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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 10 Dec 2015 12:43:00 +0000

The Paris Attacks Are Just The Beginning

Storm Clouds Gathering
Dec. 9. 2015

It might be tempting to react to this event emotionally without looking beyond the official narrative, without examining the evidence, without questioning where this is headed. You wouldn't be alone, but blind indignation lends itself to easy answers, half truths and comforting lies.

On the evening of November 13th 2015, Paris was shaken by a series of coordinated attacks. 129 people were killed, hundreds more wounded. An ambience of fear gripped the country. Terrorists could strike anywhere at any time. Nothing was safe. Even the smallest venue could be targeted.

Any time a population is attacked (or believes that they have been attacked) by an outside force, the reaction is as predictable as it is dangerous. New wars, and totalitarian laws that would have been unthinkable days before are easily justified, voices of reason are drowned out, and entire nations can be driven towards a cliff. Given the nature of this particular cliff it would behoove you to look a little deeper this time.

There are several moving parts in this story: the Syrian war, ISIS and the push to remove Assad from power, the expansion of a militarized police state throughout Europe, and of course the refugee crisis. All of which has been conveniently tied together, by a passport, carried by a suicide bomber, a passport which miraculously survived the blast unscathed. (Never mind the fact that German Interior Minister Thomas de Maiziere came forward to say that he had reason to suspect that the passport had been planted.)

Let's deconstruct this one piece at a time.

Evidence of Foreknowledge

Without even looking beyond mainstream sources, we find evidence that the French government knew that the attacks were coming. They were warned by the Iraqi government, they were warned by the Turkish government twice, and according to this article from the Times of Israel (which as since been edited), security officials in Paris were specifically warned of an impending attack that very morning. (The same article goes on to mention that the Bataclan theater had financial ties to the Israeli Military.)

And of course the French government just happened to be running an exercise simulating a mass shooting in Paris just hours before the attacks began. Where have we seen that before?

Could someone please explain how Iraq, and the Turkey government (which are developing countries), were able to see this coming, while the NSA and French intelligence were caught completely off guard? Are we really to believe that this was just incompetence?

The Setup

Before the dust had even settled, the official narrative was clear. ISIS was responsible. This was war, and France was going to escalate that war, both at home and abroad. A state of emergency was declared, road blocks, border controls and a curfew were imposed, freedom of assembly was restricted, and the military was deployed on the streets. French President Francois Hollande soon announced that he intended to extend the state of emergency for three months (some are even saying it may be extended indefinitely), and to alter the French constitution.

The state of emergency gives the police the power to detain people without trial, search without warrants and to block any website they see fit.

France's parliament has already voted to extend the country's state of emergency following the Paris attacks for three months, giving the police powers to keep people in their homes without trial, search the homes of people without a warrant from a judge and block any website deemed a problem.

These powers are already being used! Activist have already been placed under house arrest, and not for crimes that they have been accused of actually committing, but preemptively!

The attacks are also being used as a pretext to justify the establishment of a new European Intelligence Agency modeled after the CIA. See also here.

Who Created ISIS?

And speaking of the CIA... let's not forget who actually created ISIS.

France didn't seem too concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism when they joined the U.S. in the 2011 regime change operation in Libya. If mainstream news outlets were publishing evidence of jihadists among the CIA backed rebels, (secondary confirmation from the BBC here) it would be utterly naive to think that French intelligence services didn't know.

France also didn't seem to mind the fact that Islamic extremists were receiving the lion's share of the weapons that were looted from Gaddafi's armories, and shipped through Turkey, and into Syria.

France didn't stand up or speak out for years as the U.S. government continued arming, funding and training these extremists.

There was no righteous indignation at the atrocities they were committing.

There were no calls for criminal proceedings after those same rebels got caught using sarin gas against thousands of civilians, and the French government has never so much as verbally condemned the numerous state actors which have been caught assisting ISIS and/or its allies logistically (Turkey, Jordan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia & Israel for example).

Why? Because ISIS serves a purpose. ISIS and its associates, Al-Nusra and the FSA are weakening the Syrian government, creating a pretext for military intervention, and providing the perfect excuse for a massive power grab on the home front.

"Whoah! That's not fair to equate the FSA with ISIS!"

Really? Then explain this away: ISIS and Al-Nusra have officially formed alliances, FSA commanders have gone on record to say that they cooperate with, and conduct joint operations with Al-Nusra, and it has been well established that the FSA command is dominated by Islamic extremists. Do The Math.

The Rise of Fascism in Europe

What's happening in France should not be viewed in isolation. Xenophobic sentiment has been on the rise throughout Europe, and is gaining ground politically. This trend has clearly been exacerbated by the ongoing migrant crisis (which is obviously tied to the regime change policies of the West) but one variable in this equation that no one is talking about is the fact that the way immigration has been handled in Europe is not merely a question of short sightedness, it is a reflection of policy.

In 2012 UN migration chief Peter Sutherland urged the EU to "do its best to undermine" the "homogeneity" of its member states. Such a proposition may sound absurd, unless you take into account that breaking down the national identity of a country makes it much easier to dissolve political boundaries and independence. And that's precisely what the technocrats in Brussels want.

Hollande has been one of the most outspoken voices in this push to hand over more power to a centralized European government, effectively stripping member states of any meaningful sovereignty. Give that European government a military, it's own surveillance apparatus and public which is struggling financially, looking for someone to blame, and practically begging for war, and you have a recipe for the rise of overt fascism in Europe.

Many have remarked that recent moves by the French president take several pages from the extreme right. Some have interpreted this as an attempt to prevent the right from capitalizing on the event, but it hasn't worked out that way, at all. (See also this article)

Taken on its own one might be inclined to interpret this as a political miscalculation, but what if it's not? Hollande's actions don't make much sense if we view him as an independent leader, but they make perfect sense if you understand that he's just a puppet.

The powers seized by Holland following the Charlie Hebdo and Paris Attacks, are not suited for the political left. The left is held back by the need to maintain a soft spoken, inclusive veneer. Those rising up to replace them will not be.

The right will not scale back these powers. They will expand them, and they will use them, even more than they are being used now.

It's the left, right, left, right two step to tyranny.

Problem, Reaction, Solution

This formula is not new. These tactics are not original, nor are the motives or response. Like the American public following 9/11, it's going to take the European population quite some time to realize where they are being led, and they're only going to come to that realization if those who see what is happening have the courage to speak out.

And make no mistake, this is just the beginning. They'll take it as far as you let them.

Source:

http://stormcloudsgathering.com/paris-attacks

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Jimmy Carter Calls Out Israel on Permanent Apartheid

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 16 Aug 2015 19:56:00 +0000

The US has withdrawn from tackling the Middle East's most intractable problem, says the former President

August 15, 2015
by Juan Cole
Truthdig Op-Ed

In an interview with the U.K.‘s Prospect magazine, former President Jimmy Carter is brutally frank in saying that all hope for a two-state solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict has ended. “At this moment, there is zero chance of the two-state solution,” he said, according to journalist Bronwen Maddox.

That judgment is widely shared and not so controversial. It is what he said next that ruffled feathers in Israel: “The Netanyahu government decided early on to adopt a one-state solution … but without giving them [the Palestinians] equal rights.” In this sentence, he accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of having pursued, upon his election in 2009, a deliberate policy of relentlessly annexing and colonizing the Palestinian West Bank, ensuring that it will end up as part of Israel. At the same time, he said, Netanyahu conspired to ensure that the 4.2 million Palestinians under Israeli occupation remain stateless and without rights.

It seems fairly clear to any dispassionate observer of Netanyahu’s government that these steps are precisely the ones it has taken, and Carter is simply stating the obvious. But in the world of international diplomacy, it is customary to put some of the blame for this state of affairs on the Palestinians. Pro-Israeli critics run interference for Tel Aviv, insisting that the PLO, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, has declined perfectly reasonable negotiating offers and that Israel would be very happy to have someone take Palestine off its hands, if only it could receive security in return. Carter violated these conventions of “on the one hand” political discourse by baldly and correctly blaming the occupying authority for its illegal actions, rather than the helpless, occupied population.

Carter wasn’t done with Netanyahu. Not only is the two-state solution dead, the Palestinian West Bank being entirely stolen, the Palestinians doomed to be ruled by the Israelis in perpetuity—but Israeli society and politics are such that in the single state now forming under Netanyahu’s iron fist, Palestinians “will never get equal rights.” In short, he implicitly called Israel an apartheid state in which the only hope for the Palestinians is to achieve at least “more equal rights.”

Carter began warning of Israeli racial exclusion with regard to West Bank Palestinians in his 2006 book, “Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid.” It was arguably the first time someone of Carter’s stature had dared use the word in this context, and it produced vehement attacks on the former president from the Israel lobbies. Fourteen pro-Israel advisers on the board of his foundation noisily resigned in order to embarrass him.

He was initially disinvited from speaking at Brandeis University unless he would share the podium with gadfly Alan Dershowitz, an offer he declined. When he did go to the campus in January of 2007, he said, “This is the first time that I’ve ever been called a liar and a bigot and anti-Semite and coward and plagiarist. … This has hurt me.” Given that Carter’s Camp David Accords in 1979 had protected Israel from the Egyptian army, its only credible foe, the vehemence of the denunciations seemed ungrateful, to say the least.

Without doubt, the lobbies’ extensive reach helped marginalize Carter in many important quarters. Although Carter himself denied it, there were allegations that the former president was, contrary to custom, excluded from speaking at the 2008 Democratic Party convention out of fear of offending pro-Israel donors.

The phrase is, of course, inexact if applied to Israel proper, where 20 percent of the population is Palestinian and has the right to vote as well as most other rights of citizenship (though unrecognized Israeli-Palestinian villages are treated in a discriminatory way by the state).

But Israel has ruled the West Bank since 1967 without giving Palestinians any basic rights, and some South Africans have been so appalled by the situation there that they say it is actually wors e than the former white apartheid system in their country.

As in so many other matters, the views of nonagenarian Carter have largely prevailed. Secretary of State John Kerry warned last year against Israel becoming an apartheid state. The goal post has moved, so that saying Israel is moving toward that eventuality is commonplace even among high U.S. officials (Kerry had to clarify that he didn’t mean Israel had already become an apartheid state). But there is not much point tiptoeing around the issue. Even a majority of the Israeli public agreed in a 2012 poll that there are elements of apartheid in the Israeli system.

One reason the word “apartheid” is so charged is that it is now an actionable crime under the Rome Statute, ratified in 2002, that created the International Criminal Court. To the extent that the judges there are affected by public opinion and international norms, the public stance of someone of Jimmy Carter’s stature is potentially important if Palestine brings an action against Tel Aviv on this basis.

Carter is beginning a fight against liver cancer, which he will no doubt pursue with the same steely-eyed determination he has shown in all of his political and social crusades. His forthright declaration of the end of any hope for a two-state solution is a twilight jeremiad about the darkness to come. There is going to be a single state in Israel-Palestine, he is saying. And Palestinians are not going to have the rights of citizens in it—just as the Bantustan KwaZulu remained under South African suzerainty even as its people had their South African citizenship revoked. It isn’t acceptable to the former president. It shouldn’t be acceptable to anyone.

Source:
http://www.nationofchange.org/2015/08/15/a-brutally-frank-jimmy-carter-calls-out-israel-on-permanent-apartheid/
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Interview with Kim Dotcom

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 02 Aug 2015 14:40:00 +0000

Kim Dotcom was the founder of Megaupload, its successor Mega, and New Zealand's Internet Party. A while ago you had a chance to ask him about those things as well as the U.S. government charging him with criminal copyright violation and racketeering.

Kim Dotcom Answers Your Questions

SlashDot
July 30, 2015

Politics - Internet Party and the TPP by vinn
So you've recently taken a foray into politics with the formation of the Internet Party. What are your thoughts about what's needed to actually improve New Zealand politics? One of the stated goals of the Internet Party is to review the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade agreement, which has recently become a hot topic in the US as well. What are your thoughts on the TPP?

Dotcom: The TPP is for the benefit of corporations and their wealthy shareholders. It does not benefit citizens. Prices will go up, human rights will be reduced and if you'll ever have a health issue you'll end up paying more. It's a corrupt treaty, paid for by the lobbyists of the rich, bribing politicians to do their bidding in expanding monopolies to the detriment of the people. That is why they have to keep the text of the TPP secret. That is why their PR machine (the mainstream media) is drumming a pro TPP narrative.

Do your homework and within an hour of online research you will realize that the TPP isn't helping you. It's toxic.The Internet Party will continue to fight against increasing inequality and the reduction of our rights and freedoms. If you want to launch the Internet Party in your country to make a difference please contact us. We are happy to make our branding, policies and advise available to you. We can't do it alone. We need your help.

Mana party
by Anonymous Coward

You created the "internet party" as a fight against privacy laws being tramped in your adopted country, helped shape policy and pushed for "digital rights" not just for yourself but others.

Yet your "party" formed an alliance with the "mana party" who once claimed that broadband was stealing the soul of the country and sought compensation from the Govt, a party who has never gotten more the 1.30% of the popular vote, Nationalisation of monopolies and duopolies (which means they will never get any business votes, and which constricts their only policy of "for the people" (aren't people allowed to make profit?)

I was absolutely with the "internet party" and digital rights, until they made a coalition with the "mana" party. Was this a choice that you had a part in for the betterment of the political party you bankrolled, or was this out of control?

Dotcom: We joined forces with Mana for 2 simple reasons:

1. Mana is the party of the poor and disadvantaged. They fight against inequality. They want a government that is helping those that are struggling. I think that's honorable. And if you ever get into a situation where you need your government to help you out I think you would be glad that there is a party that cares about your urgent needs. Society has grown cold and selfish. We need to be more considerate for those who really need help. That's why I support Mana. I do admit that they had some radical &unrealistic ideas. It was our job to explain that to them and work with them on better ideas. They were good listeners and had the wisdom to change.

2. We started the Internet Party only 6 months before the election. Mana was our most likely ticket into parliament. It was a strategic decision because we would not have reached the threshold of 5% on the first run. It is extremely difficult for a brand new political movement to achieve the minimum 5% required to get into parliament. It was a gamble. We all knew that it was risky but we had to try. It didn't work out and I took full responsibility for that. In 2017 the Internet Party will run again, solo. We will have more time to prepare for the election and work hard to convince the electorate that we are worthy of making it into parliament.

Modern Warfare 3
by Spy Handler

Did you achieve your rank all by yourself, or were there other people you shared your account with?

What is your favorite
-Game type? (Team Deathmatch, Search and Destroy, etc)
-Loadout
-Perks

Any other comments or stories you'd like to share about your COD experience?

Dotcom: I played on my account the vast majority of the time. I have always achieved the #1 spot in any Call of Duty without help. But to maintain the #1 spot I would sometimes ask someone to help me out when I had long business meetings or other time consuming engagements. I played free-for-all and I had so many players chasing my #1 spot that it would have been impossible to maintain it without help because of my time constraints.

A story I like to share is this: I would rarely verse players in free-for-all who could impress me. Especially in 1on1 matches. But every now and then there was a standout talent. One kid impressed me with his skills and I decided to sponsor him to become a top competitive player. If given the opportunity he could win COD champs one day. We became good friends and he is currently living at the mansion and we play video games together.

I'm in love with Destiny at the moment. AW was a disappointment but I can't wait for Black Ops 3 to come out.

Perspective on jurisdictionally conflicting laws
by Capt.Gingi

What are your thoughts on the conflict of laws between jurisdictions with specific regard to how countries like the U.S. can claim jurisdiction over the actions of people and business in other countries if U.S. citizens seek to use the internet to purchase or use services not available in their own country?

Dotcom: The US Justice system is a tool of a US empire that wants to control the world. Isn't it arrogant for a US judge, who is limited to US laws, to destroy businesses and jobs half way around the world, without any due process? This is the world we live in today. You are all governed by US laws. They can take ownership of your assets and do it without you ever getting heard, without any due process. It happened to me, in a COPYRIGHT case.

I have never traveled to or lived in the United States and my business wasn't located there either. Based on my experience the US Justice system deserves no respect. Alleged criminals are tortured into submission with the threat of decades in jail and forced to make plea deals even when they are completely innocent like our software programmer Andrus Nomm. He could not take the pressure anymore and decided to make a deal. That isn't Justice. It's a rigged game, with a completely unfair power balance, designed to give the Government more wins.

I'm strong enough and I will fight for the future of my children and for Internet Freedom. The DOJ knows that this case is toxic.They know I'm not a criminal copyright infringer. In fact the New Zealand Govt has tried to negotiate a deal with my lawyers, on behalf of the US, to settle this case. The solicitor general of New Zealand had proposed that this case could go away if I was willing to accept some copyright liability under New Zealand law. No extradition required. I told my lawyers that I'm innocent and that I'm not interested. And the next thing you know is the Attorney General of New Zealand offering my main NZ counsel a job as a judge. I'm dealing with an unethical system that is willing to rig the game just to win. That's when I decided to start the Internet Party.

Location, location, location
by nut

If, hypothetically, you had emigrated to San Francisco USA rather than NZ and Megaupload had been a US-based company do you think it would have been more or less vulnerable to the kind of action it was shut down by? Bonus points for an insightful discussion of the value of political contributions, etc.

Dotcom: The US government would not have taken such overreaching and drastic action if 220 Americans would have lost their jobs. There has never been a case like this before and never since the almost 4 years since the raid. The DOJ called this a test case. The New Zealand government is so corrupt and so eager to please the US that they did not even question any of the bogus legal theories the DOJ is using in this case. The only hope they have is that I don't have the funds to afford a good legal defense, which is why they are pursuing an aggressive starve-out strategy.

End game
by Sigvatr

Do you foresee an eventual end game to copyright infringement legislation in the future, or a moment when copyright holders throw their hands in the air and give up for good?

Dotcom: As long as there is a giant lobbying industry in America and politicians who allow themselves to be bribed by lobbyists it will just get worse. The vast majority of politicians today are not working for the people. They work for those who keep them in power. The banks and corporations. The US government is so openly corrupt it is hard to understand how the American people let them get away with it. I hope at the next election America will vote for someone who makes it his or her priority to get rid of the money influence in politics.

If you could rewrite copyright
by NotInHere

What would be your proposed copyright rule set, so that content producers still can live off their creations?

Dotcom: Copyrights & technology need to co-exist. Copyright creators need to adapt to new technologies and not the other way around. The Internet is threatening the old copyright models but it is also offering an enormous opportunity to monetize copyright with innovative concepts that are better than those of the past. Today we are living in a world of copyright extremism. It is completely misguided and it's hurting technology companies and the Internet as a whole. I believe that the companies and people creating content should be compensated for their work and investments. But just like any other industry the copyright industry has to evolve, constantly. It isn't right to censor the Internet and stifle innovation just because the creative industry is struggling to find newer, better business models.

End to End Crypto
by psyclone

Is there a market in the world for strong cryptographic file sharing? Meaning only the end users control their private keys and the "network" just connects users -- it never knows the keys.

Or does that only work on the small scale such as one user sharing some files with a few friends. If that same user shared those files with ten thousand friends, then would the sharing would be public as the keys would be "leaked" by nature of lots of people having them? (And thus those files could be examined for copyright infringement.)

Dotcom: Yes. The booming encryption market has been created by the actions of the US government. Businesses that offer verifiably safe encryption will outperform those that don't. Now that the people are aware of what's going on they will demand more privacy options from the services and products they purchase. Governments will struggle to stop or control encryption and technology will prevail. That is good for all of us. But it's sad that technology has to safeguard our human rights because our governments failed to do so.

