The Media Trap

It's long been a matter of some note how easily Americans -- people in general, but Americans in particular -- can be manipulated, persuaded, and stampeded by propaganda, and how the American mass media serve as high octane conduits for some of the most egregious propaganda campaigns.

The premise that "government" is responsible for nearly all propaganda campaigns is false. This idea derives from Nazi, Soviet and Chinese examples from the 20th century and has never been particularly germane to the United States. Of course there are American government propaganda campaigns, but they are always undertaken in close collaboration with corporate interests and particularly with American mass media outlets. The US government is essentially incapable of mounting a significant propaganda campaign on its own, for it lacks suitable conduits to get the word out. Any propaganda the Government wishes to "catapult" -- to coin a phrase -- must take place in concert with, and be aligned with, the interests of corporate mass media.

Much as it might like to, the Government cannot compel mass media to carry propaganda messages on Government's behalf against the will of the media enterprises. That Americans are immersed in propaganda is the direct result of mass media's delight in propagandizing on its own behalf and on behalf of Government interests that coincide with corporate ones.

On the other hand, corporate mass media is constantly engaged in essentially independent corporate propaganda. It is relentless. It's called "advertising," but there is much more to it than that. They aren't simply promoting and selling product; they are shaping beliefs, controlling behaviors, and directing actions.

I posted recently about some of the anti-communist propaganda and scaremongering I was immersed in when I was in elementary school, propaganda that made a huge impression on me -- even though I came to disbelieve and ridicule it while being continually exposed to it. This propaganda was a universal fact of life that could not be escaped in the 1950's, something that people who weren't exposed to it have a hard time understanding. It wasn't just anti-communist propaganda, it was also the constant scaremongering over The Bomb and our pretty much certain nuclear annihilation when the Soviets launched their inevitable attack.

As much as we look back and would like to believe that this was all a government propaganda campaign, it was not. It was just as surely a corporate campaign, as was the whole Cold War enterprise from start to finish. It wasn't just the military-industrial complex, it was the entire infrastructure of public-private command and control that had been built during WWII which continued -- and continued to grow -- relentlessly during the Cold War and afterwards.

The United States and its allies may have been victorious in WWII, but that victory was hardly a matter of the government alone pursuing military ends. It was just as much a matter of corporate self-interest. After the War, the government shrank while corporate strength grew. And the "enemy" was immediately transformed from the defeated Nazis and Imperial Japan to the victorious Soviets, soon thereafter joined by the Reds in China. This transformation of enemies was accomplished through propaganda.

The major mass media (all privately and mostly corporate controlled) conditioned the public to accept this state of affairs, even celebrate it as patriotic, righteous and good.

The revolt of the 1960's was triggered by recognition that what we had been conditioned to believe was... false. We had been sold a bill of goods about our own country and its conduct abroad, and it had to stop. The way to make it stop was to throw oneself onto the "machine" -- making it impossible for the machine to function.

Much as I maintain that a significant factor in the collapse of the Soviet Union was public disbelief in the propaganda they were fed, so I maintain that the revolt of the 1960's in this country was fed by a similar recognition and disbelief in American propaganda.

This idea has become clearer the deeper I plunge into Seth Rosenfeld's "Subversives." But in the back of my mind, I realize that Rosenfeld himself is a reporter for the San Francisco Chronicle, a significant part of "major mass media" on the West Coast, and he is weaving a media driven narrative of the events of the revolts of the 1960's, what led up to them and their aftermath. It's interesting, for example, that he "exposes" the propaganda and lies of the San Francisco Examiner during the period, but he has very little to say about the Chronicle's similar reporting during the era. The Examiner may have been somewhat more strident, but the Chronicle was no less negative about the student uprising at Berkeley and soon enough, merely less provocative. The two major regional newspapers were basically in agreement about the rebellions and those responsible, as were nearly all media outlets throughout California and soon enough throughout the country. Rosenfeld touches on this near-unanimity, but he focuses on the Examiner's stridency and lies rather than his own paper's fundamental agreement with them.

Once the rebellion was over, of course, it could be analyzed in a more dispassionate way -- and I really appreciate Rosenfeld's exhaustive examination of the events and players -- but it is still (to me, at any rate) a media construct and narrative, relying on reporting from the era, more recent interviews and media narrative driven interpretations of FBI and other documents Rosenfeld obtained over 30 years of FOIA requests.

The Media Trap is the reliance on major mass media almost exclusively to inform us. The mass media serves a function, to be sure, but it is not to inform us in any comprehensive and objective way. Its primary functions, as stated above, is to shape our beliefs, control our behavior, and direct our actions.

Reliance on news accounts and editorial positions that appear in the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the many (surviving) regional newspapers for "objective" news is silly, but it's no worse than relying on media personalities who appear on television or radio, or more and more on the internet. These mass media outlets are propaganda organs. This is a truism, whether or not we agree with the propagandist's point of view and narrative about personalities and events.

Who holds the reins of this propaganda machine is often being contested, but the presumption that changing drivers (to mix a metaphor) will result in "better propaganda" --  or none at all  -- is absurd.

The propaganda machine exists for a particular purpose, and who is in charge of it or driving it doesn't change that mission and purpose.

The AP Thing, The IRS Thing, The Beng[h]azi Thing...

Whoo boy, the Roller Coaster is in overdrive now boys and girls. Did somebody offend somebody? Or is the situation behind the scenes just too unstable to keep the ship of state aright?

This is primarily a media scandal-fest, something like the ones that went wilding during the 90's leading to the Impeachment Circus and all the rest of it. Which led, of course, directly to the Supremes' lawless intervention in the 2000 election to put the majority's candidate on the Throne. If we think back, it's easy to see how media driven this all was, from the get-go to the miserable end of the Bushevik Regime.

