Monday, January 20, 2014
Domestic Surveillance:
Glenn Greenwald: Obama's NSA 'reforms' are little more than a PR attempt to mollify the public
"...The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are "serious questions that have been raised". They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic 'reforms' so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge. This scam has been so frequently used that it is now easily recognizable. In the mid-1970s, the Senate uncovered surveillance abuses that had been ongoing for decades, generating widespread public fury. In response, the US Congress enacted a new law (Fisa) which featured two primary 'safeguards': a requirement of judicial review for any domestic surveillance, and newly created committees to ensure legal compliance by the intelligence community. But the new court was designed to ensure that all of the government's requests were approved: it met in secret, only the government's lawyers could attend, it was staffed with the most pro-government judges, and it was even housed in the executive branch. As planned, the court over the next 30 years virtually never said no to the government. Identically, the most devoted and slavish loyalists of the National Security State were repeatedly installed as the committee's heads, currently in the form of NSA cheerleaders Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House. As the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013 article on the joke of Congressional oversight, the committees 'more often treat … senior intelligence officials like matinee idols'. As a result, the committees, ostensibly intended to serve an overseer function, have far more often acted as the NSA's in-house PR firm. The heralded mid-1970s reforms did more to make Americans believe there was reform than actually providing any, thus shielding it from real reforms..."
Protecting Business vs Protecting Public Health:
George Chidi: W. Virginia water polluter Freedom Industries files bankruptcy in legal shell game
"Freedom Industries fouled a sixth of West Virginia’s water supply last week with toxic chemicals. Friday it filed for bankruptcy, which will at least temporarily shield the firm from lawsuits. And in a brazen legal gambit, the owner of Freedom Industries has also created a shell company to provide financing to his bankrupt firm, which may allow him to retain much of the assets of the firm if and when it is dissolved in bankruptcy. Freedom owes $3.6 million to its top 20 unsecured creditors, according to bankruptcy documents obtained by the West Virginia Gazette. The company also owes the IRS more than $2.4 million in unpaid taxes dating back 13 years. The name of the owner of Freedom Industries, J. Clifford Forrest, also appears as an officer in a newly-formed firm — Mountaineer Funding LLC — which Freedom Industries named as the source of debtor-in-possession financing of up to $5 million. In a bankruptcy, the debtor in possession financier is typically placed at the head of the line of creditors making a claim on the assets of the firm. If a bankruptcy judge allows the financing to go forward, Mountaineer — and Forrest — might be expected to scoop up most of the assets of the bankrupt firm without any legal liability for the catastrophic environmental damages wrought by it..."
Glenn Greenwald: Obama's NSA 'reforms' are little more than a PR attempt to mollify the public
"...The crux of this tactic is that US political leaders pretend to validate and even channel public anger by acknowledging that there are "serious questions that have been raised". They vow changes to fix the system and ensure these problems never happen again. And they then set out, with their actions, to do exactly the opposite: to make the system prettier and more politically palatable with empty, cosmetic 'reforms' so as to placate public anger while leaving the system fundamentally unchanged, even more immune than before to serious challenge. This scam has been so frequently used that it is now easily recognizable. In the mid-1970s, the Senate uncovered surveillance abuses that had been ongoing for decades, generating widespread public fury. In response, the US Congress enacted a new law (Fisa) which featured two primary 'safeguards': a requirement of judicial review for any domestic surveillance, and newly created committees to ensure legal compliance by the intelligence community. But the new court was designed to ensure that all of the government's requests were approved: it met in secret, only the government's lawyers could attend, it was staffed with the most pro-government judges, and it was even housed in the executive branch. As planned, the court over the next 30 years virtually never said no to the government. Identically, the most devoted and slavish loyalists of the National Security State were repeatedly installed as the committee's heads, currently in the form of NSA cheerleaders Democrat Dianne Feinstein in the Senate and Republican Mike Rogers in the House. As the New Yorker's Ryan Lizza put it in a December 2013 article on the joke of Congressional oversight, the committees 'more often treat … senior intelligence officials like matinee idols'. As a result, the committees, ostensibly intended to serve an overseer function, have far more often acted as the NSA's in-house PR firm. The heralded mid-1970s reforms did more to make Americans believe there was reform than actually providing any, thus shielding it from real reforms..."