Mega Technique
by Anonymous Coward

I've seen some criticism from open source advocates and hackers that Mega can't be trusted because the source isn't available.What assurance could you give someone to the point that their files may not be kept secret while hosted on your platform?

Dotcom: I'm not involved in Mega anymore. Neither in a managing nor in a shareholder capacity. The company has suffered from a hostile takeover by a Chinese investor who is wanted in China for fraud. He used a number of straw-men and businesses to accumulate more and more Mega shares. Recently his shares have been seized by the NZ government. Which means the NZ government is in control. In addition Hollywood has seized all the Megashares in the family trust that was setup for my children.

As a result of this and a number of other confidential issues I don't trust Mega anymore. I don't think your data is safe on Mega anymore.

But my non-compete clause is running out at the end of the year and I will create a Mega competitor that is completely open source and non-profit, similar to the Wikipedia model. I want to give everyone free, unlimited and encrypted cloud storage with the help of donations from the community to keep things going.

What drives you to keep going?
by Joe Gillian

I've seen many a file-sharing site shutter its doors or become overly restrictive after even the merest hint of action by law enforcement officials, doing things like requiring logins to upload or download, sometimes even requiring people to sign in via social media (4Shared). The end result is that a lot of these places become borderline unusable.

Unlike a lot of those website operators, you have personally been dragged out of your home by law enforcement and had actions taken against MegaUpload by the United States government. It could be argued that you have more to fear as a "face" of file-sharing that the Department of Justice would want to make an example out of than pretty much any other file-sharing or torrent tracker operator out there (apart from maybe the Pirate Bay founders).

So my question is this: What drives you to keep going with Mega after having such things happen to you? What kind of mindset does it take to (metaphorically) keep spitting in the face of the United States government after having them raid your house by proxy?

Dotcom: It ain't easy. I had to carry a lot of pain and fear for a lot of people in the last few years. They destroyed my business. They took everything I worked for and seized all my assets.They destroyed my family and drove my wife back into depression and alcoholism which destroyed the happy family we once had. So many people suffered as a result of the unjust actions by both the US and New Zealand governments. I thought about giving up. Who wouldn't in such a situation.

But I have to fight because I have such a huge responsibility. First and foremost I have to fight for my five children. They need me. Unfortunately they can't rely on anybody else. And of course I'm fighting for all of you. If I give up all of you will lose. They will use this case to turn our Internet to shit. I love the Internet. It gave me everything. I believe in Internet freedom, in your right to share, in your right to privacy. With your help and your support I can do it. I want to win this fight for all of us.

To anyone who is interested in this case I recommend that you read this document to understand the corruption behind the mercenary law enforcement action that led to the destruction of Megaupload.

Just one:
by Opportunist

Was it worth it?

Dotcom: Yes!

Source:
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/15/07/27/200204/interviews-kim-dotcom-answers-your-questions
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Are Some Cultures Better ?

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Jul 2015 22:32:00 +0000

Are Some Cultures Better Than Others at Cultivating Empathy?

Monday, July 27, 2015
by Gary Olsen
The Morning Call

Today's pop quiz: Which of the following countries has the most medical professionals working in the world's poorest countries; has doctors who have performed 3 million free eye operations in 33 countries; created the world's largest medical school with 22,000 students; has a ratio of one physician for every 167 people (No. 1 in the world); has lower infant mortality and higher life expectancy than the United States; and has free, high quality, universal primary health care?

A. Sweden
B. France
C. Canada
D. Norway
E. None of the above

The correct answer is E. None of the above. Many Americans are surprised to learn that the country described above is Cuba. For more than five decades we've heard plenty about Cuba's shortcomings, but virtually nothing about its stunning accomplishments.

For many scholars, the Cuban health care system is the jewel in the crown of Cuban achievements. Here I choose to focus on Cuba's medical internationalism, a practice admired throughout the world but virtually unknown to U.S. citizens.

After the Cuban revolution of Jan. 1, 1959, which overthrew the brutal Batista dictatorship, about half of Cuba's doctors fled the island for more lucrative practices, most to Miami. Yet even under these dire circumstances and the crushing U.S. embargo that followed, Cuba began dispatching volunteer medical contingents abroad.

Many people are surprised to learn that Cuban medical professionals have saved more lives in the Third World than all the wealthy G-8 nations combined, plus the World Health Organization and the Nobel Peace Prize recipient Doctors Without Borders.

As noted by Cuba expert John Lee Anderson, "At any given time, there are an estimated 50,000 Cuban doctors working in slums and rural areas in as many as 30 other developing nations around the world."

And because Cuba believes health care is a fundamental human right, these totally volunteer services are provided to recipients gratis. One remarkable example among many follows from Cuba's world class specialization in ophthalmology. Under Operacion Milagro (Operation Miracle), Cuban specialists have performed vision-restoring surgery to 2 million people in 34 countries, again at no cost.

In sentiments shared by people from Asia and Africa to Latin American and the Caribbean, Bolivian President Evo Morales expressed his gratitude for Cuba's crucial medical assistance to his country by saying, "Cuba has shown its solidarity to us by sending 'troops' who save lives — not like other countries which send troops to end lives."

In 1999, Cuba founded ELAM (the Latin America School of Medicine), the world's largest medical school. It offers a free education (including books and a living stipend) to students from poor countries, and more than 10,000 students have graduated from its highly respected six-year program. The only requirement is that students make a moral commitment to return home and serve marginalized populations. Note: Since 2007, more than 100 young people from the U.S. have graduated from ELAM and returned to work in underserved areas of the United States.

At this point, I can readily appreciate why some readers might react with cynicism. Canadian professor John Kirk, who conducted 120 in-depth interviews with Cuban medical volunteers, acknowledges a myriad of motives. However, he emphasizes that "a key element that needs to be understood is the form of socialization that Cubans are reared in, and develop throughout their formative years."

Professor Kirk notes that beginning in day care, Cuban children are socialized to watch out for the weakest, to empathize with others who are less fortunate. A volunteer physician in Venezuela added, "We Cuban doctors devote everything to love and solidarity because that's what we've been taught since we were little, in school." This was a founding principle of the Cuban revolution.

Cuba's robust medical internationalism contradicts the common-sense, bleak view of human nature, the dominant narrative of hyper individualism and the profit motive. I suggest that we remain open to the possibility that some cultures are compatible with the lived expression of empathy while other cultures suppress it.

Cuba's practice of moral medicine is the world's most compelling example of empathetic solidarity. Despite overwhelming odds, this small country of 11 million people has taken empathy from the abstract realm and brought it down to earth. We court both personal and national peril by not learning more about it.

Article Source:
http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/07/27/are-some-cultures-better-others-cultivating-empathy
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Snowden's Cryptographer on the NSA and Defending the Internet

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 06 Feb 2015 00:20:00 +0000

Click here if Youtube video does not display

by Alex Pasternack
Motherboard
November 26, 2013

Since Edward Snowden's disclosures about widespread NSA surveillance, Americans and people everywhere have been presented with a digital variation on an old analog threat: the erosion of freedoms and privacy in exchange, presumably, for safety and security.

Bruce Schneier knows the debate well. He's an expert in cryptography and he wrote the book on computer security; Applied Cryptography is one of the field's basic resources, "the book the NSA never wanted to be published," raved Wired in 1994. He knows the evidence well too: lately he's been helping the Guardian and the journalist Glenn Greenwald review the documents they have gathered from Snowden, in order to help explain some of the agency's top secret and highly complex spying programs.

To do that, Schneier has taken his careful digital privacy regime to a new level, relying on a laptop with an encrypted hard drive that he never connects to the internet. That couldn't prevent a pilfered laptop during, say, a "black bag operation," of course. "I know that if some government really wanted to get my data, there'd be little I could do to stop them."

Still, Schneier manages to avoid paranoia. When we met at the Berkman Center at Harvard Law School, where he's now a research fellow, scribbling away on security, the Internet, and power, Schneier wore a Hawaiian shirt and a ponytail; he had the cool demeanor of a rebellious tenured professor. He insisted that the Snowden bombshells only confirmed things he'd and many others had known for years.

"Nothing in the documents is really a surprise," he said.

I asked him about the NSA disclosure that bothered him most. He described how, in the name of defending the country, the hackers of the NSA are committing a cardinal digital sin: weakening the Internet by targeting cryptography and other security measures that make the internet secure for the bad guys and for everyone else too.

The NSA used to target only foreign signals, and according to its own legal interpretations, that's what it still does. But communications are now global: the Internet is so interconnected that everything and everyone on the network becomes a potential target, even the network itself.

That's not to say that the NSA has "broken" all cryptography: "the math works," says Schneier, and while anonymizing tools like Tor are targeted by NSA, they seem to remain secure. Instead, the NSA appears to have manipulated encryption tools and tapped into data center links and fiber backbones—in essence, silently removing the hinges from their doors.

"We do know they made a systematic effort to place back doors in the products we use to get our security, and that makes us all less safe," he said. Schneier, like others in the cryptography community, regularly trades hunches and suspicions about NSA encryption exploits, and the National Institute for Standards and Technology, the federal group that sets encryption standards, is reviewing its past work in light of the NSA scandal. But few know for sure just how widespread the NSA's targeting of encryption standards is. And, Schneier worries, those who do know might not necessarily be well-intentioned.

"It's folly to believe they are the only ones that are taking advantage of it," he said. "So [the NSA is] saying in effect, we want to listen in on the Chinese, so much that we're gonna let the Chinese listen in on you. I think we'll be safer in a world where neither can listen—if we spend more effort on security, on assurance, then we'll be safer, even though there are bad actors."

Surprise or no, Schneier admits that revelations like this are still hard for us to compute. He pulled out a little metaphorical key to that idea: "It's a lot like thinking about death. We know it's coming. It's not a surprise. And yet when it comes, it's always a surprise," he said. "That's what Snowden is doing—he's making us think about this."

Thinking about surveillance doesn't need to be overly philosophical or difficult or even creepy. "It's not about anonymity, it's not about secrecy—It's about control." That concern over how our data is treated, by whom and for what, applies to how government surveillance is conducted, but it's also crucial when thinking about the companies that act as stewards of our data, and which offer the government and who knows who else a ready font of valuable information about us.

And while we may have tacit and Constitutional agreements with the government (agreements that have been broken), Schneier worries that we lack similar protections from big tech companies and their "feudal"-like systems where we work and play. Why not have "a Magna Carta for the Internet," he wonders, to more clearly articulate the terms of our relationship with those companies? That would help to establish some kind of trust—which is, he points out, crucial for society, for security, and when it's necessary, secrecy.

But under the shroud of too much secrecy, and not enough oversight and transparency, security measures can run roughshod over our standards and our sense of autonomy. Kept in the dark, we may have nothing to say about it. There are technological solutions, like continually improving cryptography and protecting yourself online, but there are also political ones too: now a number of measures are afoot in Congress and in the courts meant to rein in the government and Internet companies.

Schneier is carefully optimistic about political change, especially as more younger people enter the fray with a stronger sense of the relationship between our data and our lives as citizens. But given how little most people tend to think about their data or their privacy, he worries that serious political responses to the problem of digital security might take some time. Consider something as basic as the most common password. "It used to be 'password,' but we all got better, and now it's 'password1,'" he chuckled. "That fools all the hackers—don't tell them!"

Source:
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/snowdens-cryptographer-on-the-nsa--defending-the-internet
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Inner City Turmoil and Other Crises

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 14 Jan 2015 23:24:00 +0000

My Predictions for 2015

Written by Ron Paul
Thursday January 8, 2015
Emphasis added (ed)

If Americans were honest with themselves they would acknowledge that the Republic is no more. We now live in a police state. If we do not recognize and resist this development, freedom and prosperity for all Americans will continue to deteriorate. All liberties in America today are under siege.

It didn’t happen overnight. It took many years of neglect for our liberties to be given away so casually for a promise of security from the politicians. The tragic part is that the more security was promised — physical and economic — the less liberty was protected.

With cradle-to-grave welfare protecting all citizens from any mistakes and a perpetual global war on terrorism, which a majority of Americans were convinced was absolutely necessary for our survival, our security and prosperity has been sacrificed.

It was all based on lies and ignorance. Many came to believe that their best interests were served by giving up a little freedom now and then to gain a better life.

The trap was set.

At the beginning of a cycle that systematically undermines liberty with delusions of easy prosperity, the change may actually seem to be beneficial to a few. But to me that’s like excusing embezzlement as a road to leisure and wealth — eventually payment and punishment always come due. One cannot escape the fact that a society’s wealth cannot be sustained or increased without work and productive effort. Yes, some criminal elements can benefit for a while, but reality always sets in.

Reality is now setting in for America and for that matter for most of the world. The piper will get his due even if “the children” have to suffer. The deception of promising “success” has lasted for quite a while. It was accomplished by ever-increasing taxes, deficits, borrowing, and printing press money. In the meantime the policing powers of the federal government were systematically and significantly expanded. No one cared much, as there seemed to be enough “gravy” for the rich, the poor, the politicians, and the bureaucrats.

Warfare/Welfare State Requires Police Control

As the size of government grew and cracks in the system became readily apparent, a federal police force was needed to regulate our lives and the economy, as well as to protect us from ourselves and make sure the redistribution of a shrinking economic pie was “fair” to all. Central economic planning requires an economic police force to monitor every transaction of all Americans. Special interests were quick to get governments to regulate everything we put in our bodies: food, medications, and even politically correct ideas. IRS employees soon needed to carry guns to maximize revenue collections.

The global commitment to perpetual war, though present for decades, exploded in size and scope after 9/11. If there weren’t enough economic reasons to monitor everything we did, fanatics used the excuse of national security to condition the American people to accept total surveillance of all by the NSA, the TSA, FISA courts, the CIA, and the FBI. The people even became sympathetic to our government’s policy of torture.

To keep the people obedient to statism that originated at the federal level of government, control of education was required. It is now recognized that central control of education has actually ruined education, while costs have skyrocketed.

National control of medical care has brought a similar result. This has meant more money for bureaucrats, as well as drug, insurance, and health management companies, and less money for medical care. Constantly more police are required to run our lives at greater costs while providing less benefit. “Nationalizing” both medical care and education has provided a great incentive to increase the policing powers of the federal government.

The predictable poverty that results from such a terrible system is now upon us and is a strong motivation for the militarization of local police as part of the expansion of the national police state.

Temporary and perceived benefits of government overreach and expanded policing powers end up becoming the real problem. By the time it is understood that these “benefits” are artificial, government power and special interests have gained control of a system designed to serve them and not the people the programs were purported to help. The victims are left hanging and taught that too much freedom is the source of the problem, prompting even more support for the policing power of the state.

Today the failure of central economic planning and of the US as world policeman is everywhere to be found. This is especially noticeable in the police war on the lawbreakers — real and unreal — in America.

The failures of social and economic policy of the past 50 years have led to a mounting friction between the local police and the rights of the people. Local police have been militarized and have become an integral part of the national police state. A police culture that accepts the principle of initiating unjustified violence against citizens has become a serious problem.

The news is constant. If it’s not Ferguson, it’s New York City. If not New York City, it’s Chicago or Detroit or Cleveland. And I believe the violence in our cities is only in its early stages. We had a taste of the conflict in the 1960s, but the fundamental values of equal justice and economic opportunity have receded further from reality.

Failing to understand why the past 50 years of government expansion to eradicate poverty has only worsened the conditions of our cities will guarantee that the violent conflicts we see erupting today will only get worse.

Fight for Equal Protection Distorted by 'War on Poverty'

Fifty years ago, as a result of Martin Luther King Jr.’s leadership in a plea for equal justice, LBJ declared war on poverty. Poverty was seen at that time as the major contributing factor in the plight of those living in the inner city. King’s dream was to make sure all people will be judged by the “content of their character” and not by “the color of their skin.” Good advice, but it was never followed. Residual racism remains, but the excuse for every shortcoming in the failed cities is said to be due to the color of one’s skin.

The very expensive war on poverty has after 50 years only made matters worse, compounding the problems of poverty and inflation while hurting most of the people the “war” was supposed to help. Currently our government spends over $1 trillion per year on anti-poverty programs. Over the past 50 years, over $16 trillion was spent, i.e., wasted. And yet poverty and dire economic conditions remain the major factor in the violence that persists, which incites or gives the police the excuse to overreact to maintain order. The plans and expectations for the war on poverty must have been seriously flawed.

Although the degree of poverty is different for the various races in the United States, all categories — Asian, white, Hispanic, and black — have had a steady increase in real median income from 1964 until the year 2000, when the first of many bubbles started bursting. In all four race categories incomes are lower since then.

With the economy moving into the next stage of liquidation of bad investment and debt, we should expect this trend to continue. Economic setbacks and a decrease in real income are not limited to blacks in the inner city. The setback for the young has been dramatically worse than for the older generations, aggravating the problem of violent crime in our cities.

The “progress” of the early years of the war on poverty is understandable because the payment that always must be paid was delayed. The deficits and the borrowing and printing of money were unsustainable. It should not be difficult to understand that the welfare benefits, the bloated government, the excessive salaries, and the promised pensions for thousands of nonproductive bureaucrats in Detroit would lead to bankruptcy. The benefits had to be reduced. If policies don’t change and the politicians continue to be elected by wild promises, the disaster will continue. How can the provocateurs blame racism for the plight of the middle class in Detroit?

We must get people to reject flawed economic policy if we want a real war on poverty.

LBJ’s war on poverty was no more successful than his Vietnam War — or any war since, for that matter. A national government that can print money as needed to finance extraordinary extravagance can function longer than a city, state, or private entity, but it too must eventually “file for bankruptcy” albeit in a different fashion. As we are now seeing, the bankruptcy of a nation also involves poverty for many.

This situation will continue to worsen. Since poverty is a major contributing factor to the violence of excessive police militarization, some fundamentals must be understood. The economic theories of Paul Samuelson, Paul Krugman, John Maynard Keynes, and all those who claim to know how to “regulate” the economy to benefit the poor, must be challenged and abandoned.

So far reality has not yet set in. The poor grow in numbers as the middle class shrinks and the privileged class that benefits from government spending and government control of the monetary system thrives.

The political demagogues and the authoritarians feed the flames of resentment that develop between the rich and the poor as class warfare and racial strife take over. They care little and understand less what liberty is all about — the more chaos there is, the more laws they seek to pass.

The Victimized Inner Cities

This social disruption has motivated the enthusiastic growth and militarization of our local police departments. The law and order crowd thrives on excessive laws and regulations that no US citizen can escape. The out-of-control war on drugs is the worst part, and it generates the greatest danger in poverty-ridden areas via out-of-control police. It is estimated that these conditions have generated up to 80,000 SWAT raids per year in the United States. Most are in poor neighborhoods and involve black homes and businesses being hit disproportionately. This involves a high percentage of no-knock attacks. As can be expected many totally innocent people are killed in the process. Property damage is routine and compensation is rare. The routine use of civil forfeiture of property has become an abomination, totally out of control, which significantly contributes to the chaos. It should not be a surprise to see resentment building up against the police under these conditions. The violent reaction against local merchants in retaliation for police actions further aggravates the situation —hardly a recipe for a safe neighborhood.

