Propaganda and Scaremongering In the 1950's

Propaganda and scaremongering. This is the sort of thing that school kids were exposed to regularly during the 1950's and into the first half of the 1960's.

I remember seeing the following movie while assembled with the rest of my elementary school in the cafetorium. I must have been in the second or third grade. It scared me... and it made me laugh because houses in Southern California didn't have basements in which to take shelter when the bomb warnings came...



I remember seeing the one below, too, whether in school or in a theater, I can't be sure now, but the vision of the destructive power of the Bomb -- even when we were being told we could survive it, ha ha -- was a constant back-of-the-brain nightmare, and for many of us, it was a literal nightmare.



This is a photo (from the Goggle) of my elementary school cafetorium taken recently.

It hasn't changed a bit since I was a student there 100 years ago (well, from 1954 to 1959), except it was painted Institutional Green in my day. Notice something? That high bank of windows? Well, there's another bank of high windows on the opposite side of the building. Of course there were dark green canvas curtains to pull over the windows to darken the room when we were shown propaganda and survival movies and film strips, but none of us thought they would do much to keep the flying glass from cutting us to ribbons when the Bombs fell. We did believe the sturdy concrete walls would survive a blast, however, so there was that. The cafetorium, btw, was our "shelter" at school, unless we didn't have time after an alert to get to the cafetorium. In that case, we were supposed to shelter in our classrooms.

This is a picture of one of those classrooms:

Picture taken in the kindergarten of my elementary school by Allan Grant (not used) for a Life Magazine article on a family moving from Connecticut to Southern California for the sake of jobs and future..

Note the high windows? Not surprisingly, the other side of the room had windows, too, but these weren't up high. Instead, they went from the height of the cabinet you see on the left up to the ceiling. Note, also, in this room there are no desks under which to duck and cover (it was actually a double room with a folding door in the middle which could make it into two rooms if need be). The portion of the room not shown in the photo did have tables and chairs, though.

Regular classrooms, unlike the kindergarten, had desks of the rounded modern style, but getting under them was... well, a joke as they weren't really designed for... erm... blast protection.

Your Child Deserves the Best (blast protection? Not so much)

We did regular duck and cover drills, nevertheless, and what they'd do is have us push the desks against the side of the room with the lower windows and have us crouch against the side of the room with the high windows, covering our little necks with our hands. Much like the scene of children crouching in the hallway of the apartment house in the first video above or as the children below are doing in the hallway of Elysium Heights School in Los Angeles.

Duck and Cover Drill, Elysian Heights School, Los Angeles, CA, c. 1962

Of course there were no interior hallways in newer public schools in California; fresh air and sunshine was the fashion, and so there were no hallways at all; each grade level had its own separate building with up to four classrooms in each (it depended on the number of students in that grade). On the entrance side, there was a broad roof overhang that was like a porch, on the other side there was another roof overhang, but no "porch". There was a covered but not enclosed concrete walkway that connected all the buildings, as seen in the overhead shot below taken recently for the Google:

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I don't know what those little buildings are at the ends of classroom wings. They weren't there when I went to school. Probably punishment cells for the children who annoy or defy the teachers or who bring contraband and forbidden things in their backpacks. Training them up for their inevitable prison stint, don'tchaknow.

Scaremongering was primarily of the Instant Incineration -- "but you can survive it!! if you Duck and Cover!!!" -- kind. This went on all through the 1950's and well into the 1960's. In high school, for example, one of our Bomb drills involved quick-marching the entire student body to "the bowl" -- the football stadium in the far corner of the campus -- where we were directed to assemble on the running track next to one of the seating areas and do the Duck and Cover routine. I only remember doing this one time though, because afterwards it was obvious to everyone, most especially the students, that this was one of the most absurd and ridiculous exercises the school district had ever ordered us to engage in. It took far too long to assemble the student body in the first place, longer still to quick march us to the far end of the campus (it was a large school) and it was obvious as sin that once assembled in "the bowl" we may as well kiss our asses goodbye as there was no protection from The Bomb at all, though the theory was that because "the bowl" was partially sunken into the ground, we would escape the blast wave. The problem, it was eventually realized, was that the distance between the rims of "the bowl" were so great, there wouldn't actually be any protection and we may as well be fully exposed to the impending blast.

This high school was located near one of the air force bases that was part of the SAC, the Strategic Air Command, and everyone knew in their bones that it was a prime target for nuclear annihilation. The school was no more than two or three miles from the main entrance of the base, so we knew full well that if the Bombs ever came, we would be vaporized or crispy critters in an instant. That realization leads to a kind of soul-deep resignation and apathy that's hard to describe, but which is very real. The honest assessment that most of us had was that "there is nothing we can do" if the base was targeted with hydrogen bombs. It would be... over... in a twinkling, and God help anyone who somehow survived. We knew this. It was not a matter of question or debate. We would not survive a nuclear attack. We were too close to a primary target.

My elementary school in Southern California, however, was thought to be far enough away from any likely target (primarily the Aerojet plant in Azusa, about eight miles as the crow flies) that "many" would survive... somehow.

We were also fed a steady diet of anti-Communist propaganda, mostly literature that warned us about Communists lurking in our midst or movies that told us blood curdling stories of the Communist tide overruning everything good and proper. Much of was focused on how "wonderful!" everything was for children in America compared to the gray and sooty -- and shoeless, always shoeless -- existence poor Ivan in Soviet Russia had to endure.

 

Two Samples of "Fight the Red Menace" Bubble Gum Cards 

In some ways, we believed this. In others we didn't. I lived in a new and integrated neighborhood, one of the few in California at the time that was not de facto segregated by race. Our neighbors may have been mostly Anglo, but there were many Latin/Hispanic families as well and more than a few blacks and Asians in the mix. Children thought nothing of it, of course, but parents sometimes let the prejudices they'd grown up with run away with their judgement, and there was occasional racial tension if not outright conflict.

The story of how "wonderful" everything was in the United States was the story of how "wonderful" everything was for white people. There were no people of color in this story, and there wouldn't be for many years to come, in any story of America, the Brave and Beautiful. While I lived in an integrated neighborhood and went to an integrated elementary school -- and thought nothing of it at all, because it seemed perfectly natural to me -- I was made aware that things weren't so "wonderful" for some people,  people of color, my neighbors and some of my friends. No, they had to endure discrimination, taunts, and not infrequent threats of violence from white people. It was wrong, absolutely wrong but that's what they endured. I also learned that for the most part, people of color were poorer and lived poorer than I did -- and when I was a child, I had no illusions about being well off, because we didn't live as if we were. We lived very modestly. But the children I knew in black and Hispanic families lived far more modestly than I did. As did some of the Anglo households.

The strictures and struggles of Poor Ivan in Soviet Russia that we were propagandized to believe were mirrored in the strictures and struggles of poor people and people of color all around us. The idea that somehow Ivan had it worse and that we should all celebrate our good fortune failed to resonate very strongly. It was obvious that we weren't all living in Capitalist Paradise. Not even close to all of us.

So even when I was very young, the anti-Communist propaganda we were immersed in didn't really resonate. I didn't know what conditions really were in the Soviet Union -- I would later learn of course that is both worse for some and much better for most than we were told -- but I knew from looking out my own two eyes that social and economic conditions in the United States were essentially nothing at all like we were told and were expected to believe. Nothing. At. All.

For example, none of us lived in houses with picket fences in front, and only a few of us were blond and blue eyed. In many households, even in the 1950's, both parents had to work because the father didn't make enough at the plant to make ends meet. Some households had only one parent in any case, and so for them there never was a well-coifed mother at home all the time to take care of the children. There were several ad hoc child-care providers -- that is to say, a woman down the street who would look after children whose parents were working -- but there was no organized day care of any kind.

Where we lived, by and large, people didn't have new cars, couldn't afford all the new appliances coming on the market, had few or no luxury items at home (many didn't even have televisions until the late '50s), didn't go on vacations to "the lake" and kids didn't go to camp in the summer,  some couldn't afford to belong to the Scouts or Campfire organizations -- and even if they could afford to belong, they might not be admitted because of some "defect" in their home-life or characters (such as being black or Hispanic for example.)

This was the reality we lived with. The anti-Communist propaganda campaigns seemed surreal under the circumstances, not so much because we disbelieved the myths about Communist Russia (we really didn't know one way or the other) but because it was so starkly obvious that the myths about America The Wonderful were... false.

Although I'm sure some of my neighbors were either Communists or Communit-sympathizers, as they were termed in the propaganda, they didn't seem to me to be any different than anyone else.

But one day, we found out my fifth grade teacher, Mr. Brossard, was targeted for alleged "subversive activities." He was a really good teacher -- which was apparently part of his problem, you see. The kids all liked him, and most parents thought he was great. But apparently someone reported him, for what I'm not entirely sure because there was nothing even vaguely "Communist" in his teaching. That didn't matter. He was a "suspect." And once "suspected," you might as well be dead. He was out of class on many days, and we had stupid and mean substitutes who we ignored or ridiculed to their faces. When he came back to class, he was... chastened, subdued. I began to think he didn't want to teach any more.

We never knew the details of the "investigation" into his "subversive activities," but whatever had happened had clearly hurt him deeply, and I don't doubt it had scared him witless. I moved out of that area in the middle of fifth grade, and I don't remember hearing about him after I moved (I may have and have forgotten). Just the idea that the anti-Communist witch hunt of the 1950's and '60s had come so close, though, was definitely disturbing.

