President Barack Obama on Friday seemed to acknowledge that the determined effort by the White House and Congress to demonize Edward Snowden has not exactly worked. The White House has put pressure on many people in this town to make clear that Snowden is not to be praised in the media or by members of Congress. Various reporters and new organizations have held the line in mocking Snowden or refusing to call him a “whistleblower” rather than a “leaker.” After all, the fear seems to be that Snowden has to be a traitor or Obama would look like a tyrant. Even high-ranking members have been frog walked back before cameras for uttering a work of praise for Snowden. The problem is that it has convinced few people, even with alteration of Wikipedia and other sites to maintain the party line. Now Obama has come forward to assure people that Snowden is no patriot. No, I guess that title belongs to Obama and others who have engaged in warrantless surveillance and continue to mislead the public on the erosion of privacy and civil liberties. Those patriotic souls include John Clapper who lie under oath to mislead the public about the programs. He is not a perjurer but a patriot in America’s New Animal Farm. Notably, however, not a single reporter asked Obama about the perjury by Clapper. Instead, Obama laid out another set of meaningless measures designed to lull the public back into a comfortably and controllable sleep.
Obama seems to be going through the stages of Kübler-Ross from denial to anger to bargaining to depression to acceptance. Last week, he was in denial and assuring the public that they are not being spied upon even as more stories appeared revealing even broader surveillance programs. He then attacked Snowden and now insists that he is no patriot for throwing away his life to disclose these massive surveillance programs. He ended the week with bargaining, telling the public that he would create a committee of hand-picked experts to review such surveillance — just like his committee ratifying his killing of citizens without charges or convictions.
Obama clearly wants to have unchecked power but not be thought of as authoritarian. He returned to the theme that he can create the due process and review within his own Administration that is obviously lacking in Congress or the courts. He went as far as to say that a simple committee of his making would have avoided the Snowden affair because the public would have accepted his word for the status of their rights and privacy. “There’s no doubt Mr. Snowden’s leaks triggered a much more rapid and passionate response than if I had simply appointed this review board.” In other words, I messed up by not first creating a screen for the programs to give my allies cover. In the meantime, his Administration is moving to remove the greatest danger to their warrantless surveillance programs: people.
What was particularly galling was Obama’s statement that “[g]iven the history of abuse by governments, it’s right to ask questions about surveillance, particularly as technology is reshaping every aspect of our lives.” However, his administration has been classifying even legal argument to prevent such questions from being asked and has pursued both reporters and their sources for any stories informing the public. His Administration is the most anti-whistleblower government in modern history and has abused national security laws in the pursuit of leakers to an extent that would make Richard Nixon blush.
Obama added as one of his great reforms on Friday that he would consider making the legal rationales for these programs more public despite the view that such classification was always ridiculous. So he will make legal arguments public and appoint his own committee to review his own policies.
Finally, he got away with telling the media that Snowden is not a whistleblower because he had “other avenues” to oppose the programs. Maintaining a straight face (and again without serious challenge from the press corp), Obama noted that “he can appear before a court with a lawyer and make his case.” First, by that definition, no one would be a whistleblower since they could all take the suicidal act of filing a public complaint or seeking judicial review. Second, if Snowden revealed the programs to an attorney, he would have been immediately charged. This is an Administration that put reporters under surveillance for speaking with leakers. It is also the Administration that has forced courts to dismiss dozens of public interest lawsuits by classifying the evidence needed to establish standing or the merits of the case. This includes the greatest victory of his Administration in killing the Clapper challenge (that’s right the same guy who lied to Congress recently). The Obama Administration succeeded in getting the Court to reject the standing of civil liberties groups and citizens to challenge the Obama Administration’s surveillance programs. President Obama has long been criticized for his opposition to such lawsuits and his Justice Department has continued a successful attack on the ability of citizens to challenge the unconstitutional actions of their government in the war on terror. The 5-4 opinion by Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. insulated such programs from judicial review in yet another narrowing of standing rules. (After claiming that such surveillance programs were too classified to be discussed in courts, they then a few months later discussed such programs in the public only after Snowden’s disclosures).
The level of disingenuous arguments coming out of the Administration now amounts nothing short of open contempt for the public and its intelligence. With both parties working to support the effort, it could well succeed. However, the degree to which Obama feels free to make such transparent arguments show how little he has to fear from contradiction in the media or in Congress. It is simply a problem of optics with a public that still feels uncomfortable with the expanding Imperial President established in the last decade. It is hard to get a public back to sleep when they wake up in a nightmare. That is when you have to tell them soothing stories.