How many millions paid with their lives and fortunes for this political misadventure? Did the media gain from their scandal mongering? Ask Roger Ailes, maybe he'll tell you. Maybe he won't. Maybe he'll lie.

The AP Thing is a doozy; they're all panty-wadded because their counsel got notice that phone records of certain reporters had been scrutinized by the DoJ, apparently as part of a leak investigation by the gov't. Hm. Yes, well. At least they got notice.

I mean, this sort of thing really galls me. Ever since the imposition of the Patriot Act back in the day, warrantless domestic surveillance has been essentially universal. But now AP is calling foul, stomping its little feet and screaming, "You can't do this to MEEEEE!!!!" Everybody else is fair game? But not the AP? Bullshit. The problem is not surveillance of the press; the problem is universal domestic surveillance. Period. And that's not something the Mighty-Mighty Press has ever had the least bit of concern about. Was it assumed that the Press would be immune?

This is not unlike my annoyance at the nearly hysterical response to the "torture" of Bradley Manning by members of the blog-o-tariat, with nary a nod to the fact that what was happening to him was relatively  mild compared to what goes on in American detention facilities to tens of thousands of Americans, every. fucking. day. And which has been going on for YEARS. What happened to Manning shouldn't have happened, but in my view, you cannot separate out his treatment from the gross brutality -- and yes, torture -- that is part and parcel of the entire American detention system.

Just so with the surveillance of the AP reporters. Yes? And? This is 'Merika. This is what goes on, has been going on for YEARS, "it's the Law," and this is what has been done to millions and millions of Americans on a day-in and day-out basis. What has the AP had to say about that? Nothing, right?

The AP is demanding -- now -- special treatment for itself, to be free of "this sort of intimidation!" Great, fine. They should be free of it -- so should everyone else. But you are unlikely to ever hear that from the AP or any of those marching around with their chins thrust out in AP's defense these days.

No, they want their own special dispensation, just as many of the advocates for Bradley Manning wanted his dispensation, ignoring the thousands and the millions who faced the same sort of intimidation/torture under the color of authority every day. For whatever reason, in the minds of so many people, the masses who suffer don't matter, only the individual -- or institution in the case of the AP.

To my way of looking at these things, it's nonsense.

Separating out an individual or one institution and demanding recompense for their suffering while ignoring everyone else who is facing the same sort of thing or worse is not even a simulation of "justice."

It's grotesque.

But that's how very far we've fallen under the spell of the Individual.

As for the IRS Thing, the notion that the IRS uses its power and authority to go after certain targeted individuals and institutions, and it sometimes oversteps its authority in doing so, is hardly news. The notion that some of their scrutiny has the appearance of a political motivation again is hardly news. What's news in this case is apparently that the agency was inclined to use its clout to look into nonprofit status of TeaBagging and other rightist political organizations, something that simply is not done in this country, rightists being Free and all. Well, Patriots, you know.

Scrutinizing Leftist outfits is only right and proper, but dare the IRS -- or anyone else in Gubmint -- to probe the  behavior of a 'Bagging interest and all hell breaks loose. Again, we are dealing with demands for special exemptions and dispensations for certain (perhaps momentarily) favored individuals or groups, leaving everyone else who has the same or similar difficulties to fend for themselves. This is not "justice." I can't put it any plainer than that.

To my way of looking at it, the IRS should be abolished for cause (along with quite a few other government department and agencies) and its functions should be reformed from the bottom up. The notion of non-profit, religious, or charitable tax exemptions should be re-thought. Just what is the purpose of these exemptions, and why should certain industries and individuals be exempt while others must pay and pay more, with the tax burden being shifted more and more onto the backs of those least able to pay?

But that's not what the hoop lah is about. No, it's about "targeting" rightist outfits, purely and simply. The whole system is rotten, but as long as it doesn't "target" rightists, it's OK? Leftists can be targeted -- and have been for generations -- but not rightists? What utter crap.

 Finally The Beng[h]azi Thing. It's as if no one involved in the many "investigations" has ever heard of or utilized (deceptive) Talking Points before. Yes, of course, the talking points were not accurate. Yes? So?

How often are talking points used by anyone fully accurate? How often are they intended to spin and how often are they intended to deceive?

In this case, the whole thing appears to be a mighty clusterfuck. It's not the first time. And until the AP and IRS Things, it seemed that the "investigations" of the clusterfuck were going to be taunted and dismissed by the media as so much political posturing by the Rs (which they are), but now, with the other "scandals" on the table as it were, Beng[h]azi will loom large on the topic list for some time to come.

I assume all this is coming to a head now (even before the Summer Driving and Shark and Missing White Woman Season gets going) because someone who matters in the media was offended by someone in the White House, possibly even by the President Himself. The media skin is sometimes very thin, and the least insult, or even an accidental one, can open the gates of Hell on an otherwise unsuspecting officialdom.

It's happened before. I would just remind readers that the Watergate Thing happened largely because A Person Who Mattered in the Media (Katherine Graham) took offense at the White House, and took personal offense at Richard Nixon for some insult or slight or other, and she vowed to have his ass in a sling or know the reason why. She got what she wanted.

A lot of people tend to think the Watergate story reporting and the subsequent investigations leading to the resignation of Richard Nixon was somehow a high point of public and media integrity. I would suggest it was nothing of the kind. It was instead an act of gross and deliberate revenge for... an insult. There were crimes committed, lord knows, in the course of the Nixon administration, monstrous, horrible crimes, compared to which the Watergate burglary was small potatoes. The point, which got completely missed, is that it is in the nature of our system of governance for the government itself to operate lawlessly, criminally, and often murderously. It is in the DNA of the institution, and the only way I know of to change things is to start over with a different institution.

Thus, as criminal as the Nixon administration was, it was by no means uniquely criminal. It was typically criminal. Decapitating the operation doesn't change its fundamental nature. But in the course of events, someone who mattered in the media demanded and got revenge against Richard Nixon, thus in effect decapitating the government, yet not changing it in any important way (she didn't care about that, after all), and here we are, forty years down the line, and guess what?