It was one of many examples of the times, of the arbitrary imposition of authority, authority we were conditioned to accept, and yet when it happened to someone like Mr. Brossard, we knew it was wrong. Simply wrong.

The arbitrary imposition of authority would light the fire of the Civil Rights Movement and the Free Speech Movement and many other rebellions and movements through the rest of the century.

And now there's little doubt in many people's minds that the arbitrary imposition of authority as well as the general collapse of institutional integrity and the resurgence of propaganda and scaremongering is leading inevitably to another era of revolt and rebellion, the vanguard of which we've already seen in the Arab Spring and the subsequent global Occupy movement.

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Speaking of which, while doing some research on Mario Savio, I came across this long and detailed article by Seth Rosenfeld published in the San Francisco Chronicle in 2004. It covers a lot of the same ground as his later book "Subversives" does, but it seems to do so more succinctly. I haven't finished reading the article -- it is quite long -- but from what I've read so far, I can recommend it highly for the insights it provided into Mario's sense of justice and doing what is right. The more I learn about him the higher my respect and regard for him. He was always a reluctant Movement celebrity, to be sure, and when he returned to relative obscurity, not that long after becoming such a huge figure in the student rebellion at UC Berkeley, what he gave to the rebels and the world may have been forgotten or overlooked -- as more radical and clownish figures like Jerry Rubin or Abbie Hoffman emerged, along with not a few more threatening figures. Mario was at the beginning of my rebellion -- I was 16 when the Free Speech Movement got under way at Berkeley -- and so he remains, for me, the central and original figure in the '60s revolt.

Just a Friendly Reminder on What 'The Intercept' Was Touted To Be

On February 14, 2014, five days after Pierre Omidyar's Flagship Online Magazine, Glenn Greenwald's "The Intercept" went live in the dead of night, the Financial Times published an interview with Greenwald in its "Life & Arts" section entitled "Lunch with FT: Glenn Greenwald" -- which presents an extended description of being in Rio de Janeiro,  the heat, the restaurant, the menu, the food, and the interviewee before actually interviewing him on the topic of the Snowden Leaks and the New Media Venture, First Look.

Part of what made the piece interesting was its emphasis on the locale, the history of this restaurant in the lives of Greenwald and spouse David Miranda, the menu, the food,  the oppressiveness of the heat and humidity, the details of the bill, and so on. While some people might object to such personal, even private, detail in a story about portentous matters of state, in fact, it struck me as one of the first times Greenwald has been featured in a news article which doesn't obsess on those portentous matters -- at least not initially -- and instead presents a human interest story about... having lunch with a celebrity. Gosh! Who'd a thunk it, right?

Of course, Greenwald has become the media celebrity of the moment, far eclipsing what he objectifies as  "the source," ie: Edward Snowden, who is apparently ensconced in a luxury suite of rooms somewhere in the Moscow area. Actually, the public has never known more than a tidbit or two of Snowden and his whereabouts. Apart from rare interviews that have taken place in or near Moscow, there is no independent confirmation that he is even in Moscow -- let alone that he was ever marooned in the Sheremetyevo Airport for weeks.

This lack of evidence and confirmation or even visualization of Snowden, his history, or his whereabouts contrasts starkly with Greenwald's nearly continuous interviews for print, radio and television, interviews conducted by the many, many journalists who have traveled to Rio where they have met and interviewed him (and his dogs) at his home or as in this case, at lunch at a fine restaurant in the Ipanema district, Bar do Beto, where, according to Greenwald, he and Miranda once came regularly for meals and to hang out. As they no longer live in the area, however, they don't often return and have only begun coming back recently. (I was once told where in Rio Greenwald and Miranda -- and the dogs -- now live, but I have since forgotten. All I recall is that it was in a western district bordering a favela on one side and the jungle on the other.)

As reported, the meal included an appetizer of squid rings and prawns for two, (R$93.80), a serving of bread, and some soft drinks, which, together with the cover and service charge, came to a total of R$171.58, or about £43 in real money, or $72 or so American, not an inexpensive lunch to be sure, but probably typical for lunch in Ipanema -- on the FT expense account no doubt.

I go through all these details and side stories because that's basically how the FT writer, Geoff Dyer, approached the story. It is, after all, in the "Life & Arts" section, not the hard news section. So, we can all meander for a while and fan ourselves as we vicariously settle in, enjoy the ambiance and develop our narrative. Why it's almost like a Tennessee Williams play, isn't it?

Greenwald, according to Mr. Dyer, is quite charming in person -- as opposed to his aggressive and combative persona on the teevee and the internet.  His laughter can even become a "giggle," says Dyer, who quotes Greenwald speaking candidly about his often abrasive public persona, “People are sometimes not sure what to expect,” he says. “They think they are going to meet this total asshole and get screamed at.”

Yes, well... actually everyone I know who has met him says pretty much the same thing about him: he's nothing like his reputation for bullying and aggression might suggest. He's actually kind of... erm, sweet. Cough.

Which only goes to show, perhaps, that what the world sees of Greenwald on the television, in print, and on the internet (particularly his infamous Twitter wars with journalists and random critics) probably shouldn't be taken at face value. On the other hand, the extreme dichotomy between his constantly raging public persona -- that "total asshole" of which he speaks -- and his behavior in person as a rather charming gentleman might give one pause and perhaps might make one think there is something a bit off about him. We all understand "playing a role," but in Greenwald's case, is there something more going on? ("I'm just asking questions...")

In fact, during the time I was part of his commentariat at UT and later at Salon, I witnessed his sometimes appallingly abusive, hostile and aggressive behavior toward regular commenters and casual visitors alike, often on no pretext at all. He'd just go off on them, viciously. I came to believe these displays of extreme cruelty and viciousness were fundamentally part of his make up. He could no more prevent himself from attacking others in that way than a Pavlovian conditioned dog can keep from salivating at the sound of a bell or a wife-beater can keep from beating his spouse... as it happened, I came to see this behavior as toxic and poisonous, and I withdrew from his commentariat four or five years ago.  I look at what we see of him on teevee and internet these days as very much the "real Greenwald" -- or rather, as one of the personalities of the "real Greenwald."

As lunch continued, Mr. Dyer asks Greenwald about "The Intercept," and among his responses,  one stood out -- especially given what has been posted at "The Intercept" to date:

Greenwald said that "The Intercept" will be publishing daily news stories (it does not), that he, Greenwald, will write a column every day as well as reporting stories (he does neither), and there will be guest op-ed writers, something that has not occurred, as all material so far posted to "The Intercept" is written by staff or -- in the case of the night-time pictures of NatSec parking lots -- is a guest photo-essay. (I would have quoted from the FT article, but their lawyers say I can't quote more than 30 words, which is bullshit, and I refuse to play these games with the FT legal department.)

Greewald also claims that "The Intercept" will be "like a news outlet." But it isn't. It's very much like an extremely slow-moving group blog, with very widely spaced posts, all of which, so far, consist of rehashes of previously reported news, or in one case, Greenwald's usual and previously aired polemics against James Clapper and President Obama. There has been no "news" in the "breaking" or investigative sense at all. The closest to an investigative report is Jeremy Scahill's lead article (also bylined Greenwald) on the use of NSA signals intelligence to target drones and night raids in Afghanistan and elsewhere, based principally on the testimony of two former drone pilots, but this, too,  is "old news" in the sense that A) it is NSA's job to provide signals intelligence to the military and its other clients -- ahem; and B) the use of cellphone metadata and geolocation information to target strikes against so-called "militants" and others has been well known and widely reported extensively for many, many years. Except for some scraps of testimony and some strangely disembodied and unidentified clips from "documents", there is nothing at all new in the lead article for "The Intercept."

The stark contrast between what Greenwald claims "The Intercept" will be and what it is and has been so far, strikes me as somewhat similar to the contradiction between Greenwald's aggressive and bullying public persona in print and other media and his relatively low-key and charming behavior in person. But there is also the contrast between the phantom-like Edward Snowden and the peripatetically in your face Greenwald, or the contrast between the shy and retiring billionaire Pierre Omidyar and the blustering, ever-furious Greenwald... There are so very many contradictions and contrasts, aren't there?

What "The Intercept" eventually will be is anybody's guess, but what it is is nothing at all like what  has been touted for the last several months, nor is it even remotely like the online publication Greenwald recently described for Geoff Dyer at the Financial Times.

But I'm sure it's serving its purpose... I go to Rio... 

Meaning to Add

Two videos A video (one got dropped apparently)  dealing with the  horrible NYPD actions connected with the arrest of Cecily McMillan. Luke Rudowski was livestreaming and at one time had a superbly edited version on the We Are Change site, but it appears to have vanished.

Testimony video:

 
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Cecily McMillan is on trial in New York City for "assault on a police officer" as a consequence of her arrest at Zuccotti/Liberty Plaza on March 17, 2012, an arrest I witnessed on the We Are Change livestream as it happened. I wrote about it at the time, but in reviewing my posts, I see it was all pretty chaotic, and I'd have to think about it a bit more before I repost them.

It was one of the most brutal, grotesque incidents of a whole raft of police brutality incidents in New York and elsewhere during a period of protest against police brutality. Go figure.

