tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-109355922024-03-13T11:04:39.213-04:00ContumaciousA blog dedicated to the contrary view,
because everything we think we know - is wrong.Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-87702985245104199172015-07-21T10:22:00.001-04:002015-07-21T10:28:01.404-04:00Harper's Canada vs Nazi Germany (and Godwin can go to hell)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="background-color: white;"><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Guardian Text Sans Web, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">Credulous, trusting Canadians are perfect exemplars of the entirely fatuous concept, "It can't happen here." It is happening here. </span></span></span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white;"><b>From the book "They Thought They Were Free" by Milton Mayer, about life in Nazi Germany:</b></span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Guardian Text Sans Web, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">"What no one seemed to notice," said a colleague of mine, a philologist, "was the ever widening gap, after 1933, between the government and the people. Just think how very wide this gap was to begin with, here in Germany. And it became always wider. You know, it doesn't make people close to their government to be told that this is a people’s government, a true democracy, or to be enrolled in civilian defense, or even to vote. All this has little, really nothing, to do with knowing one is governing.</span></span></i></div>
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<i style="background-color: white;">"What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if the people could not understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.</i></div>
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<i style="background-color: white;"><b>"This separation of government from people, this widening of the gap, took place so gradually and so insensibly, each step disguised (perhaps not even intentionally) as a temporary emergency measure or associated with true patriotic allegiance or with real social purposes. And all the crises and reforms (real reforms, too) so occupied the people that they did not see the slow motion underneath, of the whole process of government growing remoter and remoter.</b></i></div>
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<i style="background-color: white;">"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.</i></div>
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<i><span style="color: #333333; font-family: Guardian Text Sans Web, Helvetica Neue, Helvetica, Arial, Lucida Grande, sans-serif;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 14px; line-height: 20px;">"You see," my colleague went on, "one doesn't see exactly where or how to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, each occasion, is worse than the last, but only a little worse. You wait for the next and the next. You wait for one great shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You don’t want to act, or even talk, alone; you don’t want to ‘go out of your way to make trouble.’ Why not?—Well, you are not in the habit of doing it. And it is not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you; it is also genuine uncertainty.</span></span></i></div>
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<i style="background-color: white;">"But the one great shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds or thousands will join with you, never comes. That’s the difficulty. If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes, millions would have been sufficiently shocked—if, let us say, the gassing of the Jews in ’43 had come immediately after the ‘German Firm’ stickers on the windows of non-Jewish shops in ’33. But of course this isn’t the way it happens. In between come all the hundreds of little steps, some of them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be shocked by the next. Step C is not so much worse than Step B, and, if you did not make a stand at Step B, why should you at Step C? And so on to Step D.</i></div>
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<i style="background-color: white;">"And one day, too late, your principles, if you were ever sensible of them, all rush in upon you. The burden of self-deception has grown too heavy, and some minor incident, in my case my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying ‘Jewish swine,’ collapses it all at once, and you see that everything, everything, has changed and changed completely under your nose. The world you live in—your nation, your people—is not the world you were born in at all. The forms are all there, all untouched, all reassuring, the houses, the shops, the jobs, the mealtimes, the visits, the concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit, which you never noticed because you made the lifelong mistake of identifying it with the forms, is changed. Now you live in a world of hate and fear, and the people who hate and fear do not even know it themselves; when everyone is transformed, no one is transformed. Now you live in a system which rules without responsibility even to God. The system itself could not have intended this in the beginning, but in order to sustain itself it was compelled to go all the way."</i></div>
Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-71980831095434674092013-07-06T12:09:00.001-04:002013-07-08T18:29:35.433-04:00Glenn Greenwald at ACLU of Oregon 2013 Liberty Dinner<iframe allowfullscreen="" frameborder="0" height="281" mozallowfullscreen="" src="http://player.vimeo.com/video/61306840" webkitallowfullscreen="" width="500"></iframe> <br />
<a href="http://vimeo.com/61306840"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Glenn Greenwald at ACLU of Oregon 2013 Liberty Dinner</span></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><b><span style="background-color: white;">Glenn</span><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"> <span class="il">Greenwald</span></span><span style="background-color: white;"> at ACLU of Oregon 2013 <u></u><u></u><u></u>Liberty<u></u><u></u> Dinner; 3/2/13</span></b><span style="background-color: white;"><u></u><u></u></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Good evening everyone, and thank you for coming tonight. And thank you as well to Staci [?] and <u></u>Erin<u></u> for that very creative introduction. Thank so much as well to the ACLU of Oregon for inviting me to speak here, this evening. I speak at a lot of events like this, for a lot of different groups, and there really is no organization with which I feel more at home than the ACLU.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">One of the things I’ve discovered over the past seven or eight years of writing about and working on these issues is that it is extremely easy to find civil liberties allies, people who are very vocal in their opposition to government abuses of power when the other party, the party that they don’t support, is the one who’s hands are on the lever of power. But they sort of disappear, or fall mute or even become overtly adversarial when it’s there own political party or a political leader whom they admire who is responsible for those abuses. And one of the things that admire and value most about the ACLU is that its commitment to defending individual rights from majoritarian oppression and from abuses of the state is steadfast and unyielding regardless of which political faction is perpetrating those abuses, regardless of which group is being victimized by them. And it’s that principled commitment that makes the ACLU the most important and far and away the most effective civil liberties organization in <u></u><u></u>America<u></u><u></u>. So, thank you for inviting me. I’m genuinely honored to be part of this event.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">When I speak about civil liberties, regardless of how I approach the topic, the thing that I always like to start off by doing is asking what it is that we even mean by this term civil liberties. It’s a term that gets tossed around a lot. And the reason I think it’s important to ask what it is that this term denotes, is because it almost has taken on this status of vapid, trite slogan. It’s something that politicians and all sorts of people invoke continuously to justify their political agenda. But it’s very rarely debated. You don’t usually hear people standing up in public and saying Hi, I’m just here to make clear that I’m opposed to civil liberties. It’s not really a concept that gets thought about much. And, so, I think it’s important if we’re going to talk about it tonight, as part of the ACLU event, as part of the work and the commitment that it does, that we take a second to ask what it is that it means.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And the really good thing about asking that question is that ultimately the term civil liberties is a very straight forward and relatively simple concept. All it really refers to, is the list of limitations that we have imposed on the government in terms of the power that it exercises and what it is that it can do to us. And, adherence to this list of limitations is the condition that we have imposed for recognizing the assertion of government power as valid and legitimate. We agree to recognize and accept the assertion of state power provided that it never crosses the lines that we’ve created, the limits that we’ve imposed, in how it can exercise that power. And, that list of limitations is what we refer to when we talk about civil liberties.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And the other good thing about asking that question is that this list of limitations, these limitations are not ambiguous. Nor are they circumstantial or conditional. They are definite and clear. And they apply to every person and every group of people equally, regardless of the situation. They do not yield to certain situations. They can not be diluted based upon the group to which they are being applied.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And all one needs to know, to do, to know how absolute these concepts are, how clear and definitive this list of limitations is, is to look at them and read them and see what they are. And we don’t need to go searching for them. They’re all assembled in one place, in one document called the Bill of Rights or The Constitution. And their clarity and their absoluteness is self-evident from listening to what it is that they say. So, you look at the First Amendment and it says Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech. You look at the Fourth Amendment and its prohibitions on unreasonable searches and seizures, or the issuance of search warrants, and the absence of probable cause. And you look at the Fifth Amendment which says no person shall be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;"><span style="background-color: white;">A few years ago, I had this fairly acrimonious exchange with Joe Klein of Time magazine. And, I’ve actually had many, many acrimonious exchanges with Joe Klein of Time magazine, but this one in particular I was thinking of was in 2008 or 2009. I don’t remember the specifics, but it was about civil liberties defenses. And we were going back and forth over the course of two weeks on our various columns exchanging all sorts of criticisms of one another, and insults of one another. It was fairly contentious. And I remember, in the middle of this exchange he wrote something in one of the leading paragraphs that he wrote and he said, "Well I think the thing that we have to realize here, which is really driving this conflict, is that Glenn </span><span style="background-color: #f3f3f3;"><span class="il">Greenwald</span> </span><span style="background-color: white;">is a civil liberties extremist.". That’s what he wrote. And I remember when I read that I was actually really [applause] that was my reaction. I was actually bewildered, because, I was really confused because here we were in this vituperative exchange, hurling insults at one another in public, and I couldn't figure out why all of a sudden he decided to stop in the middle of this and lavish me with this praise. Civil Liberties Extremist. Is he trying to offer out a fig leaf or something? And I realized pretty quickly after that, that Oh, I understand, he actually means that as an insult, like that’s a bad thing. And that’s why I was confused. And the reason why, to me that is the greatest compliment that you can give somebody, I actually sort of fantasize about having that on my tombstone, Here Lies Glenn </span><span class="il" style="background-color: white;">Greenwald</span><span style="background-color: white;">, Civil Liberties Extremist, is because if you look at what these rights are, you really can’t believe in them without being extremist about them. The minute you start justifying waiving these rights based on certain conditions, or because of the group to which it’s applied, you immediately declare that you don’t actually believe in these rights at all.</span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And, if you look at the state of civil liberties in the United States today, which is essentially what I’m here to talk about, and what the ACLU works on each and every day, what you find are [let’s look at those rights that I just talked about], if you look at the First Amendment what you see is a whole series of prosecutions, where people are sent to prison for many decades, almost always Muslim Americans, for material support of terrorism based not on anything that they've done, or plots in which they’ve been involved, but almost exclusively on statements that they’ve made in which they’ve expressed critical opinions of the United States, a pure breach of this guarantee against punishment based on speech. Or if you look at the massive surveillance state that the <u></u><u></u>United States<u></u><u></u> government has created in which our actions are monitored and stored, not by any allegation that we’ve done anything wrong, but simply as a matter of reflexive instinct. It is as profound a violation of the guarantees against unreasonable searches and seizures, or the guarantee that we will only be monitored if we’ve done something wrong as you can possibly imagine. Or if you look at the claimed assertion and power of the President to target people around the world, even American citizens, for execution without so much as charging them with any crime, that is as extreme and pure a repudiation of the Fifth Amendment guarantee against the deprivation of life without due process as one can possibly imagine.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">So, I think that if you talk about the state of civil liberties in the <u></u><u></u>United States<u></u><u></u>, what you really have to conclude is that violations of these rights, repudiations of these principles, are not isolated or episodic. They’re really fundamental and systemic, especially over the last decade. And, so, about that fact, I think it’s worth asking a couple of questions, and I want to basically devote my time to exploring these two questions, the first of which is Why is it that we’ve allowed this to happen? Why collectively as a nation have we allowed these systemic abuses to take hold without much of a backlash? And, secondly to ask, what are the implications from allowing these abuses to have taken hold and to continue to become intensified and bolstered for as long as they have?<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">So, let me address that first question first, which is Why is it that we’ve allowed these sorts of abuses and violations to take place? I think the first answer is that it’s all happened within the context of war. We are a nation that has spent the last almost thirteen full years now, running around declaring ourselves to be a nation at war with almost no end in sight. It’s been twelve years, almost thirteen. It’s hard to imagine when that will end. And the nature of war is such that a leader’s powers are virtually limitless. This has always been true. Two thousand years ago, <u></u><u></u>Cicero<u></u><u></u> said When men take up arms, the Law falls mute. Leaders love war, because the Law ceases to constrain what it is that they can do. And what makes this war unique, is that it is not a war confined to any physical spaces on the earth, finite spaces. It is a war that has been declared by two successive governments to be one that is fought on the global battlefield, the entire globe being a battlefield. And once you accept that war paradigm, what it means is that it is almost impossible to constrain the power of leaders to surveil, or eavesdrop or detain or even kill because the nature of war is such that leaders’ powers are very difficult to constrain. That’s the reason why war is horrific not only because of the carnage that it produces, and the death that it results in, but because of the way in which it transforms and degrades a political culture and political institutions. And the acceptance of this war paradigm is a crucial factor in understanding why these trends have been so difficult to arrest.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">The second factor that I think is crucial to note, is that there is a perception that has been cultivated, by design, very deliberate, that these abuses are applicable and are only targeting a very specific, discreet marginalized group, which happens to be Muslims and increasingly American Muslims. This is the way that civil liberties abuses always work, is that the government singles out, on purpose, the most marginalized group it can think of in order to target that group with these abuses with the knowledge that most people in the society will acquiesce to them or even support them, not because in theory they support the abuses, but because they think that particular group deserves it, or because they believe that as long as they’re immunized there’s no reason really to care.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">Aside from the extraordinarily grotesque morality of that form of thinking, as long as an injustice doesn’t affect me I won’t care about it, it’s an incredibly ill-advised thing to think for two reasons, one of which is that it is almost always the case that civil liberties abuses extend beyond the group originally targeted. And the second reason that it’s an misguided way to think is that once you’ve acquiesced in the first instance to an abuse of government power, because you’re happy with the individual or a group to which that abuse is applied, that abuse becomes institutionalized, it becomes legitimized, so that future applications beyond that which you may not be so comfortable with become almost impossible to confront.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And we see this in all sorts of ways over the last decade. The Patriot Act that was enacted in the name of terrorism that people assumed would be applied to Muslims has been applied overwhelmingly in cases having nothing having to do with terrorism. And we see all sorts of tactics that have defined war on terror excesses and radicalism now being applied not to foreign nationals on foreign soil, but increasingly being imported into the <u></u>United States<u></u>, whether it be statutes that are enacted authorizing the indefinite detention even of American citizens on <u></u><u></u>US<u></u><u></u> soil. Or, we’re increasingly seeing the tactic that the FBI has long used to imprison whatever Muslims they wanted, which is they invent, The FBI does, terrorist plots, and they then create and plan and fund them and then recruit people to join them. And then, at the last minute, they heroically jump in and save us from the plot that the FBI created. And then accuse the people they’ve recruited of being terrorists. This is a tactic now being used increasingly to domestic groups, whether it be the Occupy Movement, or people protesting NATO policies or a whole slew of others as well.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">We see, as well, the importation of para-militarized police forces using tactics that were perfected in <u></u><u></u>Baghdad<u></u><u></u> now being used in American cities. And we of course see the inevitable implementation of a massive regime of drones that are being used increasingly by federal, state and local governments for surveillance purposes and increasingly as will happen, for weaponized purposes.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And, so what you see is the acquiescence to these abuses based on the expectation that they will be applied only to a small group of people that is now increasingly being applied to US politics and <u></u><u></u>US<u></u><u></u> political culture generally. But this perception, as wrong-headed as it is, that it’s only a certain group that needs to worry, has been a major factor, as well, in why this is so difficult to combat, and to why we’ve allowed this to happen.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And then, the final reason I would give as to explaining why we’ve allowed these abuses to take hold is the role that partisan loyalty plays in how these abuses are conceived of. I know this from my own experience. I’ve been talking about these policies, these civil liberties abuses for eight or nine years, now, and I know that five years ago or so, if I went and spoke to an audience of say five hundred randomly assembled people and I denounced the policies that I have spent the last ten minutes or so just denouncing, fifty percent of the room, roughly, would be incredibly hostile to the things that I was saying. Those were called Republicans. And, the other fifty percent of the room would be boisterously supportive. The would cheer and they would say You’re defending America and all of its core values from assault, and we support what you’re doing and we think these policies are threatening and menacing. And those were called Democrats. And now, here we are, four years later, and if I were to stand up in front of that same randomly assembled room and speak about the same policies and the same content of the message, probably eighty percent of the room would be at least somewhat hostile, and only twenty percent, or maybe even fifteen percent would be supportive. And that’s because lots of people who were willing to commit themselves in battling civil liberties abuses four years ago or five years ago, because they perceived that there was partisan advantage to doing so, or because they believed that the leader perpetrating those abuses was evil, are now very comfortable with those abuses, or even supportive of them because it’s their own side that is doing it.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And I think the real lesson from that is that the way in which civil liberties are protected, the way in which core rights are guaranteed is not by going to the ballot box once every four years and electing someone that we think is a better leader. That’s not how rights are secured. The way that rights are secured is by banding together as citizens and objecting to violations, no matter who is in charge of the government and no matter which group is being targeted.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">So, I just want to spend the balance of the time that I have talking about what the implications are for being a country that for the last twelve years has proclaimed itself, quite belligerently and proudly to be a nation at war, and has ushered in all of these excessive powers and allowed and acquiesced to these violations. Because I think that, the implications, some of them are somewhat obvious, from a allowing the government to punish people based on their speech and their political ideas, or targeting marginalized minority groups for special persecution. Some of those harms are inherent in the act and are fairly obvious.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">But others are somewhat elusive, and I think probably ultimately more consequential. And I want to focus on a couple of the ones I think are a bit more subtle and yet probably a bit more insidious, the consequences of allowing this to take hold.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">The first one that I want to highlight is how quickly extremism and radicalism become normalized. If you go back and read American political debates in late 2001 and 2002, when the citizenry was incredibly willing to acquiesce to what the government was doing, the Patriot Act even in the wake of the 9-11 attack was a fairly controversial measure. It was debated very vociferously. It was depicted as a threat to our core liberties. So much so, that when Congress enacted it, they put in a provision saying it has to be renewed in four years because we don’t want this to become a permanent part of our political framework.