The Internal Revenue Service reportedly received incriminating information on US citizens from the Drug Enforcement Agency, with the assistance of the National Security Agency, before concealing the paper trail from defendants.
Details of a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) program that provides tips to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) and then advises them to “recreate the investigative trail” were published in a manual used by IRS agents for two years, Reuters revealed.
The practice of concealing the source of information has attracted the scrutiny of legal experts and is now under review by the US Justice Department.
A brief entry in the Internal Revenue Manual instructed agents of the US tax agency to omit any reference to information provided by the DEA’s Special Operations Division, especially with regard to “affidavits, court proceedings or investigative files.”
The entry was published and posted online in 2005 and 2006, and removed in early 2007. An IRS spokesman had no comment on the entry or on why it was removed from the manual, Reuters reported.
The IRS publication provides some further detail on the parallel construction concept.
“Special Operations Division has the ability to collect, collate, analyze, evaluate, and disseminate information and intelligence derived from worldwide multi-agency sources, including classified projects,” the IRS manual says. “SOD converts extremely sensitive information into usable leads and tips which are then passed to the field offices for real-time enforcement activity against major international drug trafficking organizations.”
According to the document, IRS agents are directed to use the intelligence as a starting point for unearthing new, “independent” evidence: “Usable information regarding these leads must be developed from such independent sources as investigative files, subscriber and toll requests, physical surveillance, wire intercepts, and confidential source information. Information obtained from SOD in response to a search or query request cannot be used directly in any investigation (i.e. cannot be used in affidavits, court proceedings or maintained in investigative files).”
In addition to the IRS, the Special Operations Division cooperates with a number of government agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the National Security Agency and the Central Intelligence Agency.
The way the intelligence-gathering system worked is as follows: The Special Operations Division of the DEA channels secret data from overseas NSA intercepts, domestic wiretaps, informants and a large DEA database of telephone records to authorities nationwide to assist them with criminal investigations of US citizens, according to the Reuters report.
The DEA telephone database is different from the NSA database that was revealed by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who is now living in Russia under asylum.
The DEA, which works behind the scenes to investigate drug dealers, money launderers and other criminals, argues that the practice does not violate the law and has been in “near-daily use since the 1990s.” The agency said the reason it directs federal agents to recreate the investigation trail is to “protect sources and methods, not to withhold evidence.”
Judicial hurdles ahead
Legal experts, however, say that concealing potential evidence from defendants violates the US Constitution. According to documents and interviews obtained by Reuters, federal agents use a procedure called “parallel construction” to conceal the tracks of the investigative trail. For example, agents could say that an investigation was launched due to a traffic violation as opposed to an SOD tip.
House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers expressed concern with the parallel construction program.
“If they’re recreating a trail, that’s wrong and we’re going to have to do something about it,” Rogers, a former FBI agent, said on the Mike Huckabee Show radio program. “We’re working with the DEA and intelligence organizations to try to find out exactly what that story is.”
Spokespeople for the DEA and the Department of Justice declined to comment.
Sen. Rand Paul, a member of the Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, said he was troubled that DEA agents have been “trying to cover up a program that investigates Americans.”
“If the Constitution still has any sway, a government that is constantly overreaching on security while completely neglecting liberty is in grave violation of our founding doctrine,” Paul added
The NSA database contains data about every telephone call made inside of the United States. This information, according to a NSA official, as quoted by Reuters, “is not used for domestic criminal law enforcement.”
The DEA database, or DICE for short, consists largely of phone log and internet data gathered legally by the DEA through “subpoenas, arrests and search warrants nationwide.” DICE has on file “about 1 billion records,” which are stored for about one year before being destroyed, DEA officials said.
August 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Timeless or most popular | Central Intelligence Agency, CIA, DEA, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Intelligence, Internal Revenue Service, National Security Agency, Politics, Robert Bridge, Snowden, Special Operations Division, United States, USA |
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From 6th-8th August, the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil (RSPO) is holding its 4th Latin American Conference on so-called sustainable palm oil in Honduras [1]. Environmental and social campaigners have been shocked to learn that one event sponsor is the palm oil company Dinant Corporation, owned and controlled by Miguel Facusse, the largest landowner in Honduras. They are calling on World Wildlife Fund WWF and three other organisations to withdraw from and denounce the conference being held in Honduras due to the Dinant’s sponsorship of the event and the serious human rights implications [2].
Mr. Facusse was a key supporter and beneficiary of the June 2009 military coup in Honduras [3], has been associated with narco-trafficking [4], and, along with other large oil palm growers, has been linked to the targeted killing of more than 88 members and supporters of peasant organisations since June 2009 in the Aguan Valley [5], one of the main palm oil producing regions in Honduras.
Annie Bird from Rights Action states: “By holding its conference in Honduras and by allowing Dinant Corporation to sponsor the event and hold a stall, the RSPO is turning a blind eye to systemic and severe human rights abuses, including forced evictions of entire communities and over 88 killings for which palm oil companies, especially Dinant, are responsible. The RSPO Conference serves to reinforce the impunity with which the large-scale palm producers operate.”
RSPO is overwhelmingly dominated by the interests of large corporations like Nestlé, Rabobank and Unilever—all linked to cases of “land grabbing” in Asia, Latin America and Africa.” [6]
According to Tanya Kerssen, Research Coordinator for Food First, “The case of Dinant is emblematic of how large, elite-controlled companies use palm oil to expand their control over land and other resources. The RSPO is merely window dressing for this continued corporate expansion, which—whether classed as ‘sustainable’ or not—necessarily means the replacement of forests, biodiversity and food production with a large-scale monoculture crop for biofuel and unhealthy edible oils.” [7]
Guadalupe Rodriguez from Rainforest Rescue adds: “WWF and the three other organisations involved in this RSPO conference must pull out of and denounce this process. They must not, however indirectly, associate themselves with palm oil businessmen involved in repressing, evicting and killing peasants in Honduras’s Aguan Valley.”
The European Commission considers all biofuels from RSPO-certified palm oil to be sustainable and thus eligible for government support [8]. This is despite growing evidence by a large number of organisations, which shows that the RSPO has not been enforcing its own standards on its member companies and cannot guarantee environmental or social sustainability of palm oil [9].
Almuth Ernsting from Biofuelwatch states: “The RSPO Secretariat’s decision to hold a conference in Honduras and allow Dinant Corporation to contribute sponsorship and hold a stall further undermines any pretence that the RSPO’s aim is to make palm oil sustainable. Far from addressing any of the most serious impacts of palm oil production, the RSPO continues to serve as an instrument of greenwashing for the industry”.