Though poverty and excessive laws associated with the war on drugs are significant factors in the conflicts that are routine in the inner-city, the overreaction by both sides continues to make the situation much worse. As a result, policing in general is out of control, and anything suggesting racial confrontation leads to rioting, looting, and property destruction.

Civil liberties are ignored by the police, and the private property of innocent bystanders is disregarded by those resenting police violence. When police overreact and unfairly enforce the law, it elicits a violent reaction from those on the receiving end. This only escalates the problem. It’s an invitation for outside provocateurs to rush in and aggravate the racial tensions — all the while never trying to understand the real reasons behind police militarization and the cause of poverty.

The military-industrial complex now systematically lobbies to provide to local police departments the newest and most sophisticated weaponry — just as they sell weapons to the United States government to fight undeclared wars overseas. Drug laws are pushed by many corporate interests as well. Pharmaceutical companies, alcohol companies, and private prison systems all support of the insane war on drugs. The victims are the poor who suffer with a messed up economy and have no easy access to jobs. A natural temptation is to become a drug dealer. Violent activities arising from the drug war making drug transactions a criminal undertaking create demand in communities for strict law enforcement.

Why do the race baiters have so much success in making this type of conflict a racial problem alone?

Unfortunately many of them make a living off stirring up trouble. If the situation were understood in terms of police brutality and poverty, the evening news would be dramatically different. Turning it into strictly a racial conflict narrows the discussion, and the idea of responsibility for one’s action no longer needs to be discussed.

The race factor seems to stir up the emotions. Mob-like responses can be achieved, which further inflames the situation. Out of control police and an entire segment of our population taught that responsibility for one’s actions is a negative are a volatile mix.

Justice under the law requires that people cannot be punished or rewarded because of the color of their skin, but unfortunately King’s claim that only a person’s character counts is forgotten.

The entitlement mentality is a source of much anger and misunderstanding. It leads people who see themselves as victims to one conclusion: they are entitled to be taken care of. They believe that more government transfer payments are the solution. They claim that they deserve to be taken care of and that, if they are not, there’s trouble to be had — which only opens the door to more police overreactions.

There is agreement with my contention that poverty is a big problem and the source of much trouble. Therefore, it is said, someone must take care of it. If one trillion dollars per year doesn’t do the job, then make it $2 trillion. If the war on poverty’s $16 trillion hasn’t worked, make it $32 trillion. This sentiment reflects the entitlement mentality that has taught many that some people have a “right” to government handouts and that the rich must pay. This is an idea that is deeply flawed, and it stirs up class warfare on top of racial animosities and police brutality.

The blanket demand that all wealthy individuals owe support to the poor through government welfare programs is not an example of equal justice under the law. It is an example of egalitarianism gone awry. Welfare, which is the use of force to transfer wealth from one group to another, is based on a moral principle of equality that in fact is not moral and does not work.

The wealthy special interests, such as banks, the military-industrial complex, the medical industry, the drug industry, and many other corporatists, quickly gain control of the system. Crumbs may be thrown to the poor, but the principle of wealth transfer is hijacked and used for corporate and foreign welfare instead of wealth transfers to the poor.

Many people do indeed gain wealth unfairly with today’s system, which adds to the envy shared by many and especially the poor. But this is a problem that is not solved by indiscriminately placing blame on successful businesses. The result would be the country and the whole world becoming poorer while resentment rises.

Honest profits of successful entrepreneurs are quite different than profits of the corporate elite who gain control of the government and, as a consequence, accumulate obscene wealth by “robbing” the middle class. To blame and destroy those who make an honest living by satisfying consumers without the use of special benefits from the government is destructive to liberty and wealth.

Reforms that are driven by envy of successful people making an honest living will not address the problem of poverty. Poverty is actually made worse by an aggressive sense of victimization.

Many factors are involved in the crisis of our cities, including the following:

Police brutality, militarization of the police, excessive laws, courts and law enforcement efforts ignoring the principles of equal justice,
Racism that exists to some degree on both sides of the conflict,
Rampant crime reflecting structural poverty,
Absence of an understanding of the difference between earned and stolen wealth,
Race baiting,
The entitlement mentality, self-reliance not being a goal for many, and the breakdown of the family unit,
The war on drugs, and
The lack of economic understanding regarding the Federal Reserve, taxes, welfare, economic consequences of constant war, deficits, and excessive government spending.

True satisfaction comes from productive effort and self-reliance and not from a government transferring wealth in an effort to bring about an egalitarian society.

The absence of an understanding of the nonaggression principle makes it difficult for positive reforms to develop. Unfortunately hypocrisy has come to equal “common sense.” Placing confidence in people who thrive on wielding government power and who spend a lifetime using it to benefit special interests is not a wise policy.

The people have too little confidence that most problems can be solved in a voluntary manner in a society that cherishes civil liberties. There’s never an admission that government problem-solving doesn’t work. Government-created problems are a road to poverty and resentment. Too many people believe that “free stuff” from the government can solve our problems. They mistakenly believe that deficits don’t matter and that wealth can come from a printing press.

The recent high profile episodes of racial conflict involving police killings and the violence in some neighborhoods have been a fertile environment for the demagogues and those who thrive on racial conflict.

Some have suggested that sensitivity training for all police personnel should be required, to teach proper ways to deal with the public. Though there’s a lot of extenuating circumstances that provoke overreaction by the police, I’m not optimistic that the problem will be helped much by sensitivity training. Retraining the police won’t touch the complex problems that pit the police against the victims of complex social conditions generated by hate, violence and bad economic policies. The high profile episodes of police violence and overreaction are a consequence of conditions that in many ways were generated by government policy.

If social engineering intended to produce economic equality fails, more of the same cannot possibly be the solution. Seeking and promoting equal justice has nothing to do with welfare redistribution. On the contrary: equal justice requires the end of welfare redistribution. Redistribution is a process that is always destined to help a small minority, whether in an economy like ours that endorses central economic planning or in one run by radical fascists or communists. While advocates claim that it’s the duty of government to pursue economic equality, all efforts fail to achieve that goal, while gutting the principle of equal justice.

The Rich Are Getting Richer, But Why?

Under an authoritarian regime, those in power take care of themselves. This always leads to poverty and discrepancy in wealth distribution. Eventually the social strife that is predictable leads to an overthrow of the government. The Soviet communist leaders never suffered from want, but even they were routed when the people in the Soviet system decided that they had had enough.

We must realize that we are not exempt from a breakdown of our system. The strife that we are witnessing is a reflection of a growing number of people who are recognizing the discrepancy between rich and poor, the weak and the powerful, Wall Street and Main Street. The courts are obviously failing at meting out justice fairly and impartially. Money and race have a lot to do with how arrests, convictions, and incarcerations are carried out. That provides motivation for some people to become angry and violently strike out against anyone who appears to have more than they do.

While the courts fail to follow the rules of equal justice, those who react violently believe that attacking almost anyone is justifiable in seeking what they claim is justice.

Talk of the 99 percent and one percent is not just sloganeering. It reveals a problem generated by government and a situation in which some people believe that they have a “right” to be taken care of rather than just a right to live in a free and just society where all persons are treated equally under the law.

Indeed the rich are getting richer and the poor poorer.

The extreme current inequality is not a consequence of free markets and true liberty. Rather it results from the welfare state that, as always, morphs into a system that provides excesses for the powerful few. Better management of the welfare system does not help. That only changes the types of authoritarians in charge.

Both political parties are financed by Wall Street, the big banks, and the military-industrial complex.

Getting rich by being part of the government class is the problem. Wealth achieved by hard work is quite a bit different. Opening the door to this opportunity is achievable by following the principle of life, liberty, and property.

The economic interventionist system under which we live today rewards those who benefit from government economic planning by the Federal Reserve, access to government contracts, and targeted special regulations to help one group over the other. The insiders benefit during the bubble phase of the business cycle and are the first ones in line for the bailouts. The poor, for whom welfare is supposedly designed to help and for whom the politicians justify the spending, end up with the crumbs while the Wall Street/banking elites thrive in good times and bad.

There are two problems. First is conceding the principle that government has the moral authority to redistribute wealth. Second is believing the redistribution will be managed wisely and without corruption.

All government management ends up being unwise, corrupt, and wasteful.

The money interests inevitably prevail. Belief that “good” bureaucrats and politicians can be found to manage the economy and achieve equity in distribution is a dream that always ends up a nightmare. To make even a modest attempt at this goal requires government to use aggression against one group for the benefit of another. This authority must be denied to government. We must limit the government’s role to protecting equal justice in defense of life, liberty, and property.

Currently the political system in America and in most of the rest of the world is not motivated to seek this limited goal for government. Thus the move toward unfair concentration of wealth in the few and a dramatic increase in the number of people living in poverty as the middle class shrinks. Since there is little understanding of the economic system that is a major contributing factor to the economic problems, it can be expected to exacerbate social and class conflict. The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson plus many similar incidents are signs of a serious economic and political crisis that is not limited to police brutality and runaway violence.

Police brutality and militarization may well induce a violent event far beyond what we have seen in Ferguson. It also can serve as an excuse. But it is not the root cause of turmoil.

The real cause is poverty, the entitlement mentality, and the breakdown of the rule of law. Moral decay and the national police state are the real culprits.

More police with improved training will not do much to deal with this growing conflict. Bowing to entitlement demands from the “victims” will not be helpful in a bankrupt system. We have too many police, too many laws, and too much exemption of government officials from the crimes they commit. Both adding police and increasing entitlements involve expanding the role of government in an effort to solve problems that too much government has already caused.

Government can only be expanded by diminishing the people’s liberty.

This problem can only be ended by maximizing liberty and getting people to realize that self-reliance, hard work, and the absence of coercive force by individuals and government is the only way to reverse the downward trend from which we are suffering.

The battle will no longer be to get the government to pick sides in a conflict between rich and poor, black and white, young and old, or the lawless police versus the lawless demands of entitlement recipients demanding their “fair share.” There has to be an understanding that productive effort and self-reliance on the part of everyone is required for a free society to thrive.

Our Liberties Under Attack

The economic and moral decay of American society is reflected in the loss of liberties. This problem affects all Americans and not just the poor in the inner city. Gradual erosion of personal and economic liberty has proceeded for a century.

The loss of our liberty has sharply accelerated since the 9/11 attacks. We have done to ourselves what no foreign enemy could have possibly accomplished.

Government surveillance provides the state with information that enables it to know our every move. The protection of the Fourth Amendment is gone. Many Americans are comfortable with the sacrifice of liberty for safety and accept the notion that government’s key responsibility is to keep us safe. It’s a nice dream but the truth is it can’t do it. One thing for sure: if it tries, it will do so at the expense of liberty.

Welfare, for the rich or poor, cannot exist without the sacrifice of the principal of property ownership.

Though it always starts small and justified for the “needy,” the principle of wealth transfer incentivizes the special interests and the rich to obtain benefit at the expense of the poor. This occurs in all societies and inevitably grows to a point where the production of wealth is diminished and the system collapses. This is what we are witnessing today.

The growth of the state necessitates government surveillance of all our financial transactions to enhance the collection of tax revenues. Because there is never enough money for the “do-gooders,” the tactics of the tax collectors have become more vicious. Violation of our liberties is excused by the majority in order to ensure that all people “pay their fair share.” When conditions deteriorate, capital controls are imposed to prevent moving assets out of the country. Our monstrous tax code reflects the hundred-years development of our income tax system and is one of the greatest invitations for our “caring” government to pursue the impossible goal of the fair distribution of all wealth.

The vicious drug war, which dates from the early 1970s, provides another excuse for knowing everything about everybody at all times. Its selling point is to keep people safe from themselves. Pursuing this principle guarantees that liberty will be decimated in the process. It invites the government’s interference in our spiritual and intellectual well-being. What one reads and believes becomes of interest to the manipulators who want to care for us for our own good. And they never rest from seeking this goal.

This concession to the state invites controls on everything we put into our bodies: what we eat, drink, or inhale. It takes a lot of bureaucrats, politicians, and money to manage the process. The people, we have been told, are “too stupid” to make their own decisions about their own lives. We are to believe that politicians who invite themselves to rule over us are all-wise and that we should be thankful to sacrifice our liberty for this “service.”

Authoritarians actually believe that we should be grateful to them for all the good things that they do for us. We must remember that if the people don’t rebel against a police state it only grows in size and becomes more ruthless.

In addition to all these trends — which includes the federal government monopolizing and administering medical care and education — government surveillance becomes the darling of the gurus who love the technology that allows the government to know our every move, every day, without limits.

With the disaster of 9/11, an existing acceptance of government monitoring, along with technological advances, helped allow a new age to be ushered in that makes the horrors of George Orwell’s 1984 look less threatening by comparison.

The Federal Government’s War on Us

Tolerance is a favorable trait when it means acting without aggression toward others, but tolerance of the monster that has evolved in our government is not good. Instead of adding more government agencies to spy on the American people, we should be talking about eliminating the ones we have, at a cost the American taxpayers of over $80 billion per year.

We have lived with the global war on terrorism for over 13 years now, and the threat of terrorist attacks against Americans and American allies is worse than ever. Though a global threat exists, the greatest dangers for American citizens here at home have been caused by our own government. Our government’s attacks on our liberties have been overwhelming and worse than anything any foreign power has ever done.

It’s the federal government that leads the charge in all our domestic wars, which, in addition to the global war on terrorism, include the war on drugs, taxpayers, and poverty, all of which contribute to the constant war on our privacy.

Today every American is a suspect.

Our president has established a policy that an American citizen can be assassinated without even being charged with a crime. The national police are made up of over 100,000 bureaucrats and police officials who carry guns to enforce federal law on the American citizens. The Founders and our Constitution intended that policing powers would be the responsibility of the individual states. That was forgotten a long time ago.

Not only do employees of agencies like the CIA, FBI, and BATF carry guns, employees of OSHA, EPA, Fish and Wildlife, and many other agencies enforcing regulations do so as well. The notion of total homeland security being provided by a heavily armed Department of Homeland Security was foreign to America up until just recently.

Today, whether it’s riots in our cities or chaos after a national disaster like a hurricane, the Feds are there taking charge over all local officials and property owners, . It shouldn’t surprise us that our local police departments have become an arm of a runaway federal police mentality that mimics an army.

The Founders did not even want a standing army. They wanted only a militia.

Today we endure, at the expense of our liberties, a national police force armed like an invading military force. We are destined to see a continued escalation of violence in our cities as the internal conflicts grow. Instead of the police quelling the violence, they unfortunately have become part of it.

It’s evident we have a national police force harassing the people and failing to protect liberty and property. It fails to quell riots while too often it incites them. We are also stuck with a huge “standing” army, marching around the world and engaged to some degree in over 150 countries, “making the world safe for democracy” and serving as a private police force for American corporations overseas.

The US Empire: Who Does it Serve?

When Obama announced a shift in geopolitical interest to the Far East —– to keep an eye on China —– one TV anchor pointed out that the move seems quite logical since we have a lot of “business interests” in the region. It is, in fact, far from logical if one looks at the tragic mess US government interventionism has caused in the Middle East and the conflict the US government is stirring up with Russia over Ukraine.

Old-fashioned colonialism was deemed necessary by various European powers to secure natural resources along with control over sea lanes and markets for selling manufactured goods.

European-style colonialism — supporting a mercantilistic economy — came to be seen as politically unrealistic and unnecessary. When free-trade principles were utilized, colonialism did not die; it only changed form. Mercantilism in various forms and degrees drove trade policies of nations with strong economies and militaries. Though the United States is the world’s military powerhouse, controls the oceans and airspace, and has a presence in the four corners of the earth, few people refer to America as a colonial power. But in many ways it is, which has prompted our interests in oil and mineral rich countries.

We are frequently involved in choosing the “elected” leaders, as well as hand-picking dictators, in many countries as well. This is not exactly what the Founders had advised.

International militarization of our policies is just as dangerous to our liberties and economy as is the domestic policy that drives our authoritarian governments to regulate our every move. We are now subject to an out-of-control domestic police force while the US military maintains our Empire overseas.

The “one percenters,” generally speaking, are internationalists who are not champions of individual liberty and free trade. They are supporters of managed trade and international institutions like the WTO where the interests of the one percent can influence the rulings that frequently have little to do with advancing advertised goals of low tariffs and free trade.

The international monetary system is a powerful tool for the select few. Easy credit, government guarantees, and generous contracts are a great benefit to those in charge. Non-compliant nations, or any country that is deemed unfriendly, can be punished with severe sanctions without moral or economic justification. US corporations benefit from our military presence worldwide.

The military-industrial complex profits not only by selling weapons to the US government, but also by being the world’s chief arms provider.

It is a fact that many weapons we send into areas such as Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria frequently end up in the hands of our enemies. ISIS obtaining US weapons led to the US military then taking action to destroy the weapons. The military-industrial complex is immediately available to replace the weapons while earning generous profits. This is great if you happen to be an insider manufacturing or selling these weapons. It is quite a lucrative business, all at the expense of the American taxpayer.

The United States military presence around the world provides a “private” police force to protect US and other international companies against any local resistance or leaders that turn unfriendly.

Our military presence overseas has nothing to do with protecting our freedoms and defending our Constitution.

Those are lies and are used for the purpose of gaining the support of the American people for wars that should never have been fought. After long periods of tragic losses and expense, the American people generally wake up and realize what has happened. But what we need to do is wake the American people up earlier and get them to realize that the resistance has to be heard from the people when the government is preparing for war, not after the war has begun or even ended.

Military personnel are idolized, and, if any one raises a question on whether or not all soldiers are universally “heroes,” that person is accused of being unpatriotic, un-American, and unsupportive of the troops. In fact, the real heroes are the ones who expose the truth and refuse to fight foreign wars for the international corporations. Disengaging our troops from around the world and refusing to defend American neocolonialism is pursuing a course compatible with the qualities that Americans claim to stand for.

Liberty at home is never enhanced by war abroad.

Preemptive wars are especially antagonistic to the goals of peace, commerce, and honest friendship. War “is the health of the state,” it has been said, and the state is the enemy of liberty. Wars overseas justify the wars at home against the American people. It is expected that liberties will be sacrificed when a country is at war. Pro-war neoconservatives are blatantly honest by arguing that for freedom to exist the sacrifice of liberty is required. This admission is truly discouraging. It hardly makes sense that voluntarily sacrificing liberty is worthwhile, if the goal is to preserve liberty. Time is short to reverse this trend.

Not only are our policies destructive to liberty, the economic costs are prohibitive.

So far the bills have not been paid, but they are rapidly coming due. Both the deeply flawed policy of military interventionism abroad and the failed errors of central economic planning at home are now threatening our liberties and our general welfare. The recent breakout of violence in our cities between police on one side and people who have been thrust into the stagnation of poverty as a consequence of bad government social and economic policy on the other side should not be a mystery if one could see the forest for the trees. Economic problems are “blowback” and unintended consequences of well-meaning welfare programs that have been usurped by the powerful special interests demanding benefits off the top.

Yes, it’s tempting to believe the falsehoods of economists who claim that transferring wealth for fairness sake is beneficial, but history shows that it never works. The same humanitarians argue that all spending is crucial and beneficial, deficits don’t matter, borrowing is good, and taxing is the equalizer. If government still comes up short they say just turn on the printing presses. That is the philosophy we have been living with for 85 years, and the evidence is now in. It is clear to most Americans that these policies have not worked. Yet they are not ready to concede that it is less government and more freedom that is the solution.

The obsession with continuing all the same policies has increased our poverty, increased violence between the classes, and lowered the standard of living for all except the elite one percent.