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And yet, in 2005 under a Republican President and a Republican Congress, and then again in 2010 under a Democratic President and a Democratic Congress the Patriot Act got renewed overwhelmingly with almost no debate or attention paid and almost no reforms, because what was once a radical concept, this legislative statutory framework, became an embedded part of our political framework. We barely notice the Patriot Act anymore. We don’t talk about it. We don’t even think about it. That’s not what is considered radical any longer. It’s become completely normalized.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And this process of how extremism becomes normalized was really conveyed to me viscerally by this one personal anecdote that I just want to share with you. It was, last year I was speaking at a college in Indiana, Perdue, and three high school juniors, who were fifteen or sixteen years old, all drove up to hear me speak, and they were journalists who write for their high school news paper and afterwards they wanted to interview me. And I actually found that the things they had to say were much more interesting than the things that I ended up saying to them. In particular, one of the girls, a high school sophomore who spoke to me said, you know one of the things that you kept talking about in your speech and that you write about a lot, is how we’ve lost so many of our freedoms and how we’ve so radically changed as a society in the wake of 9-11. But, she said, I think one thing you need to understand is that for people my age, I’m fifteen, she said, I was four years old at the time that 9-11 happened. There really is no such thing as a pre 9-11 and a post 9-11 world for people my age. The post 9-11 world is the totality of their political consciousness which seems extreme and radical to those of us old enough to remember what things were like prior to then is the only thing that people her age and increasingly more and more people even know. And every year that goes by these radical policies become part of the woodwork, barely even noticed any longer, without a citizenry even aware that there are other alternatives. And this is a major implication from allowing these policies to endure as long as they have. <u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And then, the second implication that I think is even more important, and is a little harder to describe, but I think is really worth thinking about, is the way in which the relationship of the citizenry to the government changes dramatically when it knows that they have a government that no longer adheres to those lines I talked about earlier. Because I think in an ideal free society, the way things work is that people who wield power have a healthy fear of the people over whom they wield power. They fear the consequences of what will happen if they abuse their power. But in a tyrannical state, by definition, that gets reversed, and the citizenry fears the government because they know there’s nothing constraining it from doing whatever it wants, that these lines that we’ve imposed are simply being disregarded without consequence.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">This really got viscerally conveyed to me by another personal anecdote that I just want to share with you, because it really has stuck with me as a critical part of how I see all theses civil liberties issues. This took place in January of 2010. I’ve spent the last several years writing many times about the organization Wikileaks. And I’ve written in defense of them and about the promise that their model of transparency holds. In 2010, January 2010 that was the first time I ever wrote about Wikileaks. Almost nobody had even heard of the group at the time. Nobody had known about them. It was before they did most of their significant leaks. The way that I learned about Wikileaks at the time was that there was a top secret Pentagon report in 2008 that had declared Wikileaks to be an enemy of the state. They talked about how Wikileaks posed a profound threat to national security and plotted ways to destroy the organization. And, ironically enough, this top secret report got leaked to Wikileaks, which then published it on line. And, you could go and read it and the New York Times wrote a very short article about this report, and it talked about how this obscure Australian and his weird organization had been declared an enemy of the state by the United States. And I read this article, and I remember thinking that any group that has been declared to be an enemy of the state by the Pentagon is one that merits a lot more attention and probably a lot more support. <u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">So, I went and researched the group and I found that they had done these incredible projects of transparency and exposed all kinds of damaging secrets around the world to the most powerful factions. And I wrote long article about the promise the group held. And I interviewed Julian Assange. At the end of the article, I encouraged people to go and donate money to the organization, because they were having budgetary constraints. They were sitting on lots of secrets they weren’t able to process because they didn’t have enough staff. And I posted links to how people could go and donate money to Wikileaks, through Electronic Wire, through Pay Pal and the like. In response to that column that I wrote, I had dozens and dozens of people in all kinds of different venues, in events like this, by e-mail, in the comment sections, wherever I would go, say to me essentially along the lines something like I completely understand why you support Wikileaks. I want to support Wikileaks myself. I want to donate money to Wikileaks as well. The only reason that I don’t is because I have a fear that if I donate money to Wikileaks, I’m going to end up on a government list somewhere. Or, I could even be subjected to criminal liability for aiding and abetting a terrorist organization or materially supporting a terrorist group if they are declared to be such. And these were not bizarre, conspiracy ridden kinds of people, prone to paranoia. Trust me, I recognize those people from extensive interaction. These were very sober, rational people, readers and other kinds of American citizens. The reason that was so striking to me was because these were people who had voluntarily relinquished their own Constitutional rights, which is what donating money to a political organization whose cause you support is. It’s pure free speech and free associational rights because they had come to fear the <u></u><u></u>United States<u></u><u></u> government. They came to believe that the <u></u><u></u>US<u></u><u></u> government could punish them or otherwise take action against them regardless of the fact that those rights that they were exercising were guaranteed, because those rights no longer had meaning.<u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 10pt;">And that was what was so incredible to me, was that you could offer all the rights you want on a piece of paper or a piece of parchment, but if you intimidate the citizenry out of exercising them because they know the government can cross whatever lines it wants to cross, those rights become completely worthless. People become so afraid of the government, reasonably and rightfully so, that they will simply oppress themselves. And that’s why that was such a profound situation and profound episode for me, underscoring the significant implication of what happens when we allow the government to ignore civil liberties. It’s not abstract or intellectual as an issue. It’s very visceral and profound.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">So, the last point I just want to make in the minute or two that I have, is that it’s often the case that if you gather at events like this, and talk about these systemic problems, that I just talked about, this sort of really dark, like gloominess can set in. Like, oh my god I just listened to this person talk about all these formidable rights abuses and I think I want to go, you know, shut all my windows and hide under the bed or jump off a bridge or something.<u></u><u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Times New Roman;">And it can kind of [unclear] as defeatism. The reason I think that’s not a rational response, as tempting as it might be, is because the clear lesson of all eras of history, including recent history, is that any human structure that is built by human beings can always be modified or torn down and replaced by other human beings if the right commitment and the right passion and the right will is devoted to it.<u></u><u></u></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'; font-size: 12pt;">And you see that in the Arab Spring, where some of the most oppressed populations subverted some of the most entrenched tyrannies. You see it over and over in the history of the <u></u><u></u><u></u>United States<u></u><u></u>, extraordinary social progress being made by citizens banding together who are stripped of power and influence, because they find ways to do it. And it’s that possibility that I think history has proven over and over exists in a very real and animated way that makes organizations like the ACLU so critically important to support, because they’re the ones on the front lines leading that fight. And that’s really the reason that I’m so honored to be part of a group like the ACLU that does lead this fight. It’s the reason why I’m so happy to be here tonight and I thank you very much for listening. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">The ACLU of Oregon is an advocacy organization dedicated to preserving and advancing civil liberties and civil rights. Our annual Liberty Dinner, held on Saturday, March 2, 2013, was a benefit for the ACLU Foundation of Oregon and featured guest speaker Glenn Greenwald.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">Glenn Greenwald worked as a constitutional and civil rights litigator before becoming a columnist and blogger to Salon.com and then The Guardian, where he focuses on political and legal topics. He has written three New York Times bestsellers: How Would a Patriot Act? (2006); A Tragic Legacy (2007); and With Liberty and Justice for Some: How the Law is Used to Destroy Equality and Protect the Powerful (2011). He also wrote Great American Hypocrites (2008).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">More about the ACLU of Oregon: </span><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Oregon Affiliate of the ACLU is a non-partisan organization dedicated to the preservation and enhancement of civil liberties and civil rights. We believe that the freedoms of press, speech, assembly, and religion, and the rights to due process, equal protection and privacy, are fundamental to a free people. We advance civil liberties and civil rights by activities that include litigation, education, and lobbying.</span></span></div>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: x-small;">*With much thanks to "EvenHarpier" for this transcription!</span></b></div>
Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-77529837178308151182013-05-26T17:56:00.001-04:002013-05-26T20:55:50.365-04:00"No Comment" at The Guardian on the London attack<br />
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The Guardian has, for "legal" reasons, deleted all comments on the murder of Machine Gunner Rigby, or as they call him, "Drummer" Rigby at Glenn Greenwald's column, They have gone on to disable ALL commenting on any article relating to the Woolwich murder, making a mockery if not a travesty -- out of their misnamed "Comment is Free" section.<br />
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The Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald on security and liberty issues has posted <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/25/andrew-sullivan-distortion-terrorism-woolwich" target="_blank">this explanation of sorts.</a><br />
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UPDATE<br />
For reasons I'll let the Guardian explain, all of the comments to all of the columns and articles posted on the London attack were deleted, and the comment sections then closed. I hope that won't happen to today's column here, as the topics discussed here are not really about the attack but the broader debate about terrorism. But it's possible that it will happen again. Those wanting to post comments should be aware of this possibility before spending your time and energy to write one. - Green Greenwald</blockquote>
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In England, which resembles Orwell's "Air Strip One" more and more each day, several people have been charged with making "malicious" social media comments. I find this bizarre and wrong. That's something the Americans got right, free speech!</div>
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Since The Guardian has seen fit to end all discussion of this event I thought I would open this space for anyone who wishes to comment on Greenwald's two latest posts. (or anything else relevant)</div>
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Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-55842456823429938312013-01-22T17:26:00.001-05:002013-01-22T19:33:51.769-05:00Talk is cheap<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 13px;">In general, I think Americans are too preoccupied by what people 'say' and not enough by reality. Perhaps this is a by-product of the culture of personality. Perhaps a by-product of television, of living vicariously, of virtual realities.</span><br />
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Whatever the case, I see the slippery slide back into the entire paradigm of the matrix whenever that SOB opens his mouth. The entire western world is still peeing their pants because, in part, this bum is a black man.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"><br />MLK on the other hand is someone we like not because he's a black man, but because he spoke truth and truth is always informative and educational. Obama is NOT informative and educational.<br /><br />If Obama wants to describe the workings of some aspect of the universe, great, but it's not a speech then, but an education, a talk, whatever. If you want to talk about North American indigenous having no defense against Eurasian microbes such that they were 90% dead by the time the English and Dutch were landing on what is now the East Coast of the US, then fine. But you can't do that and hem and haw about phrasing and pleasing crowds and selling agendas etc and call it educational (even if it contains some educational items).<br /><br />Obama is disgusting. Every time he opens his mouth he's disgusting. He mentions MLK and he's a whore, exploiting another black man for his own ends. He makes a point of using MLK's bible for the oath and it's a sheer abortion of what MLK was about.<br /><br />So the devil can quote scripture. Good for him. He's still a fucking liar.<br /><br />I prefer Bush speeches, because no one with any interior lighting could possibly be fooled into enjoying his speeches. He was a cretin and a scoundrel and when he opened his mouth, it was obnoxious and disgusting. IOW, his speeches were exactly what they looked like.<br /><br />Hitler DID give good speeches. He was also charming to a fault and extraordinarily likable. He loved dogs, he was sensitive and gentle, he had incredible charisma. Can you imagine radio programming today waxing on and on about Hitler all day long without so much as a qualification? Stalin too. I once wanted to mention that Stalin had taken a famine ridden agrarian nation of immense size and turned it into a world industrial power in the space of one decade and the company I was in would not even allow me to say it.<br /><br />Just today I was in an email conversation about how the Italian socialist paper John Pilger writes for stopped using his stuff after Obama was elected, for the first time ever. And in this exchange, I learned that in Spain too, the "otherwise utterly lucid Spanish newspaper - Público – had a headline stressing that Obama had chosen someone distinguished for his criticism of the Bush Administration torture policies. John Fucking Brennan!"<br /><br />So, honestly, I want to know, just how long does this prick's honeymoon last?<br /><br />I'm no historian to begin with, but even if I were, I could not have the historical perspective at present to know who was the greatest destroyer of America - that is, the America of values, of Jefferson, of Madison, of Thomas Paine - - Ronald Reagan or Barack Obama. But right now, without that perspective, my money is on Obama. </span></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">So, amidst all this talk about Obama's speechifying, all I can do is quote that well worn phrase from film and fiction, </span><i style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Don't piss on my back and tell me it's raining. </i><br />
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<span style="color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">I</span><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"> hope his wife is proud of America NOW.</span><br />
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<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Terry5135</span></span>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-47627333590055813012012-09-10T00:49:00.001-04:002012-09-10T02:22:37.297-04:00BLOG OF THE DAMNED <span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><br /><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i></i><i>A procession of the damned.</i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>By the damned, I mean the excluded.</i></span><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i> </i></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><i>We shall have a procession of data that Science has excluded.</i> </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">- opening lines of </span><i><span style="font-size: x-small;">The Book of the Damned, by Charles Fort</span></i></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">This is a place for those who are being "moderated" at The Guardian in the increasingly ironically named "Comments are Free" section, in particular at Glenn Greenwald's section.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">If you think your comment may be deleted, please keep a copy and post it here. Anyone interested in seeing what the deleted comment was may do so here.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Just post it as a regular comment with any relevant information or data that you care to append.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Anything goes except for: any criticism of me, my nose, the Guardian, Glenn Greenwald or Israel. Bad mouthing cats is also not appreciated.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Okay, I am kidding.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">Good luck and good commenting!</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">permalink: http://eyestir.blogspot.com/2012/09/blog-of-damned-this-is-place-for-those.html </span><br />
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<br />Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-5805754602276224992012-08-25T12:42:00.001-04:002012-09-10T01:21:51.836-04:00Obama the Hypocrite<blockquote style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;" type="cite">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;">Earlier this year, the Obama refused in court to release videos or photographs related to the killing of Bin Laden, on the grounds that they were too secret to release and would be a threat to national security. Typical of Der US courts, these days, acquiesced to those arguments and dismissed the suit, arguing "the release of the images and/or videos 'reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.'"</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;">And yet, ever since that day, the administration has been a non stop treasure trove of leaks about that killing, so as to enhance the image of the deep dark heroic and courageous image of the profound contemplative president, even though the white house has behaved unprecedentedly ruthless and obsessed with prosecuting whistle blowers who shine a light on wrong doing.</span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;">Worse, since that day also, Hollywood film makers sat down with administration and military personnel for detailed information for the purposes of producing a major blockbuster film about the event, to be released in sept or oct of this year, just in time for the election, to show Oboob in the light of being a real all American macho warrior. There was such a furore over how this could influence the election, they postponed the release of the film until December. But obviously, not the trailers. So I wonder how many times you'll see this and other trailers of the movie between now and November. This may be #1:</span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><iframe allowfullscreen='allowfullscreen' webkitallowfullscreen='webkitallowfullscreen' mozallowfullscreen='mozallowfullscreen' width='320' height='266' src='https://www.youtube.com/embed/EYFhFYoDAo4?feature=player_embedded' frameborder='0'></iframe></span></div>
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<blockquote style="background-color: white; font-size: 13px;" type="cite">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;">And now we learn that one of the seals has written a book detailing the raid that is too secret and vital to national security to be demanded in court, which will be ready for release in September, ample time to embed the presidential heroism in the public mind. It's written under a pseudonym, but contains so much auto-biographical references that anyone with access to confidential military records could determine who it is faster than you can say Bradley Manning. Gee, I wonder if he too will be put in isolation - torture, according to international law - for two years and forced to stand at attention every morning stark naked for roll call like Bradley Manning was. Somehow, I don't think so.</span></span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br /></span><span style="color: #444444;">It's embarrassing how much American rulers have come to resemble a bunch of thugs at an organized crime summit meeting.</span></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><b style="color: #444444; font-size: small;"><br /><br />Terry5135</b></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">* My inspiration here is Glenn Greenwald's essay on the subject, so check out his piece for a more detailed and well sourced commentary along similar lines:</span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #333333; font-size: 2.166em; line-height: 1.154;">The Bin Laden raid exposes the Obama administration's selective secrecy</span></span><br />
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<div style="color: #666666;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;">The White House punishes whistleblowers even as it permits flattering leaks. So which will it be for a Navy Seal's new book? - Glenn Greenwald</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><a href="http://bit.ly/QCQ6fm" style="background-color: transparent; color: #666666; font-size: x-large;" target="_blank">More</a></span></div>
Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-54469904836634315942012-08-24T13:19:00.001-04:002012-09-10T02:21:47.993-04:00With Obama, there are good leaks, and bad leaks...<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;">Terry5135</span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"><span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"> </span></span>Earlier this year, the Obama refused in court to release videos or photographs related to the killing of Bin Laden, on the grounds that they were too secret to release and would be a threat to national security. Typical of Der US courts, these days, acquiesced to those arguments and dismissed the suit, arguing "the release of the images and/or videos 'reasonably could be expected to cause exceptionally grave damage to the national security.'" </span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.7273px;" /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">And yet, ever since that day, the administration has been a non stop treasure trove of leaks about that killing, so as to enhance the image of the deep dark heroic and courageous image of the profound contemplative president, even though the white house has behaved unprecedentedly ruthless and obsessed with prosecuting whistle blowers who shine a light on wrong doing.</span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.7273px;" /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Worse, since that day also, Hollywood film makers sat down with administration and military personnel for detailed information for the purposes of producing a major blockbuster film about the event, to be released in sept or oct of this year, just in time for the election, to show Oboob in the light of being a real all American macho warrior. There was such a furore over how this could influence the election, they postponed the release of the film until december. But obviously, not the trailers. So I wonder how many times you'll see this and other trailers of the movie between now and November. This may be #1:</span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYFhFYoDAo4" style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.7273px;" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/watch?<wbr></wbr>v=EYFhFYoDAo4</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"> </span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.7273px;" /></span><span style="background-color: white; color: #444444; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">And now we learn that one of the seals has written a book detailing the raid that is too secret and vital to national security to be demanded in court, which will be ready for release in September, ample time to embed the presidential heroism in the public mind. It's written under a pseudonym, but contains so much auto-biographical references that anyone with access to confidential military records could determine who it is faster than you can say Bradley Manning. Gee, I wonder if he too will be put in isolation - torture, according to international law - for two years and forced to stand at attention every morning stark naked for roll call like Bradley Manning was. Somehow, I don't think so.</span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><br style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.7273px;" /></span><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">It's embarrassing how much American rulers have come to resemble a bunch of thugs at an organized crime summit meeting.</span></span></span>
<br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia,"Times New Roman",serif;"><span style="color: #444444;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"><br /></span></span><span style="color: #444444;"><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/aug/23/bin-laden-raid-exposes-obama-administration-selective-secrecy">The Bin Laden raid exposes the Obama administration's selective secrecy | Glenn Greenwald | Comment is free | guardian.co.uk</a>: </span></span>
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Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-60619010284264822092012-08-20T14:29:00.001-04:002012-09-10T01:22:58.755-04:00Fucking hell - and Fuck The Guardian<h2>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: small;"><b>An open letter to The Guardian Editorial Board</b></span></h2>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><b>by Terry5135</b></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"><br />
</span> <span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Well, I for one, think it's pretty fucking strange to post an editorial and then say comments will be welcome the next day. Is that so the writer will have time to get out of town?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">This editorial (to loosely use the word) has to be one of the most specious pieces of crap I've ever seen in any major media organization that has an iota of credibility (which qualification doesn't leave very many). To even respond to any of its elements is to further a fantasy being furthered by yet another of the multitude of storybook characters who want to believe in their fairy tale world; who want to reside in a reality of things being as they would wish rather than how they are; who want to use Orwellian logic to believe that the map is the territory.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">The plain fact is that none of these events have anything to do with any Swedish procedures, persons, concepts of law, or political and/or legal desires. This is about Assange and Amerika. One can argue, as the author feebly attempts to do at the very end of his smear piece, that Assange's reasoning is faulty, but this piece is not that argument. The sole patronizing concession (something had to be there, to at least provide a pretense of desiring credibility) to that argument is this statement:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;" /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Yet there is no serious evidence that Washington plans to start such proceedings</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"> [i.e., "that if he goes to Sweden he will face extradition to the US to be prosecuted for treason"]; </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">and if it ever did, the political and public opposition in Sweden as well as Britain and across the world would be massive</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">.</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;" /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Well, to start, the last half of that statement - that the world would object - is hysterically funny to ears of grief on the face of it. Where has this bozo been for the last 11 years? (Indeed, I'd say for the last 31 years, but we'll leave that aside for the moment.) To suggest with a straight face that the US really cares what the world's public, be they in Sweden or Britain or anywhere else, thinks about anything it does at all takes that old, trite metaphor about heads in sand to new depths of absurdity. Sure, even if her own citizens care, they can drift off to a free speech zone five miles from where anyone will see them and make their sentiments known to each other. </span><i style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">Hello? Hello? The lights are on but no one is home!</i><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"> Even before we start compiling the list, we can start with the two at the top: America is launching aggressive wars, which crime Justice Robert Jackson called the mother of all crimes (or was it the 'father'?); and America has become a nation that officially tortures (but calls it something else, which probably endears the US to the author of this tripe above).</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;" /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">The first half of the statement is a bald assertion of something [i.e., "there is no serious evidence that Washington plans to start such proceedings"] that is just plain false. I'm not going to dignify some hack at this junction, in order to engage in the bottomless lilliputian version of sophism, but the plain fact is that there is ample evidence of that very thing. I will not outline those things in plain sight that this author has obviously long ago tightly shut his eyes against. We need look no further than Jose Padilla who was driven out of his mind before even entering into "such proceedings" or Bradley Manning who was treated to two years of the most horrific mind shattering treatment before being able to enter into such "due process" - which, incidentally, the attorney general of the USA has pronounced as not necessarilty being "judicial process". Need we look further than gitmo to see that people the army long ago had determined not to be a threat or of having a terrorist connection which the US </span><b style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">still</b><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;"> holds after a decade?</span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;" /></span>
<span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">I think Assange has plenty to worry about from that country, besides "criminal proceedings for treason", which specific horrors the anonymous author of this piece assures us could not take place because of international public opinion in the first place (pardon me while I seach for the airsick bag).</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;" /></span>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><span style="background-color: white; color: #222222; font-size: 12.727272033691406px;">But perhaps the gravest sin of all is the egregious insult to the one player who seems to escape notice here entirely - Ecuador. What is it about British fascists that engenders the kind of arrogance that assumes that little brown people have no ability to discern matters for themselves? It should be patently obvious that Ecuador is not about to extend asylum to some mere perpetrator of sexual assault so that he can evade even so much as questioning about such matters as a person of interest. No matter what one thinks of Ecuador - and this author obviously thinks precious little of them - it's a risky, lose/lose situation for that country and that president. So obviously, rightly or wrongly, they are granting asylum from the political persecution of the USA. If the Guardian editorial staff wishes to make a convincing argument that Ecuador is acting incorrectly and from faulty conclusions, then the paper should make that argument.</span> </span><br />
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Julian Assange: the balcony defence</h1>
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Miss A and Miss W are at the heart of this story, however inconvenient it may be for the WikiLeaks founder's supporters</div>
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Editorial</div>
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<li class="publication" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><a data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;">guardian.co.uk</a>, <time datetime="2012-08-19T15:47EDT" pubdate="" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0px; padding: 0px;">Sunday 19 August 2012 15.47 EDT</time></li>
<li class="publication" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357;"><br /></span></li>
<li class="publication" style="background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; margin: 0px; overflow: hidden; padding: 0px;"><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357;">Amid </span><a data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/aug/19/julian-assange-us-war-whistleblowers" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="">the estimated 100 protesters, 50 police, a noisy helicopter and rained-on press corps</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357;"> gathered in Knightsbridge on Sunday afternoon, two women were missing. They are referred to as Miss A and Miss W – that is, when they are mentioned at all in the hullabaloo over </span><a data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/julian-assange" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="More from guardian.co.uk on Julian Assange">Julian Assange</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357;">. Yet </span><a data-bitly-type="bitly_hover_card" href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2011/feb/05/julian-assange-reveal-everything" style="background-color: white; background-repeat: no-repeat no-repeat; border-collapse: collapse; color: #005689; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; text-decoration: none;" title="">Miss A and Miss W</a><span style="background-color: white; font-size: 1.166em; line-height: 1.357;"> are at the heart of this story, however convenient it may be for Mr Assange's supporters to elide them.</span></li>
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<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; line-height: normal;">Editorial is </span><a href="http://bit.ly/NBU7lb" style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; line-height: normal;" target="_blank">here</a><span style="color: #222222; font-family: 'Comic Sans MS'; line-height: normal;">.</span></span> </div>
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Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-86531651180828968432012-04-22T22:40:00.000-04:002012-04-24T11:34:34.517-04:00Glenn Greenwald in Ottawa<embed flashvars="host=picasaweb.google.com&hl=en_US&feat=flashalbum&RGB=0x000000&feed=https%3A%2F%2Fpicasaweb.google.com%2Fdata%2Ffeed%2Fapi%2Fuser%2F110258933018231379177%2Falbumid%2F5734414212912786753%3Falt%3Drss%26kind%3Dphoto%26hl%3Den_US" height="267" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" src="https://picasaweb.google.com/s/c/bin/slideshow.swf" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="400"></embed>
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<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Glenn
Greenwald </span></b><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><b><span style="font-size: large;">Canada, America, Together into the storm</span></b></span><br />
<b style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;">April 12, 2012</span></b><br />
<b><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></b><br />
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<b><span style="color: red; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><a href="http://www.salon.com/2012/04/16/speech_on_secrecy_and_war/singleton/" target="_blank">Salon Article</a></span></b></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyehDF9s6ZlZEQjdDPfCkH5I8wyNSrUo7W8Fg5fFAW6OnUohhPOvG3585OGHmBNbKcd7c8v60inVj5UhvAqZrbDBHA1tYGLEu0_OhNgzXN4zbLvOB7p08tGZdzZThGs5qVjBrXMA/s1600/glenn+podium+profile.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><img alt="Glenn Greenwald speaking at lectern" border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiyehDF9s6ZlZEQjdDPfCkH5I8wyNSrUo7W8Fg5fFAW6OnUohhPOvG3585OGHmBNbKcd7c8v60inVj5UhvAqZrbDBHA1tYGLEu0_OhNgzXN4zbLvOB7p08tGZdzZThGs5qVjBrXMA/s200/glenn+podium+profile.jpg" title="Glenn Greenwald " width="149" /></span></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="font-size: x-large;">T</span>hank you
very much. Thanks so much for that and thanks for coming out this evening. And
thank you as well to <a href="http://prism-magazine.com/" target="_blank">Prism Magazine</a> and to the Ottawa School of Journalism and
Communication and to the National Press Club Foundation for sponsoring the
event; and particularly thank you to Bill Owen, who is a resident of Ottawa and
a long time reader of mine whose idea it was to have me come here, and who
really did a fantastic job on organizing the event. I really appreciate that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I’m really
happy to be in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and to be here to speak about these issues. The reason for that is the
following: I actually go to a lot of events and have been speaking at a lot of
events over the past several years about issues of civil liberties erosions and
endless war and militarism, and growing government secrecy and executive
authority in the post 9/11 era. Typically, because I write about the conduct of
the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region> government
primarily, most of those events that I attend are in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
But over the past several years, I’ve been asked with increasing frequency to
speak about these issues in countries other than the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>. I also have a very
international readership. I think only something like 55 or 60 percent of the
people who read me are located within the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United
States</st1:country-region> and the rest are outside of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
These facts used to be a little bit baffling to me. I had a hard time at first,
understanding why, given my focus on the policies and conduct of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">US</st1:place></st1:country-region> government,
that that was the case. One of the things I’ve realized from going to different
countries and speaking about these issues and becoming somewhat immersed in
their political controversies and political disputes, and speaking with people
in those countries who work on the same issues, is that there really is an
extreme similarity in the dynamic of how these issues express themselves in
what I would describe generally as western countries, but more specifically in
the United States and it’s predominantly English speaking allies, by which I
mean Britain, Australia and Canada. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The
similarity that I would…I think there are a lot of ways in which you could talk
about these similarities, but the principal way that I would talk about it and
think about is that it is defined by this extremely glaring paradox, and that
paradox is the following: the west really started to pay attention to the
concept of what it considers to be terrorism [which essentially means violence
committed by Muslims directed at the west] it really started to pay attention
in any significant way to that issue and to it’s understanding of that problem,
with the September 11 attack on the United States. It isn’t very surprising, in
fact it’s perfectly natural that in the immediate aftermath of that event which
was pretty traumatic for people not just in the United States but in the west,
who perceived that there was this new-found vulnerability, to react or even
over-react in ways that they hadn’t previously considered doing. So, it made
sense that in the immediate aftermath of 9/11, in the weeks and months and even,
say, the first couple of years that people were willing to vest more power in
their government in exchange for promises of safety. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And yet, one
would expect just naturally, that as cultures and societies became increasingly
removed from that traumatic event, we’re now over a decade away from the 9/11
attacks; we’re more than six years away from the subway attacks in London; neither
Australia nor Canada have ever had a serious terrorist attack perpetrated by
Islamic radicals. You would think that as the threat and the perception of the
threat subsided, that these policies would begin to recede, and that the
willingness of the populations to vest these extraordinary powers in their
government would be reduced as well. What has happened, instead, and this is
what I refer to as the paradox [and it’s happened not only in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
but also in its closest allies] is exactly the opposite. As we’ve gotten
further away from the memory of the 9/11 attack, as the perception of the
threat from Islamic radicalism and what we consider to be terrorism, as that
perception diminishes, the claims that governments are making on increased
power in the name of terrorism, have actually been increasing, and they’ve been
increasing radically and dramatically especially as of late. So you see claims
in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
that the government has the power to do things like not just imprison people
without due process of charges of any kind, but to target their own citizens
for assassination. You see proposals pending by the British and Canadian
governments to dramatically increase their ability to engage in surveillance on
the internet. You see in <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">Australia</st1:country-region></st1:place>
all kinds of measures to increase the tension and surveillance authorities, all
being justified in the name of this threat that has actually really diminished
significantly over the past decade. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, this is
what I mean by the similarity. The trends are very similar between the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
and other countries that express an interest in having these discussions. It’s
not really immediately obvious that that should be the case. I mean, different
countries, even English speaking allies of an Anglo tradition, have very
different political cultures. They have very different understandings of their
relationship to their government. They have different understandings of what
threats are and what really threatens their interests. And yet, you do have
this extreme similarity that I just think at first glance is surprising. I
think it’s really worth asking what it is that accounts for these similarities.
Why is it that these countries of seemingly disparate political orientations,
are none the less progressing ever more aggressively on this route of
empowering the government to detain and to surveil; to a belief in the virtues
of militarism and endless war and an expanding national security state; to
allowing government and political officials to operate behind an increasingly
opaque wall of secrecy. What is it that accounts for this trend that really can
be seen across cultural lines and in a variety of countries that have sort of
banded together in the wake of 9/11 in common cause? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think there
are a few factors that account for this that are really worth considering. The
first one is that it is all driven by a common mindset, a common mentality.
That mentality can be described along the following lines: it is the mentality
that says that if you can be convinced that there’s some threat that’s being
posed to your security and your safety, it is worthwhile to empower the
government, to take whatever steps it can take to minimize the risk that’s
being posed to your security and your safety, without regard to assessing
whatever costs doing so might entail to things like your liberty or your
privacy or your ability to restrain political power. It’s really a mind set
that venerates security, physical security, above all other values, all other
political values. So that as long as you can be convinced that there’s some mild
benefit to security from a certain government policy or power, then people who
have acquiesced to this mind set are willing to accept that proposed power or
proposed policy. The reason that that explains the paradox that I started off
by describing, [the paradox that as we move further away from 9/11 and the
threat of terrorism, we continue to allow greater government power in the name
of terrorism and greater government secrecy and assaults on liberty, and the
like]; the reason that mind set explains that is because it is a self
perpetuating mind set. Once you go down that path of thinking, it is impossible
to remove yourself from that path. The reason is that there is never a moment
when we reach a state of complete and absolute safety. That’s a purely illusory
state of affairs. We’re always going to have some sort of threat that can be
identified to our security and our physical well being. If governments are in a
position where they can justify new powers based on simply identifying added or
new or still existing threats to physical security, then it will always be the
case, by definition, that governments can convince their population to allow
them greater and greater power in the name of this threat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think when
we talk ten years removed from 9/11, and in this world that we consider the
post 9/11 era, I think if we talk about that mind set in the way I’ve just
described it, it doesn’t seem all that odd or weird or extraordinary, the idea
that we should consider physical security to be the most important value that
outweighs all other considerations. That doesn’t seem like a particularly
radical or fringe notion. In fact, in the United States, there are lots of
politicians, including ones who are on the right wing of the Republican Party,
who pride themselves on exuding what they consider to be this sort of tough guy
demeanor, this sort of I’m a rugged individualist who is going to stand firm up
to my enemies, they will constantly say, without really much controversy if you
raise the issue of civil liberties or privacy, or government surveillance, what
they’ll say with a perfectly straight face with no recognition that it’s an odd
or radical concept, they say well civil liberties really don’t matter much if
you’re dead, which is really a way of saying that as long as I can do something
to increase my own security I’m willing to do that, because staying alive is
the most important value. They say it as though it’s just the most obvious
thing in the world, that it’s not controversial. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">What’s really
strange about that concept is that it really is an extremely radical concept.