And now, Ms McMillan is on trial for 'assault' on a police officer.

Here is Cecily discussing what happened -- clearly she can't remember much -- on Democracy Now! a few days after the incident.

Why Didn't Occupy Cause the Kind of Disruption in the United States (and Europe) That The Arab Spring Did in North Africa and the Middle East?

"Red Ink," a new film by Kusha Sefat, may have part of the answer.... Hint: Follow the Money...



Via Occupy.com, via Differentivity

This Just In!

Apparently Pierre's media baby called "The Intercept" hasn't been entirely shut down, as another old story has appeared within the last few minutes penned by Murtaza Hussain  -- who sometimes sat in for Greenwald when he went on vacation from  Salon.

It's about the grotesque ordeal Rahina Ibrahim, a former Stanford University student and citizen of Malaysia, has been put through for the last nine years by an out of control "no fly list" held by some sub-agency of the FAA and maintained by the DoJ to interfere with the travel of tens of thousands of people world wide, often with neither cause nor accountability.

Ibrahim has been fighting to find out why she was placed on the no-fly list for the past eight years, and recently a judge ordered that she be told: it was a clerical error. However, she is apparently still on the no-fly list and denied a visa to return to the US, as those who put her name there, and those who maintain her name there, have consistently refused to correct their error, no doubt fearing that to do so would set a bad precedent -- or something. And of course, the government continues to invoke the state secrets privilege in the matter. After all, fuck ups must remain secret or the Apocalypse will be nigh.

It's nice that Hussain has somehow found the time to cover the story of Rahinah Ibrahim's ordeal for "The Intercept," I suppose, but the second comment under the article points out that "Papers, Please!" has been covering it extensively, for years. Not only have they been covering it, they've actually been posting documents and other ephemera connected with the case.

Observe:

The price of justice: 9 years, $3.9 million, and counting

On January 2, 2005, Dr. Rahinah Ibrahim found out she was on the US government’s no-fly list when she was denied boarding, arrested, handcuffed, and locked in a cell for two hours when she tried to check in for a flight from San Francisco to Hawaii.

Just over nine years later, on January 14, 2014, a Federal judge entered judgment in Dr. Ibrahim’s favor following the trial in her lawsuit challenging her placement on the no-fly list, her mistreatment by Federal and San Francisco government employees and contractors, and the denial of her right to due process of law.

Dr. Ibrahim’s pro bono lawyers have now applied to Judge William Alsup for reimbursement by the government defendants of their costs: $3.6 million for 11,000 billable hours of attorneys’ and paralegals’ time, plus more than $300,000 in out-of-pocket expenses (including fees charged by the defendants to Dr. Ibrahim’s lawyers for obtaining clearances to see evidence alleged by the defendants to contain Sensitive Security Information).

The total price of justice: Just under $4 million dollars — and counting.  The government defendants have until February 13th (30 days after the entry of Judge Alsup’s judgment) to decide whether to appeal that judgment to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, where they have already lost two appeals of pre-trial rulings in Dr. Ibrahim’s lawsuit.  If the government appeals the judgment, payment of their fees and expenses (which depends on Dr. Ibrahim having “prevailed” in the litigation) will be further delayed while more costs accrue.

There's much more at the site, and I urge anyone who is interested in the soft police-state of denial to wander over to "Paper, Please!" and have a gander at the lengthy and detailed coverage they've been doing of this and other cases for a long, long time.

Occupy Sandy Call for Volunteers to Help Out in West Virginia

This came in my email today, and I thought it was important enough to share. The situation in West Virginia (oh, and in North Carolina coal country too) may not be absolutely dire, but it's not getting better. There is a need for volunteers to help out with both the short and long-term projects.

I became more aware of the horrors of West Virginia coal country thanks to Nathan Grant and the RAMPS Campaign.

But before that, I got just a little education about these things from the likes of Kathy Mattea, song stylist and fierce advocate for the people of coal country.

What are we doing to the Earth? What are we doing to ourselves?

Via InterOccupy.net View Online

West Virginia needs our help. 
Please read the urgent message below from our friends with the West Virginia Clean Water Hub, a grassroots effort to get clean water to communities and help organize in the fight against Big Coal, Big Gas, Big Oil, and terrible government. These are radical folks, in it for the long haul, and they could really use some solidarity right now.
Can you answer their call?
- The Occupy Sandy Team
P.S. Read or listen to this NPR story about the scale of the crisis (WV Clean Water Hub is also featured).

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Dispatch from West Virginia:
It's been a ridiculous few weeks in and around the coalfields of southern West Virginia. The water crisis has not abated, with hundreds of thousands of people still struggling to cope with toxic tap water. Babies, children, pregnant women, and all kinds of folks are getting sick and in many cases being hospitalized due to chemical exposure in their homes. The other day, a Charleston school had to shut down after teachers and students fainted from the fumes. And of course, the state and federal governments seem to be doing everything in their power to do absolutely nothing.

To cut to the chase: WE NEED YOU! We especially need longer-term volunteers who can commit to 3+ weeks to several months of organizing around the water crisis and other existential issues in this area. You will be providing water, making phone calls, coordinating with community members, working on sustainable water alternatives, and driving, driving, driving.

**WHAT WE CAN PROVIDE: Warm housing, internet connection, reimbursement for water & (some) gas purchases, and other excellent people.
**WHAT WE NEED FROM YOU: Your time & physical presence, a vehicle (important but not necessary), organizing skills, and the willingness & ability to work with residents under challenging, stressful circumstances.

Please call the WV Clean Water Hub at (304) 249-8115 or email wvcleanwaterhub@gmail.com.
Thanks!

The Altar Boy is Radicalized at Berkeley -- Mario Savio and More About "Subversives"

Mario Savio, Free Speech Movement, UC Berkeley, 1965

Now that I've gotten to the chapters about the student rebellion at UC Berkeley and more particularly about Mario Savio, I'm learning plenty of stuff I didn't know or didn't think about if I did know.

Images of the early Free Speech Movement protests at Berkeley and of those involved (particularly Mario, but not just of him) are burned into my brain. They form a huge part of what I considered positive in my adolescence. "Who" these people were and the underlying motivations for "why" they were doing what they were doing hardly mattered. What mattered was that they were doing it, fearlessly, determinedly, and at considerable risk to themselves and and their futures. Bravery was only the most obvious of their attributes.

While I was riveted by Mario Savio's eloquence and charisma -- and oh, yes, I had a sheepskin lined suede jacket like his, and I think in other ways I strongly identified with him -- I knew nothing, really, about him, except that he was considered "working class" among the students and administrators who came from money (I knew too many of those people), and thus he was subject to relentless denunciation and ridicule by those opposed to the FSM protests.

After the glare of the media spotlight faded from him and the student movement went on to other issues and other campuses, I didn't try to follow Mario's further adventures. I knew that he was a reluctant hero, if you will, and was deviled by doubt during the Free Speech Movement years, but beyond that, not much. It wasn't until much later that I learned he'd gone on to become part of the initial faculty at Sonoma State University in the 1980s, and died of heart failure in 1996. Resquiat in Pacem.

Until I got into the biographical chapters about him in "Subversives," I didn't know that he had been an altar boy in Queens, or that he was considered a "troubled genius" in school and had a terrible stammer when speaking -- unless he was on stage or in front of a crowd, at which time he could become extraordinarily eloquent and persuasive. I didn't know that his mother wanted him to become a priest -- and he seriously considered it -- but he chose physics and the sciences in his initial college days in New York, only to switch to philosophy studies when he transferred to UC Berkeley in 1963.

I didn't know that he was initially enthusiastic about the Kennedy presidency, but he became disillusioned as Kennedy seemed incapable of following through on his campaign rhetoric and promises. Where have we heard that before?

I didn't even know that he had gone South for the Freedom Summer, and that his experiences with the Freedom Riders and with CORE and SNCC at Berkeley had profoundly shaped his perspective about the absurd and arbitrary restrictions placed on student political advocacy and activity on the University campus.

While Mario's iconic speech about "the gears of the machine" he gave on the steps of Sproul Hall on December 2, 1964, will likely resonate forever, the issues he was speaking about are not really well known at all, and they're not particularly easy to explain or examine from the distance of almost 50 years.

I remember what I was feeling about it back then, but the issue of the prohibition of on-campus political activity -- which is what the Free Speech Movement was opposing -- seems somewhat arcane and even petty from a distance.

It was actually a pretty much universal rule to prohibit on-campus political activity throughout California's public education system at the time, especially so at the University. The premise was that California's students would receive a mandatory and "free" public education through high school, and qualified students would be eligible for tuition free higher education at any public institution of higher learning in the state -- any that they could get into, as access was highly competitive and restricted. But part of the bargain that made this possible was that the public education system, particularly the University, had to stay out of politics... thus the prohibition on political advocacy on the Berkeley campus that became the fuse that lit the fire of the Free Speech Movement.

Up to a point, this prohibition was tolerated because the University didn't interfere with tabling and political speechifying "outside the gate," Sather Gate. Well, that is they didn't until they discovered that the sidewalk outside the gate actually belonged to the University, not the City of Berkeley as they had assumed. The campus administration and police started enforcing the rule on the sidewalk as well on the campus proper, and this seemingly arbitrary act triggered the protest. Students moved their tables onto the campus in front of Sproul Hall, the administration building, and defied the administration and police orders to desist.