And worst of all, the sacrifice of liberty was for naught. Losing both liberty and the right to truly own property undermines the ability to create wealth. When this process gets out-of-control the economy goes into a death spiral, in the beginning of which we currently find ourselves. Without a correction to the basic understanding of the proper role of government, the downward spiral will continue.

Blowback All Around: We Are Less Safe

Economic blowback and unintended consequences is one thing, but blowback from our needless and aggressive policies around the world is another, and every bit as dangerous. As we find ourselves increasingly engaged economically and militarily around the world, we can expect many more attacks on American interests. With so many military personnel abroad, they will be the easiest targets to be hit. But attacks similar in nature to the 9/11 attacks will remain a threat to our homeland. We will not be attacked because we are free and rich. The attacks will come from angry people who have had friends and relatives killed by America’s careless and often vicious use of our military force in their countries.

It is not that difficult to feel resentment against a country that comes thousands of miles from home and bombs, invades, and punishes with sanctions, other countries that have never initiated force against it. As long as our foreign policy remains the same we can expect serious blowback attacks — and for them to increase in number as our prowess is diminished. Economic factors will determine this, and the loss of dollar hegemony will aggravate the situation.

The US government’s foolishness in foreign affairs has plagued us for 100 years.

The escalation of our presence around the world since 9/11 continues. It is a policy “bubble” of gigantic proportions. This “bubble” of intervention is about to burst. Any serious look at our last 13 years of intervention around the world should convince all skeptics of how foolish, dangerous, and expensive it has been.

The US operates with an attitude that it has the power and therefore the responsibility to be involved in deciding almost every foreign leader, whether elected or appointed as a dictator.

We have been engaged in picking and financing political factions in revolts in countries including Egypt, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, Afghanistan, Iraq, Kurdistan, Syria, Ukraine, Somalia, Nigeria, the Philippines, Liberia, Georgia, Haiti, and Lebanon.

These involvements impose a huge tax and inflation burden on the American people. Trillions of dollars have been spent, and the debt continues to mount. The abject failure of our efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan elicits a loud call from the neoconservatives for more money, troops, weapons, and bombs, with zero hope of a successful mission.

ISIS, now considered our greatest threat, is not even a country, but our occupation and destruction in the region motivates even a ragtag bunch to expel foreign forces from their homeland. ISIS has rallied enormous support and resources to undermine our allies in the region. That assessment is difficult, of course, since it’s hard for anyone to identify exactly who our allies are and distinguish them from our avowed enemies.

US foreign policy has helped create the disastrous situation in Syria. We declared that Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad had to go. We supported rebel factions. We armed them. They turned on us and used their American weapons against us with an amazing resistance headed by the ruthless ISIS, an outgrowth of al-Qaeda. It’s quite an irony that ISIS is well entrenched in northern Iraq, since before we decided to invade Iraq and kill Saddam Hussein no al-Qaeda were present in Iraq. Now the neocons are getting their way and American forces are returning with reinforcements and weapons to save Baghdad from the jihadists.

No one can make this stuff up. It’s too bizarre for fiction. Unfortunately, with the help of the media and our government, the American people have remained oblivious to the stupidity of our policies of the past 13 years.

A day will come though when the full cost of this policy is dumped on the American people. Then they will get the message. Then it will be too late to gracefully exit and restore sanity without cataclysmic changes being forced on us. The major challenge will be the survival of our liberties.

What to expect in 2015?
Foreign Affairs

More American troops will be sent overseas to places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine. There will be no military victories to brag about. More American military personnel will be killed in 2015 than in 2014. Military contractors will be used in growing numbers and their casualties will not be counted as military casualties.

The Ukraine civil war will not end, and the United States will be further bogged down in this conflict. Relations with Russia will continue to deteriorate. The neocons in Congress will gain even more influence over our foreign policy. Punishing sanctions will continue to be made more severe and push Russia further into China’s sphere of influence. Gold will gain credibility as we isolate the Russians from the financial markets.

Sanctions on Russia will alienate Europe against the United States. The British oil industry will suffer from the “conspiracy” of the US and Saudi Arabia to drive oil prices down to punish Russia.

The military-industrial complex will continue to thrive and make even more money with the greater influence of the neocons in the new Congress. Supplemental budgets for the military should be expected, along with covert assistance and additional foreign aid to finance the management of our Empire.

Our enemies’ strength will grow and prompt even more abuse of American citizens’ privacy and free expression. We should not be surprised if there is a reigniting of the conflict in the Balkans. The first of the color revolutions in 2000 in Serbia can hardly be claimed a permanent victory. Generally, bombs from outsiders don’t solve internal problems. Those problems must eventually be solved from within a country rather than from outside interference.

The US and NATO announced that the 13 year war in Afghanistan has ended. There has been neither the pretense of "Mission Accomplished" nor an admission of outright failure, along with an exodus.

In reality the war has not ended and instead will continue for a long time. No victory for US policy is possible. The conflict will actually spread and increase in intensity since our goals are undefinable and therefore the war is un-winnable.

Sanity will not return to US leaders until our financial system collapses — an event for which they are feverishly working.

Domestic Issues

An honest assessment of the economy will not reveal any significant improvement in 2015. Inflation will continue to plague us, possibly even with the government-rigged CPI figures showing an increase. But the true inflation of the Fed’s credit creation, as well as the subsequent mal-investment and the various bubbles bursting will accelerate. Debt in all categories will continue to increase at unsustainable rates. The Fed will not permit interest rates to rise — at least on purpose. Eventually the market will demand that rates do rise, however.

Tax revenues will continue to rise, aiding the policy of the government spending the people’s money rather than those who earned it. Regulations, even with (or maybe especially with) a Republican Congress will continue to increase and make the Federal Register more incomprehensible. Friction between the middle class and the one percent, many of whom are living off government privileges, will escalate further and be reflected in confrontations especially in the large cities. Financial currency controls will continue to expand especially with cross-border transactions.

Blowback and unintended consequences from our sanctions and foreign policy in general will continue to threaten our domestic security and our economy, as well as our liberties.

Relations with Cuba will be improved with the president’s effort to resume diplomatic relations, but the radicals and isolationists who oppose free trade will place roadblocks in the way and slow the process.

A major geopolitical or economic event, greater than the crisis of 2008, is fast approaching. The precipitating event will be a surprise to the majority of politicians and economists. There are many “next shoe to drop” possibilities, and one could happen any time or any place.

Wall Street will be protected, and the trillions of dollars of big banks derivatives will be absorbed by the Fed, the FDIC, and ultimately by the American taxpayers in the next financial crisis. There’s no doubt the poor will get poorer and the rich richer until the spirit of revolution in the people calls a halt to the systematic destruction of freedom in America.

Conclusion: Toward a Peaceful Revolution

Authoritarianism has overtaken our economic system as the welfare mentality takes over at every level of government. Once the initiation of force by government is accepted by the people, even minimally, it escalates and involves every aspect of society.

The only question that remains is just who gets to wield the power to distribute the largess to their friends and chosen beneficiaries. It’s a recipe for steady growth of the government at the expense of liberties, even if official documents and laws written to limit government power are in place. Planting even small seeds of monopoly power in the hands of a few people in government, whether democratically elected or not, will always metastasize like a cancer.

This was Jefferson’s concern when he advised that “the tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time.” He believed the people must warn the rulers that taking up arms against the government is legitimate if the government fails to protect the people’s liberty.

This should be a consideration. But if the spirit of liberty is not alive and well in the hearts and minds of the people, violence alone against the government will not be a solution. History has shown that, more often than not, people who rebel against abusive governments, whether run by kings or modern day dictators, do not gain much — overthrowing one dictator and replacing him with another just as bad.

A clear understanding of the nature and source of liberty is required for revolutions to be beneficial. Restraining the few who thrive on the use of force to rule over us is the challenge. Fortunately they are outnumbered by those who would choose liberty yet lack the will to challenge the humanitarian monsters who gain support from naive and apathetic citizens.

All positive revolutions must be philosophic in nature to make a difference. Violence alone achieves nothing.

Before we can actually restore our liberties, we most likely will have to become a lot less free and much poorer. This is sad since correct and workable answers are available to us if only the people understood them and demanded liberty and honesty, rather than being dependent on excessive government power and believing the false promises of politicians.

Even with the problems we face today and the bleak outlook for the coming year there’s much to encourage us. During this next year there will be the continuation of many more people recognizing the failure of government to create peace and prosperity. More widespread understanding of this truth is required in order to bring about a successful revolution.

The freedom movement, especially with many young people involved, will grow in numbers and influence.

Current monetary policy and the Federal Reserve will continue to lose credibility, especially with the next bailout. Although “too big to fail” will stay in place, it will further alienate Main Street America causing it to rebel against the system.

The real problem of course is that too many “stupid people” are IN our government and have high visibility on the major TV networks.

There will be plenty of people, not officially associated with government, who will rebel against various governments around the world. The sentiments supporting secession, jury nullification, nullification of federal laws by state legislatures, and a drive for more independence from larger governments will continue.

We should not be discouraged. Enlightenment is not nearly as difficult to achieve as it was before the breakthrough with Internet communications occurred. Besides we must remember that “an idea whose time has come” cannot be stopped by armies, demagogues, politicians, or even Fox News or MSNBC.

The time has come for the ideas of liberty to prevail. I smell progress. Let’s make 2015 a fun year for LIBERTY.

Copyright © 2014 by RonPaul Institute. Permission to reprint in whole or in part is gladly granted, provided full credit and a live link are given.

Link: http://www.ronpaulinstitute.org/archives/featured-articles/2015/january/08/inner-city-turmoil-and-other-crises-my-predictions-for-2015/

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This is the tale of two geniuses. One on TV. One Dead.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Thu, 13 Feb 2014 00:20:00 +0000

Aaron Swartz Died for Piers Morgan's Sins

By Greg Palast
Vice Magazine
Jan. 30, 2014

In 2000, Aaron Swartz, aged 14, had just released his astonishing invention, RSS, liberating news and information, replacing the selection of the tiny minds of editors with your own wide judgment.

Around the same time, one of Piers Morgan's stringers hacked into the phone of Sir Paul McCartney's wife and stole some highly personal, and highly valuable, information – the type of gossip used to sell Morgan's grotty little scandal sheet, The Daily Mirror, the cornerstone of Morgan's $20 million fortune based on tittle and titties. Electronic burglary for profit is a crime in the UK and USA both.

But Piers is serving time on prime time, on CNN.

Aaron Swartz did not get a TV show. The Robin Hood of the Information Liberation Front faced 35 years in prison for a selfless act of civil disobedience.

Swartz was charged for the crime of attempting to liberate documents from JSTOR computers. JSTOR is the Goldman Sachs and Politburo of university research papers, a giant information sucker squid that hordes research and discoveries crucial to the public - the public which paid for most of the research.

(If Oxford joined JSTOR when Isaac Newton published, only a well-heeled elite would have the secret of thermodynamics. If Newton worked for Microsoft, we'd be paying a royalty for the use of gravity.)

Aaron, rather than face a life in Obama's dungeon, chose suicide. And Piers?

Piers liberated information as well - but for his own profit. To his loot from hacked gossip, Piers added fraud on the stock market.

His scheme: Two of Morgan's influential financial columnists would make recommendations to the rubes reading The Mirror. Piers bought the stocks just before they were boosted in his paper. and thereby pocketed tens of thousands of dollars when the stocks got tips went public. His co-conspirators, the reporters, got jail time. Not Piers. He admitted to the profiteering and walked away with a fine.

So how did Piers get through US immigration when surrounded by a cloud of criminality? Easy: Morgan's a "genius."

The US embassy gave him a rare O-1 work permit, known as the "Genius Visa" for "the individual who possesses extraordinary ability in the sciences, arts...".

Odd that: Genius or not, US laws, especially the mellifluously titled, "Anti-terrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act" of 1996, bar work visas to those who have admitted to "the essential elements of a crime" including fraud and white collar felonies.

But the US Embassy can exercise its "discretion" on visas. And no one is more discrete than the US Ambassador to the Court of St. James, Mr. Louis Susman, whose credentials are listed as former Vice-Chairman of Citibank and "prolific fundraiser for [the] Democratic Party". Susman's embassy did a thorough review of Piers' visa and stamped Piers a genius and innocent as a lamb. (Here is a photo of Ambassador Susman with Piers at the CNN launch party of Morgan's show.)

What does "genius" Morgan have to do with the horror of the arrest and death of Aaron Swartz?

It's the story of How The System Works—and Whom It Works For.

Swartz, after creating RSS, went on to co-found internet phenomenon Reddit, then social activist group Demand Progress and was named Research Fellow at Harvard University's Safra Center for Ethics.

From there, he led the national uprising against SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, which would have criminalized the spread of information and corporatized its control – all by the age of 26. (Makes you question what the hell you've been doing all these years.)

I've read the Justice Department's indictment of Swartz. The charge would have made Pinochet blush—and Torquemada proud. Swartz hoped to make public millions of university research papers, as the Great Liberator had already done for federal court records. Our rulers couldn't tolerate this any more than Kings and Popes could accept the printing press and translations of the Bible.

The Internet was supposed to bring us freedom by making the world's information available to all. No tyrant, no corporation, no commercial or political monopolist could keep vital information from even the remotest village.

But electronic democracy, the free flow of information, has always scared the crap out of the political and commercial oligarchs.

Did Aaron Swartz deny the oligarchs the ability to extract a monopoly rent for information rightly belonging to us? Of that he was guilty. And by stopping the "Stop Online Piracy Act," he stopped the theft of our online discourse.

Our rulers determined Swartz had to be punished.

But they would never punish Piers–because Piers Morgan is the puppet clown of the information counter-revolution. I joke about Piers and his newspaper's attack on my penis —but, as I've explained last week [See "Piers Morgan and My Pee-Pee'] , Morgan's un-humorous purpose was to smear this reporter to discredit my investigation of the corporate takeover of the British government, his two masters.

You might find it ironic that the government gave Morgan, the fraudster, a Genius visa while indicting Swartz, a true genius.

But that's the genius of the system. Democrats and Republicans, Microsoft and Citibank, not to mention the Chinese Politburo, need a huckster like Morgan who, for a mere $2 million from Time Warner (CNN's owner) will present whatever tickles his bosses and betters. Whether the host of Piers Morgan Tonight is fawning on the feckless landlords of the planet ("Romney is one of the least principled politicians I've ever met – and [so] Mitt Romney might just save America"), or merely distracting the public with Britney Spears and pretend controversies, America will be defended from real information by his puppet show.

Should we deport Piers? Yes: certainly America's Got Talent has got to be a deportable offense. But as long as the puppeteers dangle $2 million strings, they'll just find another willing Pinocchio with the genius to let their show go on.

– Read the full article at Vice.com.

* * * * * * *

Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Billionaires & Ballot Bandits: How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and the highly acclaimed Vultures' Picnic, named Book of the Year 2012 on BBC Newsnight Review.

Visit the Palast Investigative Fund's store or simply make a contribution to keep our work alive!

Sources:
http://www.gregpalast.com/aaron-swartz-died-for-piers-morgans-sins/
http://www.vice.com/en_uk/read/aaron-swartz-died-for-piers-morgans-sins
___________________

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 10 Feb 2014 12:31:00 +0000

FEBRUARY 11TH 2014 IS

The Day We Fight Back

AGAINST MASS SURVEILLANCE

The US is falling out of the ranks of the industrialized countries and is on the path to becoming an undeveloped economy.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 01 Feb 2014 15:17:00 +0000

How Junk Economists Help The Rich Impoverish The Working Class

By Paul Craig Roberts
Institute for Political Economy
Jan 29, 201

Last week, I explained how economists and policymakers destroyed our economy for the sake of short-term corporate profits from jobs offshoring and financial deregulation.

That same week Business Week published an article, “Factory Jobs Are Gone. Get Over It,” by Charles Kenny. Kenny expresses the view of establishment economists, such as Brookings Institute economist Justin Wolfers who wants to know “What’s with the political fetish for manufacturing? Are factories really so awesome?”

“Not really,” Kenny says. Citing Eric Fisher of the Cleveland Federal Reserve Bank, Kenny reports that wages rise most rapidly in those states that most quickly abandon manufacturing. Kenny cites Gary Hufbauer, once an academic colleague of mine now at the Peterson Institute, who claims that the 2009 tariffs applied to Chinese tire imports cost US consumers $1 billion in higher prices and 3,731 lost retail jobs. Note the precision of the jobs loss, right down to the last 31.

In support of the argument that Americans are better off without manufacturing jobs, Kenny cites MIT and Harvard academic economists to the effect that there is no evidence that manufacturing tends to cluster, thus disputing the view that there are economies from manufacturers tending to congregate in the same areas where they benefit from an experienced work force and established supply chains.

Perhaps the MIT and Harvard economists did their study after US manufacturing centers became shells of their former selves and Detroit lost 25% of its population, Gary Indiana lost 22% of its population, Flint Michigan lost 18% of its population, Cleveland lost 17% of its population, and St Louis lost 20% of its population. If the economists’ studies were done after manufacturing had departed, they would not find manufacturing concentrated in locations where it formerly flourished. MIT and Harvard economists might find this an idea too large to comprehend.

Kenny’s answer to the displaced manufacturing workers is–you guessed it–jobs training. He cites MIT economist David Autor who thinks the problem is the federal government only spends $1 on retraining for every $400 that it spends on supporting displaced workers.

These arguments are so absurd as to be mindless. Let’s examine them. What jobs are the displaced manufacturing workers to be trained for? Why, service jobs, of course. Kenny actually thinks that “service industries–hotels, hospitals, media, and accounting–have taken up the slack.” (I don’t know where he gets media and accounting from; scant sign of such jobs are found in the payroll jobs reports.) Moreover, service jobs have certainly not taken up the slack as the rising rate of long-term unemployment and declining labor force participation rate prove.

Nontradable service sector jobs such as hotel maids, hospital orderlies, retail clerks, waitresses and bartenders are low productivity, low value-added jobs that cannot pay incomes comparable to manufacturing jobs. The long term decline in real median family income relates to the movement offshore of manufacturing jobs and tradable professional service jobs, such as software engineering, IT, research and design.

Moreover, domestic service jobs do not produce exportable goods and services. A country without manufactures has little with which to earn foreign exchange in order to pay for its imports of its shoes, clothing, manufactured goods, high-technology products, Apple computers, and increasingly food. Therefore, that country’s trade deficit widens as each year it owes more and more to foreigners.

A country whose best known products are fraudulent and toxic financial instruments and GMO foods that no one wants cannot pay for its imports except by signing over its existing assets. The foreigners buy up US assets with their trade surpluses. Consequently, income from rents, interest, dividends, capital gains, and profits leave US pockets for foreign pockets. It is a safe bet that Hufbauer did not include any of these costs, or maybe even the loss of US tire workers’ wages and tire manufacturers’ profits, when he concluded that trying to save US tire manufacturing jobs cost more than it was worth.

Eric Fisher’s argument that the highest wage growth is found in areas where higher productivity manufacturing jobs are most rapidly replaced with lower productivity domestic service jobs is beyond absurd. (Possibly Fisher did not say this; I’m taking Kenny’s word for it.) It has always been a foundation of labor economics that workers are paid the value of their contribution to output.

Manufacturing employees working with technology embodied in plant and equipment produce more value per man hour than maids changing sheets and bartenders mixing drinks.