By radical, I mean it’s really a new concept, a new way of thinking, certainly
in recent western political traditions. If you look back, for example, on what
American school children are taught about the American founding and the reasons
why we should revere the American founders, the sort of mythical proclamation
that is supposed to define the American ethos was when Patrick Henry stood up
and was told that revolution against the greatest empire on the earth at the
time, the British Empire, was likely to be a futile cause, that they going to
wipe out the American colonists, and he stood up and said “Give me Liberty, or
give me death”; which is a renunciation of this idea that the only thing that
matters is physical security. It’s the opposite embrace. It’s the idea that
there are certain things more important than maximizing physical safety,
including being able to live with basic liberties, being able to live free of
despotism and tyranny. This was not supposed to be a radical concept. This was
supposed to be the defining ethos of the American political project that all
American school children are taught to embrace. And yet, I think not just in
the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:country-region w:st="on">United States</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
but in its Western allies as well, that value has really been lost. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And one of
the, just to make it a little bit less abstract than Patrick Henry’s sort of
mythical proclamation, if you look at the US Constitution, and this is true of
Constitutions in pretty much every single western country, what you find is
that value that I just described embedded very clearly in the document;
pervading our understanding of what political liberties are supposed to be
about. The example I always like to focus on is the Fourth Amendment to the
United States Constitution which says that the government shall be barred from
searching or seizing people’s homes or property or papers or affects unless
they can first demonstrate to a court that there’s probable cause to believe
that the people or the homes that they want to search relate substantially to
criminal activity. The reason why that’s a pretty amazing right to embed into
the constitution [and there are similar rights in most western Constitutions],
is because it’s actually a pretty risky thing to do to constrain the ability of
the police to investigate crimes that way; to say to the police you can not
enter homes and you can not search whatever you want to search unless you first
convince a court that there’s evidence to reach a level of probable cause so
that the court approves what it is you want to do, because if you restrain the
police that way, what you’re basically doing is ensuring that lots of really evil
and violent criminals are going to remain unapprehended. It would be so much
better for security if we allow the police to invade whatever homes they wanted
at will, to search whomever they wanted under any circumstances at any moment.
A mindset that said that physical security was the most important thing that
catching people who mean to do us or our families harm, is the most important
political priority, a mind set like that would never have approved of the
Fourth Amendment, because why would you possibly want to restrain the police in
their efforts to keep you and your family safe? And yet, exactly the opposite
judgment was made at the time the American Constitution was written, and was
ratified. It’s the exact opposite political tradition and political judgment
that permeates western conceptions of freedom generally, which is the idea that
there are other values that compete at least on an equal basis, and in fact are
more important than mere physical security. And yet, the 9/11 attack enabled
governments to propagate this mind set of fear mongering, so that it has caused
large majorities of western countries, of western populations to abandon that
central political judgment that really had endured for several centuries. Once
you abandon that political judgment it becomes self perpetuating. It no longer
matters how proximate a particular threat is, how close you are to the threat
of terrorism. As long as threat of terrorism is still vaguely out there, or the
threat of crime is vaguely out there, [and it always will be] then the
government can always convince the citizenry that greater and greater powers
are warranted. I think that’s what you’re seeing in all of these western
countries: this idea that’s really permeated these countries, like a contagion,
like a virus, and it’s what’s really accounts for this paradox that I described
taking place in all of these different nations. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, That’s
one reason that I think accounts for that common trend among these different
countries. A second reason is that these policies that all of these countries
banded together to pursue in the wake of 9/11 in the name of terrorism:
militarism, war, taking a militarized approach to the problem of terrorism,
empowering the government domestically to monitor and surveil various
populations and really the population as a whole; that gives rise to a very
powerful industry, basically a national security state and a surveillance
industry that essentially needs the continuation of these policies as the fuel
that feeds it, even once the justification for those policies no longer exists.
So, you can look back. This is not a controversial conception. You can look
back fifty years to the <a href="http://bit.ly/I4W7C1" target="_blank">farewell address</a> given by Dwight Eisenhower, who was a
Republican two-term American President. He was also a five star general who
commanded WWII troops and is often credited with winning WWII for the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
No radical, he, Dwight Eisenhower, and yet, when he left his presidency after
two terms, he gave a speech to the United States and he warned the United
States about what he called the military industrial complex. The collaboration
between the public war making factions of the government and the private
industry that produces armaments and produces weapons and produces defense
technology, and the way in which these two factions band together, he warned,
fifty years ago, would threaten to subvert democracy. They would essentially
become more powerful even in democratically elected officials that they would
be beyond the realm of democratic accountability; and their voracious appetite
for more profit would basically ensure that they would continuously create the
pretext for war, for more militarism, for more surveillance for more of a
national security state mind set, even when there was no justification for it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You see this
mind set, that he warned about fifty years ago, and it’s so much worse now,
constantly. I know there’s a debate in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Canada</st1:country-region>,
a controversy in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>
over the government’s acquisition of F-35 fighter jets, and this spiraling cost
and the procurement process. One of the really funny and weird things is that,
in preparation for my coming here I actually immersed myself pretty intensively
in this controversy. I read a lot of articles and a lot of columnists and a lot
of debates about it taking place in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>. One of the things that you
will never find, even from opponents of the government’s attempt to purchase
these weapons, and it’s really a
conspicuous absence, yet it doesn’t really seem to strike many people in its
absence] is any real explanation for why Canada needs these extremely
sophisticated fighter jets. You know, I remember, I started reading it, and I
spent like a few days reading it; and there was all this technical debate about
whether the procurement process was corrupt and was it a reasonable expectation
that the costs had spiraled. Then all of a sudden, I just took a step back and
put that down and I actually I did, I said to myself, why does Canada need
these weapons, is there a country threatening Canada? Is there some reason that
these extremely sophisticated fighter jets will ward off the threat of
terrorism? And the reason that that explanation is lacking is because this
machine of militarism marches on without any need for any real pretext or
justification. There are some vague claims about how national security requires
this purchase, but it really is a culture that drives policy, and it doesn’t
really need to give an explanation to the citizenry. What’s really most amazing
about that is, I know just from the couple of days that I’ve been here and in
the couple of weeks that preceded my arrival when I was following Canadian
debates, one of the things that you see in Canadian political discourse is
something you see in almost every western political culture now, which is
constant claims from the government and the political class that the country is
burdened by extreme levels of debt, and that as a result, all kinds of
government services need to be cut. Just listening to local television here in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Ottawa</st1:place></st1:city>, I heard all kinds
of discussions about huge layoffs on the part of government agencies. There are
all kinds of debates about what social services need to be cut, even though
cutting these social services and laying off people will take money out of the
economy and exactly the time that the economy is restricting. But, there’s this
constant claim that there’s huge economic pressures that compel the government
to eliminate all luxury items and anything including even necessities, and yet,
at the very same time, there’s hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on
weapons that the government plainly does not need. This is true in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
even more so. It’s true in <st1:country-region w:st="on">Britain</st1:country-region>,
it’s true in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Australia</st1:place></st1:country-region>.
It’s true throughout the western world. The reason is that this industry, this
complex, about which Dwight Eisenhower warned, is really that powerful that it
can continue to commandeer the money from the middle classes of this country,
the tax payers, at exactly the same time their being told they have to
sacrifice and subject themselves to all kinds of austerity and pain, they can
commandeer this money to feed the insatiable beast that is endless militarism,
even without even pretending that there’s a real justification. It, too, is a
self perpetuating complex. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And then the
third factor that I think explains the common dynamic that I described, this paradox
in all of these countries, is the fact that power is extremely addictive;
that’s just true as part of human nature. One of the things that happens when
governments can convince their populations that there’s some grave external threat
or even internal threat, that necessitates a posture of militarism and greater
government power to protect the population, is that political leaders become
increasingly unconstrained in the power that they exercise. This, too goes
back, that observation is as old as politics, itself. <st1:city w:st="on">Cicero</st1:city>,
as part of the <st1:place w:st="on">Roman Empire</st1:place> observed that in
times of war the law falls mute; meaning once a government can convince its
citizenry to go to war, law and legal constraints, the instruments we use to
constrain political leaders, simply no longer matters. James Madison, the
American founder probably most responsible for the framing of the American
Constitution, said that war is the greatest enemy of liberty; the one most to
be dreaded, because at times of war, the population not only acquiesces to but
encourages and demands restrictions on political liberty, which is another way
of saying increasing government power. So, when you constantly tell a population for a decade that it faces this grave and significant threat, whatever you want to call it, terrorism, Islamic radicalism, domestic crime, you put the population in a posture of fear.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><span style="color: #666666;"><span style="font-size: large;">... when you constantly tell a
population for a decade that it faces this grave and significant threat,
whatever you want to call it, terrorism, Islamic radicalism, domestic crime,
you put the population in a posture of fear.</span></span> </span></i></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Once, they’re in a posture of
fear, they no longer want to constrain political leaders. And political leaders
like that state of affairs. They become addicted to it. The more it happens,
the more they want it to happen. You see this with western leaders as well, who
not because they’re consciously malignant in their intentions, but sometimes
because they believe they’re benevolent, they believe that they should not be
constrained by bothersome concepts of law or democratic accountability or
transparency. They know that keeping the population in a state of fear is the
way to convince them not to so constrain them. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, these are
the factors that I think explain why this trend exists; why it’s so powerful,
why it continues even as we move further and further away from a palpable
threat of terrorism. I think the important thing to note about all of those
factors, the ones that I just described, is how potent they are; how much they
appeal to our base instincts; the desire for power, the pursuit of profit are
incredibly central attributes of human nature. Once you are able to put a
population in fear for their physical safety, the instinct to safeguard our physical
well being, the well being of our families is incredibly base. When you add on
top of that the tactic of convincing the population that it’s only a subset of
the population, a small subset of the population that will be targeted by these
civil liberties abuses, by this increasing government surveillance or detention,
which in western countries means Muslims, which are minorities in all of these
countries, when you add onto that this pernicious flavoring that all of that has
is the idea that all of that won’t affect the majority of people in the
society, it will only affect these others, who are sort of foreign and exotic
even when they’re citizens of your own country. That, too, is a very base and
primal appeal; the idea that there should be others who are demonized and
treated differently is something that appeals to us as human beings as well. So
these are incredibly potent forces being brought to bear to ensure the
continuation of these policies. It’s easy to scoff at them, it’s easy to look
at them in an overly rationalized or intellectualized way and be dismissive of
them, but they’re incredibly powerful in terms of the appeal that they have to
all human beings by virtue of our human nature. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, I think
it’s extremely important, in fact, incumbent upon anybody who wants to work
against these trends, or to convince our fellow citizens that they should care
more about them and to oppose them, to think about ways to compete with these
very primal forces in terms of how they can be counterbalanced, and how you can
convince people despite all of these extraordinarily formidable obstacles that
have been arrayed in favor of these policies, how you can convince them to
oppose these policies. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think one
of the things that often happens is, even among people who are sympathetic to
the need to confront these policies, to battle against these trends, is a sort
of attitude of defeatism sets in. Well, I just don’t believe that the average
person is ever really going to care about theses rights; I don’t believe that
they are ever going to be convinced that they’re more important than their
physical safety. I just don’t think this is a possibility. Or, the tactic is
just the wrong one. It’s too abstract and overly intellectualized. So, the attempt
is made to convince people that they should care about basic liberties or civil
protections or government transparency and accountability based on things that
are just simply too abstract to compete with these primal drives. The idea
that, well, these are the things that make us free as a people, or these are
things that are embedded in our political tradition. These really don’t even
compete with the power of fear or the demonization of others when it comes to
persuading people to act. So, I think it’s very important, whenever people
gather in a situation like this, and want to talk about basic freedoms and
liberties and transparency and accountability, to do the hard work of thinking
about how to talk about them in a way that will get other people who don’t
already see that they’re important, to start realizing their importance. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, I just
want to spend a little bit of time examining some of those ways that I think
that that can be highlighted, because I think that even for people who are
intellectually sympathetic to a civil liberties agenda, to the idea that these
things done in the name of security should be resisted, I think sometimes, even
people in this room who are sympathetic to that agenda, also fall prey to the
idea that maybe these conceptions aren’t really quite that important. The
reason why it’s easy to fall prey to that mind set is because for most people
in this room, I’d venture to bet, and for most people who are otherwise
sympathetic to a civil liberties agenda or advocacy of these issues, when you
wake up in the morning, on your list of immediate worries, you do not find
things like fear that the government is going to come to your home and ship you
to Guantanamo and keep you there for a decade without charges. Or, you probably
don’t wake up worried that that afternoon, the government is going to send
drones, unmanned drones over your house and launch a hellfire missile that will
explode your house and kill your family. Or that you will be persecuted for
your political speech by being charged with criminal offenses. So it’s easy to
keep these at a sort of distance and to think, well, even though I’m
intellectually sympathetic to them, I don’t really feel like they’re of
immediate concern to me, and so it’s easy to deprioritize. So, I want to talk about
why all of those assumptions are untrue and ways that I think that those
assumptions can be dislodged when talking to other people about why they should
care more about them or think that these things are disturbing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, the first
thing I want talk about is the nature of what we even mean when we talk about
these basic liberties. What does it mean when we refer when we describe civil
liberties or the assault on civil liberties, or constitutional freedoms or the
basic rights that in the western tradition that have come to define freedom.
Really, all that means, it’s a pretty simple concept. All it really means is
the limits and the lines that we’ve imposed on the government that they cannot
cross under any circumstances, because we believe that to allow them to cross
those lines is too dangerous and will inevitably lead to some form of tyranny. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, for
example, generally in western societies that consider themselves free, we have
the idea that governments can’t imprison us unless they first charge us with a
crime and present the evidence in a fair and open tribunal and convince either
a jury or a judge beyond a reasonable doubt or some standard that we’re
actually guilty of those crimes. We certainly believe that governments can’t
simply target us for assassination. We think that powers that the government
exercises that are the most consequential should not be exercised in complete
secrecy and in the dark but instead should have all kinds of oversight and
transparency to them. These are the kinds of things that we’re talking about:
the most basic safeguards to political freedom when we talk about civil
liberties. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">One of the
ways that it’s easy to convince the population to either accept and support
assaults on those freedoms, or to at least passively accept that they’re going
to happen, is to convince people that they will not be affected; that only some
minority group, that probably deserves it in some way, will be. That’s what I
was describing earlier by the way in which western countries have been
convinced that since most of these abuses are being applied to Muslims, and
maybe even to Muslims who are sort of more religious, who seem a little bit more
inclined to identify as Muslims rather than as Canadians or Americans, or
Brits, that specifically for those kinds of Muslims that these are the groups
of people to whom these abuses are being confined, and therefore I don’t really
need to care about them much. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So leave
aside the question of whether or not that is an incredibly immoral way of
thinking, that as long as it’s just them over there, who are being tortured and
detained and assassinated, I don’t really need to worry about it as much; as
long as it doesn’t happen to me. If somebody is of that mindset, there’s
probably not a lot you can do to persuade them. But, leave that aside, that
question, and instead, focus on the following, which is that it is simply an
invariable truth, in the history of politics, in the history of government,
that whenever a new power is acquired in the name of some threat, it always,
not sometimes, not often, not usually, it always extends beyond its original
application, beyond its original justification. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">You know,
it’s amazing, in the United States, in the wake of 9/11, one of the most
controversial things that was done by the US government [and this was done in
the weeks after 9/11, literally two weeks after 9/11] was the enactment of
legislation called the Patriot Act that empowered the US government with all
sorts of new powers of surveillance and infiltration. At the time, it was
incredibly controversial. It was considered this radical step, but the country
accepted it on the grounds that as the <st1:place w:st="on"><st1:placename w:st="on">World</st1:placename> <st1:placename w:st="on">Trade</st1:placename>
<st1:placetype w:st="on">Center</st1:placetype></st1:place> was still
smoldering, it was necessary to take these extraordinary steps to prevent it from
happening again. Well, ten years later, the Patriot Act is not even
controversial any longer. Every four years is has to get renewed and the vote
in the Congress, in the Senate is something like 91 to 9 to renew it. Now that
there’s a democrat in office, all the democrats and republicans, with very few
exceptions last time, last year, voted to renew the Patriot Act, with no
reforms, no changes of any kind. It’s become completely normalized. The reason
it’s become completely normalized whereas even in the week of 9/11, the weeks
after 9/11 it was considered radical, is because people have become convinced
that the Patriot Act is something that only gets applied to Muslim radicals.