NOTES
[1] The Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil is a stakeholder forum which provides voluntary certification for palm oil. The great majority of RSPO members represent industry interests. (Conference website: http://rspo2013.com/)
[2] See http://rightsaction.org/action-content/open-letter-world-wildlife-fund-solidaridad-network-snv-netherlands-development for an Open Letter to WWF, Solidaridad, SNV Netherlands Development Organisation and Forest Ethics on this issue.
[3] In June 2009, the democratically elected Honduran government of Manuel Zelaya was overthrown by a military coup. Manuel Zelaya’s government had begun listening to and acting on the demands of peasant organisations for land reform, including in the Aguan Valley region. The land reform process was ended by the military rulers after the coup. Since then, Dinant Corporation and their armed security forces have been collaborating with military forces and police forces in repressing local communities who have been trying to reclaim land controlled by Dinant. See for example: http://www.enca.org.uk/documents/ENCA56_Sep_2012.pdf .
[4] Published Wikileaks Cables revealed that the US embassy in Honduras has had evidence linking Miguel Facusse to drug trafficking since at least 2004 and that several aeroplanes with drugs have landed on his private property. See http://www.thenation.com/article/164120/wikileaks-honduras-us-linked-brutal-businessman#
[5] For a report by Rights Action about killings and other human rights abuses in the Aguan Valley, see http://rightsaction.org/sites/default/files/Rpt_130220_Aguan_Final.pdf .
[6] See, for example: “The bloody products of the house of Unilever” Rainforest Rescue, 2011. https://www.rainforest-rescue.org/mailalert/747/the-bloody-products-from-the-house-of-unilever
[7] For more on the link between palm oil expansion and corporate control, see Kerssen, Tanya. Grabbing Power: The New Struggles for Land, Food and Democracy in Northern Honduras. Food First Books, 2013.
[8] See http://www.rspo.org/news_details.php?nid=137
[9] Previously, over 250 organisations condemned the RSPO for ‘greenwashing’ of palm oil: http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2008/rspo-declaration-english/ . More recently, the RSPO has been denounced for example by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth; http://www.biofuelwatch.org.uk/2008/rspo-declaration-english/
August 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Environmentalism, Subjugation - Torture | ‘Green Energy’, Dinant, Greenwashing, Honduras, Human rights, Latin America, Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil, RSPO |
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Fukushima is a nightmare disaster area, and no one has the slightest idea what to do. The game is to prevent the crippled nuclear plant from turning into an “open-air super reactor spectacular” which would result in a hazardous, melted catastrophe.
On April 25, 2011 – one month after the explosions at the Fukushima nuclear plant and the anniversary of Chernobyl – I was interviewed by RT and asked to compare Chernobyl and Fukushima. The clip, which you can find on YouTube, was entitled, “Can’t seal Fukushima like Chernobyl – it all goes into the sea.” Since then, huge amounts of radioactivity have flowed from the wrecked reactors directly into the Pacific Ocean. Attempts to stop the flow of contaminated water from Fukushima into the sea were always unlikely to succeed. It is like trying to push water uphill. Now they all seem to have woken up to the issue and have begun to panic.
The problem is this: the fission process in a reactor creates huge amounts of heat. Of course, that is the whole point of the machine – the heat makes steam which runs turbines. Water is pumped through channels between the fuel rods and this cools them and heats the water. If there is no water, or the channels are blocked, the heat actually melts the fuel into a big blob which falls to the bottom of the steel vessel in which all this occurs – the pressure vessel – and then melts its way through the steel, into the ground, and down in the direction of China. Well, not China in this case, but actually Buenos Aires, Argentina (I figured out).
I have been keeping an eye on developments, and it is quite clear that the reactors are no longer containing the molten fuel – some proportion of which is now in the ground underneath them. Both this material and the remaining material in what was the containment are very hot and are fissioning. Tepco is quite aware – and so is everyone else in the know – that the only hope of preventing what could become an open-air super reactor spectacular is to cool the fuel, the lumps of fuel distributed throughout the system, mainly in the holed pressure vessels, and also in the spent fuel tanks and in the ground under the reactors. That all this is fissioning away merrily (though at a low level) is clear from the occasional reports of short half life nuclides like the radioXenons. The game is to prevent it all turning into the open air super reactor located somewhere under the ground. To do this, they have to pump vast amounts of water into the reactors, the fuel pond and generally all over the area where they think the stuff is or might be. This means seawater since luckily they are near the sea. But they are also unluckily near the sea – since you cannot pump the sea onto the land without it wanting to flow back into the sea.
Now a good proportion of the radioactive elements, the radionuclides, are soluble in water. The Caesiums 137 and 134, Strontiums 89 and 90, Barium 140, Radium 226, Lead 210, Rutheniums and Rhodiums, Silvers and Mercuries, Carbons and Tritiums, Iodines and noble gases Kryptons and Xenons merrily dissolve in the hot seawater. There is also a likelihood that the normally insoluble Uraniums, Plutoniums and Neptuniums will dissolve in seawater to some extent, because of the chloride ions. And if they don’t, the micron and nano-particles of these materials will disperse in the water as colloidal suspensions. So a lot of this stuff gets into the sea. Of course, most of the fuss is being made by the Americans who are on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. How unfair that the USA should suffer from the Japanese affair, they think. And also feel a level of fear, underneath all this. As perhaps they should since it is their crappy reactors that blew up.
We hear that 400 tons of highly radioactive water is now escaping the barriers that Tepco erected and is reaching the sea. Japan’s prime minister, Shinzo Abe, said on August 7 that “stabilizing Fukushima is our challenge.” Tepco said, “This is extremely serious — we are unable to control radioactive water seeping out of the Fukushima plant.” CNN quoted “industry experts” saying that “Tepco has failed to address the problem…[the experts] question Tepco’s ability to safely decommission the plant.”
There are some things I want to say about all this. First is the inevitable discourse manipulation – something that we have seen in the media ever since this disaster occurred. “Decommission the plant” suggests some calm and ordered scientific process akin to shutting down and defueling an old reactor which has reached the end of its design life. It sparks images of a wise nuclear engineer in a lab coat consulting a document, discussing some issue with a worker in brilliant white overalls with a Tepco logo, wearing a white hard-hat. The reality is that this is a nightmare disaster area where no one has the slightest idea what to do and which has always been out of control. All that they can do is continue to pump in the seawater to hope that the various lumps of molten fuel will not increase their rate of fissioning. And pray. The water will then pick up the radionuclides and flow downhill back to the sea. Of course, they can put up a barrier; surround the plant with a wall. But eventually the water will fill up the pond and flow over the wall. All that water will create a soggy marsh and destabilize the foundations of the reactor buildings which will then collapse and prevent further cooling. Then the Spectacular. All this is predictable enough.