Nothing has really changed but the optics.

But at least the media now has its summer shitstorm laid out. What will happen to the Sharks and the Missing White Women?

And what of the Summer Driving Season?

This Is Kinda Fun... As These Things Go

Agenda 21 Full Video from Bryan Long on Vimeo.

Yes, well.

There's actually some more or less accurate information in the video within the video; I'll let the viewer figure out what it is. There are most definitely Things Going On that either the public is not privy to at all (a whole bunch of that stuff), or Things which are sold to the public using what amounts to false advertising. In other words, Things are not necessarily what they appear to be, and their upshot may be quite different than we are led to believe.

Government uses falsehoods frequently to help lull and control the People. This is nothing new, it's been going on for as long as there has been government, and it is by no means a peculiarity of the Modern American Government. Falsehood is built in to the institutional framework of government as we know it. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But I wouldn't call it good.

Tactics and techniques of mass control are pretty much constant in the haute monde of both the public and private sectors, and as we descend further and further into our Neo-Fascist Future, the interchange between the sectors essentially fuses them into a unity. They use each others' techniques freely, and for an identical purpose: control.

What is striking about this presentation is that it is offered as if it were "secret knowledge" -- much like the inner workings of the Mormon Temple to use one recent similar example -- when it's not really "secret" at all.

To state the obvious: The everyday world the public experiences doesn't operate the way the inner working of government does, but the way the government works is not especially hidden from view. Almost any interaction with the government will demonstrate how it works.

What's interesting to me is the how the ordinary operations of government can be so easily interpreted and sold as some vast conspiracy or other, much as is done in the video-within-the-video above and was done in a kind of baroque excess during the Clinton Era. There are conspiracies to be sure. And some of what the government and private sectors plan and do is not in the public interest by any means. Many people would say that most of what the government does is not in the public interest while giving the private sector a pass, and that's simply absurd; the twain have plighted their troth in a manner of speaking, and there is no way to separate their plans and actions from one another -- quite unlike the situation between the People and Government.

I've written many times that the United States Government has essentially divorced itself from the People and there is no longer much or in many cases any institutional necessity to include the People's Will or the Public Interest in the institutional framework of Government. This is true of many smaller jurisdictions as well. The United States Government -- like other governments around the world and at home -- serves the needs and interests of a select (and diminishing) minority of keyed-in and hyper-wealthy individuals and interests almost exclusively. The People are an impediment at times; most times they are simply irrelevant to the needs and interests of the power elites.

The surprise is that this state of affairs still comes as a surprise to many people.

It shouldn't.

In the meantime, the fantasy that is spun in the video above is really something to behold. The Truth might actually be scarier, though. So when these things appear, I generally take them to be the product  of an elite faction that wishes to press its own case in opposition to whatever is currently going on, and wishes to sell a load of crap to the public in the process in an effort to sway public opinion its own way.

Wheels within wheels...

[Speaking of: We had a series of truly remarkable adventures on Friday, starting with the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, thence to the Very Large Array at the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, thence back to the Refuge for the Arrival of the Cranes, thence to New Mexico Tech to hang out at their Observatories. I've drafted some stuff about it, but it may be a while before I post anything. Still working on the pictures....;-)]

Governing Contrary

"Meddy, Meddy, quieet contreddy, houw des uer gahdden gdreuw?

In all the hysteria over the Debt Crisis Crisis and the Deal, one thing is startlingly clear: Washington is so divorced from We, the People that it is institutionally incapable of addressing or even acknowledging the People's Will or the Public Interest -- except inversely.

The fashion is to govern exactly contrary to the People's Will and the Public Interest, and at this point in history, there is no way for governments in the United States or pretty much anywhere in the developed West to do otherwise.

This fashion for governing contrary to the People's Will and the Public Interest seemed to get going in earnest during the premiership of Maggie Thatcher in Britain, and it then became the style of the Reagan Administration in Washington (of course he'd done it to a certain extent previously as Governor of California, but it was actually somewhat subtle and much more deceptive than the Thatcher way. That's another discussion altogether, though.) By degrees, Governing Contrary became the operating theory of government throughout the West: whatever the People wanted or the Public Good needed, Government would do the opposite -- because that's what would inevitably enhance the wealth and power of the favored few.

And so it has been, relentlessly, for decades, so much so that many people have come to accept it as natural.

Since they've known nothing else their entire lives, why wouldn't they?

"Government is the problem, not the solution." And if the Government looks like it might be the Solution, then make it the Problem. Simple.

Make most people distrust government instinctively; make it harder and harder for them to participate in democracy; falsify "democracy" through media; make more and more ridiculous rules; make much more draconian punishments for more and more intrusive and incomprehensible laws; set trade policies that destroy industry and jobs at home; "liberate" the economy so that one bubble after another can be inflated and then deflated, thus providing the periodic illusion of "opportunity" for the masses, while ensuring that each time the bubble deflates, the proles are pillaged more comprehensively for the benefit of the Overclass; conduct wars of aggression overseas, institute an aggressive security apparat at home; put everything on credit.

This is what governments in the West have been doing for decades, led by the examples in the United States and Britain, under both Democratic (Labour) and Republican (Tory) administrations, one of which might be slightly less harsh in its Contrariness than the other, but both of which operate on the same principle of Governing Contrary to the People's Will and the Public Interest.

Nothing at all seems to move them from their course, and one catastrophe after another is simply an excuse to increase the level of Governing Contrariness.

So what do you do about it?

So far, nothing tried has even come close to working. No public argument, tumult, uprising or revolution has managed to alter the course of governments obsessed with operating contrary to the People's Will and the Public Interest anywhere... except, perhaps, to an extent in Latin America for a brief period after the horrors of the Reactionary/Fascist Period and its numerous civil wars wound down.