In my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West (2013), I point out the obvious mistakes in “studies” by Matthew Slaughter, a former member of the President’s Council of Economic Advisors, and Harvard professor Michael Porter. These academic economists conclude on the basis of extraordinary errors and ignorance of empirical facts, that jobs offshoring is good for Americans. They were able to reach this conclusion despite the absence of any visibility of this good, and they hold to this absurd conclusion despite the inability of a “recovery” (or lack of one) that is 4.5 years old to get off the ground and get employment back up to where it was six years ago. They hold to their “education is the answer” solution despite the growing percentage of university graduates who cannot find employment.

Michael Hudson is certainly correct to call economists purveyors of “junk economics.” Indeed, I wonder if economists even have junk value. But they are well paid by Wall Street and the offshoring corporations.

What the Brookings Institute’s Justin Wolfers needs to ask himself is: what is the redefinition of economic development? For my lifetime the definition of a developed economy is an industrialized economy. It has always been “the industrialized countries” that occupy the status of “developed economies,” contrasted with “undeveloped countries,” “developing countries,” and “emerging economies.” How is an economy developed if it is shedding its industry and manufacturing? This is the reverse of the development process. Without realizing it, Kenny describes the unravelling of the US economy when he describes the decline of US manufacturing from 28 percent of US GDP in 1953 to 12% in 2012. The US now has the work force of a third world country, with the vast bulk of the population employed in lowly paid domestic services. The US work force no longer looks like the work force of a developed country. It looks like third world India’s work force of three decades ago.

Kenny and junk economists speak of the decline of US manufacturing jobs as if they are not being offshored to countries where labor is cheap but replaced by automation. No doubt there has been automation, and more ways of replacing humans with machines will be found. But if manufacturing jobs are things of the past, why is China’s sudden and rapid rise to economic power accompanied by 100 million manufacturing jobs? Apple computers are not made in China by robots. If robots are making Apple computers, it would be just as cheap to make the computers in the US. The Chinese manufacturing workforce is almost the size of the entire US work force.

US companies employ Americans to market the products that are produced abroad for sale in the US. This is why US corporations employ Americans mainly in service jobs. Foreigners make the goods, and Americans sell them.

Economic development has always been about acquiring the capital, technology, business knowledge, and trained workforce to make valuable things that can be sold at home and abroad. US capital and technology are being located abroad, and the trained domestic workforce is disappearing from disuse and abandonment. The US is falling out of the ranks of the industrialized countries and is on the path to becoming an undeveloped economy.

Source:

http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2014/01/28/junk-economists-help-rich-impoverish-working-class-paul-craig-roberts/

______________________

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 31 Jan 2014 00:40:00 +0000

Finally, a legal challenge to US warrantless wiretapping that beats the Catch-22

By Cory Doctorow
BoingBoing
Jan 30, 201

Last October, the Justice Department made a seemingly cosmetic change to its procedures related to NSA surveillance: requiring prosecutors to tell defendants when the evidence against them originated with a warrantless wiretap (remember that the NSA made a practice of handing warrantless wiretapping data over to the DEAand other agencies, who would then request a warrant in order to create a plausible, public source of evidence).

But that change made all the difference. Last year, the Supreme Court ruled that you couldn't sue the government over warrantless wiretapping unless you had direct evidence that you'd been spied on. The catch? The only way to get evidence that you'd been spied on was to sue the government, which you couldn't do without evidence.

The first defendant to be notified that the case against him was built on warrantless wiretaps is an Uzbek human rights activist who lives in Colorado, named Jamshid Muhtorov. Under the new rules, Muhtorov now has the evidence he needs to challenge the government's program of warrantless surveillance -- and that's just what he's doing. The ACLU has taken his case, and have filed a motion [PDF] challenging the evidence against him.

A win for Muhtorov would be a win for America, and for everyone who believes that you can't fight crime while ignoring the law.

Muhtorov and his counsel from the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a new motion against the government in his pending criminal case. In his 69-page brief, he argues that the “fruits of the [FISA AA] surveillance” be suppressed on the grounds that his Fourth Amendment rights, protecting against unreasonable search and seizure, were violated.

"The FISA Amendments Act affords the government virtually unfettered access to the international phone calls and e-mails of US citizens and residents,” ACLU Deputy Legal Director Jameel Jaffer said in a statement. “We’ve learned over the last few months that the NSA has implemented the law in the broadest possible way and that the rules that supposedly protect the privacy of innocent people are weak and riddled with exceptions. Surveillance conducted under this statute is unconstitutional, and the fruits of this surveillance must be suppressed."

In rare move, terrorism suspect challenges core of warrantless snooping law [Cyrus Farivar/Ars Technica]

Source:
http://boingboing.net/2014/01/30/finally-a-legal-challenge-to.html
____________________

Why the hyper-rich turn into crybabies when "one percent" is invoked

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 27 Jan 2014 02:48:00 +0000

The Brittle Grip Part 2

By Josh Marshall
TippingPointMemo
Jan 25, 201

If you've been in the media slipstream today you know the outrage and mockery directed at Tom Perkins, one of the world's wealthiest and most successful Silicon Valley venture capitalists, for an oped he wrote in the Wall Street Journal comparing the rising critique of income inequality and "the 1%" to Kristallnacht.

Just so we're all on the same page, Kristallnacht ("the night of shattered glass") was essentially the opening act of Hitler's Final Solution. It took place on November 9th and 10th, 1938. This claim manages simultaneously to be so logically ridiculous and morally hideous that Perkins deserves every bit of abuse he's already receiving.

But I think we're missing the point if we see this as the gaffe of one aging, coddled jerk. Because it's only a more extreme and preposterous version of beliefs that have become increasingly widespread in the wealthiest sectors of American society, especially since 2008 and the twin events of the global financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama.

Let me state the phenomenon as clearly as possible: The extremely wealthy are objectively far wealthier, far more politically powerful and find a far more indulgent political class than at any time in almost a century - at least. And yet at the same time they palpably feel more isolated, abused and powerless than at any time over the same period and sense some genuine peril to the whole mix of privileges, power and wealth they hold.

There is a disconnect there that is so massive and glaring that it demands some sociocultural explanation. I've written about this before (Part 1). But I confess not terribly well because I've found it a difficult issue to get my arms fully around and to reorient my focus on day to day events to the longer horizon. But I do think it's one of the core political and economic issues of our time and deserves real explanation.

I first started noticing this when I saw several years ago that many of the wealthiest people in the country, especially people in financial services, not only didn't support Obama (not terribly surprising) but had a real and palpable sense that he was out to get them. This was hard to reconcile with the fact that Obama, along with President Bush, had pushed through a series of very unpopular laws and programs and fixes that had not only stabilized global capitalism, saved Wall Street but saved the personal fortunes (and perhaps even the personal liberty) of the people who were turning so acidly against him.

Indeed, through the critical years of 2009, 10 and 11 he was serving as what amounted to Wall Street's personal heat shield, absorbing as political damage the public revulsion at the bailout policies that had kept Wall Street whole.

Let's start by stipulating that no one expects the extremely wealthy to react happily to mounting discussion of wealth and income inequality or left-wing diatribes about "the 1%." But again, the reaction is extreme and excessive and frequently runs into less comical versions of Perkins' screed, with weird fears of persecution and threat from the folks who quite truly rule the roost.

Here's an exchange I had more recently with one of the wealthiest persons in the United States on the issue of perceptions of Obama among the very wealthiest Americans.

Let me start by saying that I am not a fan of rich people complaining they're being mistreated... That said, all the rich people I know think that Obama is trying to whip up anti-1% sentiment. The irony is that Obama's policies have been fine for rich people -- taxes have stayed low, almost nobody got prosecuted coming out of the financial meltdown, etc. But the feeling is real.

So what is it about?

I see three basic roots, though I don't think my list is exhaustive.

One is the simple but massive run up in the concentration of wealth itself over the past two generations. There's a slice of the population, whether it's the top 1% or .01% or whatever, that doesn't just have more stuff and money. The sheer scale of the difference means they live what is simply a qualitatively different kind of existence. That gulf creates estrangement and alienation, and one of a particular sort in a democracy where such a minuscule sliver of the population can't hope to protect itself alone at the ballot box.

Let's call this socioeconomic acrophobia.

A second is tied specifically to the 2008 financial crisis. The last 35 years or so have seen a period in which the celebration of wealth and the wealthy has been near the extreme end of the pendulum swing that has moved back and forth over the course of American history. Let's not distract ourselves, for the moment, with whether this view is right or wrong. It's a pendulum swing as old as America. In this view, the super rich, the founders and most successful entrepreneurs, not only wow us by their genius and success but are also seen as the people driving forward the society and economy and prosperity for everyone. That's a nice climate to be wealthy in.

That all changed very abruptly at the end of 2008.

Suddenly, there was vast public animus at "Wall Street" and the Big Banks, exacerbated massively by the politics of the bailout. And not just from the left but from the right too, though in a different form. Pretty deserved on many levels: the financial sector, the figurative "Wall Street", had come close to crashing the global economic system by a mix of irresponsible risk taking and gaming the political system to permit this high-risk, wealth-juicing leverage. But if we're to understand the psychology of the individuals involved we must appreciate the whipsaw nature of that experience.

Quite simply, these were and are folks who just weren't used to public criticism.

The whole "masters of the universe" mythology was basically, sure we're massively wealthy. But we're also the ones keeping the globe we all live on from spinning off its axis. So let us enjoy our Hamptons estates and our private jets in peace and we'll do our jobs and you do yours. The crossfire hurricane that ripped apart that social contract stung a lot.

And then there's the other really important variable in the equation. We know now that Wall Street came out of the financial crisis pretty nicely. But that was far from clear in the fall of 2008. The titans, under-titans and sub-titans saw the entire financial system spin on the edge of un-self-regulating collapse, something the reining ideology of recent decades said shouldn't have been possible along with the real prospect of whole personal fortunes evaporating in an instant.

That kind of scare is not easy to forget. Mix it with the need to run to the political class hat in hand and that ocean of animus from the public at large and you get the makings of a political and psychological toxicity that breeds Perkinsonian nonsense at the extreme end and more pervasively the sense of embattlement and threat verging on persecution complex that I described above.

It is that mix of insecurity, a sense of the brittleness of one's hold on wealth, power, privileges, combined with the reality of great wealth and power, that breeds a mix of aggressiveness and perceived embattlement.

Third there is the simple fact of Obama himself. By various criteria you could argue that before Obama, America hadn't had a progressive president in decades. Popular perceptions aside, Carter was actually part of the privatizing trend of the late 70s. And Clinton, while genuinely a progressive in many ways, served most of his presidency during a period when basically everyone was either getting rich or making at least some progress. And when everybody is getting at least some taste of the good times, these sorts of antagonisms find a way of getting overlooked or passed over.

President Obama is far from being a Franklin Roosevelt or Harry Truman. But he is a progressive and sees the economy and the larger society's claims on the very wealthy differently than a Bush or a Reagan. And again, that was just not something any of these folks had experienced before.

But again, the answer is the confluence of these events, no one of them. It's worth remembering that Bill Clinton pushed through a reasonably substantial tax hike on upper income earners in 1993. President Obama meanwhile largely maintained the tax policies of George W. Bush, the guy who had in essence repealed Clinton's tax increase. These are all facts that are hard to ignore.

Put it all together and you get the climate in which someone like Perkins writes something as ridiculous as he did. As I said up top, his Holocaust analogy is so hyperbolic and ridiculous that he's getting dumped on by almost everyone. But we miss the point if we see this in isolation or just the rant of one out-of-touch douchebag. It is pervasive. The disconnect between perception and reality, among such a powerful segment of the population, is in itself dangerous. And it's led to what I would call a significant radicalization of the politics of extreme wealth. My evidence for this is only anecdotal. But it's come up in conversations I've had with many business reporters who cover these folks on a daily basis.

We take it more or less rightly as a given that people in finance will have generally right-leaning politics - low taxes, tight money, lax regulatory regimes. Basically traditional money Republicanism. But over the last few years (since 2008), I think there's been a pretty dramatic growth in what we'd call Tea Party politics in that set - extreme conservatism that goes beyond hands off fiscal and regulatory policy, the kind of feverish mindset in which you could write with a straight face that progressives might be building toward some sort of mass wealth confiscation or internment or even extermination for the likes of Tom Perkins.

It's a problem. And Perkins is just getting our attention because his self-censor and/or editor failed him so miserably.

Source:

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/the-brittle-grip-part-2

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Live Q&A with Edward Snowden: Thursday 23rd January

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 25 Jan 2014 13:59:00 +0000

Snowden: laws aren't enough to stop spying, we need technology that keeps our secrets

Cory Doctorow
Boing Boing
Jan 24, 2014

Summary of Twitter Interview

In a live Q&A conducted on Twitter yesterday, Edward Snowden answered questions about the state of security and freedom in the world. While the whole interview in interesting, I was most struck by his answer to a question on how states should react to the news of widespread snooping:

We need to work together to agree on a reasonable international norm for the limitations on spying. Nobody should be hacking critical-to-life infrastructure like hospitals and power stations, and it’s fair to say that can be recognized in international law.

Additionally, we need to recognize that national laws are not going to solve the problem of indiscriminate surveillance. A prohibition in Burundi isn’t going to stop the spies in Greenland. We need a global forum, and global funding, committed to the development of security standards that enforce our right to privacy not through law, but through science and technology. The easiest way to ensure a country’s communications are secure is to secure them world-wide, and that means better standards, better crypto, and better research.

I agree that technology is a very important -- crucial and necessary -- part of the answer, but I think it's incomplete on its own. The right way to think about this is Lessig's idea that regulation is accomplished by norms, laws, technology and markets. It's important that we have technology that is as good as it can be in order to keep people secure -- that's why it's so disastrous that the W3C has paved the way for DRM in all browsers, because it's illegal to report defects in DRM, and that means that browsers (which are in every pocket and on every desktop, and are thus very valuable to attackers) will have long-lived vulnerabilities that can be exploited by snoops and crooks.

But as we see from the DRM example, there's also a legal question: if it's illegal to make technology secure, then technology will be less secure. And there's a normative question: if people believe that it's reasonable and proportionate to design computers that treat their owners as untrusted hostiles, then we'll get that kind of computer. If there's widespread consensus that problems shouldn't be solved by designing computers to attack their owners, then we'll get less of that.

Finally, there's markets: if there's normative consensus that privacy is worth doing something about, and no laws preventing pro-privacy technology, and technology that can supply good privacy, then companies will manufacture and sell those technologies, in states that default to privacy.

All four of these mechanisms -- markets, norms, tech and law -- strengthen one another. No one is sufficient on its own, but each one makes it easier to attain the rest.

Live Q&A with Edward Snowden: Thursday 23rd January, 8pm GMT, 3pm EST (via Internet Evolution)

"The people you need to watch out for are the unaccountable senior officials authorizing these unconstitutional programs, and unreliable mechanisms like the secret FISA court, a rubber-stamp authority that approves 99.97% of government requests (which denied only 11 requests out of 33,900 in 33 years). They’re the ones that get us into trouble with the Constitution by letting us go too far."

Entire Twitter Interview Here

http://www.freesnowden.is/asksnowden/

Source:

http://boingboing.net/2014/01/24/snowden-laws-arent-enough-t.html

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The contamination’s reveal comes just one week after it was revealed that the Alberta government would hand over regulatory responsibility for the province’s tar sands industry to a corporation that’s funded entirely by Canada’s oil, coal and gas industry.

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 20 Jan 2014 12:37:00 +0000

Scientists Find 7,300-Mile Mercury Contamination ‘Bullseye’ Around Canadian Tar Sands

By Emily Atkin
ThinkProgress
Dec. 30, 201

Just one week after Al Jazeera discovered that regulatory responsibility for Alberta, Canada’s controversial tar sands would be handed over to a fossil-fuel funded corporation, federal scientists have found that the area’s viscous petroleum deposits are surrounded by a nearly 7,500-square-mile ring of mercury.

Canadian government scientists have found that levels of mercury — a potent neurotoxin which has been found to cause severe birth defects and brain damage — around the region’s vast tar sand operations are up to 16 times higher than regular levels for the region. The findings, presented by Environment Canada researcher Jane Kirk at an international toxicology conference, showed that the 7,500 miles contaminated are “currently impacted by airborne Hg (mercury) emissions originating from oilsands developments.”

The Canadian government touts Alberta’s oil sands as the third-largest proven crude oil reserve in the world, next to Saudi Arabia and Venezuela. The region’s heavy crude oil is mixed with clay, bitumen, and a good deal of sand — hence the name “oil sands.” This makes for a unique and energy-intensive extraction process that some scientists say produces three times the greenhouse gas emissions of conventionally produced oil. Environment Canadahas said it expects production emissions from tar sands to hit 104 million tonnes of CO2 by 2020 under current expansion plans.

Giant oil companies across the United States are currently investing in Canada’s tar sands as part of their role in the Keystone XL pipeline, which would carry tar sands oil from Alberta all the way to Texas. The pipeline would double imports of tar sands oil into the United States and transport it to refineries on the Gulf Coast and ports for international export. The oil sands industry itself is undergoing a major expansion, powered by $19 billion a year in investments, according to Bloomberg News.

Mercury pollution is just the latest contamination-related environmental woe to hit the tar sands. In May of this year, leaks of the oil started popping up in Alberta, and haven’t yet stopped. In September, the company responsible for the leaks was ordered to drain a lake so that contamination on the lake’s bottom could be cleaned up. By September 11, the leaks had spilled more than 403,900 gallons — or about 9,617 barrels — of oily bitumen into the surrounding boreal forest and muskeg, the acidic, marshy soil found in the forest.

Environment Canada’s research on the mercury pollution reportedly suggested that tar sands development has created a “bullseye” of contamination, with the highest levels of mercury found in the middle. The research also included indications that the toxin was building up in some of the area’s wildlife, with elevated levels being found in some birds’ eggs. Mercury pollution is particularly disconcerting because of its ability to bioaccumulate, meaning it tends to become more concentrated as it moves up the food chain.

The contamination’s reveal comes just one week after it was revealed that the Alberta government would hand over regulatory responsibility for the province’s tar sands industry to a corporation that’s funded entirely by Canada’s oil, coal and gas industry. The Alberta Energy Regulator (AER) said it would take over the duties of the now defunct Energy Resources Conservation Board (ERCB) — which was funded in part by taxpayers — and Alberta Environment and Sustainable Resource Development.

The shift to the AER as the main environmental regulator in Alberta is part of the provincial government’s plan to streamline the approval process for oil companies. It’s drawn concern from environmentalists in Alberta, who are worried that the AER’s financial backing from the fossil fuel industry makes the group too close to the industry it’s supposed to regulate.

Source:
http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2013/12/30/3107761/tar-sands-mercury/#
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The question of who is allowed access to what data is a defining one of our age – and Edward Snowden has taught us to be wary

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 03 Jan 2014 18:03:00 +0000

David Cameron's internet porn filter is the start of censorship creep

By Laurie Penny
The Guardian
January 2, 2014
[Emphasis added]

Picture the scene. You're pottering about on the internet, perhaps idly looking up cake recipes, or videos of puppies learning to howl. Then the phone rings. It's your internet service provider. Actually, it's a nice lady in a telesales warehouse somewhere, employed on behalf of your service provider; let's call her Linda. Linda is calling because, thanks to David Cameron's "porn filter", you now have an "unavoidable choice", as one of 20 million British households with a broadband connection, over whether to opt in to view certain content. Linda wants to know – do you want to be able to see hardcore pornography?

