thoroughness. Left to their gentle minstrations, we'll never find out what really happened.

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Scott Johnson's obit at BuzzFeed is a doozy. In it, he explains that Hastings had moved to Los Angeles, had bought the Mercedes last month, and that he was probing the darker underbelly of Hollywood, where, he said, "dreams come to die."  Yes. Well.

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This is great. WikiLeaks claims Hastings contacted WL attorney hours before the crash because he was being investigated by the FBI. At first, the FBI LA office refused to confirm or deny they were investigating Hastings. Standard "no comment" comment. Then the LA Coroner positively identified Hastings from the charred remains in the car. THEN the Coroner said that they got the ID from fingerprint info from the FBI. THEN, the FBI positively, absolutely, in no uncertain terms said they weren't under any circumstances "investigating" Hastings.

Right.

Is it any wonder the tinfoil hats are on extra tight? And let's not forget that standard procedure in these cases is to issue all kinds of conflicting statements and whatnot. It's gonna be a bumpy ride.

Americans Haven't Quite Reached This Spot Again...Not Yet

 

Florence Owens Thompson and children, March 1936

Dorothea Lange's iconic photo of Florence Thompson and three of her children will, it seems, forever be imprinted on the psyches of Americans as an image of untellable suffering in this Land of the Free, Home of the Brave. Most people will have little or no idea what was going on or who these people were or even where or when this picture was taken. It is the most singular icon of the Dust Bowl Era/Great Depression, without doubt or dispute. There are other photos from the era that resonate to be sure, but nothing like this one.

First off, I think it is of some note that this picture was taken in 1936, when the Depression, or at least its worst aspects of mass suffering, was perceived to be mostly over. FDR, the New Deal and all that.

It was taken on California's Central Coast, not Dust Bowl Oklahoma, and though Florence and her older children (not these -- her younger children were born in California) were from Oklahoma, they had been in California mostly working in the fields up and down the state since 1931. They were not Dust Bowl refugees -- at least not any more. They were migrant laborers in the fields of California, like tens of thousands of others did then -- and still do.

 Of course in those days, many of the California field hands were white. Nowadays, not so much. Nearly all of the field hands today are Hispanic, mostly from Mexico, though many are from Central America, and not a few were born and raised in California of Mexican or Central American parents.

For a time, and even in Thompson's time, it seemed to be possible to go from the fields in California to a fairly comfortable, fairly middle class lifestyle in one or at most two generations. That passage seems far from certain now. In this country today, if you're born poor, you'll most likely stay poor the rest of your life. Same for any children you might have. There is less social and economic mobility in the United States today than perhaps at any time in its history, less mobility in fact than in most other places in the developed world.

Florence and her children were poor to be sure, but they were not truly destitute at the time of the photo, though that's how they were portrayed by Lange and the press, a press which glommed onto the photo immediately and presented it as a portrait of despair and destitution of unparalleled magnitude in this land of plenty, and this after three years, three years!, of the New Deal.

According to the story Florence told later, what happened was that the family -- which included Jim Hill, her (common-law?) husband at the time, her older children and these younger ones -- were traveling from fields they'd been working in the Imperial Valley toward Watsonville near Salinas, where they hoped to find more work, but the timing chain on their Hudson broke and they coasted into a large ad hoc migrant camp (that held at that time maybe 2,000 or 3,000 hopeful workers) in Nipomo. (I'm very familiar with all these places, having lived and worked in or near California's agricultural areas most of my life. There are also other connections which may come up in other posts.)

The workers were there because they'd heard there was field work to be done picking peas, but when they got there, a freezing rain had ruined the crop and there was no work.

Many of the migrants in the camp were destitute and starving, but Florence's family were not. Comparatively speaking, they were doing OK.

Florence and her children were laying over in the camp while Jim Hill and the older boys were in town getting the car fixed so they could continue their journey north toward Watsonville. While in the camp, Florence said they subsisted on frozen peas they collected from the fields and the few birds the children were able to kill for the cooking pot. Hungry children came by and asked if they could please have a bite. Once the car was fixed, they moved on.

That they had a car and were used to the migrant labor life in California was to their advantage. While they had advantages that many others didn't, their life in the fields could not have been pleasant.

California's field hands were and are terribly exploited, often wretchedly housed and provided for, and frequently treated with feudal levels of abuse. Migrant field workers in California were and are beneath the level of an oppressed underclass; they were frequently seen and treated as disposable slaves by their employers.

Eventually, the Florence and family moved to California's Central Valley, still doing mostly farm labor, but apparently settling down near or in Modesto,  where Florence would meet and marry George Thompson, a hospital administrator, and from 1945 onwards, the family would live in modest financial security.

Florence claimed to be a full-blood Cherokee, born ("in a teepee") and raised outside of Tahlequah, OK. Her blood father was a Christie, and so could have been full-blood Cherokee, but he abandoned Florence's mother (of the Cobb family, and thus likely not full-blood Cherokee) before she was born. Her mother then married Charles Akman, of Choctaw descent. (All this, according to the Wiki...)

The other day, I was in the company of a genealogist out of Tahlequah who is a Christie descendant on his mother's side, and he said he'd been trying to trace Florence's Cherokee ancestry and was coming up short. Of course Cherokee lineages can be complicated. Just ask anyone who's tried to demonstrate their blood quantum to the satisfaction of the authorities of the Cherokee Nation. It can be quite a complex and drawn out process, even for full-bloods.