If we really want to overcome the fashion of Governing Contrary, it might help to understand what gave rise to it in the first place, and why it was adopted by both "liberal" and "conservative" governments throughout the West almost without exception as the General Rule of Government.

That will require a whole other exploration.

The Obama Problem

I have from time to time offered both criticisms and defenses of His Serenity, Barack "Hoover" Obama -- mostly critical observation of what he is doing and why I think he's doing it. I don't think he is particularly evil or smart for that matter, but I do see him as increasingly self-possessed, self-actuated, and increasingly rigid in his core principles and beliefs.

President Carter with better looks and no Southern accent.

Well, yes. The Carter comparison has been raised since forever, on the presumption that Obama would be a one term president -- which he might well be, and I don't think he really much cares about that.

But lately, the fashion mavens in the Blogosphere have decided to push the notion that Obama is somehow The. Worst. President. Ever. (Excuse me, no.) Aware observers are more than willing to point out that the premise itself is stupid and unworthy, but it's hard not to succumb to the silliness because it is based in a human need to be on a "team" and support or defy the conventional wisdom.

Someone who supports his team feels validated, especially if his captain wins the game. And one thing I can say about Obama -- which I have in other fora -- is that he is a true believer in his own principles and his abilities to institute them through his agency as President.

His primary principle is that of Transcendence. He believes, truly, that it is his role to transcend the partisan divide, to bring the parties together, if not in harmony at least in agreement that something must be done and can be done, and to help hammer out whatever deal is necessary to Make It Happen.

That's what this Debt Crisis Crisis is all about. And it is -- sort of -- looking like he might pull it off.

Meanwhile, I came across a couple of considerations of The Obama Problem today that I think help clarify the picture. The first, via Digby, is by Michael Tomasky at the Daily Beast, and it is very good. The upshot is that Obama is doing what he is doing -- which often seems incomprehensible to observers -- because he really believes in the principle of transcendence and he is determined to stick with his principles no matter what.

He apparently really believes—still!—in civic-republican notions of government as an arena for reasoned deliberation. That he could still think this is akin to a child believing in Santa Claus until he’s 15—but apparently he does. The journalist Alec MacGillis captured this conviction well in a profile he did of Obama for the British New Statesman back in 2008. Barack Obama, he wrote, “was running not on a record of past achievement or on a concrete program for the future, but instead on the simple promise of thoughtfulness.”

From this perspective a unilateral action would be almost impious—or at least, if you’d rather aim a little lower than God, anti-Madisonian. Obama would be giving up on his ideal. Of course he should have long since given up on it. I was with him at the beginning—his conviction that politics could be better and more deliberative was one of the things I found appealing about the man. But that ship sailed long ago, and Obama’s position has declined from admirable principle to indefensible fetish. Politics simply isn’t going to get better and more deliberative any time soon.

The third reason the president probably won’t do it is related to the second, but it’s more personal. Unilateral action would be at odds with Obama’s image of himself. In his article, MacGillis defined thoughtfulness Obama style as “the notion that the leadership of the country should be entrusted not on the basis of résumé and platform, but on the prospect of applying to the nation's problems one man's singularly well-tempered intelligence.” This is pretty obviously a dead-on description of Obama’s view of himself and his potential as president.

I think it is really a good description of what is going on. Of course Tomasky, like many others, is OUTRAGED!!!!™ and wants Obama to Stop This Nonsense Right Now!!! Yes, well. Good luck with that. At no point during his reign on the Throne has Obama shown even a hint of giving up his principles -- though he will cheerfully give up just about everything else.

The other Worst. President. Essay I read today was by Sterling Newberry via Ian Welsh. Sterling, gosh, goes back a long way, into the mists of Internet times, and he's always been an acute observer and analyst of what's happening. In today's essay at The Sorcerer's Apprentice he examines what is wrong, desperately wrong, with the Obama Reign, and I think he gets it mostly right.

I especially like his historical notes and this part:

The President who Obama most resembles is Herbert Hoover, another one of those chief magistrates of government who became inflexible and iron willed. His idea of compromise is that he cuts out what he thinks is a compromise, and then relentlessly grind on it. He's dealing with people whose idea of compromise is a woman having an orgasm while she is raped. Neither of these two sides have actually compromised very much, other than compromising on extending the Bush tax breaks for the wealthy.

Hoover was a malfortunate president. Unfortunate is not a sufficient adjective to describe it. He inherited an economy that was about to explode. He takes office in March of 1929, the move to January would, to no small extent be because the long gap between election and inauguration paralyzed the country when later he would lose the Presidency, and in October of 1929, the stock market plunges in what is know as "The Crash." In reality such a crash was essentially inevitable after the Olmstead Break in August. In effect he had 5 months of Presidency. The rest was a long grind and heavy flail. His response was not without compassion and, within his understanding, he worked hard to do what was right. He simply was a mammoth in a lake that had been swamped by a breaking glacier dam, to be found, frozen, as an oddity. His failure was that as his policies failed, he doubled and tripled down on them. In essence, he turned a single large downturn, into three back to back downturns, and left the very faith in capitalism and democracy bruised behind him.

FDR and Hoover had once been political friends, but his rants and threats, the most famous being his offer to let FDR be President early, if FDR would scrap the "so-called New Deal." FDR replied tartly that he was still a private citizen until inauguration, his term as Governor of New York having ended.

Like me and a number of others, Newberry is relating Obama to Hoover's presidency, and he explains why very well.

On the other hand, when it comes to the Debt Crisis Crisis, I think he is somewhat off the mark in that he doesn't seem to be able to relate it (or actually much of anything Obama has done) to Obama's principle of transcendence.

That's why I highlight both articles today: the one by Tomasky which gets into the underlying reasons why Obama is doing what he is doing -- though Tomasky is calling it wrong in all kinds of ways -- and Newberry's, take which relates Obama's actions with those of other Worst Presidents and takes him to task for missing so many opportunities to please The People (and his more leftward critics) by taking bold(er) and more authoritative/authoritarian action.

