Coming Out of the Closet

Posted on December 7, 2013 by camelotkidd

I have decided to come out of the closet and live my life free from shame.

Nope, not gay, if that’s what you were thinking. Not that there’s anything wrong with that sort of thing.

No, my closet consists of hackneyed economic conventional wisdom.

In my last post, critiquing neoliberalism, I avoided using Karl Marx as a reference because Marx and Marxism have been converted into pejoratives. In the process it came to me: I’m a Marxist.

There, I said it. Don’t hate me.

I’m a Marxist in the sense that Marx was, after all, an economist who critiqued capitalism. I’m not an economist but I critique capitalism, frequently.

Our system of propaganda is powerful. Noam Chomsky frequently points out that our propaganda system targets intellectuals with their meta narrative.  This message comes complete with heros and villains and there is no greater villain than Marx. I’m pretty sure I internalized this.

Reading Marx in the aftermath of the Wall Street Crash and ongoing economic recession it’s apparent that the dude was on to something. He examined capitalism critically and found that it would ultimately lead to gross inequality. Check. He predicted that over production would cause a fall in demand and lead to an over financialization of the economy. Check and check.

Certainly Marx’s inquiry into the nature of capitalism earned him the hatred of the ownership class. But unfortunately, many intellectuals have been complicit in demonizing Marx by conflating his critique of capitalism with the Marxist movements of the 20th century. The USSR, for example, was depicted as the perfect embodiment of Marxism. Among right-wing intellectuals it was especially fruitful to smear any socialist or nationalist movement as both Marxist and controlled by the Soviet Union. See the ongoing coverage of the death of Nelson Mandela for a manual.

With the demise of the Soviet Union there has been an intellectual triumphalism that has led to a further discrediting of Marx. The end of history theory was treated as sober truth in the early 90’s, now it’s ridiculous. However, capitalist cheerleaders are always useful and I’m pretty sure they will never admit they were wrong. Also too, the (TINA) “Thatcherites” will forever attack Marx to preclude any hope of an alternative to neoliberal capitalism.

For all the intellectual firepower directed at Marx he is more relevant than ever. After all, there is that class thing that Marx emphasized. With record levels of inequality Americans are starting to look around and notice that there is indeed a class-war, the rich have won and they are busy finishing off the survivors.

Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism gets it exactly right when she notes “…as political science has documented, American politics are driven not by voters but by powerful monied interests. And perversely, those groups on the whole seem to believe that bleeding ordinary Americans dry is a winning strategy for them. Short term, of course, it sure looks that way, but we look to be at the end of an economic paradigm, so how long they can keep that sort of thing up remains to be seen.”

I believe the demonization of Marx and subsequent lionization of capitalism comes down to control over the levers of power.

Under our American system of neoliberal capitalism, we have a rich, powerful elite who rule unobtrusively, without the sullen acquiescence under a dictatorship. As anthropologist Peter Rigby says, “Capitalism is the most opaque form of oppression known to mankind, because in capitalism, people are convinced they are free, when, in fact, they are in chains.”

John Lennon was another guy who understood a thing or too about class warfare.

“Keep you doped with religion and sex and TV
And you think you’re so clever and classless and free
But you’re still fucking peasants as far as I can see
A working class hero is something to be.”

Amen.

Update: I found this interview with Chris Hedges that dovetails nicely.

“JAY: You quote in your article Karl Marx writing, “The ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships,” Marx wrote, “the dominant material relationships grasped as ideas.” Why did that hit you?

HEDGES: Well, because the whole notion of the free market–laissez-faire capitalism, globalization–is a very thin rationale for unmitigated greed by a tiny oligarchic elite. And they have made sure that that ideology is taught in universities across the country. And people, especially economists, who deviate from that ideology have been pushed aside, have become pariahs. And yet the driving ethos of that ideology is really to justify the hoarding of immense amounts of wealth by a very tiny percentage of, you know, the upper ruling class. That’s what it is.”

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Primitive Accumulation

Posted on November 28, 2013 by camelotkidd

I’m fascinated by neoliberalism and the worship of the market. I’m especially interested in the intellectual underpinnings of this ideology and how it became our de facto religion.