Let us look at some numbers. Four hundred tons of seawater a day are flowing into the sea. That is 400 cubic meters. In one year, that is 146,000 cubic meters. That is a pond 10 meters deep and 120 meters square. This will have to go on forever, a new pond every year, unless they can get the radioactive material out. But here is the other problem. They can’t get close enough because the radiation levels are too high. The water itself is lethally radioactive. Gamma radiation levels tens of meters from the water are enormously high. No one can approach without being fried.
‘Anyone living within 1km of the coast near Fukushima should get out’
But I want to make two other points. The first is that the Pacific Ocean is big enough for this level of release not to represent the global catastrophe that some are predicting. Let’s get some scoping perspective on this. The volume of the North Pacific is 300 million cubic kilometers. The total inventory of the four Fukushima Daiichi reactors, including their spent fuel pools, is 732 tons of Uranium and Plutonium fuel which is largely insoluble in sea water. The inventory in terms of the medium half-life nuclides of radiological significance Cs-137, Cs-134 and Strontium-90, is 3 x 1018 becquerels (Bq) each. Adding these up gives about 1019 Bq. If we dissolve that entire amount into the Pacific, we get a mean concentration of 33 Bq per cubic meter – not great, but not lethal. Of course this is ridiculous since the catastrophe released less than 1017 Bq of these combined nuclides and even if all of this ends up in the sea (which it may do), the overall dilution will result in a concentration of 1 Bq per cubic meter. So the people in California can relax. In fact, the contamination of California and indeed the rest of the planet from the global weapons test fallout of 1959-1962 was far worse, and resulted in the cancer epidemic which began in 1980. The atmospheric megaton explosions drove the radioactivity into the stratosphere and the rain brought it back to earth to get into the milk, the food, the air, and our children’s bones. Kennedy and Kruschev called a halt in 1963, saving millions.
What we have here in Fukushima is more local, but still very deadly and certainly worse than Chernobyl since the populations are so large. And this brings me to my second point, and a warning to the Japanese people. The contamination of the sea results in adsorption of the radionuclides by the sand and silt on the coast and river estuaries. The east coast of Japan, the sediment and sand on the shores, will now be horribly radioactive. This material is re-suspended into the air through a process called sea-to-land transfer. The coastal air they inhale is laden with radioactive particles. I know about this since I was asked in 1998 by the Irish State to carry out a two-year study of the cancer effects of releases into the Irish Sea by the nuclear reprocessing plant at Sellafield. We looked at small area data leaked to us by the Welsh Cancer Registry covering the period of 1974-1989, when Sellafield was releasing significant amounts of radio-Caesium, radio-Strontium, and Plutonium. Results showed a remarkable and sharp 30 per cent increase in cancer rates in those living within 1km of the coast. The effect was very local and dropped away sharply at 2km. In trying to discover the cause, we came across measurements made by the UK Atomic Energy Research Establishment. Using special cloth filters, they had measured Plutonium in the air by distance from the contaminated coast. The trend was the same as the cancer trend, increasing sharply in the 1km strip near the coast. We later examined cancer rates in a higher resolution questionnaire study in Carlingford, Ireland. This clearly showed the effect increasing inside the 1km radius in the same way. The results were never published in scientific literature but were presented to the UK CERRIE committee and eventually made it into a book which I wrote in 2007 entitled, “Wolves of Water.” Make no mistake, this is a deadly effect. By 2003, we had found 20-fold excess risk of leukemia and brain tumours in the population of children on the north Wales coast. The children were denied of course by the Welsh Cancer Intelligence Unit that supplanted the old Welsh Cancer Registry – which had been shut down immediately after the data was released to us. We did publish this in scientific literature.
Nevertheless, the sea-to-land effect is real. And anyone living within 1km of the coast to at least 200km north or south of Fukushima should get out. They should evacuate inland. It is not eating the fish and shellfish that gets you – it’s breathing.
And what about the future? The future is bleak. I see no way of resolving the catastrophe. They will either have to pour water on the wreckage forever, and thus continue to contaminate the local sea, or find some more drastic immediate solution. I was told that US experts had the idea at the beginning of bombing the reactors into the harbour. Not so stupid in my opinion. That at least may enable them to get sufficiently close to the pieces to pick them up, and should also solve the cooling problem. Apparently (my contact said) the French argued them out of it because of the negative effect on nuclear energy (and Uranium shares).
Professor Christopher Busby from the European Committee on Radiation Risks for RT.
August 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Environmentalism, Militarism, Nuclear Power | Fukushima, Japan, Pacific Ocean, Shinzō Abe, Tepco, Tokyo Electric Power Company |
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Last week the US and some of their allies shut up diplomatic shop in various places through North Africa and the Middle East due to a threat heard on the ‘al Qaeda’ grapevine that a big attack was being planned for the end Ramadan.
It seems now that the panic is over. The Guardian reports that the US on Wednesday carried out a number of drone strikes that apparently killed seven ‘al Qaeda’ operatives of the ‘al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ (AQAP) franchise who had reportedly been planning to attack various towns and oil installations in south Yemen.
Meanwhile, US officials are using the entire experience to vindicate the existence of the NSA, recently brought into disrepute following the defection of ex-NSA operative turned whistleblower Edward Snowden to Russia, but, more importantly, the US is using the experience to justify the continued use of drones after international criticism following a large number of civilian deaths associate with their use.
The stories of ‘terrorist chatter about major attacks’ remain just stories. The subsequent publicity resulting from the shutdown of embassies throughout the region gave the stories the feel of imminent catastrophic terrorism – all of which is fed to the people of the world without an iota of any evidence to support the stories.
Do you feel safer now? Does the idea of drones roaming the skies over our planet killing America’s enemies at the whim of its President make you feel more secure? Are you happy to lose your right to privacy and judicial process in exchange for feeling safe from an Islamist in the Yemen who has been enraged by the deaths of family or friends by an errant drone missile?
If you do, then the latest propaganda exercise brought to you by the US government has worked. I you don’t feel safer and, indeed, feel more sceptical, then fear not; there will always be more threats to come to help convince you.