That’s the only people on whom the government is interested in spying. And the
reality is completely the opposite. There are countless applications now, of
how the government uses the powers of the Patriot Act to spy on dissident
political groups, on peace groups, to infiltrate student organizations who are
opposing policies of the 9/11 attacks. The surveillance policies of the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>
have grown dramatically so that there are almost no limits, now, on the way in
which they can use these surveillance powers. I know, again, in my preparation
for coming to <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Canada</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
there was a controversy. Some documents were obtained, just in this week I
believe, where this federalized, national centralized terrorist agency that is
designed and was created to monitor threats of terrorism on Canadian soil
basically got caught monitoring and infiltrating the Occupy movement that
existed on Canadian soil on the grounds that they’ve now expanded their mandate
so that any threats to Canadian national security, whether from Islamic
terrorists wanting to blow up shopping centers, to college students gathering
together and peacefully assembling in a park in order to protest financial policies,
is now within the purview of this agency and its powers can be used every bit
as much against them as they can against Muslims. I know there’s a controversy at
the defense ministry here where powers of spying and surveillance have been
used against political opponents of the defense ministry. This is always the
way in which power is expanded. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Before I
started writing about political issues I was a Constitutional lawyer. One of
the types of work that I did was free speech advocacy, and free speech defense.
In the course of that work, I would represent people who had some really
repellant and pernicious political opinions. I mean really offensive political
views. People like white supremacists and neo-nazis and people who believed in
violence against immigrants; people who were very, very extreme in their views.
Like most people who defend free speech in the <st1:country-region w:st="on">United
States</st1:country-region>, lawyers who defend free speech in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>,
like the ACLU and others, I would always get asked, you know, look, I totally
believe in free speech, they would say. I think it’s super important, but I
just don’t understand why you need to represent people like that. Why do you
need to represent those people in defense of this principle? The answer that I
would always give, really the only answer that you can give, is that whenever
the government wants to infringe political liberty, it always targets the
people who are the most marginalized and hated in the society, because that’s
the way the government convinces the citizenry that those abuses are
justifiable. The problem with the attitude that, well, I’m going to allow
government infringement of these rights as applied to those people over there [because
they kind of deserve it], is that once you’ve allowed that to take place given
your dislike for those people, or your belief that they’re sufficiently
separated from you that it doesn’t threaten you, those abuses become
legitimized. They become institutionalized. It then becomes impossible to argue
against them any longer. There’s a huge political controversy in the United
States, or at least there’s a political controversy in the United States [it’s actually
not huge; it should be] about the asserted power of President Obama to target
American citizens for assassination; literally to sit in secret, with no
transparency, no accountability and order American citizens killed -- executed by
the CIA, without even bothering to charge them with a crime. President Obama has
not only asserted this power, he has exercised it when he targeted Anwar al-Awlaki,
the <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> born, <st1:country-region w:st="on">US</st1:country-region> citizen, Muslim preacher, who was in <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Yemen</st1:place></st1:country-region>, for
assassination. He was killed last December by a drone attack. This is something
that you see constantly, is the idea that well, I’m comfortable having this
power asserted because it’s being applied to this extremist Muslim preacher,
who I kind of think probably deserves that. There’s no sense at all, that if
you allow the President this power; the power, I think, that is the most
tyrannical power a government can exercise, the power to target one’s own
citizens for death without due process, that power, eventually at some point,
even if you think Barack Obama is this sophisticated and noble and magnanimous,
progressive constitutional scholar, at some point, as troubling as this is to
some people, he’s going to leave office, and there’s going to be somebody less
noble and less magnanimous in office who will inherit that power. For anyone
who is comfortable with the assertion of that power now, none of those people
will have standing to complain or object when that power is applied to people
they think don’t deserve to be executed without due process. That’s always the
nature of civil liberties abuses is that they always extend beyond their
original application, and if you don’t object at the first instance, then
you’re essentially enabling and aiding and abetting the institution of this
policy. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The second
important reason why it’s so imperative to oppose these policies, even if you
think or can’t perceive immediately why they don’t affect you, is because the
values that they destroy are incredibly significant, and once destroyed, the
destruction is really irreversible. I think there’s this sense, for example,
among the younger generation that has grown up accustomed to internet usage,
there’s this sort of ethos in Silicon Valley and among the internet generation
that privacy is not really that important; that privacy doesn’t really have
significant value; and there’s a generalized sense that the government has
implicated, that privacy is not something you should value, unless you’re doing
something wrong. If you’re not doing something wrong, if you’re not engaged in
wrong doing, why would you care if the government knows what you’re doing;
keeps track of what you’re doing; has files on you to record what you’re doing?
This is something you would only care about if you’re actually engaged in wrong
doing. The extent to which we’ve allowed privacy to be destroyed in the name of
surveillance is almost impossible to overstate. It really is the case that
there’s very little that you can do on the internet, which is where most of our
intellectual and mental life occurs now without serious and permanent detection
on the part of the government and private corporations. It’s difficult
sometimes to convince people why privacy is critically important, but one of
the ways you can convince people that they should care about it is you can look
to the 1984 novel by George Orwell, in which he imagined this dystopia where no
privacy exists, and there were monitors by Big Brother in every single crevice
of one’s home, so there was literally nothing that you did that was beyond the
reach of government monitoring. Most people would be instinctively averse to
that sort of constant surveillance, even if they can’t really explain why. The
reason is because privacy is also an important part of our human nature. We
need privacy even though we’re social creatures, because privacy is the place where
creativity flourishes; where we can experiment with different kinds of thought;
where we can challenge and defy convention and orthodoxy. It’s the place where
you can experiment about who you are and what type of person you want to be and
what type of person you want to become; how you can express yourself; how you
can find your own path and deviate from the norm. Only the private realm
enables that, because when you’re constantly being watched by judgmental eyes
there is a sense that you need to conform, that’s what it’s designed to do. So
the loss of privacy, although it’s difficult to convey why, is an incredibly
destructive trend for us to permit. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">To be a
little more concrete about it, in terms of the internet, the value of the
internet, the political value of the internet depends almost entirely on the
ability of citizens to engage in activism and to communicate with one another
with anonymity and with privacy. The Western world was almost unanimous in
cheering the developments of the Arab Spring last year; the ability of citizens
in incredibly oppressed countries to band together and to communicate with one
another, and challenge some of the world’s most entrenched despots. And yet,
one of the reasons why they were able to do that is because, there are lots of
reasons, but one reason is because the internet finally fulfilled its promise
as this democratizing technology, to allow even populations that had been
purposely deprived, to band together and communicate with one another in a way that
turned them into a very powerful force. The only way that that was allowed, the
only reason that happened, was because they were able to so without fear of
constant government monitoring and constant government detection. That’s the
reason that almost every western society is seeking to engage in full scale
surveillance of the internet, because they know that if they can ruin the
ability to use the internet with privacy and anonymity, then it will really gut
the value of that technology to challenge those in power. That’s an incredibly
important attribute of the internet that is under constant attack. I think it’s
not all that difficult, if you look at the way in which the internet has been
used successfully, to understand why it’s important to resist that. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The last
point I want to make, [and then we’ll have time for a good substantial question
and answering session] is what I think is probably the most significant harm
from allowing these erosions to take place, even if you think they’re not
directly affecting you. And yet, it’s probably the most difficult to convey. I
spend a lot of time thinking about and a lot of time writing about this point.
I want to just describe it this way: one of the things that happens when
governments are permitted to constantly increase their own authority and their
own power at the expense of the privacy and liberty of individual citizens, is
that it fundamentally changes the relationship between the citizenry and their
own government. More specifically, it does that by creating a climate of fear
that radically alters the behavior and the sense of possibility that people in
a certain society have. I just want to tell a little personal anecdote about
when that really became crystallized for me and how that kind of moved beyond
the realm of the abstract into the very concrete. I have spent a lot of time
over the past couple of years writing about WikiLeaks, and I write almost
always in defense of that group and the whistle blowing and sort of explosions
in the wall of secrecy behind which governments operate that they’ve been able
to effectuate. I remember the first time that I wrote about WikiLeaks was in
January of 2010. This was before very many people had heard about WikiLeaks. I
hadn’t heard about them at all. It was before they did any of their news making
releases. It was before even they posted the video of the helicopters in <st1:city w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">Baghdad</st1:place></st1:city> shooting Reuters
journalists and unarmed civilians. It was before they had really done much in
the way of big news making at all, at least in the <st1:country-region w:st="on"><st1:place w:st="on">United States</st1:place></st1:country-region>. The way that I had learned about WikiLeaks
was that there was a top secret report prepared by the Pentagon in 2008. This
top secret report decreed WikiLeaks to be an enemy of the State. It talked
about ways that the Pentagon wanted to go about destroying WikiLeaks, and
undermining their efficacy. It talked about fabricating documents and
submitting them, so that once WikiLeaks published them, they would publish
false documents and there credibility would be destroyed. It talked about uncovering
the identity of their sources so that nobody would feel safe leaking any more
to WikiLeaks. It was a very elaborate plan prepared by the Pentagon as to how
they would destroy this enemy of the State and it was marked top secret.
Ironically, this report got leaked to WikiLeaks, which published it on its
website, the report in full, the top secret report, and the New York Times had
a very brief article about it. It talked about how the Pentagon had declared
this group that no one had really heard of before to be an enemy of the State.
I remember at the time [I didn’t know anything about WikiLeaks], but I remember
reading that report and the New York Time’s account of it and thinking that any
organization that has been declared an enemy of the State by the Pentagon and
that the Pentagon is working to destroy, is one that needs a lot more attention
and probably a lot of support. So, I went and looked at the history of
WikiLeaks and I had found that they had done some incredibly impressive work on
transparency. They had exposed corporate wrong doing in <st1:place w:st="on">West
Africa</st1:place>. They had exposed government deceit in parts of <st1:country-region w:st="on">Australia</st1:country-region> and in northern <st1:place w:st="on">Europe</st1:place>.
The model and the template they had created was a very exciting one, because it
was allowing government transparency in a way that established newspapers for
all sorts of reasons were incapable of. Because I view pervasive government
secrecy as the lynchpin of all the abuses we’ve been talking about, and
transparency and sunlight as the ultimate weapon against them, I was very
enthused by the promise of this organization. I wrote a long article
highlighting their successes and the promise that I thought they held; and I
interviewed Julian Assange; and I published the interview with this article I
wrote. At the end of the piece that I wrote, I encouraged people who were also
supportive of their work to donate money to the organization, because they were
facing budgetary constraints that were preventing them from processing a lot of
the leaks that they were sitting on, including the ones that ultimately made
such news. I included some links to their PayPal account and some information
about how to wire money to their account as well. This is something I
periodically do. I encourage readers to donate money to organizations or to
causes I think are constructive. In response to my writing that, I had hundreds
of people, definitely dozens, probably hundreds, in all different venues, in
the comment section to the article I had written, by e-mail, at events like
this, come up to me and basically say the same thing, which is something along
the following lines. They would say look, I agree with you about the great
promise that WikiLeaks holds. You convinced me that this is an organization
that merits a lot of support, but I’m actually afraid that if I donate money to
them digitally, through PayPal or wiring money to their bank account, that I’m
actually going to end up on some government list somewhere; or worse that I at
some point, if WikiLeaks in the future is declared by the US government to be a
terrorist organization I could actually be prosecuted for materially supporting
a terrorist group. These are not people prone to paranoia or conspiracy. These
were very well grounded, rational, reasoned people who were expressing to me
this fear that I hadn’t previously considered, but given how many people that
had been expressing it [these were American citizens, largely] really amazed
me. It was actually pretty jarring and eye-opening. The reason is that
WikiLeaks is an organization that had never been, in fact the have never been
to this day, charged with, let alone convicted of any crime of any kind, nor
could they be, since they’re engaged in the art of pure journalism, what media
outlets around the world do, which is receive government secrets from people
who are in government and then publish those secrets to inform citizens about
what governments and corporate factions are doing. And yet, here were countless
people petrified of asserting their most basic first amendment rights of free
speech and free assembly and free petition, which is what donating money to a
political organization whose cause you support is. They were petrified of exercising their own constitutional rights.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="color: #666666; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><i>They were petrified of
exercising their own constitutional rights. </i></span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">They didn't need to be threatened
with police invasions of their home or arrest if they did it. They didn't need
a law to abolish free speech. The climate of fear that has been created was
sufficient to get them on their own to voluntarily relinquish the exercise of
their own rights. You can offer all the rights in the world on a piece of paper
or a piece of parchment that you want, but if you put the citizenry into a
position of fear about exercising those rights, those rights become worthless.
The reason they were afraid of exercising those rights is because they've watched their own government over the past decade demonstrate repeatedly that
they are willing to cross not some lines that we've imposed on how they can
exercise their power but every line, without any consequence and without any
recrimination.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<div style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">There’s just
one other personal anecdote that I want to share to just bolster that point and
to underscore and highlight what I mean. In addition to WikiLeaks, I also spent
a lot of time, and still spend a lot of time, writing about the case of Bradley
Manning, the Army private who is accused of being the principal leaker to
WikiLeaks of those news-worthy leaks. In December of 2010, I wrote an article,
detailing the ways in which he was being confined, in extremely oppressive and
inhumane conditions, ones that the UN just recently, the top torture
investigator at the UN just last month concluded was both inhumane and cruel;
that he was subjected to extreme protracted solitary confinement, was harassed
in all these sadistic ways, ones that the US government itself has
characterized as torture when done by other countries, that studies show result
in possibly permanent psychologically crippling afflictions. One of the things
that was so baffling to me about what was being done [and a lot of people asked
me this question as well, which was] why would the Obama administration want to
subject him to this level of mistreatment? It actually seems counterproductive.
Because, for one thing, it makes prosecution more difficult, because if you
drive a prisoner into insanity through the treatment to which you subject him,
you can not convict him. It also means that any statements he makes while in
custody that are incriminating can be subject to challenge: that he only made
them because he was being coerced by the conditions. It also created sympathy
for him and turned him into a martyr among people who were otherwise
unsympathetic to those leaks. In fact, President Obama’s State Department
spokesperson, PJ Crowley, denounced the treatment as stupid and
counterproductive and then was forced to resign. It really elevated the
controversy around Bradley Manning and created lots of sympathy for him. So, it
was hard to figure out why they’d want to do it. It seemed counterproductive,
contrary to their own interests. After spending some time being asked this a
lot, and actually asking myself it a lot, why would they want to do this, the
thing that I realized is that the reason that Bradley Manning was put into
those conditions and treated with such cruelty and inhumane barbarism, is the
same reason that the US government abducted hundreds of people and shipped them
thousands of miles away to a Caribbean island, and dressed them in orange
jumpsuits and shackles and showed the world that. It’s the same reason that the
US government bombs people at will and blows up huge numbers of families and
civilians and innocent people all the time, knowing that it’s going to do that
and yet continues to do it. It’s a way of expressing to the world, especially
to anybody who might challenge US government power and policy and authority,
that if you want to challenge what we’re doing, if you are a would be whistle
blower who discovers things that we’ve done corruptly and in secret and wants
to expose it to the world, think about it twice and look at what we’ve done to
Bradley Manning without any limits. Or, if you’re somebody who wants to resist
US government invasions or occupations, look at what we’ve done to Guantanamo
prisoners or to people around the world that we’ve abducted, detained and rendered
for torture, and we’ve done all this without consequence because there are no
lines that we won’t cross and that we can’t cross at will. It’s a way of
conveying to the population that you should be in a posture of fear when it
comes to thinking about challenging what we’re doing. That’s the motive for it,
it’s the effect of it and the ultimate outcome. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
</div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I think that
it’s very difficult sometimes to convince people that that really is the case;
that a climate of fear has arisen, because typically people consider climates
of fear to be something that exists in other countries, those bad tyrannies
over there. The way that populations get convinced to view themselves as free,
even when they’re not, is that people are very willing to delude themselves.