In his new book: Never Let a Serious Crisis Go to Waste: How Neoliberalism Survived the Meltdown, Philip Mirowski finds an apt comparison to this situation in classic studies of cognitive dissonance. He concludes that “neoliberal thought has become so pervasive that any countervailing evidence serves only to further convince disciples of its ultimate truth. Once neoliberalism became a Theory of Everything, providing a revolutionary account of self, knowledge, information, markets, and government, it could no longer be falsified by anything as trifling as data from the “real” economy.”

Imagine that.

Mirowski says that neoliberalism differs from classical economics in that its insistence on the use of markets for everything actually requires “strong uses of state intervention.”

Gee, where have I seen the government setting up markets and forcing citizens to purchase from said markets under penalty?

Give yourself a cookie if you answered the Affordable Care Act.

In attempting to understand neo-liberalism, it’s useful to go back to the beginning and make some inquiries about the foundation of this ideology. Is neoliberalism, where private enterprise requires vigorous state intervention, a modern phenomenon, or is this just a feature of capitalism?

That’s a question Michael Perelman attempts to answer in, The Invention of Capitalism: Classical Political Economy and the Secret History of Primitive Accumulation. 

Perelman shows how economic writers such as Adam Smith attempted to portray early capitalism  as “a natural system of voluntary market relations, which are devoid of conflict, and benefitted all of mankind.”

But what really happened was the violent seizure of other people’s means of production– primitive accumulation.

Early capitalists needed desperate people willing to work as wage slaves in the horribly dangerous factories.

But why should peasants leave the farm and their self-sufficient lifestyle and go to work for wages in a factory?

As Perelman makes clear, the peasants did not go willingly. They were “forced into the factories with the active support of the same economists who were making theoretical claims for capitalism as a self-correcting mechanism that thrived without needing government intervention.”

The peasants were forced off their land by the British government who attacked the economic independence of the rural peasantry through a series of Enclosure Acts.

“Some enclosures had to be carried out by force and many sparked resistance from users of the common land, including the tearing down of fences used to enclose the land. As a historically significant process of land privatization, the Enclosure Acts are sometimes seen as one or both of building blocks of capitalism and theft by major landowners from the peasantry.”

I think I’m starting to get the hang of this neoliberalism thing: Government intervention on behest of wealthy business owners is the magic of the free market. Government intervention on behalf of the poor and middle class is the worst kind of tyranny.

Update: I’m not the only one taking neoliberalism to task. This guy is way above my pay grade.

Update Part 2: Of course you just knew that any criticism of the sacred would make their heads explode.

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The Ratfuck That Keeps on Giving

Posted on November 22, 2013 by camelotkidd

I read compulsively, mostly non-fiction with a focus on world affairs. I’m always looking for the missing piece of a puzzle. What caused historical actors to do what they did? Why this particular policy and not that one? That sort of thing.

I’m weird, I know.

Anyway, the other day I found one of those missing pieces.

Some background. John Ehrlichman was the chief assistant for domestic affairs under President Nixon, where “he became a member of the inner circle of Nixon’s closest advisors.” Ehrlichman created the “Plumbers,” a group of burglars who broke into Watergate, and he sought to destroy Nixon’s enemies at “virtually any cost.” Ehrlichman was convicted of conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and perjury. He served 18 months in prison.

After prison, Ehrlichman granted an interview to author Dan Baum, and explained why Nixon inaugurated the War on Drugs:

The Nixon campaign in 1968, and the Nixon White House after that, had two enemies: the antiwar Left, and black people. You understand what I’m saying? We knew we couldn’t make it illegal to be either against the war or black. But by getting the public to associate the hippies with marijuana and blacks with heroin, and then criminalizing both heavily, we could disrupt those communities. We could arrest their leaders, raid their homes, break up their meetings, and vilify them night after night on the evening news. Did we know we were lying about the drugs? Of course we did.

Wow! The first thing I thought of is that this may be the best ratfuck ever.

The term ratfuck refers to dirty political tricks or sabotage and was a widely used tactic during the Nixon administration by staffers such as Donald Segretti and H.R. Halderman. And, of course, John Ehrlichman.