August 8, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Middle East, North Africa, United States, Yemen |
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Deployments to war zones and combat exposure have no effect on military suicides and fail to explain the increase in self-inflicted deaths that occurred from 2001 to 2008, concluded a new medical study, thereby contradicting previous research.
Military medical researchers on Tuesday published a paper that claims mental disorders, such as depression and alcohol abuse – not combat – are to blame for military suicides. US service members killed themselves at a record pace last year, with 350 taking their own lives. From 2011 to 2012, the military suicide rate increased by nearly 16 percent, and anti-suicide organizations feared that this number could increase as troops are drawn down in Afghanistan and are “not effectively integrated into suicide-prevention efforts,” Kristina Kaufmann, executive director of Code of Support Foundation, told NBC after the figures were released in January.
And it appears that the rate is continuing to rise: last year, a service member committed suicide every 25 hours, but in April, the rate increased to one suicide every 18 hours. The annual number of suicides last year surpassed the number of troops killed in Afghanistan and the number of military members who died in transportation accidents in 2012.
But the authors of the surprising new medical study, which was financed by the Defense Department and published by the Journal of the American Medical Association, claim that military members kill themselves for the same reasons ordinary civilians do.
The researchers said they tracked 150,000 soldiers between 2001 and 2008, and found that those who killed themselves were usually heavy drinkers, suffering from depression, or had been diagnosed with manic depression. It remains unclear whether their deployments or combat exposure prompted their mental conditions – an important fact that could shed further light on the military’s effect on its members. A 2011 study published by the Journal of Psychiatry Research concluded that deployment increases the likelihood of self-destructive behavior and psychiatric problems. The report also showed an increase in mental illness among those in active-duty service since 2005.
But this week’s study found that those who were deployed for longer than a year had a lower risk of suicide. As a result, the researchers suggested that rather than seek an early discharge, depressed soldiers should remain in the military and seek mental health care – a procedure that could put soldiers’ careers on the line, but that Col. Charles Engel of the Army Medical Corps believes would be more effective than an early discharge.
“The answer has to be an effort to approximate civilian standards of confidentiality,” Engel told Bloomberg News. “Unless we’re dealing with an imminent risk to combat or a tactical mission, really we should be using civilians’ standards.”
But the sharpest increase in the suicide rate occurred after 2008 – a period that the military study failed to examine. Critics claim that because the analysis ended right at the time that the suicide level spiked dramatically, it might underestimate the impact that multiple deployments and traumatic brain injuries may have on military service members.
“Why would the authors repeatedly insist that there is no association between combat and suicide?” Dr. Stephen N. Xenakis, a psychiatrist and a retired Army brigadier general, told the New York Times. “The careful analysis of bad data generates poor evidence.”
August 7, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Militarism, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes |
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Israel/Palestine and the Queer International, a new book by writer/professor Sarah Schulman, tells the story of Schulman’s transformation from a “Jewish, lesbian New Yorker” into a “Cosmopolitan queer and avid BDS[1] advocate.” Her book is a must read—and not because it offers original ideological or political outlook, not at all. Schulman actually provides us with a unique and invaluable window into Jewish secular progressive thought. It unveils the structure of LGBT[2] politics and its operation within the Palestinian solidarity movement. Schulman also provides the reader some crucial and juicy references to the direct involvement of George Soros’ network in promoting a gay rights revolution in the Arab world in general, and in Iran and Egypt in particular.
Schulman is a fluent writer, her narration is smooth and flowing. But more than anything, she is astonishingly honest in her attempt to describe her journey. Indeed, her genuine openness is almost suicidal at times. This fact alone may explain why, despite its sensational title, her book has received little attention from the usually loud Jewish progressive network.
In the very beginning of the book, Schulman provides us with an amazing confession most Jews would prefer to shove far under the carpet.
“We were raised with two Yiddish concepts about Christians: kopf and punim. Yiddishe kopf and Goyishe kopf. To say that someone had a Yiddishe kopf (A Jewish mind) was to say admiringly that he was a genius, that he was analytical and conceptual and an original thinker. To say that someone had a goyishe kopf was to say that he was dull-witted, conformist and slow” (p. 2).
One must admit that only rarely do Jews volunteer such intimate information that confirms the depth of racism and supremacy embedded within Jewish culture.
A few pages later Schulman is honest enough to admit that she also is immersed in some deep biological determinist thinking.
“Of course, like many Jews, I do think of myself in biological terms, despite how convenient that is for anti-Semitism. There is after all, a genetic component, since Jewish Identity—from the Jewish point of view is biologically essentialist, dependent on having a Jewish mother” (p. 10).
It goes without saying that evolutionary psychologist Prof. Kevin MacDonald and Right Wing author David Duke are hounded relentlessly by the ADL and the progressive Jewish network for basically agreeing with Schulman.
Ideological Collectivism
Interestingly enough, despite her honesty, Schulman rarely thinks for herself on her path toward universal justice. Instead she always consults with such progressive luminaries as Judith Butler, who is ‘on the top’ of her “list of credible LGBT people.” As an activist and campaigner, Schulman always builds fronts and forms leagues. She always seeks advice, she always consults with someone who knows better. These facts are actually very significant: Schulman is telling us a story about someone who thinks and operates “as a Jew,” “as a lesbian,” “as a Queer International,” “as a progressive,” etc. The truth of the matter is that people who “think” and “act” “as a something” hardly think for themselves. Instead they operate within the parameters set by an imaginary political and ideological collective (the gay, the Jew, the progressive, the Queer International’ the Black, the Muslim) instead of thinking authentically and operating autonomously.
To a certain extent Schulman’s extended monologue helps us grasp marginal politics as a powerful attempt to reduce the individual to a mere “pile of signifiers.”
Jewish Victimhood and Homo-centrism
Two years ago Jewish pro-Palestinian blogger Philip Weiss was brave enough to admit to me in an interview that it is Jewish self-interest that motivates his pro-Palestinian activism. For Weiss it wasn’t an “altruistic” concern for the oppressed—he actually believed that his activism was ‘good for the Jews.’ Schulman reminds me of Weiss. Like Weiss she is brave and honest to say it all. But she is also interested in promoting her ‘queer political agenda’. For Schulman, Palestinians are simply a means toward her sacred progressive end. “If people like me are going to turn our backs on [Israeli] queer events in support of the boycott [BDS], then we must be assured that the boycott both recognizes queer support and acknowledges Palestinian LGBT organizing,” she writes.