I honestly don't think Obama is doing what he is doing for political gain. He is doing it both because he can, and because he must. He is a believer, in other words, and a man of Principle. Unshakable Principle.

This is what Principled Governance looks like. It isn't pretty. And I don't think it is what we really want.

Aux Barricades!

From time to time, I mention that the Government of the United States has retreated behind a security perimeter of walls, gates, guards, surveillance, biometrics and so on, practically endlessly. The Government is actively working on all kinds of new and improved self-protection authorities and weapons, too. This has been an ongoing project for many a long year, pre-dating 9/11 to be sure, but put into hyper-drive in the aftermath of the attacks on that date.

Your Government is now behind its own barricades, and it is on those barricades ever watchful of the Enemy. And that would be whom, exactly.

Yeah. Right. That would be you. And me. All of us. We. The People.

Yes, we are the Enemy which the Government is protecting itself from.

It became abundantly clear during the TSA Uproar that that's what was really going on. There was no pretense at all about it: You -- and I -- we are ALL potential Terrorists in the eyes of the Government as expressed through the probes and scans of the TSA during passenger processing at airports. Not everyone, of course, would ever be in a position to experience the intimacy of the scanning and probing and groping that went into the New Procedures that were instituted just before the Thanksgiving Holiday Travel Rush. Not everybody takes an airplane to their destination. But everyone can relate to those who do, because traveling by air is such a common means of transportation that it is taken for granted.

[I'm so old, I can well remember my first trip on an airplane -- it was a DC-3 flying out of Chicago's O'Hare -- and how very exciting and hoity and toity it was, and how rare it was for most people. Imagine.]

What passengers and crews were experiencing at the airports before the OUTRAGE!!!™ got up full steam was only the tippy-tip of the iceberg of Government fear and surveillance of you and of me. And it was pretty bad.

Imagine what goes on internally.

What is the point of it, you might wonder. They cannot track us all, and furthermore, there are damned few who have any intention of damaging the Government or Overthrowing the Beast. So what's all this Stasi-Business all of a sudden?

Good question.

One of the projects that was attempted after 9/11 -- but as far as I know, it was abandoned -- was a very East German/Nazi style "block watch" program in which neighbors would be recruited throughout the land to literally spy on and report on the "suspicious activities" of their friends and neighbors. People were signing up for it, and there still may be "block watch" neighborhood spies on duty. Who they are reporting to is a mystery though, since I'm not sure there's Office of Neighborhood Spy Results in the Government.* But who knows. There's probably a voicemail number and an email drop. Neither of which is ever monitored. But that's as may be.

The point is that totalitarian-style surveillance policies, programs and projects were put in place literally as soon as Bush ascended the Throne, and they were turbo-charged after 9/11. They've been reviewed and refined ever since. They are still very much in place.

Note the date this started: as soon as Bush ascended the Throne, NOT "after 9/11". The process of barricading the Government behind its walls and gates and surveillance activities merely speeded up after 9/11.

The TSA Uprising was the first real indication that The People had reached their surveillance tolerance breaking point, and you will notice that the TSA -- while blustering that it wouldn't do so -- promptly backed off and put its New Procedures in the cooler for a while. How long this will last, I don't know. There are indications that they are slowly ramping up the scans and probes again, but I can't really say.

The point was that when there was a credible threat of systems shutdown, the Stasi-Nature of the whole thing collapsed momentarily.

That's a lesson to be savored, and the tactic, I'm sure, will make many more appearances after the New Model TeaBagger Congress is seated in January.

It won't be about pulling the plug on surveillance of the People, it will be about who controls the mechanics of it and to what purpose.

The Government is Afraid of You. The Government is Terrified. Of You. I can't begin to tell you how strong the internal Fear level is in Government. And besides barricading themselves and surveilling the shit out of EVERYONE, they really don't know what to do. You see this in the periodic revelations of the military and civilian police agency spying on Grannies for Peace and such. You see it in the continuing -- and pathetic -- roundups of Leftist dissenters, protesters, and -- as they say -- "Eco-terrorists." The focus of Government domestic police action is still largely where it was decades ago, on the Left and on the Druggies. Periodically, there are roundups of slow-witted Muslims who have been entrapped by the FBI or paid informants or whomever to assert an intention to mayhem. Some of them, no doubt, are actually inclined to the terrorist-jihadist path, but most really seem to be patsies, set up -- and then railroaded -- for Show, for statistics.

And in the meantime, everyone is being Watched. With a more and more sophisticated surveillance apparatus.

The main point of this is Government self-protection against You.

The problem is that they seem to be incapable of recognizing the true threat the Government is under. They don't seem to realize the domestic subversives they are protecting themselves from are already well inside the gates, and they are sapping the walls from within.

Sometimes you almost want to scream out like Kevin McCarthy in Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)

Dr. Miles J. Bennell: Listen to me! Please listen! If you don't, if you won't, if you fail to understand, then the same incredible terror that's menacing me WILL STRIKE AT YOU!

Nah.


Invasion of the Body Snatchers TRAILER
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[*If memory serves, actually part of this hands-on, field level surveillance is still in place, and I'm a little leery about bringing up what it is. I know that many people are aware of it, but many people are not. And there's been a lot of confusion and denial about it from the local agency and Federal level. Do you know who is spying on you, directly? Someone is.]

Does Anybody Even Know What A Cable Is Anymore?

I'm not sure I recall the last time I got a telegram, but I think it was when my father died. More than 40 years ago. A telegram is not quite the same as a cable, in that the telegram is sent by telegraph and the cablegram is sent by cable, duh, but they used to be very similar, in fact indistinguishable by the recipient. The method of travel, whether over telegraph wires or undersea cable, was the main difference.