The War on Drugs has been used and is still being used by our sociopathic elite as a means to divide and rule. Here at home it’s employed to control and incarcerate people of color in the inner city and to bash hippies. Abroad it’s used to as a proxy to wage counterinsurgency against any group or nation that challenges US hegemony.

War on Drugs. The ratfuck that keeps on giving.

Update: “The coordinated raids of at least a dozen Denver dispensaries on Thursday are the latest federal law enforcement actions to occur in the wake of legalization votes last November in Colorado and Washington states.”

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Little Timmy’s Big Payday

Posted on November 19, 2013 by camelotkidd

Last week the Wall Street Journal published a bombshell of an Opinion article by former Federal Reserve official, Andrew Huszar. You may not have heard of it.

“I can only say: I’m sorry, America. As a former Federal Reserve official, I was responsible for executing the centerpiece program of the Fed’s first plunge into the bond-buying experiment known as quantitative easing. The central bank continues to spin QE as a tool for helping Main Street. But I’ve come to recognize the program for what it really is: the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time.”

And what has been the result of this policy to aid Wall Street at the expense of Main Street? Glad you asked.

The New York Times has a heart breaking story detailing the effects of the economic downturn caused by the Wall Street crash, “It has been a painful slide. A five-year spell of unemployment has slowly scrubbed away nearly every vestige of Ms. Barrington-Ward’s middle-class life. She is a 53-year-old college graduate who worked steadily for three decades. She is now broke and homeless.”

However, the architects of the Wall Street bailout are doing just fine. For example, former Treasury Secretary, Timothy Geithner, has joined Warburg Pincus, a 47-year-old private equity firm that oversees $35 billion in assets.

As William K. Black, professor of economics and law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City, reminds us, “Mr. Geithner follows in the path of past Treasury secretaries who, after leaving government, have accepted lucrative Wall Street posts. After leaving the Clinton administration, Robert E. Rubin joined Citigroup.  And John W. Snow, a Treasury secretary in the George W. Bush administration, joined the private equity firm Cerberus.”

But, he earned this high paying job, for a lifetime of public service. Hah, hah, hah.

In the same article, Professor Black explains why Little Timmy is so valuable to the owners. “Geithner is not a financial expert, but that was no bar to making him the head of the NY Fed or Treasury.  The bankers and their political allies put the Geithners of the world in positions of increasing power not despite their weaknesses and failures but because of their willingness to aid the bankers even when doing so will betray their office.”  

In an unguarded aside, a banker confided how he really felt about Little Timmy.

“For Washington to not demand anything when it saved us, even stuff we know is good for our long term good was one of the stupidest moves in modern times. I figured Obama understood that – it wasn’t a nuanced point – and that he didn’t act as we started to pull out of the abyss six months ago. But he didn’t, and I don’t know who to thank. I feel like I should go over and hug Tim. It’s a shame we can’t pay him, ‘cause that’s a guy who really earned a big time bonus.”

If you want to understand why we have the policies we do, this revolving door between finance and government is a good place to start. We aren’t a fully corrupt Third World country where bribes and payoff are openly tolerated. No, we do it differently in the USA. Here, if you’re a good little boy or girl and go along with the plan, when your tour of duty in government is through, you’ll be taken care of.

I had serious doubts about Obama before the election but once he named Little Timmy as his Treasury Secretary, I knew the fix was in. There might be hope but there damn sure wouldn’t be any change.

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Monsters Among Us

Posted on November 3, 2013 by camelotkidd

We were privileged to have a real live monster visit Salt Lake City days after Halloween.

Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke on independent journalism and its role in diplomacy at Rowland Hall as part of the McCarthey family lecture series.

Albright said that independent journalism is a vital weapon against totalitarianism, and is “part of the foundation of any democracy.”

Albright continued with the jaw dropping hypocrisy, describing how autocratic governments want to “control the information to have the power,” while  in the next breath, criticizing Wilileaks and Edward Snowden as having “done more damage to this country and our diplomacy than anything I have seen in a long time.”

Ha, ha, ha.

Albright also confessed her biggest regret. And, no it wasn’t allowing a half a million Iraqi children to die due to US sanctions, for those of you who are keeping score at home.

No, Albright said her biggest regret in public service was the “inaction of the United States to stop the genocide in Rwanda.”