It’s not a fun thing to realize that there are certain liberties that you’ve
always thought you had and taken for granted, that you actually can’t exercise
without punishment. So, people convince themselves, well, actually, those
aren’t things that I want to do. I don’t actually want to meaningfully challenge
the government. I don’t want to oppose government policy in any meaningful way.
I don’t want to go and join the Occupy movement. I’m not doing it because I’m
afraid to. I’m doing it because I don’t want to. So, there is nothing that I
want to do that I’m restrained from doing and therefore, by definition, I’m
free. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">The socialist
activist, Rosa Luxemburg, put it this way, she said: "He who does not move, does
not notice his own chains.". He who does not move does not notice his own chains.</span><br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><i><span style="color: #666666; font-size: large;">He who does not move does not notice his own chains.</span></i> </span></blockquote>
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">If you basically are somebody who convinces yourself that you don’t really want
to engage in politically controversial speech, or dissident political activism,
you won’t realize the restrictions that have been imposed on those basic
liberties. That’s the way that societies get put into postures of tyranny while
they convince themselves that they’re actually still free. That’s why the
climate of fear is actually more pernicious, it’s more insidious as a form of
tyranny than overt tyranny; than actually communicating to the population that
they no longer have these rights. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, those are
the ways that I think it’s possible to convey to people why they ought to care
about these kinds of trends in a concrete way. The last point I want to make
is, you know it’s very easy to gather in a place like this and spend an hour
and a half or so talking about these not very sunshiny developments. When you
do that, this sort of gloominess can set in. Like, I just listened to this
person talk for an hour about all the horrible things that are taking place by these
hugely formidable forces. I think I want to go jump off a bridge. That’s a
reaction that you can induce if you talk about it in this way. It is true, that
if a society remains in this posture of fear and in continuously viewing its
own liberties as unimportant that the political culture can sufficiently
degrade so that these changes become irreversible. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I had this
sort of jarring experience a couple of months ago. I went and spoke at this
college campus, and I talked about the differences in the post 9/11 era and how
these liberties have been eroded. There were some high school students, 16 or
15, who had come from far away to hear me speak. They were people who worked at
the high school newspaper. Afterwards they came up to me and said, you know,
you keep talking about this world that existed before 9/11 as though we all are
supposed to understand how things have changed. Well, for people my age, this
girl said, this 15 year old girl said, I was actually five years old at the
time of 9/11, or four years old, and so people my age, my peers, don’t really
even know a world before 9/11. This is the entirety of our understanding of
what political culture is. That’s how these trends can become truly irreversible,
is the political culture so accepts them as normalized, that they don’t even
know there’s a possibility for anything else. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">And yet, the
thing that I always think is the ultimate antidote to that kind of defeatism,
is what happened in the Arab spring, where you saw populations that had kept
deliberately deprived in every single way, not just materially, but spiritually
and in every conceivable way, purposely kept weakened and deprived, challenging
the most entrenched despots that the world knows, ones that have been in power
for decades literally, that are funded and supported and propped up by the
United States and it’s allies. And yet, they created, almost overnight,
explosively, this extremely intimidating force that threatened those seemingly
invulnerable powerful factions. If those people, with those resources are
capable of that level of political change, then people in the western world,
with our resources and our opportunities are certainly capable of the same
thing. If we aren’t doing it, if we’re not succeeding in that effort, it’s not
because it’s impossible. It’s simply because we just haven’t figured out the
right way to do it. What I look to do
when I get up in the morning and I write and I come to places like this and
gather with people, and I presume what you look to do by virtue of the fact
that you’re here, is to find the right way to communicate to our fellow
citizens that this cause is urgent and to figure out the best way to do it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">So, with
that, I thank you very much for coming. <o:p></o:p></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Glenn Greenwald</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">________________________________________________________________</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">* As for who was the wonderful person who did this transcript? "Harpie" did it! Thanks Harpie!</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">* Photos: Bill Rankin Photography</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">Glenn Greenwald in Ottawa was produced by Eyestir Communications in cooperation with the National Press Club Foundation, the Carleton School of Journalism and Communications and Prism Magazine.</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"><br /></span><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://amzn.to/IctNi5" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;" target="_blank"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjAEk4WyIIQfZZeWOOwj3n-6V1TVDMq9X6owHctVuLUDzIp3l7S7lKUXcLohEZAw94T9Nkw8euZ-kI4b9vTgLXwdcPyjDuTJHrCEfvaePSZbuSoNOgMA23pIRO_YcV1bp5sn-IFA/s320/with+liberty+and+justice+for+some+sml.jpg" width="213" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
From the nation's beginnings, the law was to be the great equalizer in American life, the guarantor of a common set of rules for all. But over the past four decades, the principle of equality before the law has been effectively abolished. Instead, a two-tiered system of justice ensures that the country's political and financial class is virtually immune from prosecution, licensed to act without restraint, while the politically powerless are imprisoned with greater ease and in greater numbers than in any other country in the world.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Starting with Watergate, continuing on through the Iran-Contra scandal, and culminating with Obama's shielding of Bush-era officials from prosecution, Glenn Greenwald lays bare the mechanisms that have come to shield the elite from accountability. He shows how the media, both political parties, and the courts have abetted a process that has produced torture, war crimes, domestic spying, and financial fraud.</div>
<div style="background-color: white; font-family: verdana, arial, helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: small;">
Cogent, sharp, and urgent, this is a no-holds-barred indictment of a profoundly un-American system that sanctions immunity at the top and mercilessness for everyone else.</div>
</div>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com2Ottawa, ON, Canada45.4215296 -75.697193145.0649016 -76.328907100000009 45.7781576 -75.0654791tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-34064360245246799982011-03-20T14:44:00.012-04:002011-03-22T12:26:50.992-04:00Glenn Greenwald with David Barsamian, March 08, 2011<span class="Apple-style-span"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PJFqVh0U2y8/TYZQExhY5XI/AAAAAAAACgU/2y5cXMySK7o/s1600/glenn%2Bbarsam.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 400px; height: 233px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-PJFqVh0U2y8/TYZQExhY5XI/AAAAAAAACgU/2y5cXMySK7o/s400/glenn%2Bbarsam.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5586240430742758770" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" >*Glenn's Lannan talk can be viewed or read <a href="http://eyestir.blogspot.com/2011/03/glenn-greenwald-speech-at-lannan.html">here</a>.</span></span><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">DB: Well, we’ve got lots of questions and about 30 minutes to get through some of them. Let me just start, if I can have that privilege. You mentioned Eisenhower’s farewell address. It was just marked in a few columns here and there, the fiftieth anniversary. You know, after he made that warning, in the very next paragraph, the warning about the military industrial complex, he did say that there was one thing that could put a break on it, and that was an informed and knowledgeable citizenry, which goes to the whole question of the role of the media in being a conduit for information or misinformation or propaganda.</span><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: Right. Well, one of the interesting things that before I began writing about politics, and what that has enabled me to do is to focus full time on it in a way that you can’t do when you actually have a job. Before I began writing about politics, I thought that I was a fairly well informed consumer of news. I did things like dutifully read the NYT, and I would read magazines and watch high end news programs and the like. I assumed there were things I was getting that were not entirely accurate. I was a litigator, so I generally assumed that people were lying constantly. It’s just a risk of the profession. But, I thought that by and large I was getting the basic story right about what the US is and what it does in the world. One of the things that was really so eye-opening for me was, and again, there is a little bit of a naiveté to it, is that once I was actually able to start focusing on these things full time, and reading original documents for myself, and not having to rely on the mediation of the media, being able to pick and chose what I would focus on, rather than having editors decide for me what I needed to know about it and what I didn’t, was that essentially all the, not just individual facts but the broad narrative that I was getting was really radically flawed. I basically erased the part of my brain that had existed, that thought that it had stored accurate political information, and kind of rebuilt it from scratch. One of the things that today is still so remarkable to me, is that there are enormously consequential events that exist, for example, in the Muslim world, that are constantly displayed on their news programs and in their newspapers, that are literally unmentioned in the American media. That has created this extraordinarily huge gap in the perception in that part of the world, and this part of the world. We like to assume that the reason why that gap exists is that they’re these primitive fundamentalists who are propagandized and who aren’t told the truth by their media and by their government. There is some extent to which that is true, but there’s huge extent to which the opposite is true, which is the reason this perception gap exists is because we are propagandized. There’s so much that happens that we don’t know about that they do. They know every time an American airplane slaughters innocent civilians and we virtually never hear about it. They know that the American government spent years imprisoning Al Jazeera journalists without any due process of any kind in order to interrogate them about Al Jazeera, and they we attacked Al Jazeera with fighter jets. I guarantee you the percentage of Americans who knows any of that is infinitesimal. And, you go down the list, and this is the definition of propaganda, when the information that we get is designed to shape our perceptions favorably to the government and there’s so much of it that we have.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: A number of questions focus on WL and Bradley Manning. How can people support, financially or otherwise, WL and do so anonymously…that seems to be a concern, and Bradley Manning. I know there’s a demonstration coming up in Virginia on March 20.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: Right. As far as financial support to WL is concerned, there are difficult ways to do that, because all American financial services corporations like Bank of America and PayPal have terminated their services and VISA and MasterCard won’t process payments. It is difficult. There are ways to do it through bank wires. I don’t know if there’s a way to do it anonymously, and again, the fact that that concern has been raised reflects the climate that I talked about earlier. But if you go the WL website which isn’t easy to find these days, thanks to the cyber attacks and Amazon, but it’s at wikileaks dot ch. There are instructions for how one can donate to WL. Bradley Manning is a much more conservative donation to make, in the sense of nobody could ever suggest that there would ever be anything illegal about it. He has a defense fund, which fortunately has raised I think ninety five or ninety six percent of the money that they think they will need for his defense. There are still other things he needs in terms of publicity to help get his story out in the media. There may be other expenses associated with protests and legal actions brought over the treatment to which he’s being subjected. So, you could just google Bradley Manning Defense Fund and you’ll find it there, a very trust worthy organization, and you can donate as well. But, I think the more important thing that one can do for WL and Bradley Manning, rather than giving money, is what we’re doing now, which is, you know, a lot of times when I write things or speak at places, there are always question, well, what can be done about this, as though what we’re doing is nothing. One of the most important things you can do is get together with fellow citizens and inform them and talk with them and buildup the dissatisfaction and the anger over it, so that there is real dissatisfaction in the citizenry for these things. There is a protest on March 20th at the Quantico Base in Virginia, the brig where he’s being held, and whoever has the resources to go there, I think would be encouraged to do so. And there are similar protests being organized all around the country, at Marine or Army facilities or at members of congress over the torture to which this American citizen is being subjected on American soil. I think this would be immensely helpful in bringing more attention to his plight.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: Again, this is an amalgam of several questions. You talked in your presentation about this enormous consortium of government and corporate power and that faction is so powerful. In some ways, that’s very disenabling in terms of creating this tremendous force. How can people confront it?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: One of the interesting dynamics that I confronted from the very beginning of my working on political issues, writing about political issues full time, was this idea that if you, and it’s almost a paradox, but it’s almost like the more you document just how heinous things are, the more hopelessness you risk breeding, because, the more you demonstrate how these powerful factions are seemingly invulnerable, and how immunized they are from any forms of accountability, the more daunting the task seems to confront them. And, what I would always say, whenever people would say this seems so hopeless and everything seems pessimistic in terms of the prospects for change, I would say that any systems that have been constructed by human beings can be destroyed and replaced, or even modified by other human beings. History proves that. One of the things that I think is so vital about what’s happening in the Middle East is, I mean, “hopelessness”-if you were to look up that term in the dictionary, you would find essentially the pictures of the people who were living under the repression in those countries. I mean, these are dictatorships that have been in place for decades. The people are disempowered, not just financially and in terms of weaponry, but in terms of being kept illiterate and poor education. I mean, that’s not true in all the countries, but in many. When you have a country that is under that level of repression for so long, it breaks their spirit, it breaks their psychological belief that they can actually change things. And, so the fact that in that part of the world the most unlikely part of that world, people, ordinary people are rising up together and essentially putting great fear in these tyrants and in these monarchs who are propped up by the US and have been for decades; and are winning should prevent any person in this country with the resources and the relative domestic liberties that we have, from ever succumbing to resignation. That ought to be the model that prevents that from happening.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: It took the Egyptian people eighteen days to overthrow a 30 year autocracy.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: Yeah, exactly.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: [9:40] Quite an amazing accomplishment. What do you think is behind Obama’s decision to restore military tribunals in Guantanamo?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: Well. This is part and parcel of the entire preservation by Obama of the Bush-Cheney architecture for the war on terror generally and the detention regime specifically. There’s this idea, [I actually wrote about this today even though I was traveling, but it was irritating me so much that I found the time because I thought I was going to go crazy if I didn’t], that Obama wanted to close Guantanamo so very, very badly, but unfortunately he was thwarted by the Congress, because they denied him the funds to do so, and then enacted legislation barring the transfer of detainees from Guantanamo to the US, and that he is therefore forced, against all of his wishes, to preserve what’s taking place in Guantanamo. And this is actually a complete fiction, because if you go and look at what Obama actually said he wanted to do, and intended to do, prior to the time that Congress did anything, he, it is true, wanted to “close” Guantanamo, in the sense of taking all of the parts that compose it and moving it a couple thousand miles north to a maximum security facility, a super-max in Thompson, Illinois, where the detainees there would continue to be detained without any due process of any kind, without being charged, without any recourse beyond the say-so of the president and to continue their system of military tribunals as well that caused so much controversy during the Bush administration. I was pretty involved in the debates over the Guantanamo disputes, and my recollection is pretty clear that what made people so angry about Guantanamo, was not that it was located in Cuba rather than Illinois, so that if you move it to Illinois it’s all problem solved. I think what made people angry, was that it was sort of un-American and unjust to put people in prison for decades or for life without so much as charging them with a crime; or inventing new tribunals, [instead of allowing them access to our regular courts] that were essentially rigged in advance to ensure their conviction. So, this idea that Obama wanted to close Guantanamo, and isn’t that great and too bad he got thwarted is true only in the narrowest sense. The reality is he all along wanted to simply transfer this system that was Guantanamo to a different location on the premise that if he did that, I guess, it would fool enough people in the Muslim world, and in the US, to make everyone think that the nightmare of the Bush regime was over. That would never have fooled anyone, other than a few partisans in the US and probably the entire cast of cable news, but other than that, it would not have fooled anyone. It is true that Congress forced this system to continue in Cuba, but what Obama wanted to do wasn’t all that different.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: Talk about the social media and its impact; Face Book, Twitter, You Tube. I was just in Kashmir ten days ago. The kids there who are in revolt against the Indian occupation are taking their cell phones and photographing and then uploading those onto You Tube and they’re spreading all over.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: Right. To me, this new social media really is just he inevitable and logical progression from what I think the internet did several years ago in terms of making political discourse much more democratized. It really was the case not all that long ago, even just going back to 2002, 2003, when the only people who could really be heard loudly in political discourse in the US were people who either were entrenched political officials who had access to large media outlets or employees of large multinational conglomerates who essentially comprise all the people who call themselves journalists in the US. Every person you saw on television who delivered the news, who talked about the news, journalists who wrote for newspapers, the largest newspapers are all employees of huge corporate institutions. That meant that there was a very homogenized voice, set of voices that were shaping political discourse, which is why, if you go back and read political debates in 2002 and 2003 as I sometimes still do, you’ll be shocked. No matter how much you think you remember just how insane it all was, if you go back and read what happened on PBS or CNN as they talk about Saddam Hussein and all his scary weapons; or if you talk about, people who talk about in newspapers George Bush and Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld being brave and even sexually arousing warriors and how manly they were, all very common themes. You don’t have to look very hard for that, it’s all there, you will be shocked by just how rotted and degraded our political discourse was, even that recently. What the internet really did was it allowed people, such as myself and a lot of other people, to no longer have to go to large institutions and corporations in order to have the means for building a readership and building an audience and using the technology that can disseminate ideas to large numbers of people. It really diversified and democratized political discourse and brought in a lot of new voices and therefore a lot of new ideas, which is why I do think things have improved slightly in terms of how political debates are conducted. What Face Book and Twitter and what all that social media has done, is, it has brought it to parts of the world where it didn’t exist before and it has just democratized it further. So now, all you need is access to You Tube and a cell phone, and you can make major international news without the mediation of any corporate editors, in a way that was completely unthinkable even seven or eight years ago. It especially is effective at organizing like-minded people in a very quick way to create their own alliance of power that could compete with far more entrenched power. Again, I think we’re at the very insipient stages of this process, and that is why internet freedom is such a vital war to be attentive to, because people in power know how threatening it is, and that’s why they’re constantly devising ways to control it, to undermine it, to dilute it and to subvert it.