How about information on illegal drugs? Or gay sex, or abortion? Your call may be recorded for training and monitoring purposes. How about obscene and tasteless material? Would you like to see that? Speak up, Linda can't hear you.

The government's filter, which comes into full effect this month after a year of lobbying, will block far more than dirty pictures. That was always the intention, and in recent weeks it has become clear that the mission creep of internet censorship is even creepier than campaigners had feared.

In the name of protecting children from a rotten tide of raunchy videos, a terrifying precedent is being set for state control of the digital commons. Pious arguments about protecting innocence are invariably marshalled in the service of public ignorance.

When the first opt-in filtering began, it was discovered that non-pornographic "gay and lesbian" sites and "sex education" content would be blocked by BT. After an outcry, the company quickly changed the wording on its website, but it is not clear that more than the wording has been changed. The internet is a lifeline for young LGBT people looking for information and support – and parents are now able to stop them finding that support at the click of a mouse.

Sexual control and social control are usually co-occurring.

Sites that were found to be inaccessible when the new filtering system was launched last year included in some cases helplines like Childline and the NSPCC, domestic violence and suicide prevention services – and the thought of what an unscrupulous parent or abusive spouse could do with the ability to block such sites is chilling. The head of TalkTalk, one of Britain's biggest internet providers, claimed that the internet has no "social or moral framework". Well, neither does a library. Nobody would dream of insisting a local book exchange deployed morality robots to protect children from discovering something their parents might not want them to see.

Online, that's just what's happening, except that in this case, every person who uses the internet is being treated like a child.

Every argument we have heard from politicians in favour of this internet filter has been about pornography, and its harmful effect on young people, evidence of which, despite years of public pearl-clutching, remains scant.

It is curious, then, that so many categories included in BT's list of blocked content appear to be neither pornographic nor directly related to young children.

The category of "obscene content", for instance, which is blocked even on the lowest setting of BT's opt-in filtering system, covers "sites with information about illegal manipulation of electronic devices [and] distribution of software" – in other words, filesharing and music downloads, debate over which has been going on in parliament for years. It looks as if that debate has just been bypassed entirely, by way of scare stories about five-year-olds and fisting videos.

Whatever your opinion on downloading music and cartoons for free, doing so is neither obscene nor pornographic. Cameron's porn filter looks less like an attempt to protect kids than a convenient way to block a lot of content the British government doesn't want its citizens to see, with no public consultation whatsoever.

The worst thing about the porn filter, though, is not that it accidentally blocks a lot of useful information but that it blocks information at all.

With minimal argument, a Conservative-led government has given private firms permission to decide what websites we may and may not access. This sets a precedent for state censorship on an enormous scale – all outsourced to the private sector, of course, so that the coalition does not have to hold up its hands to direct responsibility for shutting down freedom of speech.

More worrying still is the inclusion of material relating to "extremism", however the state and its proxies are choosing to define that term. Bearing in mind that simple protest groups like tax justice organisation UK Uncut have been labelled extremist by some, there is every chance that the categories for what constitutes "inappropriate" online content will be conveniently broad – and there's always room to extend them.

The public gets no say over what political content will now be blocked, just as we had no say over whether we wanted such content blocked at all. Records of opt-in software will, furthermore, make it simpler for national and international surveillance programmes to track who is looking at what sort of website.

Just because they can doesn't mean they will, of course, but seven months of revelations about the extent of data capturing by GCHQ and the NSA – including the collection of information on the porn habits of political actors in order to discredit them – does make for reasonable suspicion.

Do you still feel comfortable about ticking that box that says you want to see "obscene and tasteless content"? Are you sure?

The question of who should be allowed to access what information has become a defining cultural debate of the age. Following the Edward Snowden revelations, that question will be asked of all of us in 2014, and we must understand attempts by any state to place blocks and filters on online content in that context.

Policies designed for controlling adults have long been implemented in the name of protecting children, but if we really want to give children their best chance, we can start by denying private companies and conservative politicians the power to determine the minutiae of what they may and may not know.

Instant access to centuries of information and learning is a provision without peer in the history of human civilisation. For the sake of the generations to come, we must protect it.

Source:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/jan/03/david-cameron-internet-porn-filter-censorship-creep
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A few basic facts about postdoctorates

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 29 Nov 2013 03:39:00 +0000

The Postdoc: A Special Kind of Hell

By Adam Ruben
Science Magazine
November 21, 2013

New Ph.D. recipients, welcome to the next stage of your career! It's a time-honored tradition of academics, research, and stagnant purgatorial nonprogression. That's right: It's your postdoctoral appointment!

As a postdoc, you'll contribute vitally to the progress of science, simultaneously filling the roles of scientist, scholar, and sucker.

But first, a few basic facts about postdocs:

Postdoc positions were established to prolong the awesomeness of graduate school, which everyone loves, while simultaneously postponing the ability to make money, which everyone hates.
Many postdocs are foreigners who come to the United States to enjoy the abundant opportunities this country offers for scientific advancement. We reward their enthusiasm with postdoc positions. We hope they forgive us.
Postdocs are very small and hard to see. If you encounter a postdoc in the wild, approach with extreme caution! You can frighten away a postdoc by asking, "Shouldn’t you be in the lab?"
Despite its masculine undertones, the term "postdoctoral fellow" is actually gender-neutral. This has led to much confusion when female doctoral students have told their friends or family, "I’m planning to become a fellow."
Because tuition is not a factor, a postdoc actually impacts the annual lab budget less than a graduate student. Then again, a postdoc impacts the annual lab budget less than an order of Pad Thai (if Pad Thai were an allowable expense on National Institutes of Health grants).
Postdocs have many natural predators, including vapid undergraduate trainees, negligent advisers, erratic funding sources, unsympathetic significant others, and the predator from Predator.
The earliest postdoctoral appointment was in 1931. That postdoc hopes to go on the faculty job market sometime in the next couple of years.

An important semantic note: The term "postdoc" refers both to the position and to the person who occupies it. (In this sense, it's much like the term "bar mitzvah.") So you can be a postdoc, but you can also do a postdoc, which unfortunately isn't as sexual as it sounds.

Because the term "postdoc" warrants clarification, you'll find yourself regularly explaining your status to family members who were so excited about you finishing grad school and now are just confused. When describing your postdoc to an unfamiliar audience, use the following script:

"[Relative's name], I've chosen to work in a branch of the sciences that doesn't want me to start actually doing things until I'm in my early forties. That's just the norm at this point, and I blame [politician/funding agency/some kind of national institute of, say, health]. Your patience is appreciated during this trying time."

Now we come to the all-important decision of where to do your postdoc. (In this case, "postdoc" refers to the profession; see semantic distinction above. Where you do your postdoc-the-person is between you and the presumably consenting postdoc.)

Ask whether your adviser has any collaborators. Actually, if you have to ask this, you haven't paid attention in graduate school.
Check the job boards. This is the best way to convince your spouse that you're making progress.
Think about the region of the world in which you'd most like to live. Then go to Arizona State anyway.
Network, network, network! This is a process that involves giving your contact information to lots of people who simultaneously believe they're networking with you.
Some scientists elect to remain in their grad school labs for a postdoc. These people either fear change or married someone in the lab.
Make sure your prospective lab has sufficient funding to pay your salary. Ask indirect questions such as, "Do you have sufficient funding to pay my salary?" If your prospective employer responds by diving under a desk and whimpering, then welcome to 2013.

Being a postdoc has advantages and disadvantages.

Here are the three worst aspects:

The hours and the pay. You work long hours, but on the other hand, your salary … wait, let's look at it the other way. The pay may be abysmally low, but on the other hand, your hours … shoot. What's the way to phrase this? Oh, right. The hours are long and the pay is low, but the prestige … damn it.
For every available opening for a tenure-track professorship in the United States, there are roughly seven postdocs. That's not an exaggeration or a joke. That's not me being all like, "Yo yo, postdocs are so screwed—('How screwed are they?')—they're so screwed that there are seven times as many postdocs as there are academic openings! And that's pretty screwed!" No, this is a freaking fact. Look at the postdoc on your left, and look at the postdoc on your right. Then look at the postdocs on the left and right, respectively, of the postdocs on your left and right. Finally, look at the postdocs on the left and right, respectively, of the postdoc on the left of the postdoc on your left and the postdoc on the right of the postdoc on your right. Only one of you will get a faculty job.
There's such a thing as a second postdoc. WHAT THE HOLY HELL. It's true. You can sail through 4 years of undergrad, survive 7 years of grad school, and suffer a half-decade postdoc, and then do it again. It's like getting to the end of World 1-4 of Super Mario Bros. only to learn that our princess is in another castle. Some people even do a third postdoc, which is more like Super Mario Bros. 2, because it is nonsensical, tedious, and was never intended to exist in the first place. Also, giant turnips may play a role.

But fear not!

Here are the three best aspects of postdoctoral fellowships:

Grad students will look up to you. That's something, right? They'll envy your scholarship, your ability to regularly buy groceries, and the proof you offer that it's possible to finish grad school.
You've checked all the boxes necessary to become a professor! Then again, next year, when I turn 35, I will have checked all the boxes necessary to be president of the United States. And that doesn't make me president. (I just asked my 2-year-old daughter, and she says the president is grandma.)
Best of all, and ostensibly the point of your postdoc, you’re supposed to control your own project. If you worked in a lab as an undergrad, you were told, "This is your project, and here's how you'll do it. Stop stealing beakers." Then, in grad school, your adviser said, "This is your project, but how you do it is up to you. Stop sleeping." But principal investigators generally tell postdocs, "Choose your own project. Choose how to do it. Stop envying my tenure." (At least, that’s how it’s supposed to work. Unfortunately, many postdocs are treated like glorified lab techs … and it’s very sad that you felt a little good just now about the "glorified" part.)

At this point, you may be asking, "Why would anyone be a postdoc?" The answer, of course, is that people who have jobs you may fill someday say that you have to. "Hire someone right out of grad school?" they ask. "With no more than a science Ph.D., which is notoriously simple to achieve? How could we expect such a person to have the skills necessary to work in a laboratory setting?"

So welcome, young postdoc, to your new position. Sit back, smell the filtered air, and gaze at the haggard assistant professor anxiously working 20-hour days while fretting about tenure. And think, "Someday, all this may be mine."

Access may require login

Source:

http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/career_magazine/previous_issues/articles/2013_11_21/caredit.a1300256

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“The agricultural landscape has been sterilized”

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 24 Nov 2013 02:06:00 +0000

The Year the Monarch Didn’t Appear

By Jim Robbins
The New York Times
November 22, 2013

On the first of November, when Mexicans celebrate a holiday called the Day of the Dead, some also celebrate the millions of monarch butterflies that, without fail, fly to the mountainous fir forests of central Mexico on that day. They are believed to be souls of the dead, returned.

This year, for or the first time in memory, the monarch butterflies didn’t come, at least not on the Day of the Dead. They began to straggle in a week later than usual, in record-low numbers. Last year’s low of 60 million now seems great compared with the fewer than three million that have shown up so far this year. Some experts fear that the spectacular migration could be near collapse.

“It does not look good,” said Lincoln P. Brower, a monarch expert at Sweet Briar College.

It is only the latest bad news about the dramatic decline of insect populations.

Another insect in serious trouble is the wild bee, which has thousands of species. Nicotine-based pesticides called neonicotinoids are implicated in their decline, but even if they were no longer used, experts say, bees, monarchs and many other species of insect would still be in serious trouble.

That’s because of another major factor that has not been widely recognized: the precipitous loss of native vegetation across the United States.

“There’s no question that the loss of habitat is huge,” said Douglas Tallamy, a professor of entomology at the University of Delaware, who has long warned of the perils of disappearing insects. “We notice the monarch and bees because they are iconic insects,” he said. “But what do you think is happening to everything else?”

A big part of it is the way the United States farms. As the price of corn has soared in recent years, driven by federal subsidies for biofuels, farmers have expanded their fields. That has meant plowing every scrap of earth that can grow a corn plant, including millions of acres of land once reserved in a federal program for conservation purposes.

Another major cause is farming with Roundup, a herbicide that kills virtually all plants except crops that are genetically modified to survive it.

As a result, millions of acres of native plants, especially milkweed, an important source of nectar for many species, and vital for monarch butterfly larvae, have been wiped out. One study showed that Iowa has lost almost 60 percent of its milkweed, and another found 90 percent was gone. “The agricultural landscape has been sterilized,” said Dr. Brower.

The loss of bugs is no small matter. Insects help stitch together the web of life with essential services, breaking plants down into organic matter, for example, and dispersing seeds. They are a prime source of food for birds. Critically, some 80 percent of our food crops are pollinated by insects, primarily the 4,000 or so species of the flying dust mops called bees. “All of them are in trouble,” said Marla Spivak, a professor of apiculture at the University of Minnesota.

Farm fields are not the only problem. Around the world people have replaced diverse natural habitat with the biological deserts that are roads, parking lots and bluegrass lawns. Meanwhile, the plants people choose for their yards are appealing for showy colors or shapes, not for their ecological role. Studies show that native oak trees in the mid-Atlantic states host as many as 537 species of caterpillars, which are important food for birds and other insects. Willows come in second with 456 species. Ginkgo, on the other hand, which is not native, supports three species, and zelkova, an exotic plant used to replace elm trees that died from disease, supports none. So the shelves are nearly bare for bugs and birds.

Native trees are not only grocery stores, but insect pharmacies as well. Trees and other plants have beneficial chemicals essential to the health of bugs. Some monarchs, when afflicted with parasites, seek out more toxic types of milkweed because they kill the parasites. Bees use medicinal resins from aspen and willow trees that are antifungal, antimicrobial and antiviral, to line their nests and to fight infection and diseases. “Bees scrape off the resins from the leaves, which is kind of awesome, stick them on their back legs and take them home,” said Dr. Spivak.

Besides pesticides and lack of habitat, the other big problem bees face is disease. But these problems are not separate. “Say you have a bee with viruses,” and they are run-down, Dr. Spivak said. “And they are in a food desert and have to fly a long distance, and when you find food it has complicated neurotoxins and the immune system just goes ‘uh-uh.’ Or they become disoriented and can’t find their way home. It’s too many stressors all at once.”

There are numerous organizations and individuals dedicated to rebuilding native plant communities one sterile lawn and farm field at a time. Dr. Tallamy, a longtime evangelizer for native plants, and the author of one of the movement’s manuals, “Bringing Nature Home,” says it’s a cause everyone with a garden or yard can serve. And he says support for it needs to develop quickly to slow down the worsening crisis in biodiversity.

When the Florida Department of Transportation last year mowed down roadside wildflowers where monarch butterflies fed on their epic migratory journey, “there was a huge outcry,” said Eleanor Dietrich, a wildflower activist in Florida. So much so, transportation officials created a new policy that left critical insect habitat un-mowed.

That means reversing the hegemony of chemically green lawns. “If you’ve got just lawn grass, you’ve got nothing,” said Mace Vaughan of the Xerces Society, a leading organization in insect conservation. “But as soon as you create a front yard wildflower meadow you go from an occasional honeybee to a lawn that might be full of 20 or 30 species of bees and butterflies and monarchs.”

First and foremost, said Dr. Tallamy, a home for bugs is a matter of food security. “If the bees were to truly disappear, we would lose 80 percent of the plants,” he said. “That is not an option. That’s a huge problem for mankind.”

Jim Robbins is a frequent contributor to The New York Times and the author of “The Man Who Planted Trees."

Source:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/24/sunday-review/the-year-the-monarch-didnt-appear.html?_r=0
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Monsanto and India’s “Suicide Economy”

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 09 Nov 2013 01:41:00 +0000

Monsanto has a long history of contamination and cover-up. In India, another Monsanto cover-up is ongoing. Since 1995, nearly 300,000 Indian farmers have committed suicide due to massive debt. Monsanto has argued that these suicides have no single cause. However, there is clear evidence that Monsanto’s Bt cotton is implicated. Physicist and author Vandana Shiva has been monitoring what is going on in these rural farming towns. Shiva noted, “The price per kilogram of cotton seeds [has gone] from 7 to 17,000 rupees. . . . Monsanto sells its GMO seeds on fraudulent claims of yields of 1,500 kg/year when farmers harvest 300–400 kg/year on an average.” Shiva and other critics have concluded that Monsanto’s profit-driven policies have led to a “suicide economy” in India.

A new documentary film, Dirty White Gold by Leah Borromeo, goes beyond the issue of farmer suicides to explain how the global fashion industry and international consumer habits contribute to Indian farmers’ hardships. Dirty White Gold examined the cotton supply chain, with the aim of generating support for legislation that will, in Borromeo’s words, “make ethics and sustainability the norm in the fashion industry.”

Monsanto’s horrific impact in India is also showcased in an earlier documentary, Bitter Seeds, directed by Micha X. Peled, which follows a teenage girl whose father committed suicide due to debt. Bitter Seeds showcased the major problems people in India are having, and how Monsanto lies directly to Indian farmers, going as far as making up fictitious farmers who “have success” with the new Bt cotton. Monsanto has claimed that there has also been a 25 percent reduction in pesticide costs. In Bitter Seeds, both of these claims were proven false.

Sources:

Belen Fernandez, “Dirty White Gold,” Al Jazeera, December 8, 2012,http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2012/12/201212575935285501.html.

Jason Overdorf, “India: Gutting of India’s Cotton Farmers,” Global Post, October 8, 2012,http://www.globalpost.com/dispatches/globalpost-blogs/america-the-gutted/india-cotton-farmers-monsanto-suicides.

Student Researcher: Nicole Anacker (College of Marin)
Faculty Evaluator: Susan Rahman (College of Marin)

http://www.projectcensored.org/21-monsanto-indias-suicide-economy/
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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 27 Oct 2013 23:41:00 +0000

Public Beats Private: Six Reasons Why

By Paul Buchheit

Nation of Change

Oct. 22, 2013

Private systems are focused on making profits for a few well-positioned people.

Public systems, when sufficiently supported by taxes, work for everyone in a generally equitable manner. The following are six specific reasons why privatization simply doesn't work.

1. The Profit Motive Moves Most of the Money to the Top

The federal Medicare Administrator made $170,000 in 2010. The president of MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas made over ten times as much in 2012. Stephen J. Hemsley, the CEO of United Health Group, made almost 300 times as much in one year, $48 million, most of it from company stock.

In part because of such inequities in compensation, our private health care system is the most expensive system in the developed world. The price of common surgeries is anywhere from three to ten times higher in the U.S. than in Great Britain, Canada, France, or Germany.

Two of the documented examples: an $8,000 special stress test for which Medicare would have paid $554; and a $60,000 gall bladder operation, for which a private insurance company was willing to pay $2,000.

Medicare, on the other hand, which is largely without the profit motive and the competing sources of billing, is efficiently run, for all eligible Americans. According to the Council for Affordable Health Insurance and other sources, medical administrative costs are much higher for private insurance than for Medicare.

But the privatizers keep encroaching on the public sector. Our government reimburses the CEOs of private contractors at a rate approximately double what we pay the President. Overall, we pay the corporate bosses over $7 billion a year.

Many Americans don't realize that the privatization of Social Security and Medicare would transfer much of our money to yet another group of CEOs.