I don’t know what it is about Utah, but monsters feel very comfortable coming here to speak. Maybe it’s the Mormon culture that is respectful and obedient towards authority, but it could be the breathtaking scenery.

Dick Cheney, George W. Bush, Condoleezza Rice, and now Madeleine Albright. Monsters, every one of them. But it’s America right? So they’re not in prison, but on the lecture circuit, or ensconced at elite universities. The Nuremberg principles don’t apply to our monsters, only small time monsters, like Milosevic.

Why is it that we castigate foreign tyrants for carrying out genocidal actions and suppression of the media while at the same time, venerating American leaders who engage in the same if not worse behavior?

In a word, empire. American elite and the media allow such a double standard becuase otherwise this true state of affairs would stand fully exposed. The fury directed at whistleblowers, comes from the fear that these exposures allow the American people to begin to discern the economic and military policies that benefit only the wealthy, the corporations they control, and their political retainers such as Senator Dianne Finestein,

Marcey Wheeler at Emptywheel helps unpack the double standard and explains the rational behind the NSA’s actions in support of empire.

“Meanwhile, I think we grab everything we can overseas out of hubris we got while we were the uncontested world power, and only accelerated now that we’re losing that uncontested position. If we’re going to sustain power through coercion — and we developed a nasty habit of doing so, especially under Bush — then we need to know enough to coerce successfully. So we collect. Everything. Even if doing so makes us stupider and more reliant on coercion.”

Asked why Americans shouldn’t know about our governments actions through whistleblowers, Albright claimed that we need to have a “huge discussion about what is appropriate or not…without all the damage that has been done.”

I won’t be holding my breath, monster.

 

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Deep State

Posted on September 29, 2013 by camelotkidd

God, we live in interesting times!

On one hand, we have ongoing revelations from whistleblower, Edward Snowden, detailing a massive surveillance state, determined to spy on everyone, American citizens included. “Collect it all,” is the motto of NSA chief, General Keith Alexander.

On the other hand, is the recent story of General Alexander’s high tech spy HQ with a central control room designed to be a replica of the bridge of the Enterprise from Star Trek.

 “…known as the Information Dominance Center. It had been designed by a Hollywood set designer to mimic the bridge of the starship Enterprise from Star Trek, complete with chrome panels, computer stations, a huge TV monitor on the forward wall, and doors that made a ‘whoosh’ sound when they slid open and closed. Lawmakers and other important officials took turns sitting in a leather ‘captain’s chair’ in the center of the room and watched as Alexander, a lover of science-fiction movies, showed off his data tools on the big screen.”

Megalomania, anyone? As they say, you can’t make this shit up.

If C. Wright Mills were still alive he would marvel. In 1956, Mills, a prominent sociologist, wrote The Power Elite, the controversial study of the vast concentration of power that had formed in the post war era. Mills described three dominant institutions in the US–the military, the corporations and the government, with an overlap between them.
“A long tradition of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the United States, whose members set policy and determine national political priorities. The American ruling class is complex and competitive, and perpetuates itself through interacting families of high social standing with similar lifestyles, corporate affiliations, and memberships in elite social clubs and private schools.”

These powerful constituencies comprise what President Eisenhower warned us about in his farewell address–the military/industrial complex.

Whether Mill’s recognized it or not, historical evidence has demonstrated that during World War II, this power elite determined that the United States was to replace Great Britain as the most powerful imperialist state. The Cold War with the Soviet Union was a pretext to justify a uniquely American empire.

With the demise of the Soviet Union, and especially since 9-11, the power elite in the US has united in support of a long war against a shifting cast of villains—typically dubbed terrorists. This war on terror is a pretext to maintain a worldwide empire, like the Cold War was. Examining the evidence, it is clear that the war on terror is really about controlling oil and gas, maintaining corporate profits, and projecting financial capital into every corner of the world.

There is a shadowy, secretive, very undemocratic aspect to the maintainance of empire. The Snowden revelations have made it abundantly clear that US intelligence agencies have amassed a vast amount of power through their ability to spy on everyone. The potential for blackmail is off the charts. Especially since private contractors perform 60 % of the spy agencies’ work. Remember that Snowden was working for Booz Allen Hamilton when he was able to access and copy the crown jewels of American intelligence.

