So Now Comes Word From the NYT

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

Jeebus.

Gosh almighty. Ya think?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It's as if it were by design.

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

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

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

"Oh and by the way..."

Sigh.

The Hidden Hysteria

Journalist and documentary filmmaker John Pilger was set to be in Santa Fe next week for a speaking engagement and the U.S. premier of his latest film, The War You Don’t See. - photo courtesy carlton television

My, my, my. Sometimes I regret getting the high speed internet here in New Mexico. When we only had dialup, it hardly mattered what was going on among the internet denizens, since I couldn't visit very many sites -- given slow loading and all -- and I couldn't fret too much over this or that, either.

But after the old laptop died, I decided to have Qwest do their thing, and sure enough, at the appointed hour the newer wireless enabled laptop -- that I can take all over the house and outside and everything -- fired right up and with only the slightest jiggling, connected to the now "blazing fast" internet. Oh. Dear. Now I could go pretty much anywhere on the WWW, just as fast as I pleased, and I could even see streaming videos for the first time at this house. (Needless to say, I had to watch local Albuquerque boy Neil Patrick Harris host the Tonys... Somehow I know that show business bug will never leave me...)

While that's pleasing, what I notice is that I spend way too much time surfing the internet now that it goes fast, compared to the very limited time I spent (mostly emailing; old-fashioned, right?) on dial up. So I run into all sorts of things that get me more or less annoyed, astonished or OUTRAGED!!!!™.

Such as for example the psyops video I posted yesterday. I wouldn't have seen it at all if it hadn't been posted at Willyloman's Place (much as I would not have seen the recent Adam Curtis series if "Willy" (Scott) hadn't posted them.) But if I didn't have the high-speed, I couldn't have watched them.

And then I got to thinking: what has been gained now that I have watched them? They confirmed what I either already knew or believed on the one hand, and they expanded on those core beliefs on the other, throwing new information or additional information into the mix. On one level, this is good. On another, I'm not so sure.

The question I ask is, "What can you do now that you know?" That's always the dilemma, isn't it?

Willy (Scott) has been going on about the recent psyops use of straight male bloggers (somehow this relates to Neil Patrick Harris's opening number for the Tony's but I won't go there yet) to impersonate lesbian female bloggers being abused horribly by the Dastardly Syrian Regime. This has to be one of the more bizarre uses of sockpuppetry in recent times, but it should be clear to anyone by now that "sockpuppet armies" are deployed all over the internet.

False identities are as much a feature of the internet as cute cats, porn and racy stuff of all kinds, and endless argument over trivia. Sockpuppetry is supposed to be one of the worst things internet users can engage in, and yet it is so common as to be routine, and it should be expected.

I myself have a number of identities on the internet, though I tend to use only one pseudonym at each site. I cannot think offhand of any site at all where I have used more than one at a time, and for the most part, I've consolidated other identities under the Ché Pasa banner and use it consistently. Of course it is not my real name, but on the internet that hardly matters. By using a consistent pseudonym, one is essentially establishing an internet identity that is as solid as almost anything you'd establish with a bank or utility company, or, for that matter, among friends and relations.

But a pseudonym and a sockpuppet are hardly the same thing. There are sites I'm familiar with where the "discussion" -- such as it is -- is primarily a factor of perhaps half a dozen or fewer people "and their armies of sockpuppets" holding forth, picking at one another's scabs and arguing endlessly over nothing. And getting nowhere. Of course, when it is the same person using different sockpuppet identities the "argument" is really a pretense. There is no real argument, in other words. And of course there are the plants, whether from political parties or from other unnamed shadowy interests, who attempt to hijack or "guide" discussion in preferred ways or simply state the Talking Points of the day. It's just a fact of life in internet fora, as it has been for ages. You deal with it -- or not as the case may be. You reach the point where it doesn't really matter, because in this country, at any rate, the internet is primarily a matter of entertainment, not action or even education.

Most entertaining to me are the posters on "lefty" political sites who insist that they "will never vote for a Democrat again!!!!111" "I'm so mad at these damn, dirty, Dems, I'm going to vote straight Republican ticket this time!" Sure, right. The whole point of this kind of post -- the only point, really -- is to plant the seed in otherwise loyalist Dems and relatively swayable Indies that the answer to their disappointment with the Dems (and who isn't disappointed except the Dem consultants?) is to vote R. That'll show 'em! I laugh to scorn.