And when Jack Weinberg, a graduate student, refused to desist or identify himself to police, he was taken into custody and hustled into a waiting police car on Sproul Plaza. This arrest by campus police precipitated a sit-down action by hundreds and then thousands of students, and the Free Speech Movement was launched. Nothing would ever be the same again.

Mario quickly emerged as the spokesman for the Movement, though it was obvious even then that he was uncomfortable in the role that had been thrust upon him. Nevertheless, he was a passionate and very articulate spokesman.

His passion derived from his experience, an experience I knew very little about until I started reading "Subversives." I have a much greater regard for him now than I did nearly 50 years ago, and I hardly thought that was possible. But learning about his past, and what he believed in, and what he had done prior to the Free Speech Movement only makes me admire him the more.

I'm no hero-worshiper, as anyone who knows me knows. There are many individuals, however, for whom I maintain great admiration and respect. Mario Savio has always been one of them, but now my admiration and respect for him has increased substantially.

The more I learn... I'm grateful I can still learn...

The American Media Might Be Lying and Propagandizing Against Russia and Putin? How Can It Be???

This is the infamous Naked Protester in Kiev, undergoing mistreatment by Ukrainian police in bitterly cold weather. There are a number of stories circulating about this guy; I don't know if any of them are true. One of them says he used some kind of chemical agent against police during a protest action, another says he doused his clothes in gasoline and was about to set himself on fire when he was apprehended -- which was given as the reason for taking his clothes before transport to detention. All I can say with any certainty is that  it appears he has been badly beaten about the head and body as there are many obvious bruises, he appears to be disoriented and terrified, and there is a hole in his neck that looks like something was jabbed into him. How or why he came across these wounds is unknown and apparently unrecorded. I have seen some reports saying he is a well-known skinhead/white-supremacist who has engaged in some of the most provocative actions during the protests in Kiev, and that we should be leery of any propaganda suggesting he's a "good guy" being abused by the police. Just goes to show...
 -------------------------------------------

By this point, of course, the Anti-Russia/Anti-Putin propaganda is somewhat muted, as the Games in Sochi have turned out to be pretty much OK. The American Team, though robbed of so many medals that were rightfully theirs, have so far managed to barely outpace the Russian Team's medal score, so there is that, and that's what's important.

But an article in the Nation has apparently re-opened old wounds, partly by pointing out the relentlessness of anti-Russian and anti-Putin propaganda leading up to the Games, and the ridiculousness of the American media propaganda on behalf of the Ukrainian rebels and protesters, many of whom are nothing but street thugs, white supremacists and neo-Nazis.

I haven't followed the Olympics much since the opening spectacle, as there are other things with which to occupy one's time. My own enthusiasm for the Olympic Games has long been curbed by my understanding of the deep corruption, corporatism, and neo-Fascism that has been at its root and core for many a long year.

But the anti-Russia/anti-Putin propaganda in the American media leading up to the Games was simply rank, obvious, and thoroughly disgusting. I have never seen Putin as either hero or saint, far from it, and post-Soviet Russia has been looted, dismembered, rode hard and put away wet, to coin a phrase. Putin, whatever his manifest faults, braked the decline. And that, apparently more than anything else, is what triggered mainstream (corporate) media's united crusade against him and the modestly resurgent Russian Federation. Very modestly resurgent. For some Russians, not all.

Despite his KGB roots, Putin is no Commie. Ha! But anyway...

The issue that gets to me, however, is the Ukrainian Thing, because it is self-evidently a rightist populist movement modeled after the Color Revolutions of the past and the far more recent Occupy Movement, with the clear intent of overthrowing the elected government of (the -- we're no longer supposed to say "the" when referring to the) Ukraine and installing a rightist dictatorship subservient to the IMF and EU Central Bank. And of course, much of the American media -- including a significant portion of the so-called "progressive" media -- has been relentlessly fluffing and propagandizing on behalf of the rebels and against the elected government. "Stalin-Hitler" and all that.

What's going on in Kiev and elsewhere in Ukraine, what little can be sussed out from the barrage of propaganda from all sides, is disturbing, particularly if it represents a populist trend toward adherence to ever greater levels of rightist ideology and grossly neo-Fascist, neo-Nazi beliefs and practices.

When American media fluffs for rightist populist protesters -- which we're seeing more and more widely around the world -- and routinely denounces or ignores any other kind of protest, we should have a pretty good idea where this is headed: right back to the Good Ol' USofA, where a New Model Occupy may well crop up, funded by the Kochs and other billionaires, to "re-establish American Values" or what have you, leading directly to the imposition of the kind of rightist dictatorship of the corporatariat that we thought we ought to try to avoid, and thought, perhaps, we were avoiding or at least delaying what with all the hoo-hah of anti-Wall Street protest over the last few years...

I digress...

The immediate issue is the heavy-handed and very obvious propaganda by almost all the mainstream popular media, propaganda denouncing Russia and Putin, and propaganda favoring the rebels in (the) Ukraine.

The article in the Nation referenced above is one of the only ones I've seen in more or less well regarded "leftist" publications, or "new" and "alternative" media, to point to the obvious, and to make the case that this is dangerous stuff, and we, the People, should beware.

It's a good reminder.

The Question is One of Policy

Pretty pictures, taken at night from a rented helicopter by Trevor Paglen, contributor to "The Intercept":



So far, "The Intercept," Pierre Omidyar's first of a myriad of digital "magazines" intended to transform media in the Post-Modren Era, has been very weak tea indeed.

There is -- so far -- very little content, and what there is tends to be recycled, rehashed, and recapitulated  from previous work by the participants in the venture, or -- as in the case of Jeremy Scahill's lead article  (also bylined Greenwald, but there is no indication of his contribution to the piece) about the NSA providing targeting data to drone pilots and others responsible for killing various suspects in foreign lands -- warmed over old news with a dollop of the Snowden NSA Trove mentioned for spice. (Nothing in the Trove is actually clearly identified in Jeremy's piece).

Froomkin offers nothing new in his think piece, nor does Greenwald in his froth-laden but largely substance-free polemic attacking James Clapper and "the media". There has been no word, so far, from the third member of "The Intercept's" editorial triumvirate, Laura Poitras, who has seemed strangely silent about the venture from the moment of its "leak"  to the public last October to its launch early  Monday morning -- and up to last night, the last time I looked in on the site. As for the night-time pictures of NatSec facilities -- mostly their vast parking lots -- shown in the header video above and featured in large format stills taken by Trevor Paglen (a previously unmentioned contributor) ...yes? Pretty. But....? "What does a Surveillance State look like?" Trevor asked portentously.

Is it really buildings and parking lots at night? Ask somebody who's been through the Surveillance/Security State's wringer. There are plenty of them, quite a few of them very easy to contact and who are more than willing to tell their tale; and if there are no videos or photographs of what they have been through, there is always the option of hiring an illustrator or two to help us visualize what they are telling us...

The weakness of "The Intercept" has mostly been excused by apologists as the result of  a "rushed launch" -- they wanted to get something up and running for some reason. Now. Just wait, they say. It may be a somewhat rough and limited start, but things will smooth out and content will increase over time. Give it a chance. Of course, that is their standard response to criticism of this titanic and heroic new media venture funded by press-shy billionaire, eBay founder Pierre Omidyar. From the outset they were saying, "It hasn't launched yet; wait till it launches before asking questions or criticizing. Its content will be the proof of its merit. Wait till it launches!"

Then it launched, just after midnight on February 10, with no prior announcement of the actual launch date (only a vague reference to "early next week.") "The launch was rushed," They said. "We wanted to get content up now, rather than wait any longer. You need to wait till there is a body of work before criticizing. This is only the beginning. There is much, much more to come. It's not fair to criticize it now."

When critics pointed out the startling whiteness and maleness of "The Intercept" staff, apologists tried to claim that since First Look's owner is "brown", the ratio b/w ratio is higher than one thinks, and who cares anyway about the gender of writers as long as their product is good? Clue: not all Persians are "brown." Most, in fact, are quite as "white" as any European.

Why they wanted to launch it now, with such soft rather than hard news is a mystery.  But then there are many mysteries associated with First Look Media and its entry into the mainstream media marketplace. "Mainstream" is a term I use advisedly in this case. For what has been put up so far is about as "mainstream" media-friendly as anything on the internet.

From my perspective, the launch of "The Intercept" is a disappointment, and for all intents and purposes, a flop. There is very little -- almost no --  "there" there.

The weakness of "The Intercept" is partly due to its striking lack of content. Given the high-caliber staff and the months of prep time they've had, that crew and its stringers should be able to roll out at least a dozen decent articles a day, a blockbuster or two a week. At the current rate of publication, however, that isn't going to happen in our lifetimes. In fact, the molasses-slow rate of posts at "The Intercept" is remarkable given the nearly constant output Greenwald alone has been noted for since he entered the media market almost a decade ago. Most of the others involved are certainly capable of multiple posts a day on their own.

Given the huge amount of money Omidyar claims to be investing in the venture, the striking lack of content cannot be rationally attributed to any lack of funding.