In short, it is the primacy of “queer and LGBT interests” that determines Schulman’s commitment to a battle for “universal justice.” As one would expect, Schulman’s solidarity has a clear price tag—one attuned primarily to the benefit of the LGBT movement. To my mind the meaning of this is simple: Schulman has managed to successfully transfer her Jewish tribalism into a form of sexually oriented political affinity.
Schulman isn’t just a “boring gay” activist. She is also an Ashkenazi (European) Jew, with all the necessary victim paraphernalia which she waves proudly in the very beginning of her book. “I was born in 1958, 13 years after the end of the Holocaust” begins the third paragraph. “I was born only three years after my maternal grandmother finally confirmed that her two brothers and two sisters had been exterminated by the Nazis and their collaborators 10 to 15 years before,” she continues (p. 1). Her choice of words leaves no room for speculation: Schulman is a traumatized Ashkenazi Jew. She is an adherent and follower of what Israeli philosopher Adi Ophir defines as the Holocaust religion. Her entire universe is codified in reference to the “primacy of Jewish suffering.” Needless to say, this amalgam of Jewish suffering and gay victimhood translates in Schulman’s case into a solipsistic political argument.
I guess at this point I should admit that I have never been convinced that “the personal is political,” as many marginal ideologists insist. I’ve always been certain that the personal is actually personal—and, as such, consider an individual’s sexual orientation to be his or her own business—and that when it becomes political it stops being personal. But for Schulman, as for so many other political activists within her milieu, the ‘personal’ certainly is ‘political.’ She celebrates each of her symptoms publicly and politically and, if this is not enough, she is kind enough to share it all with us.
Homonationalism, the Queer International and Joseph Massad
Schulman’s political universe is divided into binary oppositions: Homonationalism vs. the Queer International is one example.
Homonationalism describes a contemporary phenomenon most prevalent in some liberal Western countries where “white gays, lesbians and bisexuals won a full range of rights…they become accepted and realigned with patriotic or nationalistic ideologies of their countries” (p. 104).
The notion of Homonationalism is particularly relevant to Israel, for the Zionist state has been very successful in mobilizing its patriotic gay community. It has managed to recruit the vast majority of its gay population in order to convey the perception that it is way ahead of its neighbors as far as gay rights are concerned. Being a “progressive Jew” and committed to the notion of “Tikkun Olam” (fixing the world), Schulman is very upset by Homonationalism in general and Israeli Homonationalism in particular. She would prefer that gays and lesbians be primarily committed to a universal political discourse defined by their sexual orientation. This is precisely where the notion of “Queer International” comes in. Schulman is aiming at a “worldwide movement that brings queer liberation and feminism to the principle of international autonomy from occupation, colonialism, and globalized capital.”
And yet, one question remains: How is it possible that so many gays prefer to identify with their national and patriotic environment rather than with a ‘universal’ sexually oriented ideology? Apparently most people, including gays and lesbians, accept a clear dichotomy between their sexual orientation and their political identification. It also seems natural to me that a country’s LGBT citizens would be thankful to a society or culture that liberates them and respects their needs and rights.
From a heterosexual perspective (as if that exists), the above observation seems very natural. Since the vast majority of healthy people spend most of their time out of bed, it only makes sense that one’s sexual orientation is not a primary focus of one’s civil and political life. Furthermore, Schulman’s so-called ‘progressive’ expectation of homosexuals that they be devoted primarily to queer ‘universal’ issues is in itself a form of oppression that borders on abuse, since it imposes on the individual an ideological collectivism and epistemological mantra.
As an enthusiastic advocate of Queer International, Schulman is up against Palestinian academic Joseph Massad. According to Massad, the heterosexual/homosexual binary opposition is itself foreign to the Orient – it is basically “a Western apparatus imposing concepts of homosexuality on Palestinian sex between men” (p. 66). For Massad gays and lesbians are not universal categories, and the attempt to universalize them is the direct outcome of human rights activists who project their own symptom at the expense of their ‘solidarity subject.’
I am far from being an admirer of Massad, yet his argument here is coherent and deserves attention. Like Heidegger and other developed minds, Massad considers the human subject to be a product of his/her culture, language, rituals, geography and so on. Schulman’s approach, on the other hand, is the outcome of the most simplistic phenomenological anthropocentric and Judeo-centric school of thought. Like many others, she naively believes that people are actually the authors of their own biography, and that this biography is somehow universal, transferable and translatable.
This ideological clash obviously is crucial, for if Massad is correct then the “universalization” of the queer condition suggested by Schulman and the Queer International is obviously a form of interventionism. It imposes Western liberal categories on the oppressed. As we will soon see, this exact agenda is far from being kept secret; to be precise, it is actually funded largely by the liberal Zionist George Soros and his Open Society Institute.
Schulman clearly views Massad as a threat, referring to him and his criticism at least twice in her book. Yet, she doesn’t make a single theoretical effort to counter Massad’s argument. Instead she informs us that Massad had never met with the “new wave of young queer Palestinian activists.” Schulman may well be correct here, yet this is far from being an argument. It is merely an anecdote. In other words, the fact that a few young Palestinian gays adopt some Western liberal ideas delivered to the region by an Israeli gay ideologist, an American Jewish lesbian activist, or even George Soros’ Open Society only proves that Massad is actually correct—the ‘universalization’ of marginal thought is in itself a form of crude cultural intervention.
Queer International and George Soros
A year ago I was shocked to discover that the BDS National Committee in Ramallah had made a crucial change to its goal statement. It changed the wording of its original (June 2005) mission statement from “demanding that Israel end its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands”[3] to demanding that Israel end “its occupation and colonization of all Arab lands occupied in June 1967.”[4]
The BDS National Committee thus basically abandoned the most precious Palestinian right—it drifted away from the commitment to 1948 and limited its struggle to the liberation of lands occupied in 1967. An attempt to clarify who exactly made the change and what process was involved revealed that this significant change was made in a clandestine manner—it appeared only in English. It has never appeared in Arabic or any other language. It didn’t take long before it became evident that the change took place behind the back of the Palestinian people. Despite BDS’ claim to be a ‘civil society’ representing more than 170 Palestinian organizations, Palestinians are still unaware of the BDS National Committee’s compromise on their behalf.
Being an expert on Jewish marginal politics, it was clear to me that the radical change in the BDS goal statement and the non-democratic way in which it was introduced was meant to appease BDS’ Jewish adherents. Further investigation revealed that BDS—like most Palestinian NGOs—is funded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute. Yet, for obvious reasons, BDS National Committee (BNC) remained silent on the topic. It has never revealed its finances or the identity of its funders. The only reference to Soros’ links with BDS was made available by the Israeli right-wing NGO Monitor.