2. Privatization Serves People with Money, the Public Sector Serves Everyone

A good example is the U.S. Postal Service (USPS), which is legally required to serve every home in the country. Fedex and United Parcel Service (UPS) can't serve unprofitable locations. Yet the USPS is much cheaper for small packages. An online comparison revealed the following for the two-day shipment of a similarly-sized envelope to another state:

-- USPS 2-Day $5.68 (46 cents without the 2-day restriction)

-- FedEx 2-Day $19.28

-- UPS, 2 Day $24.09

USPS is so inexpensive, in fact, that Fedex actually uses the U.S. Post Office for about 30 percent of its ground shipments.

Another example is education. A recent ProPublica report found that in the past twenty years four-year state colleges have been serving a diminishing portion of the country's lowest-income students. At the K-12 level, cost-saving business strategies apply to the privatization of our children's education. Charter schools are less likely to accept students with disabilities. Charter teachers have fewer years of experience and a higher turnover rate. Non-teacher positions have insufficient retirement plans and health insurance, and much lower pay.

Finally, with regard to health care, 43 percent of sick Americans skipped doctor's visits and/or medication purchases in 2011 because of excessive costs. It's estimated that over 40,000 Americans die every year because they can't afford health insurance.

3. Privatization Turns Essential Human Needs into Products

Big business would like to privatize our water. A Citigroup economist exulted, "Water as an asset class will, in my view, become eventually the single most important physical-commodity based asset class, dwarfing oil, copper, agricultural commodities and precious metals."

They want our federal land. Attempts at privatization were made by the Reagan administration in the 1980s and the Republican-controlled Congress in the 1990s. In 2006, President Bush proposed auctioning off 300,000 acres of national forest in 41 states. Paul Ryan's Path to Prosperity was based in part on Republican Jason Chaffetz' "Disposal of Excess Federal Lands Act of 2011," which would unload millions of acres of land in America's west.

They want our cities. A privatization expert told the Detroit Free Press that the real money is in urban assets with a "revenue stream." So Detroit's most valuable resource, its Water & Sewerage Department (DWSD), is the collateral for a loan of $350 million to pay off the banks handling the litigation. Bloomberg estimates a cost of almost half a billion dollars, in a city where homeowners can barely afford the water services.

And they want our bodies. One-fifth of the human genome is privately owned through patents. Strains of influenza and hepatitis have been claimed by corporate and university labs, and because of this researchers can't use the patented life forms to perform cancer research.

4. Public Systems Promote a Strong Middle Class

Part of free-market mythology is that public employees and union workers are greedy takers, enjoying benefits that average private sector workers are denied. But the facts show that government and union workers are not overpaid. According to the Census Bureau, state and local government employees make up 14.5% of the U.S. workforce and receive 14.3% of the total compensation. Union members make up about 12% of the workforce, but their total pay amounts to just 10% of adjusted gross income as reported to the IRS.

The average private sector worker makes about the same salary as a state or local government worker. But the median salary for U.S. workers, 83% of whom are in the private sector, was $18,000 less in 2009, at $26,261. Inequality is much more pervasive in the private sector.

5. The Private Sector Has Incentive To Fail, or No Incentive At All

The most obvious incentive to fail is in the private prison industry. One would think it a worthy goal to rehabilitate prisoners and gradually empty the jails. But business is too good. With each prisoner generating up to $40,000 a year in revenue, the number of prisoners in private facilities has increased from 1990 to 2009 by more than 1600%, from about 7,000 to over 125,000 inmates. Corrections Corporation of America recently offered to run the prison system in any state willing to guarantee that jails stay 90% full.

Nor do privatizers have incentive to maintain infrastructure David Cay Johnston describes the deteriorating state of America's structural foundation, with grids and pipelines neglected by monopolistic industries that cut costs rather than provide maintenance. Meanwhile, they achieve profit margins of over 50%, eight times the corporate average.

As for public safety, warning signs about unregulated privatization are becoming clearer and more deadly. The Texas fertilizer plant, where 14 people were killed in an explosion and fire, was last inspected by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) over 25 years ago. The U.S. Forest Service, stunned by the Prescott, Arizona fire that killed 19, was forced by the sequester to cut 500 firefighters. The rail disaster in Lac-Megantic, Quebec followed deregulation of Canadian railways. At the other extreme is the public sector, and the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), which rescued hundreds of people after Hurricane Sandy while serving millions more with meals and water.

The lack of private incentive for human betterment is evident throughout the world. The World Hunger Education Service states that "Harmful economic systems are the principal cause of poverty and hunger." And according to Nicholas Stern, the chief economist for the World Bank, climate change is "the greatest market failure the world has seen."

6. With Public Systems, We Don't Have to Listen To "Individual Initiative" Rantings

Back in the Reagan years, a stunning claim was made by Margaret Thatcher: "There is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families." More recently, Paul Ryan complained that government support "drains individual initiative and personal responsibility."

That's easy to say for people with good jobs.

Individual initiative? Our publicly supported communications infrastructure allows the richest 10% of Americans to manipulate their 80% share of the stock market. CEOs rely on roads and seaports and airports to ship their products, the FAA and TSA and Coast Guard and Department of Transportation to safeguard them, a nationwide energy grid to power their factories, and communications towers and satellites to conduct online business. Perhaps most important to business, even as it focuses on short-term profits, is the long-term basic research that is largely conducted with government money. As of 2009 universities were still receiving ten times more science & engineering funding from government than from industry.

Public beats private in almost every way. Only the hype of the free-market media keeps much of America believing that "winner-take-all" is preferable to working together as a community.

This article was published at Nation of Change at:
http://www.nationofchange.org/public-beats-private-six-reasons-why-1382448019.
All rights are reserved.
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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Tue, 15 Oct 2013 00:08:00 +0000

Cyber-shield: Brazil announces govt system to block NSA snooping

RT.com
October 14, 2013

Brazil is creating an email system intended to shield the government from NSA spying. The country is set to vote on a cyber-security bill following revelations the US spy network had infiltrated the highest levels of Brazil’s administration.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff tweeted the news, stressing the need for greater security “to prevent possible espionage.”

Rousseff said the Federal Data Processing Service (SERPRO) had been charged with creating the spy-proof system for the Brazilian government.

“This is the first step toward extending the privacy and inviolability of official posts,” Rousseff said.

Furthermore, Brazil’s Minister of Communication Paulo Bernardo said that the new system would most probably be put to the test at the end of the month.

SERPRO is also developing an email security system that will be freely available for the Brazilian public.

The initiatives are part of a number of measures being introduced by the Brazilian government to sure up internet security. It comes after security leaks by former CIA employee Edward Snowden revealed that the NSA had been spying on the communications of the Brazilian government.

The classified cables obtained by American journalist Glen Greenwald and published by Brazilian newspaper O Globo revealed that the US spy agency had infiltrated the state-run oil giant Petrobras. The NSA had even managed to hack into President Rousseff’s email account.

Canada was also implicated in the scandal for spying on Brazil’s Ministry of Mines and Energy and then disseminating the data among the others in the ‘Five Eyes’ intelligence network – the US, UK, New Zealand and Australia.

“They [Five Eyes] are sharing all the information, handing over documents to let other countries know exactly what they are doing,” Glen Greenwald told Brazilian current affairs program Fantastico.

President Dilma condemned the NSA’s spying as a breach of Brazilian sovereignty and made it clear that Brazil would not tolerate such activities. She called on both Canada and the US to cease the ‘cyberwar’ they had started against Brazil.

“Without respect for [a nation’s] sovereignty, there is no basis for proper relations among nations. Those who want a strategic partnership cannot possibly allow recurring and illegal action to go on as if they were an ordinary practice,” she said in a speech to the UN in September.

In retaliation, Dilma postponed an official visit to Washington and announced that Brazil will host an international conference on internet governance next year.

Meanwhile, the White House has released a statement saying President Barack Obama had ordered an investigation into the US intelligence program in Brazil.

"As the president previously stated, he has directed a broad review of US intelligence posture, but the process will take several months to complete,” said the statement.

Source:
http://rt.com/news/brazil-protection-nsa-spying-165/
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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Mon, 14 Oct 2013 21:50:00 +0000

In Russia, Activism Is Now Officially Considered Crazy

In an act of domestic repression, authorities have locked up a prominent political dissident.

By Vince Beiser
Pacific Standard
October 9, 201

In a grotesque end-run around their own criminal justice system, not to mention human rights, Russian authorities have locked up a prominent political dissident in a mental hospital. It's a tactic of domestic repression that was common in the old Soviet Union, but which the post-Communist regime abandoned—at least until this week.

Mikhail Kosenko, 38, was one of dozens of opposition activists arrested for taking part in an anti-Putin rally in May of 2012. Several of his colleagues were sentenced to prison. As the Los Angeles Times reports: "Kosenko, who acknowledged suffering from a minor mental illness, was sent to Moscow's Serbsky mental clinic, where he was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and found to be a danger to himself and others. The diagnosis was immediately contested by a group of independent psychiatrists." Nonetheless, the judge ordered Kosensko receive "compulsory treatment in a psychiatric asylum of a closed type."

This type of arbitrary use of mental hospitals as de facto prisons is exactly why advocates for the mentally ill in this country fight so hard against laws that would make it easier to force people into treatment. California's "Laura's Law," for instance, mandates outpatient treatment for mentally ill people with a propensity for violence. It was passed by the state legislature in 2002, but has been essentially ignored since, in large part because of pressure from patients' rights advocates.

Those folks have certainly got a point. On the other hand, just in the last few weeks we've seen some horrific results of cases in which people who were known to be mentally ill were not obliged to get any sort of treatment. One of them burned himself to death on the Washington Mall. Another crashed her car into a fence around the White House before being shot dead by police—who thankfully missed her infant daughter in the back seat. And of course, there was the Navy Yard shooter.

Source:
http://www.psmag.com/politics/russia-activism-now-officially-considered-crazy-68059/ _______________________

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 13 Oct 2013 15:02:00 +0000

How Talk Radio and Fox News Brainwashed My Dad

A filmmaker's father came to believe the extreme right-wing lies of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media mavens.

By Jen Senko, Rory O'Connor
AlterNet
Oct. 10, 2013

Jen Senko is a filmmaker who watched in horror as her father slowly came to believe the extreme right-wing lies of Rush Limbaugh and other conservative media mavens. Now she’s making a documentary about it called The Brainwashing of My Dad.

Senko's first documentary, Road Map Warrior Women, won recognition with several festival awards. Her most recent film, The Vanishing City, co-directed with Fiore DeRosa, exposes the economic policies that have made New York a city for the rich. The Vanishing City won Best Feature Documentary in the Williamsburg International Film Festival, Best Short Documentary in the Harlem International Film Festival, and Honorable Mention in the Los Angeles International Film Festival.

Rory O'Connor, a filmmaker and author whose works include the book, Shock Jocks: Hate Speech and Talk Radio, interviewed Senko about her film.

Rory O'Connor: Tell us about the origins of your film. When did you first notice your dad's 'brainwashing," and when did you determine to make a documentary film about it?

Jen Senko: I remember the first time I really noticed it. My dad picked me up from the bus station when I was visiting from New York. On the way home we passed a Hooters and he started complaining about the "attack" against Hooters by the establishment, and saying how silly it was and how it interfered with our freedom.

He was frighteningly angry—excited, argumentative, belligerent... I didn’t understand why. I tried to change the subject and said something about all the SUVs I was seeing on the road—this was in the '80s, when they first came out. My dad had always been a “non-waster” and tightwad—anytime he got gas he marked it down in a little book to keep track of how much he was spending—so I thought he would agree. I was flabbergasted when he got even angrier and threatened to pull over and let me hitchhike the rest of the way home.

If you said anything that he would disagree with politically, it would trigger an extremely large reaction. For example, once on an online dating site, I specified, “No Republicans please.” He found out about it somehow, called and left a phone message. He was sputtering, so mad he could hardly speak, and blurted out, “Don't ask me for help anymore.” He stopped just short of disowning me.

ROC: Describe the specifics of your father's transformation. How did it happen? And why?

JS: When I was growing up, no one seemed particularly political. Both my parents were Democrats. Republicans were just other people. My father used to get to work in a car pool when we were growing up in West Long Branch, NJ. When he got a promotion, we moved to Maryland and then he had a long-distance solo drive to work. He started listening to talk radio to pass the time.

He didn’t like to waste time so driving and listening to talk radio I’m sure seemed "educational" to him. It was Bob Grant. Bob Grant was a bombastic, rude, openly racist and sexist radio host. And very slowly, my dad began to change.

Then when he started listening to Rush Limbaugh, that was when I started getting worried. He hated Bill Clinton with a passion I thought was bordering on obsessive. As for why it happened, at this point I can only guess. Unlike my mother, he was easily influenced and seemed to respond to anything he thought was not fair or unjust. He was sort of naïve in a way—people would tell him a story and he would be a little gullible, because he had an open personality.

So when Rush Limbaugh told him that poor people and Mexicans and blacks and feminazis were to blame for well, everything, he got mad too and took it up as his cause. He would get super-angry and bite the middle of his tongue and look like he was going to explode.

ROC:How exactly did his behavior change?

JS: When I was growing up my dad seemed to love everybody. I never heard any kind of talk against any race or ethnicity. He was funny and goofy and talked to anybody....When I was in college I knew a lot of gays, and he was friendly and even gregarious and even thought them "cultured." He wasn't prejudiced at all. It wasn't until later that he underwent a radical change.

I remember one time in particular when we went to New York to go to Radio City Music Hall. A black homeless man asked him for money. My father called him sir and gave him money. That is imprinted on my memory. When my dad changed, he became obsessive. He got angrier. After he retired, he would sit in the kitchen and eat his lunch and listen to Rush Limbaugh for three full hours a day. God forbid you interrupt Rush. He tried to inject his political views into any conversation he had, with anybody. Around Christmas-time (not just on Christmas Day) he would be sure to shout “Merry Christmas” to anyone and everyone, because he believed that liberals were engaging in a war on Christmas.

He believed it when Rush Limbaugh told him that climate change is a hoax. He called Al Gore an “asshole” even after watching the entire An Inconvenient Truth—by then he could not be moved. He also would compliment smokers on smoking. When we would go to a restaurant and people sat outside to smoke, he would take a deep breath and exclaim how good it smelled.

This was because Rush Limbaugh told him that the scientists were lying about the findings about smoking—oh, and those greedy scientists just wanted funding money and that’s why they were perpetrating this myth about climate change being caused by humans. You couldn’t argue with him. He was one angry, whirling, right-wing dervish. He even got mail from and gave money to the NRA though never owned a gun in his life. My mother found he wrote all these checks to various right-wing causes.

ROC:What are the forces that you see having changed your father and his behavior?

JS: Interesting that you ask that question because it is such a central component in my film. I’ve been told that using the word “conspiracy” is not a good idea. But there were specific plans drawn up, some in secret, by members of the Republican elite to create a major change from the political direction the country was moving in (namely more progressive) to one with much more emphasis on business through, in large part, the media. Those forces turned into changes in the media and the language and framing of values and messages like “liberal media” being repeated over and over. They created scapegoats to blame, and produced a hostility within him towards other people that he felt should be making it on their own—no excuses! He became convinced that if they were suffering it was their own fault.

ROC:How can media habits actually have such a pronounced effect on people, to change them so radically?

JS: By media habits, I’ll answer as if you mean listening or watching habits. In the film, Steve Rendell discusses the personal nature of talk radio. There is an intimate connection between the radio and the listener. As for the effect it has on people, I think any message told repeatedly has an effect on people. It works in advertising and it works in forming one’s political views.

ROC:How has your father reacted to your proposed film? Is he supportive? Does he think you are part of the "liberal media"?

JS: My dad knows that I'm making a film about him. I'm always filming something. He's proud of me. We get along great now. I love him to pieces. And I won't give the film away but he is not the same person he was three years ago. My father has always loved me, but I think had this film been made during the time of his political obsession that love would have been greatly tested.

ROC:Are you hearing from other people in the same familial boat? How many?

JS: More than I could have ever imagined. The right-wing media noise machine has had a profound affect on lives of individuals, whether they listen to it or not.

ROC:Is this more a male phenomenon in your opinion? Is it more prevalent in any one group?

JS: It is more of a male phenomenon. Rush's audience is 72% men and most are white over the age of 65, and with Fox and other outlets, it’s similar stats. However, I have met people across the board who get sucked into right-wing media outlets. It always surprises me.

You can somewhat understand the draw for white men. In the past, it was almost a guarantee that merely by being a white male one could assume a good job and a certain social status. Their roles in the world were turned upside-down during the civil rights era of the '60s and '70s. Men had very specific roles and suddenly they were being challenged by women and minorities. They either had to adapt or reinvent themselves or find a sympathetic voice that told them it wasn't their fault and there were groups to blame. And that anger, even though it's anger, is still passion. It provides a purpose and I believe anger can be addictive. It can be a rush.

ROC:Is there an antidote to this brainwashing? A cure?

JS: That’s part of what my film is about. The answer is deprogramming by exposing lies, but part of the problem is how to get them to listen.

ROC:Is it really brainwashing or is that a metaphor, an exaggeration?

JS: That’s a good question. And I’m not sure I can answer it one way or another. Perhaps some people think that brainwashing is an exaggeration, but I, and others, have seen profound and frightening changes in people they would never have imagined possible. What is brainwashing? In the '50s and '60s when there were red-scare movies like The Manchurian Candidate—those movies showed how someone could be led to act against their own beliefs and their own interests. My father voted against his own interests as do many of these Fox viewers and right-wing radio listeners. How is that different from the notion of brainwashing?

ROC:Aren't liberal opinion outfits, like MSNBC, guilty of much the same thing from the other side of the political spectrum?

JS: I think it is impossible not to have a bias in media. But, I also think there is a difference between facts and opinion. Right-wingers I know always challenge me with that question. And I answer it this way: I say MSNBC largely is a "tattletale." They talk about and try to expose the right's lies.

The second thing MSNBC does that Fox doesn't do is correct themselves when they make a mistake. They are, however, decidedly pro-administration and since they have a corporate media structure behind them they can't go too liberal. As Jeff Cohen would say, there's a very narrow debate in the news. You have extreme right, right and MSNBC is center-left. Although Chris Hayes can be pretty in your face and honest, Al Sharpton wouldn't say anything bad about the president.

ROC:Tell us about some of the people interviewed in your film, such as George Lakoff, Jeff Cohen, Edward Herman etc. Why did you choose them?

JS: Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky and the others made me aware that not only is there no so-called “liberal media,” which I knew, but that all of the media is biased toward business.

ROC:Isn’t all media a form of brainwashing in some sense?

JS: I don’t think so. No, I think there are very different ways the media operates, and perhaps intent is part of that.

It’s a very complex answer. Media can be a form of brainwashing depending on the viewer/listener. Most people who choose to ingest one type of media are going to get influenced by that media. Unless people read a lot on their own—and most people don’t have time to—they will listen to and believe whatever is fed them. And that’s easier to do when you have uneducated masses of people.

A less educated mass also serves the corporate purpose. Thus the push for charter schools, by the way. They can teach them what they want to teach them. There are also those who gravitate toward an authoritarian media who blame others for your troubles. If people aren’t doing well in life, it gives them a passion to be angry and have someone else to blame, like poor people and minorities.

ROC:You say, "Documentarians are the new journalists." What does that mean? What happened to the "old" journalists?

JS: Most journalists work for a corporate-owned media. That said, corporations have an agenda and like many corporations they want to keep costs down and provide “gains” for their shareholders. So they don’t pay the journalist what they need to be paid in order to do a thorough job. And most importantly, a “thorough job” wouldn’t serve their corporate interest anyway.