What's slowing production to absolute crawl might be of some interest -- if some intrepid investigative journalist wanted to look into it -- but from my perspective, it is what it is. A very, very slow and cautious entry into the high-stakes -- higher-level -- digital media market with nothing so far that might offend a certain faction of investors in that market. With nothing so far that would even interest them.

Jeremy's lead article for "The Intercept" is a long and very detailed account focusing on the NSA's provision of telephone location and metadata used for targeting suspected militants and "terrorists" abroad. The upshot is that the drone pilots rely much more on signals intelligence provided by the NSA to the CIA and the military for targeting their quarry in the various theaters of the (Glorious) War on (Some) Terror(ism) than they do on informants and on-the-ground human intelligence, and because of that, drones take out significant numbers of civilians in addition to, or sometimes rather than, the militants and/or terrorists who are allegedly being targeted.

We knew that.

In fact, the use of cell-phone meta data for missile targeting purposes has been known and extensively reported since the 1990s, and its use for the locating, targeting and liquidation of militants and terrorists in the (G)WO(S)T(ism) has been hailed for many years. Jeremy is not telling us anything that has not been reported previously about it, not even that the NSA produces and provides a significant amount of the information used for targeting and extermination purposes. Strangely enough, it's their job.

The issue isn't that the NSA provides this information despite all the hyperventilating over this "revelation."

The issue is the policies that allow and enable the more or less random identification and extermination of "suspects." That's the problem.

But Jeremy never questions those policies in his inaugural post for "The Intercept." This is particularly jarring given his large body of work to date, most of which aggressively questions the policies involved in the targeting and liquidation of "suspects" -- leading to the fiery dismemberment and death of thousands of ordinary villagers going about their daily lives,  together with an abundance of women, children and old people.

This is what a Surveillance State looks like, but let's not show pictures of that. God knows. Not that!

It might harsh somebody's mellow, and we wouldn't want that.

A follow up Think Piece was posted at "The Intercept" by Dan Froomkin some days later that went over the various matters Greenwald, et al, have covered since the Big Reveal of the Snowden Leak in Hong Kong last summer, and Froomkin, like Jeremy, also does not question the policy of "Death From Above" (h/t Starship Troopers) but implying, as Jeremy does, that if only these things were done better, targeting and killing the right suspects only, all would be fine.

It's jarring, extremely jarring, to see this kind of apologetics for criminal policies wherever they appear, but for it to appear in the inaugural posts at "The Intercept" is worse in many ways. Together with Greenwald's jeremiad against Clapper and the Media (writ large), but not against the policies nor the agencies involved in maintaining the Killer State, I think it shows quite clearly that this digital publication is intended to advance a factional -- but pro-kill -- agenda that doesn't question the underlying policies of the more and more generalized (Glorious) War on (Some) Terror(ism) but only questions the tactics employed and the merits of the lead intelligence agency (ie: NSA) providing sometimes inadequate or erroneous information on who should be liquidated this time. 

When I've brought up some of my reservations about Jeremy's piece specifically, I've been told it's "just one small article," and that because Jeremy has written other things questioning these policies and tactics, I shouldn't be concerned that this one doesn't do so. I disagree, strongly. His article continues to be the lead article for "The Intercept" and thus it sets the tone for the publication and its point of view. There is -- so far -- nothing at "The Intercept" that questions the policy of "Death From Above." So long as those policies are not being questioned by the writers at "The Intercept," but only those who are carrying them out and the tactics they are using are held to account, then I'll be of the opinion that this thing is a joke, a bad one, being played on people who convinced themselves that finally there would be a strong, independent, investigative, antagonistic media outlet that they could believe in...  So far, it consists of little more than polemics and propaganda.

The way it's going so far, it might turn out more like the Obama campaign vs the reality of the Obama administration...

Oh dear...

The question then will be "How long will it take readers to catch on?" 

---------------------------------
ADDENDUM: In other fora and communications, I've pointed out that while neither Jeremy nor any of the other writers at "The Intercept" have so far questioned the policies of "Death From Above" -- at least not in their writing for "The Intercept" -- Jeremy did go on Democracy Now! and was very aggressive in raising questions about it, as he usually is in both his writing and in personal appearances. That's part of why I was so perplexed by his failure to question those policies in his inaugural article at "The Intercept."

Earlier today, though, I saw an interview by Jake Tapper with Jeremy on CNN -- and shockingly, to me -- again Jeremy did not question those policies. What is going on? Is he tailoring what he says to what he thinks his audience wants to hear? That, unfortunately, was one of the criticisms I saw of "Dirty Wars," both the book and the movie. Not only was he suspected of tailoring his message, but he was accused of pulling punches so as to achieve "mainstream" acceptance. And this was well before his Academy Award nomination.

"Mainstream acceptance" seems to be very high on the list of Things Desirable by "The Intercept's" team, as they fluff and puff themselves up over every positive (and some negative) mainstream notice they receive, as they strut and preen over awards they may or may not get, as they hob and nob with the modestly high and mighty (and in Greenwald's case, go on every television venue he can find that will book him.)  I have little doubt that all the appearances and interviews they do with the mainstream media they supposedly are skewering and ostensibly loathe must be interfering with their journalism... mustn't it?

And finally, as for the extraordinarily slow and stately pace of publication at "The Intercept," I find that the site has a very active Twitter account (there is was also a pretty hilarious parody account which could be confused with the real one, sadly now suspended... but wait! It's baaaack! "The extra underscore is pronounced "WOOSH!" to illustrate the excitement of it all!" "Pierre" had that one shut down; another arose; it was shut down, too. Now there is this one... how long before "Pierre" has it's plug pulled, too? Billionaire Power, yeah baby! ) and a chock full Facebook page, both of which are being constantly curated and updated, unlike the main site itself. Which just sort of... sits there, belonely and forlorn.

Even the comment sections at the main site -- which rather quickly accumulated thousands of posts as predicted -- have pretty much ground to a slow crawl, after, of course, a not unexpected descent in to brawls and madness. There's a reason Greenwald's commentariat and the comment sections of his various outlets were sometimes referred to as a pit of vipers...

Daniel Murphy March 22, 2012 Facing Off With Police At Union Square, NYC

A rant:



A transcription was requested by ThD at FDL who was arrested with Daniel in the notorious raid on the Chicago NATO protestors in May of 2012; the trial of the NATO 3 -- the only ones who were tried in connection with the raid -- recently concluded with "not guilty" verdicts on charges of terrorism, but guilty verdicts on charges of mob action and possession of materials to commit arson, convictions which carry maximum 30 year penalties.

My balky transcription of Daniel's address to the NYPD heard in the video above follows:

[Daniel Murphy, to the NYPD, in progress] You'll probably beat us...

Ain't that right? Were you guys here last night? So was I. It was great.... 

Then you assholes came back at 9:30. I had just gotten to sleep. It would have been great if you'd a waited a little longer, but you chose not to. 

I'm here because I wanted to ask you guys a question: How many times do you ask yourselves, "Why the fuck am I here?"

Do any of you ever stop to think "Maybe what I'm doing is not actually great? Maybe what I'm doing is actually quite possibly immoral?"

 Do you ever think... [unintelligible; there is laughter and a voice over on the video saying: "This is the kid that was arrested twice in one... uh, a couple of days..."]

 [Daniel continues to the cops:] How many times do you go home and say, "Maybe I shouldn't have hit that guy over the head, maybe I shouldn't a pushed that woman to the ground, maybe I shouldn't have tied that guy's cuffs on so fuckin' tight so he can't feel his fingers a week later." That guy is me. I still can't feel my fingers, assholes. Thanks a lot.

And for what? What did I do? God knows. I guess we'll go to trial, maybe the charges will get dropped. [Unintelligible...].... the fuckin' videotape, ain't that wonderful. But you sure held me in jail for two days, wasn't that great, right? I loved the food in there, too, so I'm probably gonna go back tonight. You know why? Because you assholes just follow orders and never question why the fuck you do what you do.

I invite you to stop being mindless zombies, and quite possibly, once in a while, take off your uniforms and engage in conversation. I think if you thought of us as human beings and not as objects, you would stop beating us, but instead, you're trained to dehumanize and to think of us as criminals, when really what we're doing is not wrong at all. Legality does not equal morality. Just because something is the law does not make it right. Just because we break a law does not make us wrong.

You should go fuck yourselves and stop following orders -- only zombies and robots do that.

You are human beings. You are just like us. Except when you put on your uniforms, you turn into pieces of shit. I don't understand why.

I wear a "uniform." It's the only set of clothing I have. You guys are free to take it from me and everything else I have, cause you try to every day. But I kinda still have the last shred of dignity.

You know why? Because I can stand up here and talk to you, not because I think I have more power than you. You have guns, and if we lived in a different country, you would have killed me long ago. But we're in America.  There's still a little bit of protection. I don't think that's gonna last too much longer. I think, pretty soon, as we continue to break the law, you will have to shoot us, cause we'll get tired of you beating us. When we get tired of you beating us, we're prolly gonna fight back.

Wouldn't that be an amazing sight?

 I hope we wait until you beat us so badly that the public joins us, cause you're prolly so stupid that you'll wait that long.

I think you should change your minds. I think you should join us. There is no one else here who will fight for your pensions or your wages or any other measly benefit you get for having such shitty jobs.... [Daniel continues unintelligible...]

 [Fades....]

 Sorry if I missed anything...