Of course Florence, even if a full-blood Cherokee (which is unlikely in any case), would not have been born "in a teepee" as teepees were not used by Cherokee people (nor by Choctaw) at any time.  But then, people tell tales...

The Cherokee Christies were and are based around Wauhillau, OK, not far from Tahlequah, and Florence's biological father was said to be Jackson Christie, who appears on the Dawes Rolls from Wauhillau as a full-blood. Her mother, a Cobb, however, is the more problematical ancestor, as there is no Mary Jane Cobb listed on the Dawes Rolls, and the only Mary Cobbs listed are of 1/4th and less Cherokee blood quantum. Of course, there were plenty of Cherokee of all blood quantums who were never listed on the rolls, so nothing conclusive can be said about Florence's mother's Cherokee ancestry -- or lack thereof.

That a Cherokee genealogist cannot trace her with any certainty is interesting but not unusual, given the fact that Florence's biological father (apparently a full-blood Cherokee) ran off before she was born, and she was raised by a (supposed) Choctaw adoptive father. Well, in Indian culture, she wouldn't have been raised by either father but instead would have been brought up in her mother's matrilineal household, with slight contact with "fathers." But if Florence's mother was a Cobb (there's no reason to doubt it), it's quite possible she was less culturally Cherokee, and so she might not have raised her daughter in the culture. On the other hand, she just as well might have.

Florence kept company with several men and (officially) married two of them though both died before she did. She had six or seven children, all of whom seem to have had great admiration for her. She appears to have engaged in field work in California for as long as she had to and was physically able to, but when the opportunity arose, she left the fields to work in hospitals, and by 1945 she had settled down in Modesto with her last husband, a hospital administrator -- which no doubt relieved her of any obligation to work the fields of California again.

When Dorothea Lange took that iconic picture, Florence's situation was not as dire as it was made out to be in the press, but we shouldn't fool ourselves into thinking it was somehow "good" just because she and her children weren't actually stranded and starving, and she hadn't actually sold the tires on her car to buy food. The family's car would be repaired, and they would move on. But that didn't mean their situation was much better than miserable.

The status of the thousands of others at the Nipomo camp really was dire, though, and some actually were starving. The "Migrant Mother" picture of Florence and her younger kids led to the transport of tens of thousands of pounds of food to the camp to help succor those still trapped there. The fact that Americans could still be in such appalling circumstances, years after the advent of the New Deal under Roosevelt, came as a shock to many who had convinced themselves the New Deal had eliminated this level of destitution and desperation.

It did not. It wasn't until the 1960s and the Great Society programs of the Johnson Era that "Freedom from Want" was actually made a social and political principle in this country, a principle that we may note is being dismantled as our governing representatives seek ways to cut benefits for the masses, including Social Security and food stamps, while continuing to increase rewards and benefits for the highest of the mighty.

This is why the National Surveillance/Security State has become so essential to those few who are accumulating such remarkable rewards during a period of such economic decline and hardship for so many. As we see the identity of "terrorist" re-defined over and over and over again to include more and more individuals and groups that might one day prove problematical to the rule by the very few and the unfettered exploitation and impoverishment of the masses, we see the true nature of the Security fetish of Our Rulers. We see the "why" being answered with action.

We are all, ultimately, potential suspects and thus we all must be surveilled. This is essential for the survival and continued prosperity of Our Betters. Uppitiness must be channeled and controlled, revolt must be suppressed.

I find it interesting that some people who point out that this is the way it has been for a long time are being denounced as "Obots" and whatnot, when they are trying to get across the notion that some people have been yelling about the Surveillance State and the Security Fetish of the Ruling Class for many years and have generally been ignored or shushed, on the fictional basis that it's not really happening, or if it is, it isn't really all that worrisome, or if it is worrisome, it's better to keep quiet about it. Instead of taking it seriously when something might have been done about it, too many of those with prominent platforms in the media and on the internet were either silent or extra cautious, fearing that if too much was said or made of it, or if objections actually led to action, the Stasi would be on their tails like white on rice.

Now, interestingly, they aren't afraid, nor do they hesitate to accuse those who were calling for action years ago of being tacit supporters of universal surveillance and the security state all along. It is very much a through-the-looking-glass and down-the-rabbit-hole situation, by no means the first in these realms.

Now it's an all-important issue, but what's to be done about it -- apart from arguing and debating in endless circles?

In 1936, Americans discovered to their shock and horror that the New Deal hadn't really accomplished what they thought it had set out to do, and many millions of Americans, symbolized by Dorothea Lange's portrait of Florence Thompson, were still suffering severely. They would be reminded again in the 1960s with exposés of economic and social hardships  all over the country. In those days, Americans and their representatives in Congress assembled were empowered to and capable of doing something to alleviate that suffering.

Now? Not so much. No, let's be honest: not at all. Our Rulers are actively instituting programs of impoverishment and suffering for the masses, and the public is advised to acquiesce quietly or be subjected to the tender ministrations of or brutal suppression by the bloated National Security State -- as has been demonstrated against various groups and individuals for years. We are well past the point where the People might have intervened to halt or reverse our collective disempowerment.

Now the options for reversing what's been under way for so many years are highly constrained. Lawsuits are among the options available. But when the courts are part of the problem...

Congressional agitation is potentially useful, but when congress itself is part of the problem...

Popular outrage is hard to sustain when the Ruling Classes really don't give a shit about what the People want any more...

It's another fine mess we've got ourselves into...