Now They're in Trouble

We saw this coming, and we welcome it.

The National Rifle Association joined the American Civil Liberties Union's lawsuit on Wednesday to end the government's massive phone record collection program.

In a brief filed in federal court, the NRA argues that the National Security Agency's database of phone records amounts to a "national gun registry."

  The Hill

I am just ever so skeptical that anything will actually curtail the data mining. Those guys will never give up that kind of power.  No matter what laws might be put in place.  We have laws now against what they've been doing.  And they've been doing it anyway. 

Greenwald at Work

How Serious Is Bombing Syria?

Well, here's Senator John McCain during the recent hearing on the issue:



And here's his response to having been caught:



Yeah. Three hours is too long to debate bombing a country. Hey, who doesn't play iPhone poker at work?

Edward Snowden Statement

Excerpted from Snowden's acceptance speech of the German whistleblower award:

It does not require sophistication to understand that policy equating necessary acts of warning with threats to national security inevitably lead to ignorance and insecurity. The society that falls into the deterrent trap known in cultural wisdom as "shooting the messenger" will quickly find that not only is it without messengers but it no longer enjoys messages at all.

  Zeit

The End of the Dream

When King was murdered, civil uprisings occurred in scores of US cities, and the establishment myth makers made a second 180 degree turn. While the smoke rose from burning cities you heard the first references to Dr. King not as a champion of economic justice, not as a moral voice against militarism and empire, not the fighter for a guaranteed minimum income for all, but as “The Dreamer.” Media figures began instructing us on “Dr. King's Dream” – something nobody ever heard of before – as the reference point for our past struggle, our present predicament and our future agenda. Thus, as Gary Younge points out in his recent book, a new Dr. King was constructed

This new Dr. King didn't call into question poverty. But he did have a dream. This new Dr. King stopped wondering, as the living King once did, why people pay water bills in a world that's two-thirds water. But still, he had a dream. This new Dr. King never again mentioned the right of black workers to form unions and negotiate for their dignity and livelihoods. But this new guy, he had a dream.

The Dreamer as we know him today bears little resemblance to the man who was murdered in 1968. The Dreamer was constructed out of whole cloth by the same powerful media institutions which built King up in 1965 and 66, which denounced and slandered him 67 and 68, and made him a useful saint after his death. King never lived to be forty, so the Dreamer has already lived longer than the man, and for the powerful, has been far more useful.

[...]

[I]n the spring of 1967, Dr. King unequivocally denounced the war in Vietnam as unjust and immoral. He called the US government the greatest purveyor of violence on earth, and predicted that if nothing changed for the better we'd be marching to stop future murderous and unjust imperial wars in other places without end.

  Bruce Dixon: Black Agenda Report

Which may explain more than anything why Dr. King was murdered.

[The official MLK march on Washington commemoration] events sent a message to the world that the historical Black struggle for social justice and peace was nothing more than a ploy to achieve proximity to Power.

[...]

The problem, of course, is not [Rev. Al] Sharpton’s personal vulgarity and corruption, but the worldview that he shares with the whole cabal of Black misleaders. To put it simply, they never agreed with Dr. Martin Luther King on the need for a “revolution” that is “international in scope” and would force the United States to “repent of her modern economic imperialism,” as historian Paul Street notes in this issue. They do not share Dr. King’s socially transformational “dream.” Indeed, they have no core vision at all, other than that Black American individuals be widely represented within structures of power in the United States: Black titans of Wall Street, Black generals and – the ultimate prize – a Black president.

[...]

The collapse of the Black economy, the evisceration of the Constitution, mass Black incarceration, multiple and constant U.S. wars against weaker peoples – none of this can be allowed to tarnish or undermine the embodiment of Black progress, Barack Obama. Which is why it is perfectly logical to Sharpton and Ben Jealous and their ilk that Obama star in the March on Washington commemoration, as both the symbol and the personification of “The Dream.” It is the dream of those who want nothing more than to become full-fledged partners in U.S. imperialism.

It is inconceivable that Dr. King would share the stage with a president who was at that moment preparing a savage and illegal attack on a sovereign country. Dr. King’s voice has been censored and his dream vandalized, repackaged and presented as a gift to a corporate agent with a Kill List.