Obviously it works sometimes, such as the 2010 elections when Dems and Indies stayed home in droves rather than vote for the ever-so-disappointing Dems, thus ensuring a rather spectacular R victory in election after election.

This is all routine online political psyops. It's done all the time.

But while I was checking out various sites this morning I came across something that struck me as pernicious (not that the psyops just described isn't also pernicious.)

It was a reference to "censorship" by the Lannan Foundation in Santa Fe for the cancellation of John Pilger's appearance (scheduled for today) to discuss media and war, and to premier his new film "The War You Don't See."

Pilger himself went into full hysterical mode in an Open Letter to Noam Chomsky -- that'll get the civil liberties base riled, ne? -- over the shocking treatment he had endured:

What is deeply disturbing about the ban is that it happened so suddenly and inexplicably: 48 hours before David Barsamian and I were both due to depart for Santa Fe I received a brief email with a 'sorry for the inconvenience' from a Lannan official who had been telling me just a few days earlier what a 'great honor' it was to have the US premiere of my film at Lannan, with myself in attendance.

And then he goes on:

Neither David Barsamian nor I have been given a word of explanation. All my messages to Lannan have gone unanswered; my calls calls are not returned; my flights were cancelled summarily. At the urging of the New Mexican newspaper, Patrick Lannan has issued a one-sentence statement offering his regrets to the Lannan-supporting 'community' in Santa Fe. Again, he gives no reason for the ban. I have spoken to the manager of the Santa Fe cinema where 'The War You Don't See' was to be screened. He received a late-night call. Again, no reason for the ban was forthcoming, giving him barely time to cancel advertising in The New Mexican, which was forced to drop a major feature.

There is a compelling symbol of our extraordinary times in all of this. A rich and powerful individual and organization, espousing freedom of speech, has moved ruthlessly and unaccountably to crush it.

Oh. Well. I see.

The issue is not the cancellation. The issue is the lack of an explanation. There is apparently not even the courtesy of letting Pilger know sotto voce why his appearance is being canceled.

This would be considered somewhat irregular in a show business context: usually the reason for the cancellation of an appearance or a show is noted somewhere by someone, if not necessarily publicised. That the featured individual has just gone back to rehab, for example, may not be stated, nor may the fact that some mucky-muck behind the scenes had a spat with the featured individual be made clear, or so on and so forth, but a reason of some sort is usually provided. In this case, there was apparently nothing at all forthcoming from Lannan, just: "Bye!" No show, no story. Nothing.

According to Pilger's Open Letter, not even the local paper could get a reason out of Lannan.

All very odd. And so Pilger, who claims to be friends with Patrick Lannan -- who ordered the cancellation personally -- went into hysterics, which in turn caused mass hysteria among observers, over what they saw as and thought was "censorship."

The absence of any explanation at all from Lannan was the unresolved issue. So yesterday, Patrick Lannan issued a rather snotty statement that explained that after months of promotion, the Foundation had only sold 152 tickets to the event at the Lensic, and the Foundation (ie: Patrick Lannan) did not believe it was worthwhile to present the event to so few people. Canceling Pilger's appearance at the Lensic meant canceling the American film premier at another venue in Santa Fe as well. Too. Bad. Harrumph. "The Foundation will have no further comment on this issue." Good. Bye.

Having been presented with this sort of dilemma myself on occasion when I was a producer of events and shows, and having canceled a couple of them for similar reasons, I'm nevertheless stunned at Lannan's apparent venom and lack of any explanation to the talent, let alone to the public, until long after all hell had broken loose.

WTF? Lannan has been in the presenting business for a long time and should know the basics of how you handle problems like this positively and productively. If it had been me, assuming I was contractually obligated to pay the talent no matter what (which appears to be the case here), I would have gone ahead with the presentation, no matter how few tickets were sold, and I would have eaten any losses (which in this case are substantially more than just the talent fees), because I believe the event was more important than sales, and I would have papered the house if I had to. To cancel based on lack of sales, for something like this, is really very strange. And to do so without any explanation at all is truly bizarre.