Writer Gaius Publius, raises some provocative questions about this turn of events.

“Is the upper echelon of the intelligence community running the country? The ‘deep state’ is the part that can’t be touched by the political process. Does Gen. Alexander help run it? If I had to give my own best guess, I’d say — add the ‘upper echelon billionaires’  to the intel guys, and you’ve probably listed everyone who counts as someone with a say in what happens when.”

In Turkey, they describe the deep state as a merging of the power elite with a shadowy class of criminals that rules the country.

Is that what we have in America?

My feeling, is that the deep state resides within the executive branch, where the CIA, JSOC, NSA, and all the other intelligence and para-military outfits operate. We have 17 intelligence agencies. Think about that for a minute. Seventeen. In addition to spying, these secretive military and intelligence operatives have engaged in a worldwide campaign of kidnap, torture and assassination.

“The U.S. Executive Branch agencies that conduct U.S. foreign military and domestic police operations – the White House, National Security Council, Pentagon, CIA, Departments of State, Defense and Homeland Security, National Security Agency and FBI – have an overall budget of well over $1 trillion, employ 3-4 million people, and spend more money on the military than the next 10 nations combined.”

Our status as the most powerful empire that ever existed drives these policies. Sometimes our rulers even admit this. In the heady days after invasion of Iraq, Karl Rove informed reporter Ron Suskind that:

“We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out. We’re history’s actors…and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do.”

And, like president Bush before him, President Obama continues to fiercely defend the U.S. global empire.

“He basically came out and said the United States is an imperialist nation and we are going to do whatever we need to conquer areas to take resources from around the world. I mean, it was a really naked sort of declaration of imperialism…” 

None of this is a conspiracy. One can find documents laying out the justification for this American empire. During the Truman Administration the National Security Council issued one such document–NSC 68– that describes in chilling detail our manifest duty to control the world. 

“You cannot understand the political realities of post-WWII America without understanding the deep state and its mission...The deep state has been revealed over and over again with single bits of evidence and patterns of conduct. There is no way a reasonable person cannot come to the conclusion that the deep state exists–just looking at the consistency of U.S. foreign policy despite very different Presidents.”

If we are going to end this deep state we are going to need a coalition of liberals and conservatives, opposed to runaway executive power. This quasi-monarch astride a vast surveillance state is most certainly not what our founders envisioned.

The unprecedented coalition of liberals/progressives and conservatives/Tea Partiers which on July 24 almost passed a bill forbidding NSA spying on innocent Americans has offered the only hope that the U.S. Executive Branch’s danger to democracy can be challenged.

Stay tuned.

Update: Glenn Greenwald–much more NSA revelations to come.

 “For Greenwald — and rightly so — the question of surveillance gets to the heart of shadowy operations of governmentality and control.”

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The Ultimate Conspiracy

Posted on September 8, 2013 by camelotkidd

With the news dominated by Syria and the Obama Administration’s strenuous efforts to go to war, it’s a good time to look at the reasons why. Of course we won’t be examining the proffered excuses put forth by the administration, about upholding norms of civilized behavior and the horrors of chemical weapons.

Don’t make me laugh.

But, doesn’t American, need to bomb Syria to stop a brutal dictator, as NY Times writer Nicolas Kristof plaintively argues?

This seems to be the conventional wisdom. Our media assures us that the US is just an honest broker in these sorts of affairs, trying to sort out the issues in good faith and help the belegured Syrian citizens. There is no mention that the US has been up to it’s neck in the Syrian civil war, supporting the very  same Al-Qaeda terrorists that we are supposedly fighting in our endless “war on terror.” In fact, there’s a pretty good chance that these heroic “freedom fighters” that we are aiding are the ones that used the chemical weapons.

This support of Al-Qaeda is such a Orwellian story–where black is white, and up is down, that I find myself in agreement with Rush Limbugh, of all people.

Ick!

And, of course, like all other US foreign policy issues, there’s a back story. Most American’s don’t know anything about our history of meddling in Syria.

“Syria offers us a prime illustration of how this ahistorical propaganda system works. The press has ensured that every American now knows that Assad is a dictator and that Syria is in the middle of a bloody civil war, yet the knowledge ends there. Virtually no one discusses the aforementioned U.S.-backed 1963 coup; even fewer acknowledge the vile history of imperialism preceding this. One, however, can understand very little about what is happening in Syria (or in the rest of the Middle East) today without such historical framing.”