Shortly, we are breathlessly informed, WikiLeaks will release up to 3 million diplomatic cables (which I assume are really emails), at least some of which will likely contain messages uncomplimentary of allied governments and personnel. Oh. Dear.

My memory of history may be faulty, but I seem to recall something like this happening a long time ago and the release of uncomplimentary information was a prelude to war. That's all we need.

Apparently, though who can say, the Government has been busy notifying embassies and presidential palaces to be warned of the coming dump and be prepared for some unkind things reported. It sounds like the State Department knows pretty much which cables will be the most troublesome and has made every effort to let the other governments know in advance what was said and by whom.

But still, there is a palpable collective breath-holding while awaiting the release.

"This could be bad." Indeed.

If it is, it will be the first time for a WikiLeaks Leak. And so I won't be surprised if it is, and I won't be surprised if it isn't.

In fact, nothing that WikiLeaks has leaked so far has been of particular world-shaking importance, and despite what Daniel Ellsberg says, the importance of WikiLeaks' Leakage has always been somewhat less than advertised.

Of course that could change.

I was discussing the situation with a close friend, and I mentioned that it seemed very strange to me that such a low level military intelligence grunt would have free access to so much supposedly "secret" information, particularly something as potentially froughtful as diplomatic cables, which shouldn't be in military intelligence files at all. I still wonder how that happened. The ability to protect diplomatic communications has always been a fundamental aspect of government -- for hundreds if not thousands of years. When that communications security is breached, very bad things can happen. And they often do.

Military field reports, for the most part, don't need to be classified, at least not for more than a short time, and with only a few strategic redactions on release. The field reports that WikiLeaks Leaked were standard communications and reports from the field. They were not sensational nor did they reveal "secrets" that weren't already mostly known of at least in outline if not detail. But then, that's the nature of these reports.

Diplomatic cables are something else altogether, and the fact that Bradley Manning, if he's the leaker, had access to any of them at all, let alone to millions of them, is nothing short of a monumental governmental malpractice. This could be very dangerous for all kinds of people.

On the other hand, maybe not. We'll see.

The Sherrods vs Hysteria

Last Monday, the media and the White House exploded with hysteria over the edited video clip of Shirley Sherrod of Georgia giving a speech in March to the NAACP at an awards ceremony in DC(?). The video was marketed and promoted by Andrew Breitbart, a notorious scammer, and was purported to show a black Federal worker exposed as a racist before the racist NAACP. According to Breitbart, this was "get back" for the NAACP's call on the TeaBaggers to denounce the racists in their midst.

The White House and Agriculture Department behaved very badly indeed in this instance, for they summarily dismissed Shirley Sherrod -- actually, they required and got her immediate resignation -- within hours, if not minutes, of the posting of the video on one of Breitbart's websites, even before the thing had entered common knowledge and heavy rotation on the cable channels.

But then, the cable channels didn't actually behave any better. FOX of course was leading the charge to pillory and ostracize Ms Sherrod, and most of the other "news" channels just mindlessly followed suit. Were it not for the fact that Shirley Sherrod was in Georgia, near enough to CNN's headquarters in Atlanta, the record might not have been corrected.

But she was in Georgia and she made many appearances on CNN to counter the lies of Andrew Breitbart -- who also made many appearances on all the shows, though they never appeared together -- and to denounce FOX and challenge the White House and Agriculture Department for yielding to hysteria stirred up by FOX and Breitbart.

Ultimately, CNN made a special biographical program to explain to viewers who Shirley and Charles Sherrod are in the context of the Civil Rights Movement and what they have done in the context of rural Georgia and the preservation of farmlands and farm life for blacks and whites.

Breitbart seemed like a goon and the Government seemed out of touch and hysterical to say the least.

Ultimately, the Sherrods came out of last week's media-storm -- and White House and USDA stumble-bumming -- smelling like roses, whereas Breitbart was pummeled from every direction imaginable. Yet, according to Palace wags, he'll survive, stronger than before. He did not back down. Nor, unlike the Government, did he apologize.

I've made a number of points about this incident:

• 1) One man, Andrew Breitbart, was able to paralyze and control both media and the Government for nearly a week, by simply posting what turned out to be a misleadingly edited video clip on his website. Though the Sherrods came out of this looking very good, Breitbart was the master of what went on. Simply by posting his deceptive video clip, nearly every other story was jettisoned, a dedicated public servant was forced out of her position with the Federal Government, an action that then required "walking back" and numerous apologies for not "hearing the whole story." The media -- all of it -- was completely consumed with the saga for day after day. The media was being driven by Breitbart, and to a much lesser extent by Shirley Sherrod.
  
  
• 2) What happened demonstrated the weakness of the Government and the mindlessness of the media. Combined, the two appear to hold nearly tyrannical power over Americans, but the facts shown here demonstrated just the opposite. In fact, it was Andrew Breitbart who controlled both. That is extraordinary, and it is very dangerous. It's not so much "who" was the controlling entity, it is that the apparatus of both media and the Government could be controlled by a single individual at all. This not only indicates weakness, it implies irrelevance. When you think about what that means in the context of the WaPo's "Secret Government" series, it should put the Dread into nearly everyone.

But the fact was that pointing out the implications of what happened was met with a chorus of denial and boos. It's very hard to recognize how weak our Government really is when we are being told over and over again that it is a tyranny. Well, yes, it is, but it is a surprisingly weak tyranny. If one man, Andrew Breitbart, can control it so easily, think what a more public minded individual might be able to do.

Breitbart used a time-honored tactic, that of the "whistle-blower" to put his evil plan in motion. He had video "proof" of racists within the Government and at the NAACP, and he was blowing the whistle on them.