Source: CNN
Taking America Back with G. Edward Griffin
Elaine and AP,
Thanks…. Just has me thinking of other possibilities….. Even though his wife….. Hastings that is does not think its a hit….
CIA Director Brennan Confirmed as Reporter Michael Hastings Next Target
http://www.sandiego6.com/story/cia-director-brennan-confirmed-as-reporter-michael-hastings-next-target-20130812
“Global Signals Intelligence Collection and Communications Technologies” review group (This would seem to be Obama’s label for the NSA group)
From Timothy Lee’s piece in the Washington Post about the intelligence review panel, referred to as a “Global Signals Intelligence Collection and Communications Technologies” review group:
“The stated mission of the group has also shifted. On Friday, Obama said the group would examine “how we can maintain the trust of the people, how we can make sure that there absolutely is no abuse.” But today’s memo makes no mention of preventing abuses. Instead, it will examine whether U.S. surveillance activity “optimally protects our national security and advances our foreign policy while appropriately accounting for other policy considerations, such as the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust.”
(link at 9:11 am)
============
And then there’s the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board (PCLOB):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Privacy_and_Civil_Liberties_Oversight_Board
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2013/07/a_problem_with.html
July 16, 2013
“A Problem with the US Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board
I haven’t heard much about the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board. They recently held hearings regarding the Snowden documents.
This particular comment stood out:
Rachel Brand, another seemingly unsympathetic board member, concluded: “There is nothing that is more harmful to civil liberties than terrorism. This discussion here has been quite sterile because we have not been talking about terrorism.”
If terrorism harms civil liberties, it’s because elected officials react in panic and revoke them.
I’m not optimistic about this board.” -Bruce Schneier
ap,
Thanks for the links.
*****
Michael Hayden, Bob Schieffer and the media’s reverence of national security officials
The former NSA director is held up by the Face the Nation host as an objective authority when he is everything but that
By Glenn Greenwald
theguardian.com
Monday 12 August 2013
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/aug/12/michael-hayden-nsa-media-reverence
Excerpt:
In 2006, the New York Times won the Pulitzer Prize for having revealed that the NSA was eavesdropping on Americans without warrants. The reason that was a scandal was because it was illegal under a 30-year-old law that made it a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison for each offense, to eavesdrop on Americans without those warrants. Although both the Bush and Obama DOJs ultimately prevented final adjudication by raising claims of secrecy and standing, and the “Look Forward, Not Backward (for powerful elites)” Obama DOJ refused to prosecute the responsible officials, all three federal judges to rule on the substance found that domestic spying to be unconstitutional and in violation of the statute.
The person who secretly implemented that illegal domestic spying program was retired Gen. Michael Hayden, then Bush’s NSA director. That’s the very same Michael Hayden who is now frequently presented by US television outlets as the authority and expert on the current NSA controversy – all without ever mentioning the central role he played in overseeing that illegal warrantless eavesdropping program.
As Marcy Wheeler noted: “the 2009 Draft NSA IG Report that Snowden leaked [and the Guardian published] provided new details about how Hayden made the final decision to continue the illegal wiretapping program even after DOJ’s top lawyers judged it illegal in 2004. Edward Snowden leaked new details of Michael Hayden’s crime.” The Twitter commentator sysprog3 put it this way:
“Inviting Hayden to comment on regulation of surveillance is like having Bernie Madoff comment on regulation of Wall Street.”
Presidential Memorandum — Reviewing Our Global Signals Intelligence Collection and Communications Technologies
http://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2013/08/12/presidential-memorandum-reviewing-our-global-signals-intelligence-collec
The man who misled Congress on spying will pick Obama’s intelligence review panel
By Timothy B. Lee, Published: August 12 at 7:59 pm
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2013/08/12/the-man-who-misled-congress-on-spying-will-pick-obamas-intelligence-review-panel/
At the close of the Constitutional Convention of 1787, when queried as he left Independence Hall on the final day of deliberation:
“A lady asked Dr. Franklin, well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy. A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
How Laura Poitras Helped Snowden Spill His Secrets
By PETER MAASS
Published: August 13, 2013
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/18/magazine/laura-poitras-snowden.html?hp
Excerpt:
This past January, Laura Poitras received a curious e-mail from an anonymous stranger requesting her public encryption key. For almost two years, Poitras had been working on a documentary about surveillance, and she occasionally received queries from strangers. She replied to this one and sent her public key — allowing him or her to send an encrypted e-mail that only Poitras could open, with her private key — but she didn’t think much would come of it.