So, what is the desire to attack Syria about really? Let’s connect the dots.

It has been US policy to attack and bring about regime change in certain Middle Eastern countries. General Wesley Clark detailed after 9-11 that the U.S. had already made the decision to invade Syria as early as 1991

Perhaps this proposed strike on Syria is seen as a way to attack their ally–Iran. I’m old enough to remember that in the run up to the invasion of Iraq, “real men want to go to Tehran.”

“Iran refuses US currency for it’s oil trading, a direct blow to American hegemony. Dominating Iran is also seen by American war hawks as a way to control China based on the reasons stated above. These are transparently the real causes for American aggression towards Iran, a signatory to the nuclear non proliferation treaty with every right to enrich uranium for peaceful purposes. Since the nuclear red herring isn’t gaining traction, a war with Syria is seen as the next best thing.”

Maybe the attack on Syria is because of Saudi machinations, with “Bandar Bush” returning for a cameo role.

“Really what he’s doing is he’s reprising a role that he played in the 1980s when he worked with the Reagan administration to arrange money and arms for mujahideen fighters in Afghanistan and also worked with the CIA in Nicaragua to support the Contras,” says Wall Street Journal reporter Adam Entous. “So in many ways this is a very familiar position for Prince Bandar, and it’s amazing to see the extent to which veterans of the CIA were excited to see him come back because, in the words of a diplomat who knows Bandar, he brings the Arabic term wasta, which means under-the-table clout. You know his checks are not going to bounce and that he’ll be able to deliver the money from the Saudis.”

Or, perhaps this proposed attack is about something else entirely. As we have noted here many times before, US foreign policy always involves  powerful domestic constituencies. Give yourself a sucker if you guessed that one of the most powerful is the financial industry.

In a recent article, investigative reporter Greg Palest examines how US banks, working with key Clinton Administration economic advisors, sought to overturn not only US financial regulations, but world wide ones as well.

“Basically, there were secret calls going between Larry Summers and the head of Bank of America, the head of Goldman Sachs, the head of Citibank and Merrill, the five big boys, to find out what should happen to the world financial policing order. And the answer was: smash it. Summers was holding secret meetings with the big bankers to come up with a scheme to eliminate financial regulation across the planet.”

But, how does the elimination of financial regulations tie into the proposed attack on Syria? Here’s where the ultimate conspiracy comes in.

Long time Wall Street analyst and writer Ellen Brown, author of Web of Debt, makes the provocative argument that the attack on Syria is part of a plan to punish the Middle Eastern countries that resist US imposed financial deregulation.

“The “end-game” would require not just coercing support among WTO members but taking down those countries refusing to join. Some key countries remained holdouts from the WTO, including Iraq, Libya, Iran and Syria. In these Islamic countries, banks are largely state-owned; and “usury” – charging rent for the “use” of money – is viewed as a sin, if not a crime. That puts them at odds with the Western model of rent extraction by private middlemen. Publicly-owned banks are also a threat to the mushrooming derivatives business, since governments with their own banks don’t need interest rate swaps, credit default swaps, or investment-grade ratings by private rating agencies in order to finance their operations.”

My iron-clad rule of modern American political-economy, is that sooner or later you will find out that the bankers are involved. They and their horrible policies are largely responsible for the descent into neo-feudalism here at home, and the policies they are pursuing worldwide are a huge contributing factor to the death and destruction seen daily on CNN.

If there can be a positive from the mendacious campaign to stampede the American public into war with Iraq ten years ago, it’s demonstrated in the overwhelming sentiment against a war with Syria. So keep it up you peaceniks, call your Congress-critters and demand that the US not attack Syria.

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Spilling Your Guts

Posted on July 10, 2013 by camelotkidd

One of my favorite novels is Catch 22. In the novel Yossarian, the protagonist, tends to a wounded comrade named Snowden after flak hits their plane during a bombing raid. At first Yossarian thinks he has found Snowden’s wound and bandaged it. But Snowden complains of being cold and Yossarian realizes to his horror that Snowden has a much more serious wound. When Yossarian opens Snowden’s flak suit, Snowden’s guts spill out.