Now, however, thanks to Schulman’s book, this issue has been resolved. In her search for funding for a young Palestinian Queer USA tour in support of BDS, Schulman writes that she was advised to approach George Soros’ Open Society institute. The following account may leave you flabbergasted, as it did me:
“A former ACT UP staffer who worked for the Open Society Institute, George Soros’ foundation, suggested that I file an application there for funding for the tour. When I did so it turned out that the person on the other end had known me from when we both attended Hunter [College] High School in New York in the 1970s. He forwarded the application to the institutes’s office in Amman, Jordan, and I had an amazing one-hour conversation with Hanan Rabani, its director of the Women’s and Gender program for the Middle East region. Hanan told me that this tour would give great visibility to autonomous queer organizations in the region. That it would inspire queer Arabs—especially in Egypt and Iran…for that reason, she said, funding for the tour should come from the Amman office” (p. 108).
What we see here is clear and embarrassing evidence of a blunt intervention made by George Soros’ institute in an attempt to shape Arab culture and political life. We also learn about the manner in which Soros’ Open Society Institute introduces gay and queer politics to the region. Apparently money for a tour promoting Palestine and BDS is traveling from Soros’ Open Society to Jordan and then back to the USA with the hope that such a maneuver would “inspire” gays in Iran. At least now we know who stands behind the Arab gay revolution.
The moral is very clear: BDS had a very “good reason” to remain silent regarding its funding sources. After all, being funded directly or indirectly by a liberal Zionist philanthropy, a man who also funds the openly Zionist JStreet, is indeed slightly embarrassing. Furthermore, it seems as if this new evidence of Western intervention presented as a “Jordanian queer initiative” proves that Joseph Massed was more than correct—
Queer International is a farce. In practice it is a network of proxy operations attempting to introduce liberal ideas to Arabs and Muslims in an attempt to undermine their culture.
Intellectual Integrity vs. Materialism
Since she is not a philosopher, Schulman is not interested in arguments or any kind of theoretical depth. Instead she specializes in marginal campaigns and Queer International activism. She is obviously very good at forming alliances and making things happen. When Schulman realizes, for instance, that Frameline, the San Francisco LGBT film festival, is funded by the Israeli Consulate, she offers to “fund-raise to replace the (Israeli) money.” This isn’t exactly an intellectual approach, yet it provides us with precious and intimate information about marginal politics and the way in which it operates behind the scenes. We are dealing here with a little solidarity industry. Sometimes it is Israel and Zionists who pay the bill, other times it is Soros and other liberal Zionists who fund the “opposition.”
Schulman’s personal journey toward BDS and Justice throws light on the path taken by the BDS in Ramallah toward the Jewish crowd, the queer movement and especially liberal Zionist money.
While during the early stage of Schulman’s campaign BDS leader Omar Barghouti was clearly reluctant to openly support or integrate queer politics into BDS, by the time the book ends Schulman is convinced by Barghouti’s “liberal credentials.” “Omar and I,” she says, “had both been motivated by love and need for justice to transform ourselves so that we were now reaching each other.” And, she continues, “now I know that there is a significant Palestinian ‘civil society’ that supports a nonviolent strategy for change and is feminist and now pro-gay.”
Mazal Tov is probably the most appropriate way to congratulate Barghouti, BDS, Soros—and Sarah Schulman, of course.
I am very impressed with this revelation about a leading Palestinian civil society becoming ‘pro-gay’ and ‘feminist. I guess that Soros and his institutions indeed have reason to be optimistic about their chance to change the face of the Arab society.
However, I would really like to know whether the Palestinians are aware of all this. For some reason I have a feeling that, as in the case of BDS surreptitiously changing its goals statement, the same Palestinian civil society now has become ‘pro-gay’ and ‘feminist’ without anyone in Palestine knowing about it. I can only say that I hope I am wrong.
August 7, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Book Review, Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Holocaust, Jews, LGBT, Palestine, Philip Weiss, Sarah Schulman, Zionism |
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The journalist involved in the publication of leaks provided by whistleblower Edward Snowden said in a testimony to the Brazilian government that he possesses up to 20,000 secret US government files.
Glenn Greenwald testified before a Brazilian Senate foreign relations committee on Tuesday. The Brazil-based American reporter – who was approached by Snowden while the whistleblower still worked as a contractor for the NSA – has published details of US electronic surveillance programs taking place domestically and abroad.
“I did not do an exact count, but he gave me 15,000, 20,000 documents. Very, very complete and very long,” Greenwald told Brazilian lawmakers.
“The stories we have published are a small portion. There will certainly be more revelations on the espionage activities of the US government and allied governments… on how they have penetrated the communications systems of Brazil and Latin America,” he said.
In addition to his reporting for Britain’s Guardian newspaper, Greenwald has also been a fixture on O Globo, where the journalist shared the alleged details of US electronic surveillance of Brazil and virtually all of Latin America.
During his testimony, Greenwald alleged that Brazilian companies have agreements in place with American telecoms to collect data for the National Security Agency (NSA), and stressed that their complicity should be investigated by that country’s government.
O Globo recently published claims that Washington had at least at one time maintained a spy center in the capital of Brasilia, as part of a network of 16 similar facilities worldwide designed to intercept foreign satellite transmissions.
Allegations of widespread US surveillance of Brazil prompted US Vice President Joe Biden last month to call Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff to provide an explanation. US Ambassador to Brazil Thomas Shannon had earlier denied the NSA was tapping into telecoms in the country.
The additional files in Greenwald’s possession are believed to have been handed over when Snowden took refuge at a hotel in Hong Kong before fleeing to Moscow.
“The pretext [given by Washington] for the spying is only one thing: terrorism and the need to protect the [American] people. But the reality is that there are many documents which have nothing to do with terrorism or national security, but have to do with competition with other countries, in the business, industrial and economic fields,” Greenwald said on Tuesday.
On Monday, foreign ministers of the South American trade bloc Mercosur raised the issue of alleged NSA surveillance throughout Latin America with UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon.
The ministers discussed with Ban a statement adopted by the bloc on July 12 following a summit in Montevideo, Uruguay. The statement called for UN members to propose ways to halt spying and potentially pursue sanctions against the United States.
But doing so would be impossible under the current framework, as only the Security Council can impose legally binding sanctions and the US holds veto privilege over any such resolution as a permanent member of the council.