The stranger responded with instructions for creating an even more secure system to protect their exchanges. Promising sensitive information, the stranger told Poitras to select long pass phrases that could withstand a brute-force attack by networked computers. “Assume that your adversary is capable of a trillion guesses per second,” the stranger wrote.
Before long, Poitras received an encrypted message that outlined a number of secret surveillance programs run by the government. She had heard of one of them but not the others. After describing each program, the stranger wrote some version of the phrase, “This I can prove.”
Seconds after she decrypted and read the e-mail, Poitras disconnected from the Internet and removed the message from her computer. “I thought, O.K., if this is true, my life just changed,” she told me last month. “It was staggering, what he claimed to know and be able to provide. I just knew that I had to change everything.”
Poitras remained wary of whoever it was she was communicating with. She worried especially that a government agent might be trying to trick her into disclosing information about the people she interviewed for her documentary, including Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks. “I called him out,” Poitras recalled. “I said either you have this information and you are taking huge risks or you are trying to entrap me and the people I know, or you’re crazy.”
The answers were reassuring but not definitive. Poitras did not know the stranger’s name, sex, age or employer (C.I.A.? N.S.A.? Pentagon?). In early June, she finally got the answers. Along with her reporting partner, Glenn Greenwald, a former lawyer and a columnist for The Guardian, Poitras flew to Hong Kong and met the N.S.A. contractor Edward J. Snowden, who gave them thousands of classified documents, setting off a major controversy over the extent and legality of government surveillance. Poitras was right that, among other things, her life would never be the same.
@Squeeky,
Thanks for the terza rima tercet. Since I take all verse forms as a challenge, I would continue the sonnet with something like:
But found instead some brothers shooting hoops
Who’d seen a sister jiving G.I. Joes:
Recruiters trawling hopelessness for troops
I’ll try to write more on the subject of this particular verse form later.
Regards,
Mike Murry — Kaohsiung, Taiwan
As President Obama envisions “patriotism” it seems to fall somewhere between Ambrose Bierce and Oscar Wilde: namely “combustible rubbish ready to the torch of anyone ambitious to illuminate his name” and “the virtue of the vicious,” respectively.
Edward Snowden obviously does not fit into President Obama’s misconception of patriotism as ignorant, virulent nationalism — what Orwell called “power hunger tempered by self-deception.” Lots of Obama there, but no Snowden. Good for the little guy.
(1) Watching this “Commander-In-Chief” transmogrified into “Judge-In-Chief,” especially his body-language gestures, evoked in me suppressed memories of his 3 predecessors: Bush, Clinton and Bush. Whenever their lips moved, you knew the were lying.
(2) “Therefore the prudent shall keep silence in that time; for it is an evil time.” — Amos 5,13
Is this the reason some eloquent bloggers here have not added their 2 cents???
Judge Rejects New York’s Stop-and-Frisk Policy
What I find bothersome is the fact that the ruling was based upon race instead of the 4th in itself.
Bloomberg is a loathsome fascist nazi. We must no longer tolerate these people in office.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/13/nyregion/stop-and-frisk-practice-violated-rights-judge-rules.html?_r=1&
A federal judge ruled on Monday that the stop-and-frisk tactics of the New York Police Department violated the constitutional rights of minorities in the city, repudiating a major element in the Bloomberg administration’s crime-fighting legacy.
thanks, irv but i’ll pass on the copy and distribution. i’ll leave that to your bro’s at stormfront.
btw, i hear there’s a fella out in arizona with a sailboat for sale cheap.
good luck and fair winds
Patriotism is being loyal to your country always, and your government when it deserves it.
~ Mark Twain
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The first truth is that the liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism — ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power.
— Franklin D. Roosevelt, April 29, 1938. Message to congress
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If our Congress Critters keep giving corporations and the military-industrial complex more and more power (corporate fascism in all but name), along with giving dictatorial powers to the executive branch, almost every ordinary citizen of this country will end up opposing the elected officials, and we can have no good elected officials when our choice remains ‘evil’ and ‘the lesser of two evils.’ Our government stands to rot from within.
Then what?
As is, we can do nothing more than admire genuine patriots like Snowden and hope he is happy, content being a hero to millions, and that he remain in good health into a wonderful old age.