The recent story of NSA spying revealed by contract analyist Edward Snowden, made me recall the scene from Catch 22. In a particularlly ironic twist, both Snowden’s spill their guts. One literally and one figuratively.

Let’s get one thing out of the way. Edward Snowden is a hero for revealing NSA spying to Americans. I find it just as loathsome when President Obama, rather then President Bush, is doing the spying, unlike many Democratic partisans.

Of course, this revelation of spying is hardly a surprise. Anyone who has read James Bamford’s, Puzzle Palace, knows that the NSA and the UK’s NSA equivalent–GCHQ, have since their inception, spied on each others citizens, then exchanged the data. That way each of the agencies chiefs can stand before their respective governments and swear that, no sir, we do not spy on our own citizens. These programs evolved into a program called Echelon.

“Bamford describes Eschelon as the software controlling the collection and distribution of civilian telecommunications traffic conveyed using communication satellites, with the collection being undertaken by ground stations located in the footprint of the downlink leg.”

This program still exists. Only now it goes by a different moniker and has become vastly more comprehensive, as Snowden’s ongoing revelations make clear. These revelations, rather than focusing attention on these egregious violations by the NSA, have placed Snowden in the crosshairs of US government officials, many of whom have labeled him a traitor.

“Snowden made classified information about widespread surveillance available to the American public. That’s a curious definition of an enemy for US legislators to adopt.”

The way the US press has treated this expose has shown their servility. Our, so called, “free press” puppets the official narrative far more effectively than any state controlled media possibly could, as Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian journalist, who broke the story, makes abundantly clear.

“Our NSA stories have been published and discussed in countless countries around the world, where they have sparked shock, indignation and demands for investigation. So revealingly, it is only American journalists – and them alone – who have decided to focus their intrepid journalistic attention not on the extremist and legally dubious surveillance behavior of the US government and serial deceit by its top officials, but on those who revealed all of that to the world.”

These revelations by Snowden demonstrates how our government spies on us, and lies about it.

This spying does not make us any safer. In fact it clearly demonstrates who our government views as the enemy–us.

“The Obama administration and the NSA have claimed domestic spying on Americans is necessary to prevent ‘terrorist’ attacks. From 1970 to 2013 approximately 3,500 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks. That is around 81 deaths per year attributable to terrorism. It is estimated an average 195,000 people per year die from preventable medical errors. And as both the attacks of September 11, 2001 and the recent Boston Marathon bombings illustrate, it was the Federal government’s failure to respond to actionable intelligence gathered through traditional methods that preceded the attacks, not an absence of the information needed to prevent them. This renders the official U.S. storyline around the dangers of terrorism and ‘the government’s’ response to it contrived misdirection. The NSA is conducting increasingly intrusive domestic surveillance, but preventing ‘terrorism’ has nothing to do with its reasons for doing so.”

What’s the result of the US becoming a surveillance state? Ian Welsh has some thought that are worth pondering.

“What is being run right now is a vast experiment to see if modern technology has fixed these problems with surveillance and oppressive states.  Is it cheap enough to go full Stasi, and with that level of surveillance can you keep control over the economy, keep the levers working, make people do what you want, and not all slack off and resist passively, by only going through the motions?”

“The oligarchs are betting that the technology has made that change.  With the end of serious war between primary nations (enforced by nukes, among other things), with the creation of a transnational ruling class, and with the ability to scale surveillance, it may be possible to take and keep control indefinitely, and bypass the well understood problems of oligarchy and police and surveillance states.”

Famed whistleblower Daniel Ellsburg says that the US is a different country than when he released the Pentagon Papers.

“I hope Snowden’s revelations will spark a movement to rescue our democracy, but he could not be part of that movement had he stayed here. There is zero chance that he would be allowed out on bail if he returned now and close to no chance that, had he not left the country, he would have been granted bail. Instead, he would be in a prison cell like Bradley Manning, incommunicado.”

Thank you Edward Snowden. I hope you are granted asylum somewhere warm.

Update: At least someone gets it.