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: It’s been said more than once that corporate media is a WMD-a weapon of mass distraction, and needs to be regulated to some extent. Now, talking about, you just mentioned political discourse. The question here is about the affect of the Citizen’s United [CU] case and what can be done to reverse the effect of corporate money in elections, and how that relates to the regime of secrecy.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: [16:41] Right. One of the things I think that CU did was…I personally don’t think that CU changed very much, because, CU dealt with a very narrow form of corporate spending, which is the ability of corporations to spend money specifically in a sixty day period prior to an election in order to elect a candidate. Prior to CU, corporations were completely free to spend as much money as they wanted to do things like run what were called “issue ads”, so they could run an issue the day before the election and spend as much money as they wanted saying Congressman Smith has supported this horrendous piece of legislation that’s the equivalent of the worst tyranny. Call Congressman Smith and tell him to stop it, which was just a poorly disguised way of saying vote against Congressman Smith. All CU did was allow corporations now to make their spending more overt so that they could now say vote against Congressman Smith, vote for this person. Prior to CU, in my opinion, corporate influence, the influence of corporate money in American politics was already far and away the most serious problem that we face. I think…because what it encompasses is everything I talked about earlier. It’s the ability of the nation’s wealthiest factions to control our political process in a way that was never intended. Until that problem is redressed, there isn’t very much within the democratic process, voting, referenda, petitions, calling members of congress, none of that really matters because the people to whom they’re answering are the people who are the oligarchs, the people who control all the financial wealth because they own the political process. I personally am more comfortable, a lot more comfortable, with leveling that playing field with a very robust form of public financing so that if corporation give ten million dollars to a particular candidate, there’s a public financing scheme that will give ten million dollars to their opponent, and will level out the playing field so that candidates don’t have to be beholden to moneyed interests. I think that that’s the only way to subvert that, combined with genuine full disclosure so that people like the Koch brothers and others can’t operate in the dark and act covertly. But, I think public financing can truly level the playing field in a way that will alleviate the need of politicians to serve who their masters are now which is to the people who pay into and buy the political system.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: You excoriate in very clear terms the Democrats and the Republicans. Is it time for a second political party?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: A third?...[laughs] Right. That took me a second. It’s interesting, but some of the critics of the American political process whom I respect most will say, no matter how critical they are of the Democratic Party, and how insistent they are that there’s very little difference between them, that it’s still important at the end of the day to vote against Republicans and vote for Democrats. That’s something that Noam Chomsky says all the time. I’m not for the moment saying that’s my opinion, so if you want to applaud him go ahead. That has always been persuasive to me, or at least it was for a long time, that…Chomsky’s argument is, and Howard Zinn’s would say the same thing, and others, too, that even though the differences are so minute, relatively speaking from a bird’s eye view, and even though the kinds of issues we talked about tonight, there are no differences, that when you’re talking about a structure as enormous as the US government, that even minor differences between the two parties in terms of how they allocate resources, which programs they fund, and which ones they defund, can have a very substantial impact on the lives of millions of people and it’s irresponsible to say that because the differences aren’t great enough, that I’m going to abstain, or that I’m going to become indifferent about which political party wins. Because it actually does matter in the lives of a lot of people whether Social Security is cut a lot or kind of a lot, and things like that. That’s that argument, and it’s an argument which I have found somewhat persuasive. Lately, I’ve become a lot more ambivalent about that argument. The reason is that, though it is true that if you look at short term political cycles there are some differences between Democrats and Republicans. It may very well be the case that had John McCain and Sara Palin won, that we would have instead of just a few wars we would have one more with Iran, which would be an extremely bad thing for countless millions of people. At the same time, it’s also the case that if you look a little bit broader at the political conflicts, at some point you have to say, I’m willing to sacrifice some short term political gain in order to find a way to make more meaningful improvements over the long term. Otherwise, we’re going to be having the same conversation in 2016 and 2020 and 2024 and our children will and our grandchildren will, and everyone’s going to be lamenting how terrible it is that we don’t have any choices and yet nothing will change because at the end of the day all the loyalists lineup behind the two parties on the ground that the other one is just slightly worse. Until that mind set is broken, and I don’t know what the answer is for breaking it because I acknowledge that there is real danger from abstaining from the political process, or in becoming indifferent about which of the two political parties wins, but what I know is as long as we continue doing what we’re doing the same dynamic will persist. That’s just logical. So, at some point, I think you need to start to say that the differences are minor enough that I’m willing to let this slightly worse party win a couple more seats than they otherwise might, maybe even win an election because I want the Democratic Party to know that if they continue doing what they’re doing on the grounds that they can just take for granted all of our support, at some point that assurance in their mind needs to be broken so that they become more attentive to the people they claim to represent.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="line-height: 16px; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><b>DB</b>: Two questions from a student from St. John’s College. First off: are there some things that should be secret? And the second one is: Where have reporters like Ed Murrow, Woodward and Bernstein gone?</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><b>GG</b>: [23:30] I would certainly say clearly the answer to the question should some things be secret is “Yes”. If the government is investigating as part of a grand jury a potential criminal target, you don’t want that fact to be known; or what they discover to be known, because it may be that the person is innocent and their name will be besmirched by disclosure of grand jury secrecy. There are certain things that you probably wouldn’t want publicized on the front page of the NYT, like the location of nuclear war heads and the combination to launch them would probably be a thing that you’d want to keep secret, in my opinion. I think even the hardest core transparency advocates acknowledge that there is some degree of legitimate secrecy. The problem is that secrecy ought to be the very rare exception, and it’s become the rule. One of the things that’s so amazing to me, is that, over the last year WL has released close to a million pages of documents. While I said before, and it’s true, that this claim that there’s nothing new there is absurd, there are tons of things that are new, the vast majority of what has been released is actually quite banal. They are just very routine documents. To me, that in itself is a scandal, because what it shows is that the government reflexively stamps secret or classified on basically every single thing that it does. So, the more people keep saying that these WL documents show nothing, that they don’t reveal anything, the more to me that is an indictment of just the obsession with secrecy that the US government and the US military has. The presumption has been reversed. Everything is presumptively secret when it’s supposed to be presumptively disclosed. And that’s why, to me, when people raise concerns well isn’t WL going a little too far in disclosing some things that should be secret. We’re so far over towards the pole of excessive secrecy that I can’t even envision the day when I’m going to start worrying about excessive disclosure. I’d like to be in that position, but we’re so far from that day. So, yes, some things should be kept secret, but that is so far away from the problem that we have, that things that should be kept secret aren’t being kept secret, when everything is being kept secret, and that’s a real threat to democracy.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; ">As far as where Bob Woodward went, he’s still around. Unfortunately, I don’t mean I wish that he weren’t alive. I mean that he’s still practicing journalism in a very harmful way, and I think that that transformation from the Bob Woodward of forty years ago when he worked very hard to expose serious wrong doing at the highest levels of government, [it’s not quite as pure and romanticized as that, but there’s been enough pessimism tonight, so we’ll let Bob Woodward have his legacy], but the transformation of Bob Woodward from whistle blowing adversarial journalist into what he’s become, which is basically royal court spokesman, very highly paid, royal court spokesperson, that’s how I see him, I think is illustrative of the media generally. It used to be that journalism was a marginalized, outsider profession. The people who practiced it were fairly poor, they weren’t very rewarded economically. They’ve now been incorporated almost fully into the circles of political power. They’re far closer to, they identify far more with culturally and socio economically with the people whom they’re covering, and the people whom they’re suppose to be adversarially watch dogging, than the people on whose behalf they’re doing that. It’s become completely morphed. That, I think, has really corrupted what they do. The great journalists David Halberstam said the more famous you are, the less of a journalist you probably are. I think that kind of underscores this fact that journalists have always supposed to have been, not hobnobbing with political power and getting access to it and being friendly with it, but being truly belligerent towards it, being excluded from it and being on the outside. The minute Bob Woodward started being aloud out into the pearly halls of power in Washington, and having his access dependent on going and writing what served their interest, is the minute that he became corrupted as a journalist, no longer was a journalist. I think that’s what’s happened with journalism generally…establishment journalism generally, it’s become corporatized, and it’s become integrated into the system of political power and therefore can’t possibly be adversarial to it any longer.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><b>DB</b>: If I may say to that student, forget Woodward. Read Dahr Jamail. Read Jeremy Scahill. Nir Rosen.</p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><b>GG</b>: Izzy Stone</p></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">DB: IF Stone, of course, classic journalist. There are a lot of alternatives out there. I’m sure I left off some names. Excuse the grammar, but within a week this event will be podcastable and downloadable both the audio and the video. Just go to the Lannan Foundation website and you’ll find it there. We’re running out of time. Let me give you a couple of loaded questions, here. Any more bombshells from WL? They reportedly have some major information about what’s happening in the financial system.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: Well, there was a story for a while that they had some very explosive documents about a major bank which everyone assumed correctly was Bank of America [BoA]. And that actually lead to a recent scandal where the BoA hired a law firm and some internet security firms to start trying to coordinate a response to WL, and to attack it. I’m not sure how significant those BoA documents are really going to be. Obviously, there’s lots of corruption and wrong doing at the highest levels of every major American Bank. The BoA is America’s largest bank. So, it isn’t that the corruption doesn’t exist I just don’t know if these document are going to be able to fulfill the original promise. What I do know is that WL’s problem right now is that they’re so overloaded with disclosures of documents that seem at face value to be extremely significant, that one of the reasons why they actually do need financial support is because it’s very expensive for them to go through the process of verifying and authenticating those documents. They’re well aware that the Pentagon wants to feed false documents to them, that their credibility would be instantly destroyed if they ever released in this major fanfare of a way documents that turned out to be fabricated. So, when they do get documents, they go to extreme lengths to ensure that they are authentic. That’s why it takes some time. So they are sitting on some documents that I know for a fact, if they’re real, will make as much headlines, if not more than the previous disclosures. It’s just a matter of getting those documents verified.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">DB: Glenn, I have to ask you this question. I have an unreleased WL document right here in my hand reporting that you will sign books in the lobby in a few moments. Can you confirm or deny that?</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: It is true. It is a major coup of WL. They have authenticated that.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />DB: You heard it right here. Thanks very much for coming. Have a wonderful evening.</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br />GG: Thank you very much. [31:05]</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><br /></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">You can view the interview and read the transcript of Glenn's talk at the Lannan Foundation <a href="http://eyestir.blogspot.com/2011/03/glenn-greenwald-speech-at-lannan.html">here</a>.<br /><br />http://podcast.lannan.org/2011/03/13/glenn-greenwald-with-david-barsamian-conversation-8-march-2011-video/<br /><br />With much thanks again to longime poster extraordinaire, <a href="http://letters.salon.com/e0679185d4486d5655c30c3499a0f646/author/">harpie</a> for the transcription! </span></div></div>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-24433321742812495062011-03-16T22:52:00.019-04:002011-03-22T11:46:57.175-04:00Glenn Greenwald Speech at the Lannan Foundation<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FeoYIu4PdKw/TYLc_giRv6I/AAAAAAAACgM/WlQxO-_DPZM/s1600/glenn%2Bmontage.jpg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 550px; height: 306px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FeoYIu4PdKw/TYLc_giRv6I/AAAAAAAACgM/WlQxO-_DPZM/s400/glenn%2Bmontage.jpg" border="0" alt="Glenn Greenwald" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5585269471516409762" /></a><div><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-FeoYIu4PdKw/TYLc_giRv6I/AAAAAAAACgM/WlQxO-_DPZM/s1600/glenn%2Bmontage.jpg"></a><span class="Apple-style-span"><div class="deck md" style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; line-height: 1.3em; "><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><br /></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; "><iframe title="YouTube video player" width="550" height="370" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Lb0lE-xz4M0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe></span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Thank you. Thanks very much and good evening to everybody, and thank you for coming and thank you very much for that warm reception as well. And thank you as well to the Lannan Foundation for inviting me to Santa Fe, which I’ve discovered over the last day and a half is a beautiful city. It’s my first time here. And I’m especially delighted to have been invited to kick off what certainly will be a very exciting and vibrant speaker series that the Lannan Foundation is sponsoring. So, I’m particularly pleased to be here for that, as well.</span></p><p></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">I’ve been speaking more at events like this and at various college campuses and the like over the last year. And one of the things that typically happens before the event, is that there’s a lot of time and mental energy spent on figuring out what the topic of the speech is going to be, and what the title is going to be. The speaker and the sponsors of the event go back and forth over what will be an interesting topic, what’s timely, what will be interesting to people. And then the title gets worked on and changed and edited. I have several speeches planned over the course of the next month, and there are all different topics and titles that were all worked out as part of this arduous process. What I found is that, as much time and energy that’s spent on that process, it actually ends up being completely irrelevant, because I find that no matter what the topic is, I keep speaking about the same set of issues, no matter what the title is.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">The reason why that happens is not because I have some monomaniacal obsession with a handful of issues I can’t pull myself away from no matter what the topic is. That may be true, but that’s not actually the reason. The reason is because political controversies and political issues never take place in isolation. They’re always part of some broader framework, that drives political outcomes, and that determines how political power is exercised. And so it doesn’t really matter which specific topic, or which specific controversy of the day you want to discuss, the reality is, you can’t really meaningfully discuss any of them without examining all the forces that shape political culture, and that shape how political outcomes are determined. So, in order to talk about any issue, you end up speaking about these same, broad themes, that are shaping, and I think plaguing, the political discourse in the United States.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">This is something that I first realized when I started writing about politics in late 2005. One of the very first topics on which I focused was the scandal about the Bush administrations eves dropping on American citizens without the warrants required by law. This was first exposed by the NYT in December of 2005, so it happened around six weeks after I began writing about politics. I had this, back then, very naïve idea that this was going to be very straight forward and simple political controversy. The reason I thought that in my naiveté, was because what the Bush administration got caught doing [eaves dropping on Americans without warrants from the FISA court] is as clear as could possibly be a felony under American law. You can actually look at the criminal law that existed since 1978, when FISA was enacted. It says that doing exactly what the Bush administration got caught doing, is a felony in the US, just like robbing a bank, or extortion or murder, and that it’s punishable by a prison term of five years or a ten thousand dollar fine for each offense. The report that the NYT published was that there were at least hundreds and probably thousands of instances where American citizens were eavesdropped on illegally and in violation of the law. So, I thought that this was going to be a fairly straight forward controversy, because I had this idea that if you get caught committing a felony, and the NYT writes and reports on that and everybody’s talking about that, that that’s actually going to be a really bad thing for the person who got caught doing that. I know it was really naïve. I’m actually embarrassed to admit that I thought that, but that really is was I thought at the time. I also thought that basically everybody would be in agreement that that was a really bad thing to do….that thing that the law said for thirty years was a felony and punishable by a prison term and a large fine. And, as it turned out, [and I realized this fairly quickly] none of that actually happened. It wasn’t a really bad thing for the people who got caught committing that felony.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And, not only did everyone not agree that that was a bad thing, very few people actually agreed that that was a very bad thing. So, what I thought I was going to be able to do was to take this issue and write very legalistically about it, and demonstrate that what the Bush administration had done was a crime, that it was a felony under the statute and that the legal defenses for it that they had raised were frivolous and baseless and that would be the end of the story. Crime committed, investigation commenced, punishment ensues. So what immediately happened, when I realized that none of that was really going on, of course then the question became why. Why was my expectation about what would happen so radically different than what in fact happened?</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">So, then I needed to delve into that dynamic, that I began by referencing that determines political outcomes. I had to examine the fact that we have a political faction inside the US [the American Right] that is drowning in concepts of nationalism, and exceptionalism, in tribalism that leads them to believe that whatever they and there leaders do is justifiable inherently because they do it, and in a complete lack of principle…this is the same faction that impeached a democratically elected President not more than 10 years earlier on the ground that the rule of law is paramount and we can’t allow our presidents to break the law. And, yet, here they were defending it.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And then I watched Democratic politicians, one after the next, go on talk shows to talk about this scandal, and they were all petrified of saying what the reality was, which was that what the Bush Administration got caught doing was a crime and it was illegal. They were all afraid to say that. What they were really eager for was for the scandal to go away, for them not to have to talk about it any longer. And so that made me write about the craveness of the Democratic Party, and the extent to which they are replicas of Republicans when it comes to national security issues, and the complete bipartisan consensus, where all of these kinds of issues are concerned, especially in the post 9-11 world.