For its part, the Government -- apparently in the person of Cheryl Cook, Deputy Director of the USDA and one assumes a career civil servant -- demanded the immediate resignation of Shirley Sherrod even before the "proof" was in wide circulation or in fact had circulated beyond Breitbart's site much at all. This is stunning, and there are many implications. Was Ms Cook monitoring Breitbart and FOX on the internet? Did she report what Breitbart had "discovered?" Was it her recommendation and decision to terminate Ms Sherrod with prejudice? And was that decision then made the policy of the Government? What a mess. And who, exactly, is Cheryl Cook to be making these decisions -- if that's what happened?

We don't know. Ms Cook has been in seclusion from day one, unaccountable and inaccessible. Is she a factional player? We don't know. All I can say is that I have seen this sort of thing happen in Federal service. Without a fair hearing -- or any hearing at all in some cases -- employees will be forced out, either through resignation or firing, on the accusation of some impropriety or other without evidence or proof, or as I have seen happen, when the actual evidence contradicts the accusations. It happens suddenly, without warning, and sometimes with such determination that the victim has no chance to respond until after the events have transpired. I was one of the ones who intervened when this situation developed in my agency. So far as I knew, it was not a partisan issue, but it was an issue of hysteria ginned up by someone with a grudge who then was able to convince a supervisor to act in ignorance and haste.

The first time I saw it happen, I thought it was an aberration; then I saw it happen again. And then I realized this behavior was part of the institutional culture and that, when there was no intervention, the perpetrators could be handsomely rewarded, even if the victim eventually sued and won.

Ultimately I realized it is a self-protective action by the institution itself. Although there are real people involved, and there may be personal issues at the bottom of it, the process is often so mindless -- literally -- that it is not a personal matter. It is the Institution reacting to some perception of threat.

Based on what I've seen in the past, my suspicion is that Shirley Sherrod had been targeted and was being monitored prior to this incident, probably due to her history and her apparent newness to the Agency as an employee, as a "potential threat." Knowing something of who she was (she had pressed and won an enormous discrimination suit against the very Agency that now employed her) I'm sure close tabs were being kept on her and her activities. Although I have no idea who Cheryl Cook is or if she is a factional player in the USDA (wouldn't surprise me if she were), my instinct says she acted on her own to "protect the agency" from potential harm once she saw that Sherrod was being targeted by Breitbart. How she learned of that becomes a matter of some interest. I would guess that she was contacted directly by... someone. But I'm noodling here. What really happened will probably never be investigated let alone known, and Cheryl Cook will probably get an award. That's how these things work.

-- To be continued

On Whistle Blowers, Charles and Shirley Sherrod, and the Predominant National Security State -- Part I

From the title of this post, you can get an idea of why I've been away from blogging here for a while. I tried to put together something quickly in the midst of the Shirley Sherrod ginned up "controversy," but there was so much more going on and so much more that needed to be said. Even where to begin was problematical. But then I realized there was a common theme among issues swirling in the blogosphere and the mass media.

It starts with the concept of "Whistle Blowing."

What is it? Those who are either old enough or scholarly enough know who Daniel Ellsberg is, and they know he is a classic whistle-blower who released the Pentagon Papers to an eager (well...) New York Times back in the day, was hounded by Government (of which he had been a part) and the Shadow Government, and he was tried, though not convicted, of espionage and other crimes.

The Pentagon Papers that were at the center of all this revealed something that many people understood to be true in any case: the Government was strategically lying to the American people about (especially) the War in Vietnam, how it came to be, and how it was being pursued. The lies were non-stop, and they were deliberate.

The embarrassment to the Powers That Be cannot be underestimated. And this incident was intimately tied to Watergate. Among other things, the Watergate burglars had broken into the offices of Ellsberg's psychiatrist to gain whatever incriminating evidence the could of his purported madness. (This was a field of CYA pioneered by the Nazis and Stalinists when time was: opposition to the State was defined as "madness" and so opponents were dismissible on the grounds that they were Crazy; it's still in practice. It often works.)

Watergate was another big whistle-blower event, though what was actually going on is not necessarily what the Mythology of the Era would have us believe. Nixon was driven out of office to be sure, but not because of the intrepid reporting of Woodward and Bernstein and the dogged determination of Katherine Graham to get him -- for whatever personal and class reasons she felt obligated to follow.

Nevertheless, those two whistle-blower incidents -- one involving the release of classified documents to the New York Times, one involving intrepid reporting of leads and information coming from an anonymous (as it turned out, FBI) source -- have become iconic. Both of them severely damaged the Government's cover, and in the case of Nixon, the Government itself, in pursuit of "Truth, Justice, and the American Way."

Well. That's as may be.

After Watergate, the Government learned how to be much better at preserving, protecting and defending itself from the sticky fingers and prying eyes of the Unwashed Masses. Simultaneously with this inward protection, the Government put forth all sorts of "reforms" to protect whistle-blowers and to open its operations to public scrutiny. Reforms that have had some effect, to be sure, but to what object may be questioned.

For example, I've pointed out in other fora that whistle-blower protections have led to thousands of whistle-blower complaints and reports every year, every one of which has to be investigated, and many of which are the result of personal animosities and issues, charges of unfair employment practices, charges of sexual harassment, or self-righteous indignation at... something, just what isn't always clear.

I know this because I had to deal directly or indirectly with some of these cases while I was a Federal employee.

Very, very rarely is there an internal whistle-blower case that is actually one that merits the kinds of protections that are assumed to be provided to whistle-blowers who are revealing the illegal acts and misdeeds of Government officials -- in the manner of Watergate, et al.

No, that's not what goes on. Not for the most part. And when there are legitimate reports or complaints of high-level misconduct -- which does happen from time to time -- there is (or was) generally some kind of action, including dismissal, indictment, trial, or what have you. But the misconduct that gets the whistle blown internally is usually minor or non-existent.

The argument that Government operates too much in secret is true and false simultaneously. Government is widely open to scrutiny, though conducting that scrutiny can be difficult because the operations of Government are typically so complex, layered and documented to a fare-thee-well.