Though there are some great journalists who write for truly independent online publications—like AlterNet—documentarians now are also telling the stories in another medium that can possibly reach more people and with less outside influence. For instance, Josh Fox’s Gasland films are super-important and that’s why the right is going to try to disparage documentarians.

ROC:What are your hopes and goals for this film?

JS: Ha! Always, my hope is to help save the world in some way. In a way that I know how to and that is, to tell a personal story accompanied by facts and information that isn't out there and compiled. There are many books out there but we need film. It’s more accessible to more people. In my wildest dreams I would hope that it becomes one of those "known" things that Fox News is Faux News and convinces people to vote against their own interests and hate anybody who doesn't think like they do. I would like for their jig to be up. And I would hope that liberals could learn a little something about framing and language, as the brilliant George Lakoff talks about.

ROC:What is the status of your Kickstarter campaign and how can people find it?

JS: We did surpass the initial goal of $15,000. At the moment we are at around $26,000. I have stretch goals, which would enable us to get much further along in the film. As of Thursday, October 10 there will be 20 more days.

People can also choose to support the film for a tax deduction through WMM (Women Make Movies).

ROC:What actions do you hope to drive viewers to take, if any?

JS: As I see Fox News being played in more and more doctors' offices, airports, lobbies of any sort, ask your doctor or whomever why they would choose to show such a divisive program, and ask them to please stop. My mom has done it. I have done it. It doesn’t take that much time to do. Just politely complain and suggest they show something more neutral. That’s just one among many things.

There’s also a great organization called StopRush and they swarm targeted advertisers that advertise with Rush Limbaugh. And clamor for the Fairness Doctrine to be reinstated!

ROC: If you had 30 seconds to speak to Rush Limbaugh, what would you say?

JS: I guess I’d ask him a number of “why”s. Why do you do what you do? Is it the money? Do you believe what you say? Do you realize you have been a party to the destruction of families all across America by tearing them apart into “Dittoheads” versus non-Rushies? How do you feel about yourself? Are you proud of yourself? Then I would call him a Fat Fuck (not that there’s anything wrong with being fat).

Source:
http://www.alternet.org/media/how-talk-radio-and-fox-news-brainwashed-my-dad
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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Fri, 27 Sep 2013 11:33:00 +0000

30K cops, others can access Ohio driver’s license database with no oversight

By Travis Gettys
Raw Story
September 23, 201

Ohio allows thousands of police officers and court employees to access driver’s license images online without oversight, by far the nation’s most permissive system.

A recent Cincinnati Enquirer/Gannett Ohio investigation found the state permits 30,000 law enforcement officers and others to search the image database, which Attorney General Mike DeWine admitted last month had been uploaded in June without telling the public or reviewing security protocols.

The Republican attorney general said similar technology was used by law enforcement in more than half the U.S., but the Enquirer’s report showed the technology is far more limited elsewhere.

For example, in neighboring Kentucky, a facial recognition search can be run by only 34 people – three in the driver’s license bureau and 31 in the state police.

The newspaper’s review found 38 states and the District of Columbia used systems that could match a photograph with a driver’s license picture, but those systems were launched and controlled by the driver’s license bureau.

Those systems were operated primarily to prevent duplicate or fraudulent identity cards.

Twelve states, including California, do not use facial recognition software.

Another 12 states, including New York, use the software but do not permit law enforcement to access the technology.

In Ohio, police officers have performed at least 2,600 searches since June 2 using the new database, which scans driver’s license photos and police mug shots and compares them to any image, including those from surveillance cameras.

Anyone with access to Ohio’s database could identify and acquire personal information, such as home addresses and Social Security numbers, for any person they wanted.

DeWine said he was satisfied the system had “adequate” safeguards in place, including threat of prosecution, to prevent misuse.

But the ACLU has called for DeWine to “pull the plug” on the system until “meaningful, documented rules” were put in place to keep the information secure and protect privacy.

Source:
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2013/09/23/30k-cops-others-can-access-ohio-drivers-license-database-with-no-oversight/
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noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 25 Sep 2013 00:40:00 +0000

Internet Society Responds to Reports of the U.S. Government’s Circumvention of Encryption Technology

Internet Society
Sept 9, 2013

The Internet Society is alarmed by continuing reports alleging systematic United States government efforts to circumvent Internet security mechanisms. The Internet Society President and CEO, Lynn St. Amour, said, “If true, these reports describe government programmes that undermine the technical foundations of the Internet and are a fundamental threat to the Internet’s economic, innovative, and social potential. Any systematic, state-level attack on Internet security and privacy is a rejection of the global, collaborative fabric that has enabled the Internet's growth to extend beyond the interests of any one country.”

The Internet Society believes that global interoperability and openness of the Internet are pre-requisites for confidence in online interaction, they unlock the Internet as a forum for economic and social progress, and they are founded on basic assumptions of trust. We are deeply concerned that these principles are being eroded and that users' legitimate expectations of online security are being treated with contempt.

As the institutional home of the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), we believe that open and transparent processes are essential for security standardization, and result in better outcomes than any alternative approach. For example, protocols developed by the IETF are open for all to see, inspect, and verify, as are the open and inclusive processes by which they are specified.

IETF Chairman Jari Arkko has strongly reiterated the IETF’s commitment to improving security in the Internet, and to seeking ways of improving security protocols in light of these new revelations and security threats. “The IETF has a long-standing commitment to openness and transparency in developing security protocols for the Internet, and sees this as critical to confidence in their use and implementation.”

To read more, visit: http://www.ietf.org/blog/2013/09/security-and-pervasive-monitoring/

However, the open development of robust technical specifications is just one link in the chain. Security standards must be properly implemented and used. This is a wake-up call for technology developers and adopters alike, to reexamine what we can do to ensure that all links in the chain are equally strong. This is key to helping restore public trust and confidence in the Internet.

The Internet has tremendous potential for economic and social good, but unless all stakeholders trust the Internet as a safe place for business, social interaction, academic enquiry, and self-expression, those economic and social benefits are put at risk. To fulfill its potential, the Internet must be underpinned by the right combination of technology, operational processes, legislation, policy, and governance. The recent reports suggest that U.S. Government programmes have systematically undermined some or all of those measures, and that is why we view the revelations with such grave concern.

With this mind, we issue these calls to action for the global community:

To every citizen of the Internet: let your government representatives know that, even in matters of national security, you expect privacy, rule of law, and due process in any handling of your data.

Security is a collective responsibility that involves multiple stakeholders. In this regard, we call on:

Those involved in technology research and development: use the openness of standards processes like the IETF to challenge assumptions about security specifications.

Those who implement the technology and standards for Internet security: uphold that responsibility in your work, and be mindful of the damage caused by loss of trust.

Those who develop products and services that depend on a trusted Internet: secure your own services, and be intolerant of insecurity in the infrastructure on which you depend.

To every Internet user: ensure you are well informed about good practice in online security, and act on that information. Take responsibility for your own security.

At the Internet Society, we remain committed to advancing work in areas such as browser security, privacy settings, and digital footprint awareness in order to help users understand and manage their privacy and security. The citizens of the Internet deserve a global and open platform for communication, built on solid foundations of security and privacy.

About the Internet Society

The Internet Society is the trusted independent source for Internet information and thought leadership from around the world. With its principled vision and substantial technological foundation, the Internet Society promotes open dialogue on Internet policy, technology, and future development among users, companies, governments, and other organizations. Working with its members and Chapters around the world, the Internet Society enables the continued evolution and growth of the Internet for everyone.
For more information, visit www.internetsociety.org

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Source:
http://www.internetsociety.org/news/internet-society-responds-reports-us-government%E2%80%99s-circumvention-encryption-technology _________________________

Here we go again!

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sun, 01 Sep 2013 15:51:00 +0000

Obama and American exceptionalism
Last night's Libya speech again highlighted Obama's belief in American exceptionalism. Is that a good thing?

By Glenn Greenwald
Salon
Mar 29, 2011

Numerous commentators have observed that President Obama’s Libya speech last night rested on an affirmation of American “exceptionalism.” That conviction, they contend, was expressed by Obama’s appeal to “America’s responsibility as a leader” and by this claim: “some nations may be able to turn a blind eye to atrocities in other countries. The United States of America is different.”

Steve Benen proclaimed that Obama’s speech should put an end to the debate over whether he believes in America’s exceptionalism: “the president wasn’t subtle — the United States isn’t like other countries; ours is a country with unique power, responsibilities, and moral obligations.”

Andrew Sullivan observed that exceptionalism was “the core message of the President’s speech” and that “he clearly believes in that exceptionalism – and now will live with its onerous responsibilities.”

Mark Kleiman announced that last night’s speech exposed “one of the stupidest of right-wing talking points about Obama . . . that he somehow disbelieves in the exceptional nature of the American project” (though Kleiman also bizarrely equates that accusation with “the lie that Barack Obama does not love his country” — as though you can’t love your country if you don’t believe in its exceptionalism).

Adam Serwer wrote: “After Obama’s speech last night. . . anyone who alleges the president doesn’t believe [in exceptionalism] deserves to be laughed out of town.”

And the most enthusiastic praise for Obama’s speech came from Bill Kristol in The Weekly Standard, who gushed that with this speech, “President Obama had rejoined — or joined — the historical American foreign policy mainstream” and “the president was unapologetic, freedom-agenda-embracing, and didn’t shrink from defending the use of force or from appealing to American values and interests.”

It’s long been obvious that Obama deeply believes in American exceptionalism, and I agree entirely with these commentators who say that last night’s speech left no doubt about that conviction (not because he says he believes it in a speech, but because his actions reflect that belief).

But what none of them say — other than Kristol — is whether they believe this to be a good thing.

Does the U.S. indeed occupy a special place in the world, entitling and even obligating us to undertake actions that no other country is entitled or obligated to undertake? And, if so, what is the source of these entitlements and obligations? Is it merely our superior military power, or is there something else that has vested us with this perch of exceptionalism?

That the U.S. is exceptional is not, of course, some sort of unusual or marginal belief in American political culture. Quite the contrary: those who reject it are the ones who find themselves in the minority.

Beginning almost immediately after 9/11, George W. Bush frequently asserted that America was “called” — by whom he didn’t say — “to defend freedom.” A Gallup poll from late last year found that 80% of Americans believe their country “has a unique character that makes it the greatest country in the world.”

There are very few political propositions which can command 80% support; that this one does shows just how much American exceptionalism is solidified as political orthodoxy in the United States.

The pervasiveness of this exceptionalism isn’t really surprising. It’s a common human desire to believe that one is special, unique, better than all others. Few people aspire to ordinariness. We view the world — physically and mentally — from our own personal perspective, and are inherently situated at the center of it. As tribal beings, we naturally believe that our customs and the beliefs with which we were inculcated from childhood are superior to Theirs.

Personally, I’ve never understood how the following thought doesn’t obliterate — or at least severely dilute — the conviction of one’s exceptionalism:

The probability that I happened to be born in the greatest country on Earth — or, even more so, the greatest country ever to exist on Earth in all of human history — is minute. Isn’t it far more likely that I believe this because I was taught to, rather than because it’s true?

But the desire to believe something is a powerful force, and this belief is thus extremely widespread. Still, it’s not a particularly appealing trait for an individual to run around hailing themselves “the greatest in the world,” so it becomes perfectly acceptable — mandatory even — to nationalize this sentiment: “my country, the United States, is the greatest country in the world,” and thus — to use Benen’s description of Obama’s mindset — “the United States isn’t like other countries; ours is a country with unique power, responsibilities, and moral obligations” (This is not a question of whether one finds things to admire in America; just as one can appreciate one’s own strengths without believing one is The Greatest in the World, one can appreciate attributes of American political life — its domestic protections of free speech and press rights, its relatively integrated racial and ethnic diversity, its class mobility (as evidenced by two of the last three Presidents), its social progress — without believing it to be The Greatest).

Exceptionalism can, of course, take different forms and result in different consequences. Notwithstanding Kristol’s ecstacy over Obama’s speech, Serwer insists that Obama’s version of exceptionalism is different than the American Right’s:

Conservatives seem to believe that American Exceptionalism justifies America doing whatever it wants in the world. By contrast, Obama — at least rhetorically — emphasizes that being exceptional is a standard to meet, not a license for America to capriciously enforce its will upon others. Where conservatives sometimes refuse to acknowledge that there are limits to American power, Obama acknowledged: “The United States will not be able to dictate the pace and scope of this change. Only the people of the region can do that.”

That overstates the difference. The reality is that Bush never really acted alone; his attack on Iraq was joined by an international coalition larger than the one participating in Obama’s ~~war~~ humanitarian intervention in Libya, and the last time I checked,

Obama had no multilateral coalition or U.N. approval for his relentless drone attacks in Pakistan or covert bombings in Yemen. Stephen Walt argues, persuasively I think, that the only real difference between neocons and liberal interventionists is that the latter insist on legitimizing their wars through the U.N. while the former don’t care to.

But let’s grant that there are some meaningful differences in how the Democratic and GOP versions of exceptionalism manifest.

The fact remains that declaring yourself special, superior and/or exceptional — and believing that to be true, and, especially, acting on that belief — has serious consequences.

It can (and usually does) mean that the same standards of judgment aren’t applied to your acts as are applied to everyone else’s (when you do X, it’s justified, but when they do, it isn’t).

It means that you’re entitled (or obligated) to do things that nobody else is entitled or obligated to do (does anyone doubt that the self-perceived superiority and self-arrogated entitlements of Wall Street tycoons is what lead them to believe they can act without constraints?).

It means that no matter how many bad things you do in the world, it doesn’t ever reflect on who you are, because you’re inherently exceptional and thus driven by good motives. And it probably means — at least as it expresses itself in the American form — that you’ll find yourself in a posture of endless war, because your “unique power, responsibilities, and moral obligations” will always find causes and justifications for new conflicts.

It’s a nice political point on the President’s behalf to insist that he has proven his belief in American exceptionalism. That insulates him from a political vulnerability (i.e., from the perception that he rejects a widely held view), which is nice if politically defending the President is an important goal for you.

But the harder — and far more important — question is whether this American exceptionalism that you attribute to him is actually true, whether it’s well-grounded, and whether it should serve as a premise for our actions in the world.

Source:
http://www.salon.com/2011/03/29/exceptionalism_4/
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Policy and legal experts weigh in on the alleged quartet of new appointees

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Sat, 24 Aug 2013 15:50:00 +0000

Obama’s “outside experts” surveillance review panel has deep ties to gov’t.

by Cyrus Farivar
Ars Technica
Aug. 22, 2013
[emphasis added]

Earlier this month, the Obama Administration said it was convening a "high level group of outside experts" to review intelligence operations and conduct a meaningful review on the American surveillance infrastructure.

But a new report published late Wednesday from ABC News reveals that four of the panelists have longstanding ties to government and intelligence infrastructure, leading some legal scholars outside government to question how independent it actually will be. (It's not known if the panel will have more members beyond the named four.)

Thursday’s White House press conference aboard Air Force One did not address the issue. ABC added that the White House is expected to formally announce members of that panel on Thursday, and so far, the government has not denied ABC's report.

The panel is supposed to present initial findings to Director of National Intelligence James Clapper by November 2013, with its final recommendations due before the end of the year. According to ABC News, the group consists of four names: Michael Morrell, Richard Clarke, Peter Swire, and Cass Sunstein.

A top spy, a counter-terrorism official, and two law professors

Morrell is a veteran of the CIA, having served as acting director of the agency twice: once in 2011 and once from 2012 to 2013.

Clarke is also a veteran of government, having served as a counter-terrorism advisor during the George W. Bush Administration. Later, he was appointed as special advisor to the president on cybersecurity. After leaving government in 2003, Clarke founded Good Harbor Security Risk Management, a cybersecurity consultancy.

Swire, a law professor and privacy expert currently at the Georgia Institute of Technology, also noted on his website that he served during the Clinton Administration as “Chief Counselor for Privacy in the US Office of Management and Budget, the only person to date to have government-wide responsibility for privacy policy.” Back in 2004, Swire also wrote one of the best-known academic articles on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. In the 104-page article, he outlines an extensive history of the statute and proposes new reforms.

Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor, formerly served as administrator of the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs and is married to Samantha Power, the current United States ambassador to the United Nations. Journalists and legal experts have rediscovered an academic paper that Sunsteinauthored in 2010, in which he called for governments agents to “enter chat rooms, online social networks, or even real-space groups and attempt to undermine percolating conspiracy theories by raising doubts about their factual premises, causal logic, or implications for political action.”

Clarke, Swire, and Sunstein did not immediately respond to Ars’ request for comment. We were unable to locate an e-mail address for Morrell, the former CIA official.

“It’s especially hard not to be skeptical”

When asked about their opinions on the choice of these four, various legal experts expressed a mixture of doubt and praise as to the effectiveness of these supposed picks.

“The picks show that the president's commitment to having ‘independent’ and ‘outside experts’ review the spying programs is false,” Mark Jaycox, a policy analyst at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), told Ars. “All the picks are thorough Washington insiders.”

Other law professors held similar sentiments.

“They all clearly have strong connections to the Administration, so I think skepticism about how independently they will operate is warranted,” Clark Asay, a law professor from Penn State University, told Ars. “It’s especially hard not to be skeptical and to accept the Administration’s message of ‘trust us, we’re taking care of this’ when they clearly haven’t and are only trying to do so now because of public fallout from Mr. Snowden’s revelations.”

On the other hand…

Many, though, believe that for such a group to be effective, it by definition needs strong ties to the government.

“Choosing insiders has positives and negatives: On the one hand, choosing insiders makes it more likely that they can move the levers of power,” Robin Feldman, a law professor at the University of California Hastings College of the Law, told Ars by e-mail. “On the other hand, choosing insiders makes it more challenging for them to have the independence.”

Meanwhile, Orin Kerr, a privacy law expert and professor at George Washington University acknowledged in a Thursday blog post on the Volokh Conspiracy that while the group isn’t as diverse as he might like, “perhaps that was necessary because everyone needed to have a security clearance, which presumably they all have or recently had. But it’s not as large or diverse a group as I would like to see.”

Dorothy Glancy, a professor at the Santa Clara University School of Law, told Ars that the selection “looks like a reasonably good working group,” although she lamented the lack of women in the group. The professor also noted that Cass Sunstein was a colleague of Barack Obama’s at the University of Chicago when he was a professor of law there.

“Cass is particularly insightful about government organizations, administrative agencies, and their limitations,” Glancy added. “He is generally libertarian in his philosophical views—a good perspective to have on the panel. The word is that the president listens to Cass, who is known to be direct, frank, and unusually intelligent. Cass will likely contribute a great deal in terms of how to manage a large and famously non-transparent agency.”

Still, the EFF’s Mark Jaycox continued in his e-mail that he seriously doubts the panel’s independence.

“That's why a Congressional investigation, led by a new committee, must be tasked to fully look into the spying on innocent Americans and the secret law supposedly justifying it (which we got a glimpse of with yesterday's release of a legal opinion),” he wrote. “The government's disclosures and news reports elicit more questions than answers. These questions must be answered for the public to have a proper debate on the Constitution and our country's spying regime—especially when that regime is being turned on innocent Americans' phone calls and e-mails.”

Source:

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/08/obamas-reported-outside-experts-surveillance-review-panel-has-deep-ties-to-govt/

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