---------------------------------------------------------------
NOTE: I originally posted about Daniel Murphy and the very public torture he was subjected to on the streets of New York back in March of 2012, during the demonstrations against police brutality -- which featured heaping helpings of police brutality, not only to Daniel Murphy but to Cecily McMillan and many, many others.

I didn't know that Daniel Murphy had gone to Chicago in May of 2012, to attend the NATO conference protests, or that he had been arrested with TarheelDem and the others initially referred to as the NATO 9 (two of whom were undercover cops, two of whom were Polish nationals who were promptly deported, two of whom were TarheelDem and Daniel Murphy, and three of whom were later tried for terrorism and other offenses, and who were recently convicted of those 'other offenses' only) until I happened to Google Daniel's name and ran across a Pacifica Radio interview with him recorded shortly after his release from custody. I don't know where he is now or what has become of him, but I imagine he's found an ashram somewhere -- do they still have ashrams? -- and is doing good works building his community.

That's what I would imagine, anyway...

More About "Subversives"

Though I've now reached the Student Rebellion chapters of "Subversives," I'm still kind of gobsmacked at the information in the previous chapters, particularly about Ronald Reagan's long and intimate relationship with the FBI and J. Edgar Hoover. I can't say that I ever knew or even thought about it before.

Rosenfeld details Reagan's collaboration and cooperation with the FBI and Hoover in rooting out Communists and com-symps from Hollywood, not only in his role as President of the Screen Actors Guild, but -- apparently -- just because he was who he was and he wanted to do it. It's a tale I never really thought about before.

Of course everyone knew that he had been president of the Screen Actors Guild and had engaged in Red Baiting during that time, but what he had actually done on behalf of the FBI and Hoover's anti-Communist conspiracy/crusade, the names he had named, and the people whose careers or lives he'd destroyed had to my knowledge never been highlighted at all, certainly not to the extent that Rosenfeld does in "Subversives."

Of course, Rosenfeld has the documents, and he has interviewed many of those who were still alive during his writing of the book and were directly or indirectly involved in the conspiracy against presumed Communist infiltration of the movie industry. It is a story of gross deception and illegality on one level. On another, though -- and perhaps even worse -- it is a story of careerism and business as usual on the part of Reagan and many others who pretended one thing but who were doing something else.

I think most of us understand that J. Edgar Hoover's FBI was a lawless and criminal enterprise, particularly when going after those Hoover personally deemed suspect of disloyalty, communism, and/or communist "sympathy." Of course there were many other targets of his interest and ire, but that's another issue. The issue here is the incessant, indeed obsessive, targeting of Hollywood personalities for investigation (often enough through illegal breakins of homes and offices) and denunciation as "subversives" and "communists."

Many of us knew the FBI was doing this, not simply in Hollywood, but everywhere (my 5th grade teacher was targeted, for example), and we understood there were severe consequences for many, many people who were accused, but it simply never occurred to me that there were such deep personal connections between Ronald Reagan and the FBI in this conspiracy. Finding out about it now, for the first time, demonstrates to me how carefully and successfully these things were concealed.

 It was a conspiracy.

I won't go into the details here, but I urge you to get and read the book. It's an eye-opener both about Reagan and Hoover, and about what a very small world it can be when certain well-placed individuals join forces to destroy some designated "enemy."

Everything Old Is New Again

Oh well...

I've just been reading this story in Foreign Policy (registration required) (link was posted in comments on Jeremy Scahill's initial story for "The Intercept") that tells almost exactly the story Jeremy tells about SIGINT being used to target and kill cell phone/satellite phone users designated "terrorists" by the Powers That Be...

Only the Foreign Policy story was written in March of 2012 after the death of journalist Marie Colvin in Homs, Syria, apparently targeted and killed by the Assad regime based on -- you got it -- her cell-phone use and coordinates.

The FP article further explains that the tactic was apparently used by Russian intelligence during the Second Chechnya War in the 1990's. An example:

Russia has spent a long time perfecting these techniques. On April 21, 1996, Chechnya's breakaway president, Dzhokhar Dudayev, was speaking on a satellite phone with Russian envoy Konstantin Borovoi about setting peace talks with Yeltsin. During the phone call, he was killed by a signal-guided missile fired from a Russian jet fighter. The warplane had received Dudayev's coordinates from a Russian ELINT (electronic intelligence) plane that had picked up and locked on to the signal emitted by the satellite phone. It was Russian deception and brutality at its finest.

These methods and tactics were  apparently originated, developed and adapted by American intelligence agencies, such as the NSA and CIA (all reported in this FP article) and by the American military to be used against terrorist enemies -- and others -- world wide.

Tracking phone transmissions to hunt down targets began in earnest with a covert unit of U.S. intelligence officers from the National Security Agency (NSA), CIA, Navy, Air Force, and special operations called "The Activity." This snooping unit was also called the Army of Northern Virginia, Grey Fox, and even Task Force Orange. We see much of this technology used to inform modern drone and U.S. Joint Special Operations Command strikes. My decade covering U.S. spec ops, intelligence gathering, and their contractors highlighted the impressive ability of various countries to monitor, locate, network, and act on what is called SIGINT, or signals intelligence.

So what Jeremy was so breathlessly reporting for The Intercept has long been common knowledge in the field.

Which ultimately makes the story in The Intercept somewhat.... odd, not so much for what it says as for what it leaves out.

Wheels within wheels indeed.

First Look Launches "The Intercept"

Kinda low-key launch, it seems to me, for the Big Reveal of the Greenwald/Poitras/Scahill venture under "Pierre's" wing at First Look Media.

There are two stories and a "welcome" post in this initial effort.

One story consists of nightime pictures of some of the NatSec facilities in the DC area, apparently taken from a rented helicopter by Trevor Paglen. They're kind of pretty, though they primarily show parking lots. Well, yes. That would be right. Even the daytime pictures of NatSec facilities primarily show parking lots. And (believe it or not) you have to have a permit/pass to get into them. The parking lots themselves, which tend to surround the facilities, serve as barriers to access (by those who are unauthorized, dontchaknow). But Paglen doesn't get in to any of that, he just wants to show the pretty pictures, and the pictures are nice, make no mistake. It's good to be able to visualize these places. One place he doesn't show, however, is the CIA headquarters in Langley, VA. Apparently, CIA refused him permission to photograph the facility from his rented helicopter. Luckily, there is no lack of imagery available on the Google.

The other story is about the NSA's provision of targeting information to JSOC and drone operators in various "war" theaters used for liquidating terrorist suspects. Though bylined Greenwald and Scahill, it's obviously mostly Scahill's writing. A bit of it may be Greenwald's, but I doubt very much of it is.

The story is interesting on its merits, but it's got some problems, a major one in my view being its failure to question JSOC's mission -- and the policies of assassination and murder, only the tactics and the reliance on sometimes erroneous intelligence from the NSA. In addition to failing to question JSOC's mission, the story uses terminology which declares targets "terrorists" without questioning that designation. There are some uses of scare quotes from time to time in this very long and detailed article (something like Jeremy might have written for the Nation when time was and which is certainly reminiscent of "Dirty Wars"), which may present the appearance of questioning the standard, official terminology, but in fact, there is never a question about the terminology, only the expression of regret that "mistakes are sometimes made." OK, then.

Finally, I was initially struck by the near absence of any mention of the CIA in this story. They are referred to, but only in passing, early on in the story, as if the CIA is a branch of the military, when in fact, of course, the NSA is the branch of the military which is charged with supplying military intelligence. 

It's long been my understanding that many of the targeted killing/Death From Above program(s) involve the CIA, and more than a few are run independently by the Company itself, but what I got from the initial paragraphs othat CIA involvement in these things is peripheral, and that's just not right.

I have little doubt Jeremy is aware of that fact. But in "Dirty Wars," he claimed that even after being in Iraq for three years, he'd never heard of JSOC, and didn't learn of it until he got to Afghanistan, even though JSOC was carrying out a vicious campaign of terror and murder in Iraq right in front of his disbelieving eyes while he was there. It seemed to me that he was being deliberately disingenuous or deceptive about what he knew and didn't know, as there was no lack of reportage regarding the Death Squads in Iraq (I think some of that reporting came from Jeremy himself) nor was there any lack of reporting naming JSOC as the Valiant American Lead in establishing and carrying out the campaigns of terror and murder that wracked Iraq for years during the American Occupation.

As I got further into the article, however, suddenly the CIA appears (deus ex machina-like) out of nowhere taking over the hunt for al-Awlaki in the Yemen when JSOC fails to find and liquidate him. OK. Prior to that, it seems that the CIA is merely along for the ride provided by the NSA and JSOC. Interestingly, one of the sources for the story, Brandon Bryant, a former drone operator, criticizes the CIA for its "indiscriminate" targeting for liquidation, and he frets that CIA practices are afflicting the NSA and JSOC operations. Good doG in heaven...

There are also a number of stand-alone graphics in the piece which are for the most part not identified as to source or provenance. They appear to be selected quotes from Snowden-trove documents, but who knows...

In the "welcome" article -- rather obviously written by Greenwald, though bylined Greenwald, Poitras and Scahill -- we are treated to a recapitulation of most of the tropes about "accountability and transparency" we've been hearing from Greenwald for years. The initial focus on the NSA is excused as the "short-term" focus; eventually, "The Intercept" will be getting into other matters. Patience, grasshopper.