One of the most recent leaks provided by Snowden – published last month – refers to a secret surveillance system named XKeyscore which is allegedly used by the NSA to monitor internet traffic.
In his Tuesday testimony, Greenwald described the system as not only able to collect metadata “but also the content of emails and what is being discussed in telephone conversations. It is a powerful program which frightens.”
August 7, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Corruption, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Brazil, CIA, Glenn Greenwald, Information Technology, Intelligence, Internet, Latin America, National Security Agency, United States, USA |
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By PAUL LARUDEE | August 6, 2013
The moment Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas agreed to send emissaries to Washington to discuss the resumption of 20-year-old peace talks, the objective of the talks was achieved. To anyone not in a coma, it is clear that these talks will not lead to peace, and in fact might not even lead to peace talks, merely to talks about resuming talks.
What, then, is the objective of the talks?
Of course, both parties have particular motives for participating, which have been discussed at length by many pundits on the subject. In the case of John Kerry and the Obama administration, it is to do the impossible – to bring the parties together to the table. It is a sign of the bankruptcy of the effort that after twenty years this is considered a major achievement.
For Mahmoud Abbas, it is the chance to appear to be at once Salaheddine, the defender of Jerusalem for Palestinians and the Arab world, and the “good” and “reasonable” Palestinian to the West. He recognizes the skepticism of both of his audiences, but what choice does he have? His other choice is to be sidelined and irrelevant and to potentially lose his most positive role as distributor of largesse from the U.S. and Europe if his funds are cut off as a result of his failure to follow the US order to participate in the talks.
For Netanyahu, the talks are an opportunity to appear less intransigent while remaining just as intransigent as ever. This means making some potential gains in public opinion in the West and at home just by showing up, while not losing his hardcore constituency at home. In fact, he can show the most skeptical fascists in his administration that he already wiped away all the (admittedly few) agreements concluded by previous Israeli administrations in the last twenty years, thereby returning the talks to square one. This was achieved by Kerry agreeing that “everything is on the table” while promising Abbas that the talks would begin where they last left off, the equivalent of putting a square peg in a round hole when both are made of porcelain.
However, the real purpose of the talks is inherent in their hopelessness: to once again stage the ritual passion play, with Abbas representing Palestinians in the role of Satan, and to make sure he knows his lines. The U.S. receives praise for offering the play; Israel gets praised as the hero; and the audience unites around their contempt for the Palestinian villains. This is what is known as the peace process, and it must be repeated periodically in order to assure the tradition.
None of this is new. It has been part of Middle East history since long before the 1993 start of the “peace process”. In fact, the U.S. can draw on its history of broken treaties with Indian nations in North America, all of whom were blamed for their own demise. Abbas is the equivalent of Indian trustees selected by U.S. authorities to distribute beans and rotten meat on which the remainder of the tribe survived. Don’t blame him; he doesn’t want to deprive them of their only sustenance.
Therein lies the dilemma for Palestinians: to rid themselves of the Palestinian Authority (if they can) or to accept their gradual ethnic cleansing as inevitable and to make the best of it in the meantime.
Will the world come to their rescue? International solidarity is growing, but it does not appear to have significantly slowed the Palestinian demise, and most governments in the world, including Arab governments, are worse than useless, not to say collaborationist or driving the process.
The talks have therefore already achieved their objective: to assure that Palestinians will once again be blamed for their failure and that they will be responsible for the next horror that Israel visits upon them. The rest is opera.
Paul Larudee is a writer and human rights advocate, and one of the co-founders of the movement to break the siege of Gaza by sea.
Source
August 6, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Abbas, Benjamin Netanyahu, Israel, John Kerry, Mahmoud Abbas, Palestine, Zionism |
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The Bahrain Watch organization has revealed that the Manama regime uses fake Twitter accounts to track government critics online.
Since October 2012, the Bahraini regime has detained several citizens for posting anonymous tweets that refer to Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa.
An eight-month investigation showed that the Bahraini regime identifies those anonymous online critics by sending them malicious IP (Internet Protocol) spy links from a network of Twitter and Facebook accounts impersonating well-known opposition figures or other seemingly friendly individuals.
When a person clicks on an IP spy link, the report said, the security forces reveal the IP address of the internet connection they clicked from.
The regime can then force the internet service provider of the IP address to disclose the real name and street address of that internet connection’s subscriber.
According to the report, an examination of court records for five related cases shows that the Public Prosecution’s case centers on linking the IP address of the defendant to the offending anonymous Twitter account.
The prosecution, however, declined to disclose how the IP addresses were acquired, citing information obtained through “private methods that cannot be disclosed.”
The Bahraini regime apparently uses these accounts in secret, and may target their followers, friends, or contacts through private messages.
The report also lists over 120 other accounts that were also targeted in Twitter with IP spy links traceable to the government over the past two years.
Bahrain Watch lead researcher Bill Marczak said, “It is outrageous enough that individuals have been arrested and jailed for mere tweets criticizing the government.”
“That these individuals are being tracked down and convicted based on such weak digital evidence only makes matters worse.”
Bahrain Watch has urged political and social activists in Bahrain, and around the world, to be vigilant about impersonation accounts and malicious links.
“Given the government’s track record, it comes as no surprise that it would resort to such measures to stifle free speech,” Marczak stated.
“However, our hope is that this report will spread awareness of the methods that governments around the world use to trap digital activists.”
August 5, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Bahrain, Facebook, Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa, Human rights, IP address, Manama, Twitter |
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Neoconservatives have quickly jumped on the ‘al Qaeda is still a threat’ bandwagon after the weekend’s shutdown of many Western embassies throughout North Africa and the Middle East due, so we are told, to as yet unexplained and unspecified threat chatter between various so-called ‘al Qaeda’ groups.
Con Coughlin, a British neoconservative journalist with the UK’s Daily Telegraph writes.
For an organisation that is said to be in terminal decline, al-Qaeda will draw immense satisfaction from the events of this past weekend, when it demonstrated its ability to disrupt the work of Western governments by forcing the temporary closure of dozens of diplomatic missions throughout the Arab world.
Coughlin concedes that he has no idea what the threat is; only that “American intelligence officials are convinced that al-Qaeda is planning a spectacular attack to mark the festival of Eid, which comes at the end of the Muslim holy month of Ramadan” (Thursday 8 August 2013).
Coughlin takes the opportunity to expand the propaganda by mentioning ‘al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula’ and referring to it as an “al Qaeda franchise”.