Protecting Business vs Protecting Public Health:
George Chidi: W. Virginia water polluter Freedom Industries files bankruptcy in legal shell game
"Freedom Industries fouled a sixth of West Virginia’s water supply last week with toxic chemicals. Friday it filed for bankruptcy, which will at least temporarily shield the firm from lawsuits. And in a brazen legal gambit, the owner of Freedom Industries has also created a shell company to provide financing to his bankrupt firm, which may allow him to retain much of the assets of the firm if and when it is dissolved in bankruptcy. Freedom owes $3.6 million to its top 20 unsecured creditors, according to bankruptcy documents obtained by the West Virginia Gazette. The company also owes the IRS more than $2.4 million in unpaid taxes dating back 13 years. The name of the owner of Freedom Industries, J. Clifford Forrest, also appears as an officer in a newly-formed firm — Mountaineer Funding LLC — which Freedom Industries named as the source of debtor-in-possession financing of up to $5 million. In a bankruptcy, the debtor in possession financier is typically placed at the head of the line of creditors making a claim on the assets of the firm. If a bankruptcy judge allows the financing to go forward, Mountaineer — and Forrest — might be expected to scoop up most of the assets of the bankrupt firm without any legal liability for the catastrophic environmental damages wrought by it..."
Friday, January 03, 2014
NSA Surveillance:
The National Security State and the Trillion Dollar Military-Security-Industrial-Complex it pimps, clearly has its own party-neutral agenda, unfortunately exposing the effective non-difference between an anti-intellectual jingoist like W and the smarter Constitutional Lawyer who succeeded him. Something had to replace the evil USSR, since these interests clearly insist on being paid.
It is tragically sad, what they've felt free to do & gotten away with, based on our implicit trust. The lack of public outrage is sickening & the US corporate shill media are failing to do their job -- i.e. why am I reading about this in the foreign press?
The sheep who bleat 'If'n ya ain't got nuffin' ta hide, why do ya care?' are the worst sort of apologists for this outrage. The potential for blackmail, based on the wrong people getting access to the data collected, is vast. Politicians & captains of industry will certainly be the targets, when their agenda threatens to diverge from that of the National Security State.
We feign surprise when cornered, abused beings lash out? We are never, of course, to mention the US military actions, foreign aid & alliances in the Middle East/Central Asia that legitimately piss off the world's billion Muslims; enough for some of them to resort to horrific violence against US interests.
Der Spiegel (DE) - Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
"The NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is targeting..."
Der Spiegel (DE) - Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox
"After years of speculation that electronics can be accessed by intelligence agencies through a back door, an internal NSA catalog reveals that such methods already exist for numerous end-user devices..."
The National Security State and the Trillion Dollar Military-Security-Industrial-Complex it pimps, clearly has its own party-neutral agenda, unfortunately exposing the effective non-difference between an anti-intellectual jingoist like W and the smarter Constitutional Lawyer who succeeded him. Something had to replace the evil USSR, since these interests clearly insist on being paid.
It is tragically sad, what they've felt free to do & gotten away with, based on our implicit trust. The lack of public outrage is sickening & the US corporate shill media are failing to do their job -- i.e. why am I reading about this in the foreign press?
The sheep who bleat 'If'n ya ain't got nuffin' ta hide, why do ya care?' are the worst sort of apologists for this outrage. The potential for blackmail, based on the wrong people getting access to the data collected, is vast. Politicians & captains of industry will certainly be the targets, when their agenda threatens to diverge from that of the National Security State.
We feign surprise when cornered, abused beings lash out? We are never, of course, to mention the US military actions, foreign aid & alliances in the Middle East/Central Asia that legitimately piss off the world's billion Muslims; enough for some of them to resort to horrific violence against US interests.
Der Spiegel (DE) - Documents Reveal Top NSA Hacking Unit
"The NSA's TAO hacking unit is considered to be the intelligence agency's top secret weapon. It maintains its own covert network, infiltrates computers around the world and even intercepts shipping deliveries to plant back doors in electronics ordered by those it is targeting..."
Der Spiegel (DE) - Catalog Advertises NSA Toolbox
"After years of speculation that electronics can be accessed by intelligence agencies through a back door, an internal NSA catalog reveals that such methods already exist for numerous end-user devices..."