The article strongly suggests that "The Intercept" is an independent project of Greenwald, Poitras (the Invisible One) and Scahill that is merely being published by First Look Media. The implication is that "The Intercept" pre-dates First Look/Omidyar involvement, and if so, that's interesting, since apparently First Look Media's incorporation pre-dates Snowden's Booz Allen sojourn. (Which led me to speculate that -- perhaps -- Snowden and Omidyar had some connection in Hawaii -- where Omidyar lives and Snowden used to live before the Big HooHah -- prior to Snowden's contact with Poitras and Greenwald. Oh, what tangled webs, wheels within wheels, etc...)

Interesting too is Greenwald's nearly obsessive focus on the "threats" made against him and "journalism" by so many officials.

 Over the past seven months the journalists who have reported on these documents from the National Security Agency have been repeatedly threatened by a wide range of government officials. Sometimes, the intimidation campaign has gone beyond mere threats. These attempted intimidation tactics have intensified in recent weeks and have become clearly more concerted and coordinated.

This is one of his tropes, and it has always struck me as... well, crap. Though "Show Business" is probably more like it. These constantly hyped "threats" have never had any substance behind them. So Mike Rogers is running his mouth. Big. Fucking. Deal. Unlike HUAC and other governmental operations -- both current and historical -- Rogers and Feinstein and so on have no direct power to harm him or "journalism" as a trade and craft. They run their mouths -- it's part of their job.

Just as Greenwald sees it as his crusade to be the modern embodiment of Old Testament Prophets and thunder against them. It's Show Business.

Greenwald also asserts that the principals of "The Intercept" will engage with readers in the comment section, but among the more than 150 comments to the "welcome" post, Greenwald is the only one who does so, and it is only to acknowledge two "long-time" commenters and readers who have arrived to hail the new venture.

Many of the other commenters are clearly writing English as a second language, which is also interesting.

All in all, "The Intercept" strikes me as a surprisingly modest undertaking which may turn into something substantial over time -- or may fizzle out once the thrill of the NSA revelations is gone.

We shall see.
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UPDATE: 02/12/14
Froomkin now has a post up at "The Intercept" basically rehashing Jeremy's post and pretty much everything else that's been reported about the Snowden Trove to date. In it, Froomkin, like Scahill, does not question the policies only the tactics involved. Clearly the failure to question the policies of the drone wars and so much else in these initial posts at the "Intercept" is a conscious editorial decision, not a temporary lapse -- as some have tried to claim. On the other hand, given that everything "The Intercept" has so far published is "old news" (or in the case of the nighttime pictures of NatSec facilities, somewhat of a distraction) and there are no documents yet posted at all -- though unlabeled excerpts (from somewhere) are included in Jeremy's post -- it's little wonder some people suspect "The Intercept" is a bad joke. I wouldn't go that far, simply because the startup is as slow as it is, and there is much still to sort out (including clashing egos, I have no doubt.) There's still the question, too, of what kind of influence, if any, "Pierre" has on the venture. To say he has none would be, I think, criminally naive. But how much he may have is an open question. Meanwhile, I had my doubts this thing would launch at all, in part due to those inevitable ego-clashes. So I was wrong about that. Nevertheless, the launch is so low-key as to be practically mute. The "news" is old, the documents are not there, and the feel overall is pretty amateur and clunky.

Given all that, it may be strange to see me say, "It would be nice if it worked." But that's how I feel. I'd rather it didn't fail, but unless something happens to goose it up, I suspect it's not going to amount to very much. A digital hang-out, perhaps, and a blog-home for some writers...
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UPDATE: 02/11/14
Now having looked over the story again -- it is awfully long and in places quite dense -- and after having seen Jeremy's performance on Democracy Now! yesterday, I may be seeing a rationale for Jeremy's reluctance to question (in the "Intercept" story) the policies or the terminologies involved. In fact, as he has many times before, in his Democracy Now! appearance, he did question the policies -- and terminology -- and did so quite forcefully, as has previously been his way. It was rather striking to me that he didn't do so in his inaugural effort for "The Intercept,"  though. Why didn't he? Perhaps because of the function of the site? Is it to attack policies? Or is it to attack players on behalf of opposing factions?

Quite a few people are convinced that the Snowden Leak is a two fold matter: 1) a limited hangout to demonstrate to the public that they are "being watched" by some nefarious agency/agents of government, and they better not get out of line or "the man come and take them away"; 2) a hit by the CIA on the NSA for fucking up and fucking them over.  There is nothing at all in Jeremy's story to refute either notion; in fact, it reinforces both. The message is that your cell phone is a tracking and locating device which the surveillance services can use to locate you and -- if  so ordered -- liquidate you by any means necessary, and that the security services (ie: police, CIA, military, death squads, who knows who else?) will cheerfully carry out your liquidation, even if they are wrong.

Have a nice day.




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Also too: the comment count on Jeremy's drone story went from 37 or something this morning to well over 200 in the space of a couple of hours, after Greenwald's commentariat (and their numerous sock-puppets) arrived en masse. In fact, it was pretty easy to spot the bot-comments and the socks because they all said approximately the same thing (essentially nothing except "Congrats!"). Adding: Later, they got into brawls and arguments with one another, as they tended to do at the Guardian and Salon.

Over at the Guardian they could get the comment count up into the thousands in a day's time.

We'll see whether they are able to do that here.

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Further on the comments: the numbers are quickly rising, but the caliber of  commentary has declined precipitously, mostly into the weeds of conspiracy, insults, and complete bullshit. Inevitable, I suppose...

And Another Thing

I watched the opening pageant of the Sochi Winter Games -- and I was mesmerized. Of course it was all propaganda on an enormous scale, but wow, what a show. Breathtaking.

What was so interesting to me about it, at least in the abstract, was that it had been preceded by days, perhaps weeks, of negative news coverage of Russia, Sochi, and Putin, just on and on and on about how dismal and threatening and incomplete the situation was, over and over and over and over. Everything negative possible about Russia, Putin, and Sochi was highlighted in the American media on a pretty much continuous loop, in every imaginable outlet.

The underlying theme was "Terra! Terra! Terra!" -- because, after all, Sochi is in that strange borderland on the Black Sea where Russian Terra!™ lives. You know? Like the Boston Marathon Thing? The point of all the propaganda -- apart from ritualistic denunciations of the Enemy (which Russia is, according to many pundits who apparently never heard about the collapse and disappearance of the Soviet Union) -- was to make Americans disgusted and afraid of the Games' host country, terrified in fact, that something AWFUL would happen to our valiant athletes in such a dismal, horrifying, disgusting place.

And so the Russians put on this opening pageant, and it was stunning, absolutely astonishing -- and it was surprisingly informative and entertaining as well. It's propaganda, of course, as the Olympics are and have been for most of their history. But even propaganda can hold one's attention or be extravagantly artistic, even gorgeous. Much of Soviet propaganda strikes me that way. So it's no surprise that the successors to the Soviets can do it, too.  American propaganda, by contrast, tends to be overtly false, when it is not ugly and pessimistic. The contrast is striking.

Well, now the propaganda narrative about Russia, Putin, and Sochi has apparently changed. The opening pageant was so impressive, it seems, that the current narrative is focused on Russian art and culture, achievement, can-do attitude, etc. Almost like Russia and the US are siblings of different mothers, unified in many more ways than we ever knew, yadda yadda yadda, and Putin ("for all his faults") is the one who made it so. He is being fluffed far more than denounced, for having masterminded such an "incredible show." Indeed. Sochi's incomplete and inefficient aspects haven't been forgotten, to be sure, but they are quickly fading from the narrative, and all the neat things about the venues and the city are being highlighted and promoted.

It's quite a turn about.

But these whip-saw changes in narratives and attitudes are part of the practice of propaganda.

It's something to be aware of, but knowing about it doesn't actually do you any good!

More Insight and Ironies From "Subversives"

For example, I knew that Clark Kerr (UC President during the Free Speech Movement demonstrations in 1964 and 65) was responsible for coming up with the California Higher Education Master Plan -- which is usually attributed to Governor "Pat" Brown -- but I didn't know that he was affiliated with the Quakers or that he had been elevated to the presidency of the University specifically because of his abilities and reputation as a negotiator.

My memories of Kerr are somewhat mixed but overall they are negative, largely because he was demonized during and after the FSM, by student protesters and later by Reagan and his ilk, as part of the ongoing problem at Berkeley and other campuses, not part of the solution. I recognized him as someone who was trying to maintain control and exercise authority in a situation in which control and authority were being exercised for their own sake, and under the circumstances, it was wrong. I see from Rosenfeld's examination of the documents, however, that Kerr was trying to do something else -- not necessarily what it looked like at all -- and that despite his somewhat ham-handedness and bumbling, he may have been doing more good than harm.

It would be some time before I more or less clearly understood the often tense relationship between the Regents of the University, the University administration, and the Legislature, as well as with the Governor's Office, alumni, donors, faculty, students, and the communities in which the University campuses were placed.

Rosenfeld is saying the situation was even more complex than I came to understand it to be, and the complexity of the relationships between all the moving parts of the University was part of what made it relatively easy for interests like the FBI or, as happened with the FSM, student "radicals" to exert so much control -- at least temporarily.