There are, it seems, a number of ‘al Qaeda franchises’ scattered around the broader region. Neoconservative writers are keen to mention them often in their various articles as they perpetuate the al Qaeda myth as being some kind of homogenous organisation that is well disciplined and structured and operating via a central ‘head office’ based somewhere in Afghanistan/Pakistan.
Well known warmonger and neocon, Max Boot writing in Commentary today lists some of these ‘franchises’. He writes:
News of al-Qaeda’s imminent demise was, it seems, greatly exaggerated… Far from going out of business, al-Qaeda has spread, via its regional affiliates, to North Africa (al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb), the Persian Gulf region (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), and Iraq and Syria (al-Qaeda in Iraq, the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant).
For Boot, the objective of his article is two-fold; first, to perpetuate the myth of a vast Islamic extremist organisation determined to destroy America and Israel, and, two, to justify the existence of a massive US security network and, in particular, the importance of the work of the NSA. This, in turn, justifies a massive expenditure on the military and especially in the new science of robotic surveillance and remote and robotically controlled weapons all aimed at keeping the West and the US in particular, as top dogs in the superpower stakes.
Ever since 9/11, al Qaeda has become a useful label that can be attached to any Islamic enemy of the West regardless of whether or not any of them actually do have any connection to the tiny hard-core original organisation that clustered around Osama bin Laden up until his demise in December 2001. The Israelis even tried to create a bogus ‘al Qaeda in Palestine’ group – but they were soon exposed as fakes.
Makes you wonder about the origins of the other groups. And, of course, if they’re such a tightly organised group, how come they’re fighting among themselves in Syria – and how come the most sophisticated ‘terror’ plot since several airliners were used to attack targets on 9/11 has been some bloke who tried to blow up his Y-fronts?
August 5, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | al-Qaeda, Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, Middle East, North Africa, Osama Bin Laden, United States |
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By Ron Paul | August 4, 2013
In 2001, the Patriot Act opened the door to US government monitoring of Americans without a warrant. It was unconstitutional, but most in Congress over my strong objection were so determined to do something after the attacks of 9/11 that they did not seem to give it too much thought. Civil liberties groups were concerned, and some of us in Congress warned about giving up our liberties even in the post-9/11 panic. But at the time most Americans did not seem too worried about the intrusion.
This complacency has suddenly shifted given recent revelations of the extent of government spying on Americans. Politicians and bureaucrats are faced with serious backlash from Americans outraged that their most personal communications are intercepted and stored. They had been told that only the terrorists would be monitored. In response to this anger, defenders of the program have time and again resorted to spreading lies and distortions. But these untruths are now being exposed very quickly.
In a Senate hearing this March, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told Senator Ron Wyden that the NSA did not collect phone records of millions of Americans. This was just three months before the revelations of an NSA leaker made it clear that Clapper was not telling the truth. Pressed on his false testimony before Congress, Clapper apologized for giving an “erroneous” answer but claimed it was just because he “simply didn’t think of Section 215 of the Patriot Act.” Wow.
As the story broke in June of the extent of warrantless NSA spying against Americans, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers assured us that the project was strictly limited and not invasive. He described it as a “lockbox with only phone numbers, no names, no addresses in it, we’ve used it sparingly, it is absolutely overseen by the legislature, the judicial branch and the executive branch, has lots of protections built in…”
But we soon discovered that also was not true either. We learned in another Guardian newspaper article last week that the top secret “X-Keyscore” program allows even low-level analysts to “search with no prior authorization through vast databases containing emails, online chats and the browsing histories of millions of individuals.”
The keys to Rogers’ “lockbox” seem to have been handed out to everyone but the janitors! As Chairman of the Committee that is supposed to be most in the loop on these matters, it seems either the Intelligence Community misled him about their programs or he misled the rest of us. It sure would be nice to know which one it is.
Likewise, Rep. Rogers and many other defenders of the NSA spying program promised us that this dragnet scooping up the personal electronic communications of millions of Americans had already stopped “dozens” of terrorist plots against the United States. In June, NSA director General Keith Alexander claimed that the just-disclosed bulk collection of Americans’ phone and other electronic records had “foiled 50 terror plots.”
Opponents of the program were to be charged with being unconcerned with our security.
But none of it was true.
The Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday heard dramatic testimony from NSA deputy director John C. Inglis. According to the Guardian:
“The NSA has previously claimed that 54 terrorist plots had been disrupted ‘over the lifetime’ of the bulk phone records collection and the separate program collecting the internet habits and communications of people believed to be non-Americans. On Wednesday, Inglis said that at most one plot might have been disrupted by the bulk phone records collection alone.”
From dozens to “at most one”?
Supporters of these programs are now on the defensive, with several competing pieces of legislation in the House and Senate seeking to rein in an administration and intelligence apparatus that is clearly out of control. This is to be commended. What is even more important, though, is for more and more and more Americans to educate themselves about our precious liberties and to demand that their government abide by the Constitution. We do not have to accept being lied to – or spied on — by our government.
August 4, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Civil Liberties, Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | John C. Inglis, National Security Agency, NSA, Patriot Act, Ron Wyden, United States, United States Congress |
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The NYT has an article today on the enormous savings available to people who had major surgeries performed in Europe rather than the United States. The piece reports that the cost of hip replacement or knee replacement surgery in the United States are more than five times higher than they are in comparable quality facilities in Europe. (The gap would be even larger with facilities in Thailand and India.)
This shows the enormous potential gains from increased medical trade. In effect, our hospitals, doctors, and medical equipment makers benefit from tariffs on the order of 500 percent or more. If the Obama administration really is interesting in promoting growth through trade it would be difficult to imagine a sector with larger potential gains than trade in medical care. The agreements would focus on setting clear liability rules, accreditation systems, and removing obstacles for insurers and government programs that prevent them taking advantage of lower cost medical services in other countries.
If the trade deals do not include major openings on medical trade then it would be a clear example of why these deals are in fact about selective protectionism rather than free trade. Past trade deals have been quite explicitly focused on putting U.S. manufacturing workers in direct competition with the low paid manufacturing workers in developing countries.
Anyone who believes in free trade would want U.S. doctors and other professionals subjected to the same sort of competition. Otherwise, they really only want to use trade to lower the wages of less educated workers to benefit the the wealthy. (Low wages means cheap help.) It is dishonest to call that policy “free trade.”
August 4, 2013
Posted by aletho |
Deception, Economics, Supremacism, Social Darwinism | Free trade, Thailand, Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership, United States |
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