  Glen Ford: Black Agenda Report

Drip, Drip, Drip

The National Security Agency spied on the communications of the presidents of Brazil and Mexico, a Brazilian news program reported, a revelation that could strain US relations with the two biggest countries in Latin America.

The report late Sunday by Globo's news program Fantastico [...] showed what it said was an NSA document dated June 2012 displaying passages of written messages sent by Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, who was still a candidate at that time. In the messages, Pena Nieto discussed who he was considering naming as his ministers once elected.

[...]

[Brazilian] Justice Minister Jose Eduardo Cardozo told O Globo newspaper that the contents of the documents, if confirmed, "should be considered very serious and constitute a clear violation of Brazilian sovereignty." "This (spying) hits not only Brazil, but the sovereignty of several countries that could have been violated in a way totally contrary to what international law establishes," Cardozo said. Cardozo traveled last week to Washington and met with US Vice President Joseph Biden and other officials, seeking more details on a previous, seemingly less serious set of disclosures by Snowden regarding US spying in Brazil.

  UK Guardian

Davis, California: Still Making a Name for Itself

Police at the University of California, Davis are investigating a string of recent vandalism incidents as a possible hate crime. Late last Sunday night or early the following morning, an unknown person smashed car windshields, shattered campus windows, and wrote a racial epithet on a chalkboard.

[...]

A similar rash of hate-related vandalism occurred in 2010, when swastikas were found on campus grounds and buildings housing lesbian and gay organizations were vandalized. The perpetrators were never identified.

  Raw Story

I’m not surprised, but I wonder how hard they tried. Davis is also where the campus cops sprayed sit-in Occupy protestors directly in the face with pepper spray.

I did my graduate work at UC Davis in the mid-90s. The town is a white man’s stronghold. And not poor whites. They don’t even allow discount stores like Wal-Mart to set up shop, because it would invite Mexicans to live and work there (although I'm sure that's not the official reason). Every other community surrounding Davis, and probably all of California, has a large Mexican-American population. Not Davis. The only dark-skinned people in town that I saw were temporary students at the university, and there weren’t many of them.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Yes He Can

It's a potent sign of how low the American political bar is set that gratitude is expressed because a US president says he will ask Congress to vote before he starts bombing another country that is not attacking or threatening the US.

[...]

More to the point, his aides are making clear that Obama does not view the vote as binding, as Time reports:

”To make matters more complicated, Obama's aides made clear that the President's search for affirmation from Congress would not be binding. He might still attack Syria even if Congress issues a rejection."

According to the Guardian's Spencer Ackerman, Secretary of State John Kerry, this morning on CNN, said this when asked whether the Congressional vote would be binding: "[Obama] has the right to do this no matter what Congress does."

  Glenn Greenwald

...hey, do what you want...you will anyway.

Labor Day - Down with Unions!

Let Us Remember Where We Started

Neocon was a household word until Barry O absorbed the Bush foreign policy.

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm (commonly known as the "Clean Break" report) is a policy document that was prepared in 1996 by a study group led by Richard Perle for Benjamin Netanyahu, the then Prime Minister of Israel. The report explained a new approach to solving Israel's security problems in the Middle East with an emphasis on "Western values".

[...]

Former United States Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Perle was the "Study Group Leader", but the final report included ideas from Douglas Feith, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser.

[...]

The introduction specifically proposes three new policies:

1. Rather than pursuing a "comprehensive peace" with the entire Arab world, Israel should work jointly with Jordan and Turkey to "contain, destabilize, and roll-back" those entities that are threats to all three.

2. Changing the nature of relations with the Palestinians, specifically reserving the right of "hot pursuit" anywhere within Palestinian territory as well as attempting to promote alternatives to Arafat's leadership.

3. Changing relations with the United States stressing self-reliance and strategic cooperation.

[...]

"Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by: ---striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan. ---paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.... “

[...]

"Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions."

[...]

"Israel has a chance to forge a new relationship between itself and the Palestinians. First and foremost, Israel’s efforts to secure its streets may require hot pursuit into Palestinian-controlled areas, a justifiable practice with which Americans can sympathize."

  Wikipedia

As things have gone, it seems we're still on track.  There was, however, a small issue that didn’t get implemented.

"To emphasize the point that Israel regards the actions of the PLO problematic, but not the Arab people, Israel might want to consider making a special effort to reward friends and advance human rights among Arabs.

Then again, it might not.

...but hey, do what you want...you will anyway.