Rosenfeld has also laid bare J. Edgar Hoover's personal interest and the FBI's general interest in the University of California, dating back essentially prior to World War II. Hoover saw it as a hotbed of Communists and Communism from very early on, particularly the Berkeley campus, and he kept his personal eye on what was going on there, and ordered his agents to conduct covert and often lawless surveillance of faculty and administration, students and staff and provide the Director with reports of their findings as well as disrupting any sign of opposition to the Established Order.

I knew about the anti-Communists witch hunts and purges throughout California's public education system (my 5th grade teacher, for example, was accused) but I was not fully aware of how deeply the purges went nor how destructive they were in particular cases. This is something I probably should have been more aware of, but I wasn't.

After all, even though everyone knew that surveillance and anonymous accusation of "Commies" was routine, we weren't necessarily able to recognize the general effects: curbing or crushing dissent and enforcing conformity of thought and action. Conformity being the key -- I've written about it many times as the fundamental social/political factor of the era, far more enthusiastically embraced and enforced than any of the OUTRAGES!!!!!™ we are privy to and are expected to run around denouncing these days.

Given the technology of the era, Hoover and the FBI were as thoroughgoing in their surveillance and interference in the University as it was possible to be at the time, far more directly and disruptively than we realized, and some ways more so than the pervasive surveillance we are under today.

There's much more, of course, and I'm still in the early chapters, but the way the background of the story of the student uprising at Berkeley is being laid out and the underlying issues, personalities, and events are being detailed is actually quite revelatory  to me. I knew a lot of it, but not so many of the details. In many ways, it was worse than we thought.

Much worse. Which makes the story more depressing than I would have thought.

Oh, the Ironies of "Subversives...."

I'm still in the initial chapters of Seth Rosenfeld's "Subversives," and as I've said in conversation with others, so far it's pretty depressing.

But one thing that stands out -- and I'm sure it is Rosenfeld's intent -- is that those who throw around the accusation of "subversive" at others are almost always the actual subversives -- of the law, the constitution, and of basic human decency and justice. It is the constant theme running through the book -- at least so far as I have read.

During the hey-day of the Neo-Cons under Bush, I would post comments or write here that these Neo-Cons were, in actuality, the very "subversives" (in many cases literally) that we were constantly warned about during the 1950s. These were the very people or their ideological descendants. I thought, "How very intriguing."

But I'm finding in reading Rosenfeld's book, that the subversion was more deeply based and widespread.

It's fascinating, and I hope to write more about it in the not too distant future.

Subversives

I just received a copy of Seth Rosenfeld's "Subversives" -- a book about the early days of the student rebellion of the 60s. I've written about that era quite a few times, for the Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley and the more or less general student rebellion it inspired were deeply influential to my own perspectives about American imperialism and authoritarianism. What I've written about it is almost all my personal perspective on events I witnessed (in person or on television) or was involved in (such as the Draft Moratorium protests in Oakland in 1967 -- I was there for my pre-induction physical.)

Rosenfeld got hundreds of thousands of documents that I understand revealed the deep, deep involvement of the then-existing Security State to infiltrate and disrupt the student rebellion, largely at the behest of J. Edgar Hoover, FBI Director since dirt was new. There was much more Security State involvement than we knew at the time, that's for sure. And yet the fall out from the events of those days -- including the apparent co-optation of such rebel lights as Todd Gitlin and Mark Rudd, both of whom I have had at least passing dealings with -- continues to resonate.

I'm sure I'll have more to write about those days once I've finished the book.

Elysium

"No, no, no. This isn't science fiction. This is now. This is today." -- Neil Blomkamp, writer-director, "Elysium"

I'm still kind of laid up due to a sciatic condition which makes it hard for me to get around. Yesterday, though, we did a test to see where my limitations were. We went shopping for food for our guest and household supplies -- which meant that I would drive to several locations and hobble around some relatively large stores as well as I could.

Welp, driving wasn't a problem, though I doubt I could do it for more than a half hour or so at a time. Walking was OK -- with a cane -- for what I thought was a good length of time and a fair distance, though it wasn't in the end long enough or far enough. I was fine for a while, then really bad pains started rising in my left leg, the one affected by sciatica, pains from the knee on down, pain that was so intense I couldn't walk any farther without taking a break. Luckily there were some chairs to sit on, so it wasn't a crisis by any means. After a few minutes rest, I was able to continue on for a while, and then had to take a break again. The length of the break became longer, and the length of time I could walk relatively well became shorter. So experiment finally had to end, but not before we had gotten nearly everything we needed for the rest of our friend's stay and had picked up some necessary supplies as well.

One of the things we got was a DVD of Elysium. We had planned to see it in the theatre, but something came up and we weren't able to go before the local run ended. Seeing it on DVD was not the same of course, but it was fine for our purposes.

Oh my.

Well, while watching the movie, I kept thinking that "Elysium" was something like Neil Blomkamp's District 9 on steroids. This man, Neil Blomkamp, is really quite a remarkable young filmmaker, as he showed in the frighteningly truthful and original "District 9" from 2009. Part of what appeals to me in his films is his sense of justice, and his highly idiosyncratic and unusual (at least in contemporary filmdom) story-telling. He's very straightforward,  yet nuanced; his characters and situations ring very true, neither all good nor all evil, though the dystopian science fiction realm in which he's set both "District 9" and "Elysium" is fantasy. There's something youthful and honest about his approach. His perspective is distinctly South African, obviously based on what he knows from his life there. It's not a pretty picture at all. And yet parts of it -- especially in "Elysium" -- are spectacularly pretty. And pretty as they are, they are ultimately empty and even evil. And though we may think of South Africa as a very different place than the United States, in many ways the resemblances between the two countries, or at least parts of them, are shocking.

Elysium is set in 2154, not that far in the future. The Earth is pretty well used up by then, and the teeming multitudes who in habit its apparently global township-slums are barely able to get by, and those who do, do so on the sufferance of their betters, who live far above them... literally.

The movie deals with the issue of class and class divisions in a near-future world, based on the way things have been for Earthlings for generations, as starkly as any film I've seen -- except for "District 9" which deals with those divisions in even starker terms.

Of course, the central fact of life in South Africa now almost as much as in the past is the starkest of class divisions -- divisions that were once based entirely on race, but now depend on wealth accumulation more than race.

Much the same has happened in the United States.

Blomkamp's proposition is that as conditions become more dire on Earth -- due to pollution, rapine and global warming, among other things -- the High and the Mighty build for themselves a whirling wheel in space where they re-create idyllic terrestrial conditions and neighborhoods of mansions (much like those in Bel Air and Beverly Hills come to think of it)  and they call it Elysium. From this whirling wheel in space, the High and the Mighty rule their relatively docile vassals living (if you want to call it that) on the teeming wreckage of civilization below. Earth has become the barrio, the ghetto, the township.

The Rulers control the population through their all-knowing surveillance, brutal police robots, drones and hired killers who roam among the people with malice and cruel intent. Those who are lucky -- and behave themselves -- can work for the Rulers under conditions of servitude, danger and contempt. Not all that unlike conditions many billions of people face today.

The setting on Earth is mostly among the hovels and ruins of Los Angeles where millions live in penury and fear. Max Da Costa, played by Matt Damon, is a parolee, whose job -- such as it is -- is building robot police for Armadyne Corp, headed by CEO John Carlyle. Anyone who's been following corporate-government fusion over these last few decades will get a mordant chuckle or two out of the names chosen by Blomkamp. I'm sure he laughed a bit himself.

The story, as it builds from a relatively dour opening, is anything but a laugh. In fact, the film fairly well keeps one on the edge of one's seat, especially after Max is ordered into the radiation chamber to clear a jam where he receives a lethal dose of radiation. The conceit is that Max has five days to live and the only way to save his life is to get him to Elysium, where household Med-Bays apparently cure anything.

The only way to get Max to Elysium is through a coyote named Spider who sends injured and dying "illegals" on risky 19 minute trips to Elysium for the chance of cure, Most are shot out of Elysium's airspace -- under the sure direction of Jodie Foster as Defense Secretary Delacorte. Since she wants to be president and believes she can accomplish her aims by digital coup so long as she can get access to the appropriate reboot codes through Carlyle.

Confused yet? Well, it makes sense in the context of the story.

There are many complications and not a few gory-looking fire- and physical fights before matters are settled. How they are settled is something of a wonder, for in the end, the overriding program of Elysium is rebooted in such a way that the former regime is completely eliminated and the resources being horded by Elysium are released for the benefit of the people on Earth, particularly the resources that will enable Earth residents to be healed of their diseases and injuries.

Though there are elements from many previous science fiction thriller action movies in "Elysium," and the story is not as unique as that of "District 9," the picture is surprisingly moving and satisfying. Matt Damon and Jodie Foster are stellar in their roles, Jodie so severe she's practically chewing other character's limbs off. Sharlto Copely (from the cast of "District 9") as the mercenary Kruger is something of a standard model villain, but under the circumstances, it's little wonder he'd become what he is and do what he does.

The rest of the cast is fine -- almost an ensemble -- and the production values are at typical high-priced Hollywood standards. This is a strong movie, about us, about now, re-imagined in the future, a time-honored tactic in the genre.

 "Elysium" was more than worth the time, and we were sorry we hadn't seen it sooner.