Is this a case of official interference? I have no way of knowing. Is Pilger's hysteria warranted? That's hard to say. The failure is Lannan's, for not explaining anything at all until long after the damage was done. And then only explaining partially and publicly, and still apparently not to Pilger personally and directly.

This is just not how you do these things.

So while it may not warrant hysteria, it is a mystery that needs some further exploration.

Nevertheless, apparently these sorts of things are common enough on the "controversial speaker" circuit that one really does have to wonder about the Hidden Hysteria of suppression of ideas and speech by The Powers That Be.

If this were the Soviet Union, in other words, one would assume official interference. But it's not. So what is really going on?

Documenting the Atrocities

Jeebus, the Hysteria.

The stark raving madness surrounding the now-admitted-by-everyone to be a pretty much ideal Republican Health Care Insurance Reform measure so infected the public square and the blogosphere that I just stayed away. The Crazy is catching, and I simply did not want to play.

When you have an amiable drunk like Dick Armey stirring up the masses to Rise and Revolt, and he's the only one doing it, then you know the situation is well out of hand -- and well out of your hands. When Men of Principle like the perpetually peevish Dennis Kucinich can be -- ahem -- persuaded to go along with what is arguably The Best Republican Health Insurance Reform measure evah, then you know the fix is not only in, it has been in for months if not years.

And the hysteria over it just won't quit.

This is politics in America today, and when things get this wild, even though all the Stakeholders are pretty well satisfied, then you know it's all for Show, a Show that is meant to keep the People entertained while their betters abscond with more of their loot.

That nearly the entire blogosphere fell into it and two sites that I frequent -- or used to -- FDL and dKos -- went balls-to-the-wall with rivalry and hysteria, mutual anathema and fury, simply confirmed to me that "Health Care" was being used as a business leader by both of them, with the primary desire and function to increase revenues for their proprietors.

Much as Dick Armey has very successfully done with his "Freedom Works" TeaBagger outfit.

TeaBagging is now the model. First they made it OK to bring up the R-Word, "Revolution". Now they make it OK to be bat-shit insane, and mostly to value myth and falsity over fact to make their point.

The shape and outline of the "Health Care" was set very early on last year, by April or May, and was all but complete by June and July. After that, everything was theatrics piled upon theatrics, and jockeying for attention by all and sundry. It really troubled me that it was being done this way. I still don't know whose bright idea it was to let things devolve into such a continuous goon show, but there you are. "Day of the Locusts" -- and it wouldn't end. It just kept going and going and going...

Couple of things happened, though, that made it almost seem smart (well, that remains to be seen...): 1) the factions pretty much exhausted themselves in virtual combat with one another and with The Powers That Be; 2) the bill that has been (is still in fact being) cobbled together comes across as "Moderate" compared to the foam-flecked fury it has unleashed among the commentariat and the proles. Moderate and wise, considered and responsible, a celebration of the Public Interest, the "Health Care" seems (almost) Just Right. Or something like that.

There is very little energy left to fight the Power, or to fight this fait accompli... or to do much of anything.

Jane posted her Manifesto over the Betrayal, yadda yadda, and something jumped out at me from it: She writes about how exciting and rewarding it was to cover what was going on. As a Journalist. New Media and all that. And then she refers to how difficult it was and frustrating it was to take what she learned as a Journalist and turn it into political action -- ie: to be a Player.

And how the next step has to be this or that to turn political knowledge gained as a Journalist into successful political action as a Player Without Portfolio. Basically to be as influential as any high priced lobbyist on K Street. Or as influential as any other noisy media outfit.

What is the point of Documenting the Atrocities if you can't use them for... good? Well, for what you want.

And this is the core difficulty among political bloggers. They want -- in some cases desperately -- to be Players on the political field, and they want to Win. (cf: Markos, Arianna, Aravosis) They believe that being Journalists is the way to Glory and Winning on the Field. Documenting the Atrocities (in the form of constant Media Criticism) is one of the core functions of the Blogosphere in general, and it is a sure way to -- eventually -- gain Notice. And Notice, somehow, is supposed to translate into Power.