THE REAL CREATORS OF THE SUBURBS
( This paper is what I experienced while trapped in a large US city. BTW, Obama now wants to move “disadvantaged” folks into “better” areas. Since he’s an expert on where rich Hollywood Jews live, he could “diversify” them with the L.A. homeless. He could also change Beverly Hills into Burka Hills! Is this the “change” Obama has promised?)
The suburbs are booming, but not fast enough. Yessir, you ghetto folks
in inner cities have started a good thing, but there are still lots of acres
outside the cities without any houses on them. So you’ve gotta move into
“untouched” city blocks and do the following:
Throw trash everywhere. You’ll insure that your friends who pick up trash
and distribute free rat poison packets will keep their jobs. And folks can
predict the weather by the direction the trash is blowing!
Walk down the street. Better yet, rhythm down it. And when I say street
I don’t mean sidewalk. Save sidewalks for your friends on cycles. Besides,
it’s hard to fit many cursing, screaming, drinking, pot-smoking kids on a
sidewalk, and it’s also hard to spot keys and other things left in cars when
you’re walking on a sidewalk!
When walking down a street, turn your head when you hear a car coming
and stare at the driver. For all you know, it might be one of your enemies
out to get you. On the other hand, it might be only your neighbor and all
that hateful staring might make him want to move out.
Be sure to beget lots of unloved, unsupervised, unwashed two-legged
“Obama welfare meal tickets” – either through wedlock or (preferably) out of
wedlock. And let them often ring doorbells, begging for money.
Turn quiet streets into noisy jungles. Have a blast – a
long blast with your car horn under your neighbor’s window at
3:00 a.m. Let folks know who the real honkies are! Blow your horn when (1)
you see the police coming (2) you want to buy some dope (3) you want to sell
some dope (4) for any other reason. Play your stereo so loudly that folks can’t
hear sirens going to the latest holdup or arson. Be noisy, man, noisy!
Be cruel to animals, especially “man’s best friend.” Tie your dog on a
short chain under a blazing sun with no water or food or love or license or
dog shots. Make him as mean as you are. Better yet, let your dog run loose.
Neighbors love to find freshly killed cats (after hearing their screams) and
other goodies on their lawns. Pit one dog against another in bloody “canine
cockfights” while friends lounge on car hoods and cheer and make bets! And
what madness is it where folks move out and abandon pets in the house,
leaving them nothing to eat but their own droppings? This happens often in the
ghetto, and almost no one will help the animals.
Keep a good supply of Saturday Night Specials – also Sunday, Monday,
Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday Night Specials. Your criminal
presence will improve your neighbor’s light bill; when he isn’t watching you
at night (with his lights off), he will be able to read books at night by
the light of the police helicopter searchlights!
Here’s more insanity: Uncle Sam spends millions of our tax money to
move you into our neighborhoods where we lose much when we sell our homes.
So you have your nerve when you glare and swear at us when we don’t move
out quickly; but you’re the reason we can’t find good buyers! I really wonder
what you and Uncle Sam will do when lots of folks move to the wilderness and
live off the land and consequently don’t have to pay taxes to support such
sickness!
Finally, spread the rumor that all of your troubles are associated with
skin, even though you and I know that your problem isn’t skin. It’s sin!!!
What makes a ghetto? It’s not the paint on a house (or lack of it) but all
of you two-legged pains in the neck!
For more information on Blockbuster Obama, Google “The Background Obama
Can’t Cover Up.”
(anyone is free to copy and air this paper)
“Oh, man. The bullshit piled up so fast in Vietnam you needed wings to stay above it. ” Willard, “Apocalypse Now”.
I’ve been thinking about this line a lot lately.
@MichaelMurray:
That Dante one reminds me of the John Ciardi translation. Which I read about 10-11 years ago??? I started on a weird paper once for a project, but all I can remember of it is something like:
He searched between the dirty shotgun rows
And broken streets and broken terrace stoops
For Beatrice among the pimps and ho’s.
Anyway, yours was very good!
Squeeky Fromm
Girl Reporter
Thanks Max-1. I believe in giving credit where due:
The swift and vicious crackdown on the short-lived Occupy Movement testifies more than anything to the fear and loathing felt by those in authority towards anything that even remotely smacks of the dirty f*ing hippies returning to get it right again.
“Snowden is neither a patriot nor a whistleblower,” said the person on whom the whistle has been blown.
We need a new political party in America now.