 “…yesterday a former GOP senator for the state of New Hampshire, Gordon Humphrey, emailed Snowden to tell him, “Provided you have not leaked information that would put in harms way any intelligence agent, I believe you have done the right thing in exposing what I regard as massive violation of the United States Constitution.”

“Humphrey added, “Having served in the United States Senate for twelve years as a member of the Foreign Relations Committee, the Armed Services Committee and the Judiciary Committee, I think I have a good grounding to reach my conclusion.”

“The Guardian‘s Glenn Greenwald posted the email from Humphrey and a reply from Snowden, where Snowden told Humphrey, “Thank you for your words of support. I only wish more of our lawmakers shared your principles – the actions I’ve taken would not have been necessary.”

“The media has distorted my actions and intentions to distract from the substance of Constitutional violations and instead focus on personalities,” Snowden wrote in the email. “It seems they believe every modern narrative requires a bad guy. Perhaps it does. Perhaps, in such times, loving one’s country means being hated by its government.”

Enough said.

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Tribal Two-Step

Posted on July 9, 2013 by camelotkidd

The Supreme Court just finished off a busy session with a flourish. After passing a host of pro-business rulings, and gutting the Voting Right Act, they pivoted and overturned the Defense of Marriage Act and Proposition 8.

Now most of us would agree that the ruling overturning the Defense of Marrige Act and Proposition 8 was the right one.

But my hypothosis is that the Supreme Court decision was a classic case of divide and rule.

“These cultural issues will keep conservative and progressive activists at each others throats, and divert attention from economic issues.”

The Koch brothers and other ruling plutocrats in the US don’t really give a shit about cultural issues. They have gay friends and relatives, and their wives, girlfriends and daughters can always get abortions. And cultural issues certainly do not impede their ability to sluice more of the profits their way.

But cultural issues do stoke the tribal differences between Republicans and Democrats.

We’ve seen this familiar dance step by Republican politicians with demonization of homosexuals and other divisive cultural-war related issues. But Democrats politicians have found that cultural issues are useful as well in diverting attention away from their pro-corporate policies.

“Politicians are winning liberal hearts and minds on social issues, while at the same time embracing a corporate political agenda based on ever-greater wealth for the few and increasing austerity for the many.”

This phenomenon goes to what political scientist Michael J. Smith calls the “Ratchet Effect.”

“The American political system, since at least 1968, has been operating like a ratchet, and both parties — Republicans and Democrats — play crucial, mutually reinforcing roles in its operation.

The electoral ratchet permits movement only in the rightward direction. The Republican role is fairly clear; the Republicans apply the torque that rotates the thing rightward.

The Democrats’ role is a little less obvious. The Democrats are the pawl. They don’t resist the rightward movement — they let it happen — but whenever the rightward force slackens momentarily, for whatever reason, the Democrats click into place and keep the machine from rotating back to the left.

Here’s how it works. In every election year, the Democrats come and tell us that the country has moved to the right, and so the Democratic Party has to move right too in the name of realism and electability. Gotta keep these right-wing madmen out of the White House, no matter what it takes.

Absent some countervailing pressure from what we’ll call, for short, the Left, it’s a foregone conclusion that the political system will evolve in a way that responds to the desires of the wealthy and powerful.

The Democrats depend on the Republicans to frighten their constituencies and keep them in the Democratic corral. It’s not too strong to say that in effect, they encourage the Republicans to play the bad cop. The Republicans, conversely, need a bogeyman to energize their activist base — a Godless, urban, liberal bogeyman who will tempt good Christian boys into sodomitical vice and take away people’s guns.”

The Robert’s Court just gave those conservative activists a big gay bogyman to campaign against.

Well played.

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Woops!

Posted on April 19, 2013 by camelotkidd

If you want to know how economic reports influence your world for the worse, look no further. Here’s Yves Smith at Naked Capitalism.

Linchpin Pro-Austerity Paper Rife with Errors; Recomputed Results Show No Growth Hit from High Government Debt

Economist’s are just willing tools to be used by the wealthy and powerful to justify their preferred policies. Just like the run up to the Iraq War, the facts are fixed to allow the plan to take place. Years later when the truth comes out, it’s too late.

Woops!

Update: And it should come as no surprise that the economists have ties to Wall Street billionaire Pete Peterson.

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