Only it doesn't, not really, when it comes to Blogging. So called Progressives got nothing out of the "Health Care," not even a wink and a nod. At best they got a kick in the nads and a slap in the face, and a demand for their lunch money to boot. And like always, they pay up. It's their role and their function. Surprisingly, Jane has not yet gone into Kali-mode demanding the Heads of all who thwarted her again. Especially the Head of Obama Himself. But one shouldn't be surprised to see her turn when the situation is ripe.

Interestingly, some Republicans are complaining that they got "Nothing." Interesting especially because the measure is for all intents and purposes a Republican measure, barely recognizable as anything but a pay-off to vested interests at the crippling expense of the Public -- the way it is supposed to be in Republican Land.

It's arguably better in that regard than the Republicans on their own could possibly have made it. So what are they crabbing about?

Oh, I see.

They couldn't and didn't do it.

Someone else had to be brought in, Young Mister Obama.

That's the deal.

That's what they're crabbing about. And they will never forgive him for it.

Never.


Note: somebody at the Signing just said, "Thank you. 36 years trying to do this..."

Well, there you are.

OUTRAGE DU JOUR® -- No Tents for Haiti

Good God in Heaven, what is the matter with these people?

Today it is being widely reported that Haitian Relief Agencies have decided that the hundreds of thousands of homeless households in Haiti following the earthquake shall not receive tents as temporary shelter. No, instead, if they are lucky, each displaced household will receive one, count it, one tarp. If they are lucky.

Many of the aid agencies, especially the big ones, have made a mockery of the very idea of disaster assistance with their near total failure to provide any such thing to survivors of the Haitian earthquake that took place over a month ago now. They may have raised hundreds of millions of dollars for relief, but they are so terribly frightened of the Negroes and all of their VooDoo and whatnot, and they are so incapable of even speaking with the Natives to coordinate aid deliveries, and they are so fretful of "security", that hundreds of thousands of Haitians have received nothing at all from the stores and stockpiles of relief supplies piled up (and probably rotting) at the Port-Au-Prince airport, and many never will receive anything at the rate things are going.

Now, word goes out that the survivors are not to receive tents as a matter of policy.

Why, you may ask?

Well, of course, "they're too big, too costly, and too inefficient, aid groups say." Isn't that special. Silly me. I should have known. "Besides, they are bulky and don't last long enough to justify their cost, the aid community has decided." Thank goodness they are thinking these things through.

Food is perishable. Water gets spilled. Health care is expensive.

Why do anything? It's inconvenient anyway. Why not just let the Haitians take care of their own selves?

But never fear:

"-By May 1, one plastic tarp will be given to each of about 250,000 displaced families." So there's that.

And then?

"-Transitional shelters of 18 square meters (194 square feet), with corrugated iron roofs, will then be built. They will have earthquake-and storm-resistant frames of timber or steel and are supposed to last for three years."

Wonderful.

How bout a fucking tent in the meantime? And maybe some food. How about some water? Hay, maybe even some medical care? Ya think?

Jeebus Cripes on a Ritz this makes me mad.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

Really!

"Come on, honey. Who ya gonna believe? Me or yer lyin' eyes?" -- every dude ever caught with his pants down.

The Musharraf regime is busy spinning out an alternative Reality regarding what happened to Benazir Bhutto yesterday. Instead of having been shot twice, once through the neck and then through the shoulder, the Musharraf "investigator" is claiming that she never was hit by bullets or shrapnel. Instead, she was killed when she ducked down into her vehicle and struck her head on the lever that operates the sun and/or moon roof in reaction to the suicide bombing. Stupid woman. She was clumsy, and she died.

This is certainly an interesting version of the Blame the Victim trope that's informed nearly every disaster of the Bushevik years. It's fairly clear that this particular fiction is being generated for Pakistani domestic as well international consumption due to the pubication of various letters and emails Benazir sent before her death, all of which implicate Musharraf in her assassination, not so much directly, but through neglect of her security.

The Musharraf-ites of course are now claiming that they "did all they could" to protect The Woman, but she, being Unwise, was very hard to Protect. The gunman did not touch her. She died reacting to the bombing. And truth be told, there is nothing anyone can do about a determined suicide bomber. Tough breaks. Oh well.

It is critically important for the survival of the Musharraf regime that they convince their own people and the skeptical international community that they did everything they could. The Stupid Woman did her own self in by hitting her head you see.