On the other hand, there are layered secrets, and to an increasing extent, there is a Secret Government that operates almost entirely outside the public view. In addition, there is a growing private contractor sector that operates in concert with the Secret Security State Government. All of this is nearly impenetrable -- except to the extent this Secret State chooses to be open with the public.

The private sector, especially the large scale transnational corporate sector, is so intimately integrated with the higher levels of the Government of the United States that they are nearly indistinguishable (viz: the Gulf Oil Disaster). At those levels, it is often difficult or impossible to obtain accurate and/or truthful information.

Just so with the Government's warmaking operations. Lies are their stock in trade, and because rational people are rightly scared to death of that warmaking being turned on them, it is typical for the lies of our warmakers to be accepted (at least superficially) without question. At least the first time around.

And the Government has learned the value of Strategic Leaks and Pseudo-Whistle Blowing. It has become so adept at strategic leaks that I tend to discount almost everything that is promoted in the mainstream (and parts of the non-mainstream as well) as a "whistle blowing leak". There's just too much false information in the system. Too many incentives to shape perceptions. Too many opportunities to control the message by any means necessary.

In other words, Government whistle-blowing is not what it is made out to be; and just as a side note, Government employees are encouraged to report waste, fraud, abuse, and illegal activities; they are protected while investigations are under way, and if wrongdoing in revealed, it is generally, though not always, corrected and if there is illegality involved, prosecutions are likely. The Federal Government is 1) full of snitches; 2) highly Puritanical by nature. And the first objective of Government is self-preservation. It has the Institutional wherewithal to secure its survival.

Of course there are those who assert that Government is by nature criminal, and as such, a close eye must be kept on its operations at all levels and at all times. I've often wondered who is supposed to be keeping this "eye" on the criminal Government. The answer, when there is one, is the "Media" -- in the broadest sense. The idea being that if the Media is "doing its job" there will be plenty of Ellsbergs and Deep Throats and what not, and the secrets of Government will be exposed to the disinfecting light of day.

Nonsense. That isn't how it works. The major mass media are effectively Public Relations arms of the Government -- or rather, of factions within the Government -- and it is very rare that they will reveal secrets that will in any way jeopardize the cozy relationships between Government and the Media, or that they would do anything that would seriously jeopardize the security and survival of the Government itself.

What seems unclear to those who advocate the kind of whistle-blowing that was done in the '70's it was a very rare set of circumstances, and what happened was highly unusual. Because it was a threat to the security and survival of the Government itself, procedures and practices were instituted that were designed to ensure that kind of whistle-blowing threat never happened again.

That's part of why I am so skeptical of the WikiLeaks parade. There is not much "there" there in the WikiLeaks leaks, for one thing. Certainly nothing comparable to the Pentagon Papers and what they revealed. The fact that the Pentagon immediately verified the authenticity of the "Collateral Murder" video and that it went on immediate heavy rotation on all the news channels was a tip off to me that this thing was not what it appeared to be. It was, I thought, and still think, more likely a Honey Trap to lure would-be leakers so that they could be more easily hunted down, much as I tend to think Adrian Lamo was being used in his eventual bagging of Bradley Manning.

Those who are so certain that WikiLeaks is not what I suspect it is seem to have a very heavy investment in the notion that WikiLeaks is on the up and up. They seem to have a desperate need for something like WikiLeaks to feed them the Truth. They don't seem to know -- or to want to know -- that Government is not going to permit leaks and whistle blowing that jeopardize the internal ability of the Government to survive, and they don't seem to understand how pervasive is Government's use of strategic leaks to further its own agenda, even though they chatter about it all the time.

F**king Brilliant

My contempt for Libertarianism is boundless, and this little video I found posted at dKos this morning encapsulates a dose of it.

When people rage against teh Central Government or piddle on the Government Schools or demand the liberty to impose their authority on others (ie: Warlordism) in a Regulation Free Market, I about puke.

And then when they start celebrating Ron Paul as the ideological key to the New America, I laugh and laugh.

He claims to be some kind of "Constitutionalist" but what he really is is a Confederate who disputes the entire history of Constitutional self-government in this country. He would go back to 1789 -- pre-1789 in fact -- and start the Government over; to him, pretty much everything the Government has done since Ratification has been in Error.

That may be, but it is not "Constitutionalism" to claim nothing but Error on the part of Government since the beginning of the Constitution. The absurdity of his position is plain. And yet there are always some who can't see it.

He's a Confederate; he does not believe in a Constitutionally Self-Governing Republic as defined -- and operated -- under the Constitution of the United States of America since 1789. He believes in the Confederation under the previous Articles, which proved even in its own time to be unviable as a nation.

In fact, it's more than possible to make a case for some other form of Government than we have, and that case should be made in my view. It may ideed involve reflection on the Confederation. The United States Government has become rotten and corrupted and Palace oriented, and the Constitution itself has provided the means and the impetus to that development. The nature of the Constitution of 1789 made the current Imperial State almost inevitable, and now that we are there, it's more than reasonable to evaluate it on the basis of the Public Interest. Is this what the People truly want?

The Government, for its part, doesn't really care what "The People" (a fiction in Government eyes) want. The practice of Government has long been to govern counter to the People and the Public Interest, and little or nothing has stood in the way of that practice. That practice of governing against the People's Will and the Public Interest was quite open during the Bushevik years; Cheney was (and is) proud of it.

The answer is not Libertarianism, however.

The video shows why.

If I can find some time, I'll try to expand on these thoughts (as I have tried in the past). The current situation is unstable. Under the circumstances, we should be thinking about and arguing over and considering options on a way forward. There is no going back, but we don't know what the best way forward is. The Government, to be sure, is busy consolidating its Imperial Grandeur, safe (it thinks) behind it's Palace Gates. Operating quite independently of us, We, the People.

How do we deal with that?