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And then I started realizing that there were journalists who were shaping the political discourse who were not only saying that they were fine with the fact that the Bush Administration had broken the law, but were attacking the very few Democrats who actually stood up and said “I think it’s problematic when the President does things that the Congress says is a criminal offence.” The journalist class, almost unanimously, was saying that the Democrats ought to avoid this for political reasons, and that on substantive grounds, Bush did the right thing because he had to protect us. Then I had to start writing about the media’s allegiance to political power and their belief in the omnipotence of the national security state, and its ability to act without restraints.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And then it turned out that it wasn’t just the government who was eavesdropping, but they were doing so in collaboration with the largest telecoms, the entire telecom industry, in essence, which was turning over all the phone records and e-mails of their customers secretly to the government, even though laws were in place specifically prohibiting private telecoms from handing over any information to the government without warrants because in the past, when the Church committee discovered the decades of abuses they found that ATT had been turning over records to the government, that Western Union was turning over all telegraphs. And so, Congress said not only the government is barred from eves dropping on Americans without warrants, but private telecoms-it shall be against the law for them to turn over data without warrants as well. Of course, they did exactly that. That led to my having to write about the consortium between government and corporate power and how the surveillance state and the national security state have essentially become merged; and that the real power lies with the private sector because so many of these government functions have been nationalized.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Then, of course, the entire quote-unquote scandal ended by all of the perpetrators being completely protected. The Bush Administration was given an immunity shield by the Obama Administration from any investigations to determine whether crimes were committed. And the private Telecom industry was given retroactive immunity by the Democratic led Congress in 2008 supported by Barak Obama.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">In fact, the only person to suffer any legal repercussions from that NSA scandal was someone named Thomas Tam, who was the mid-level Justice Department whistle blower who found out that this was taking place and was horrified by it and called Eric Lichtblau at the NYT and exposed that it had happened. The person who was the only one to suffer repercussions was the person who exposed the criminality. The criminals were fully immunized.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">So that led to my having to write about how the rule of law had been subverted, all the things David was just reading about. And, so, I realized that what I thought the scandal was about, what I thought the issue was about,…you know, nice abstract clinical little discussions about whether the law had been violated, and whether Article II theories were really viable, were actually relatively irrelevant. You could have that discussion, but it didn’t make much of a difference. What made the real difference were these broader themes.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">[20:07] So, although the topic tonight is ostensibly Wikileaks and the controversies surrounding Wikileaks, if you look at what has happened in the Wikileaks scandal, it involves everyone of the ingredients that I just described. That’s why I can give a speech on the erosion of civil liberties in the US [which I’m going to do in a few days]…tonight I’m talking about Wikileaks, but what I’m always going to end up talking about are the fundamentals of how political power in the US is exercised and the way in which just outcomes are subverted because of these dynamic</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">One of the reasons why I find WL to be such a fascinating and critical topic is because I think it sheds unprecedented light on how these processes work and how they have come to develop and evolve in the US. I also think that there’s so much at stake in the war that has arisen over Wikileaks and internet freedom, and the ability to breach the secrecy regime behind which the government operates. For that reason, too, it’s such a critical topic.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">There are a lot of different ways to talk about Wikileaks, and Wikileaks is a complex topic. But, one of the things I want to do is just to sort of walk through, a little bit, the chronology of my involvement in WL and to talk about some of the realizations that I’ve had that may have been somewhat known to me, but have really been cast into a very bright light as a result of what’s happened in the controversy surrounding WL.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">[21:55] The first time that I ever wrote about WL, or ever really thought about WL was in January of 2010, a little bit more than a year ago, now. And this is a time when almost nobody had heard of WL, before they disclosed the first news-making leak, which was the video of the Apache helicopter shooting unarmed citizens and journalists in Baghdad. But, what had prompted me to pay attention to it and to write about it was that the Pentagon had prepared a report in 2008, a classified report, about WL that ironically though unsurprisingly was leaked to WL, which WL then published. What this report said, it talked about how the Pentagon considered WL to be an enemy of the state; a grave threat to US national security. It discussed a variety of ways to destroy WL: by fabricating documents to submit to them, in the hopes that they would publish forged documents, which would then destroy there credibility, like what happened with Dan Rather and CBS news and the Bush AWOL story; it talked about breaching the confidentiality between them and their sources so that their sources would get exposed and people would no longer feel confident in leaking to them. I didn’t have a really good sense for what WL had been doing, or what it was, but I figured that if there’s any grouping targeted that way by the Pentagon, that’s a group that merits a lot more examination and probably some admiration.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">So I started looking a lot into WL and what they were doing, and at the time, although they hadn’t made much news in the US, they had actually exposed a great deal of wrong doing around the world. They had disclosed documents showing the involvement of government leaders in death squads in Kenya; they had shown the involvement of the Icelandic government in the financial collapse that destroyed that country’s financial security; there was an internet bill being discussed in Australia to shut down websites that were supposedly promoting child pornography, yet secretly on the list of targeted websites were a bunch of political site that had been critical of the Australian government; they had exposed corporate toxic waste dumping in West Africa; the involvement, or the negligence of local officials in Berlin with regard to a trampling at a night club that killed 23 people. So they had been quite active in a whole variety of different ways in exposing wrongdoing.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">The one document they had exposed involving the US was a manual at Guantanamo for how prisoners ought to be treated. This manual was nothing very enlightening. We already knew that severe systematic abuse and torture were taking place at that site. But, the mere fact that WL had shown that they were able to start shedding light on some of the world’s most powerful factions, and exposing serious corruption, and had touched a little bit on America’s detention regime, with this one document, was enough for the Pentagon to take them very seriously. So, I wrote at that time about that report, and I had talked about all the potential for good that I thought WL could do. I had encouraged, in the context of my writing about it, [and I also interviewed Julian Assange at the time], I encouraged my readers to donate money to the group because there were indications that they were somewhat impeded in some of the disclosures they wanted to do because of the lack of resources. I said this would be a great organization to donate your money to. They need it. They look as though they could really achieve a lot of good. And after I wrote that, I received a lot of comments from people via e-mail, from people in person telling me at my attended events, from people in my comment section, American citizens who said the following: “I understand and agree with the idea that WL has a lot of potential to do good, but I’m actually afraid of donating money, because I’m afraid that I’m going to end up on some kind of a list somewhere; or that eventually I will be charged with aiding and abetting, or giving material support to a terrorist group”. This was not one or two people who tended toward the pole of paranoia saying these things. These were very rational people, and there were a lot of them. Some long term readers whom I knew to be quite sober in their thinking. The fear that they were expressing was somewhat pervasive. That, to me, was extraordinarily striking: that these were American citizens who were afraid to donate money to a group whose political aims they supported; who had never been charged with, let alone convicted of any crime who felt like they were going to end up on some kind of government list, or possibly be charged with aiding and abetting or giving material support to terrorism. Although I didn’t find those fears to be completely justifiable, in the sense that I thought those things would happen, I told people that I thought they ought to set those fears aside and donate money anyway, the fact that those fears existed; that that kind of climate of intimidation has been created in the US when it comes to the most basic rights of association and free speech, which are the rights which are implicated by donating money to a political organization that you support; that that climate of fear and intimidation had been so great that people were self censoring and relinquishing their own rights was something that perhaps in the abstract I had known about in the past, but really illustrated to me just how pervasive that had become.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Over the course of the next several months, because I was writing about WL more and more, especially as they began releasing the news making videos and documents about the Iraq and Afghanistan wars, and I began engaging in debates on behalf of WL and arguing with those who were claiming they were a force for evil and should be punished and prosecuted, I got to know the people who were involved in WL, either currently or in the past. Especially among the people who had once worked with WL, but then stopped, there was a common theme that they all sounded when you spoke to them about why they stopped working with WL, including some who had been very high up in the organization hierarchy and who were well resourced, and people who are citizens of European countries. What they said, almost to a person about why they stopped being involved in WL, and what a lot of people who still work with WL will tell you about why they are contemplating no longer working with WL is they will say: “I am extremely supportive of the organization’s aims and mission, I am proud to have been a part of the things they have done thus far, but I have a paralyzing fear that one day, my government is going to knock on my door and not charge me with a crime [that I can confront and am willing to deal with], but they’re going to knock on my door and tell me they are extraditing me to the US”.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">In other words, the great fear of almost every person now or previously involved in WL is that they’re going to end up in the custody of the American Justice system, because of the black hole of due-process-free punishment that they’ve seen created and that is sustained for foreign nationals accused of crimes against US National security, because of the way in which people are disappeared without recourse to courts or any political protest.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">It’s amazing that we have spent decades, probably since the end of WWII, lavishing praise on ourselves as the model of justice for the entire world, the leaders of the free world, lecturing everybody else about what their system of justice ought to be, and yet the fear that so many people around the world have, is that they will end up in the grip of American justice. That to me was extraordinarily telling, as well.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">[30:05] Then, over the course of the next couple of months, when the controversy over WL was really escalated by the release of the diplomatic cables, I began doing a lot of public media debates over whether WL was a force for good or a force for evil, or whatever media morality narrative was, and how that was framed. I appeared on countless shows and television networks. The reason I was so ubiquitous doing that isn’t because CNN and MSNBC producers suddenly decided that they really liked me. It was because there were so few people to chose from who were actually defending WL, because the unanimity in the media was essentially that they were demonic and ought to be punished. So, it in order to have a debate where one person was arguing on behalf of WL and one was arguing against it, [it was very easy to find someone who was against it. You could more or less pick a journalist or a political figure out of a hat and that would be accomplished], what was harder was to find people who were willing to defend it. There were some but not many. So, I did a lot of these show, a lot more than I like to do, and is probably healthy for me to do. One of the things that I found, that was sort of striking was, I was usually on the show, the format of the show would be: there would be some journalist or a person who is on TV, an actor on TV playing the role of a journalist [laughter] along with some kind of government official, some like Washington functionary. So, I was on CNN and I debated Jessica Yellin who’s the CNN anchor, along with Fran Townsend, George Bush’s former national security advisor; and I did an NPR show once with Jamie Rubin, who was Madeline Albright’s deputy, and John Burns, the NYT reporter. That was usually the format. I did MSNBC with Jonathan Tapper who’s a journalist who writes for the Washington Post editorial page, and Susan Molinari, a former Republican congresswoman. Literally in every single case, the person who was designated as the journalist, and the person who was there to represent America’s political class thought and argued identically. I mean they were completely indistinguishable in terms of how they thought about WL. They were all in agreement that what WL was doing was awful; that our government had to put a stop to it. The only concern that they had was that the government wasn’t more careful in safeguarding secrets. So, you had people who were claiming to be journalists who were on television outraged that they were learning what the government was doing and furious at the government for not taking better steps to hide those things from them. And you had these debates that would take place and I would be listening to them and I literally couldn’t tell the journalist and the political official apart. And the reason that was so striking to me was because, if you think about it, if you put yourself in the mindset of what a journalist is supposed to be, not what an American journalist is, what an American journalist is supposed to be, what they’re supposed to be interested in, is exposing the secrets of the powerful, especially when the actions which are being undertaken in secret, are corrupt or illegal or deceitful.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">What WL is doing is exactly that. It is shedding unprecedented light on what the world’s most powerful corporate and government factions are doing. Any journalist who ever had an inkling of the journalistic spirit, at one point in their life before that all got suffocated, you would think they would look at what WL was doing and reflexively celebrate it. Or at the very least, see the good in it. Yes, that what they are doing is what we are supposed to be doing, which is bringing to the citizens of the world the secrets that governments and corporations are trying to keep to conceal their improper actions. And yet there is almost none of that. I mean, it made sense to me that people in the political class were furious at WL because people in the political class inherently see their own prerogatives as being worth preserving, and they want to be able to operate in secret and think that they ought to be. But, the fact that journalists were not only on board with that, but were really leading the way was really remarkable to me as I did these interviews because there wasn’t even really a pretense of separation between how journalists think and how political functionaries think. I found that pretty striking as well.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">[34:34] A few other aspects to the WL controversy that I think are commonalities in how our political discourse functions: One of the things you had was almost a full and complete bipartisan consensus that WL was satanic. I don’t think there has been a single democratic of republican politician of any national notoriety [other than I think Ron Paul and a couple of very liberal members of the house] who were willing to say that maybe WL isn’t all evil in a very cautious way. Other than that, you basically had a complete consensus as always happens when it comes to national security controversies. Almost nobody was willing to defend WL.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Then what you had was a faction on the American right, and some democrats as well, who very casually, almost like you would advocate a change in the capital gains tax, or some added safeguards for environmental protection, would go on television and start calling for Julian Assange’s death: like I think we need to send drone attacks, I think we need to treat him the way that Al Qaeda is treated. And maybe I was being a little unfair to Democrats and the debated between Republicans and Democrats were having at this time was should we kill Julian Assange or just throw him in prison for the rest of his life, even though he hasn’t actually committed any discernable crime? But the ease and the casualness with which our political culture entails calls for people’s death, you know we ought to kill this person even without any due process we ought to use drones, we ought to treat him the way we treat Al Qaeda, and the like I think is also reflective of how our political culture functions.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Couple other things that happened that I think are quite common which WL sheds light on: One of the things that started happening was that you have members of congress of both parties writing laws, now to vest the government with greater power to prosecute people for espionage, and for other serious felony offenses for leaking classified information. So this is very typical when a new demon arises and here we have Julian Assange and WL the villain of the month, immediately the government starts thinking about how they can opportunistically manipulate the hatred, the two minute hate sessions that arise out of this new villain to develop and seize more power for itself. And you very much see that.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And the last point that happens that is, I think, quite significant, is, and this is what David was talking about in his introduction, was the complete manipulation of law to advance the interest of the powerful. One of the things that I found to be striking about what’s happened with WL is, there’s this group, Anonymous is what they call themselves, and they’re essentially a group of mostly adolescent hackers who have quite advanced computer skills for doing things like shutting down websites or slowing them down. What they decided they were going to do was they were going to take a position in defense of WL. They said that they were going to target for cyber attacks and other kinds of cyber warfare any companies that in response to the government’s pressure terminated their services with WL. There were a whole variety of companies that obediently complied with the government’s request to cut off all services of WL: Paypal, Mastercard, Visa, Amazon, all of these companies made it impossible for WL to stay on line or for them to conduct financial transactions to receive donations. Anonymous began to target these websites. And the attacks were fairly primitive. They slowed those sites down for a few hours. Not very much damage. And yet, the Justice Department treated them like this Pearl Harbor on the internet. Eric Holder said “We are going to devote unlimited resources to getting to the bottom of Anonymous and who they are”. Turned out to be a couple of 16 year olds in The Netherlands and Belgium doing the clichéd operating from their mother’s basement type thing, but the fact that they had targeted corporate power on behalf of WL, an enemy of the US government, meant that the full force of the law was unleashed in order to punish them.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">But, a couple of weeks before those Anonymous attacks, there was a far more sophisticated, and a far more serious and dangerous cyber attack that was launched at WL, that basically resulted in their being removed from the entire network of websites for the US, the entire website that hosts all internet websites for the US could no longer sustain those attacks that were being launched in a way that would safeguard their other customers. So they removed WL from the internet. That was when they had to search around and ultimately find a different url. Now that attack was really worthy of serious investigation because the complexity of the attack was really unlike anything that had really been seen before in terms of being right out in the open.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And yet, so far, for some really strange reason, even thought that attack was every bit as illegal as the attacks that Anonymous had launched that merited such scrutiny and investigation from the Justice Department, Eric Holder, the Justice Department, the Obama Administration has never once vowed to get to the bottom of who might be responsible for the attacks that knocked WL off line, even thought they’re much more dangerous.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And so, what this really reflects is that the law becomes a weapon for the US government for corporate power to use, to punish those who stand up to it he way anonymous did in a very mild and modest way. And yet, at the same time, the law shields those who are in power or who are operating on behalf of those in power of to advance their interests as illustrated by the fact that whoever was responsible for the attack on WL, whether a government organization or a corporate entity, or some combination of both, broke serious laws, committed serious cyber felonies, and, yet, will never be investigated, let alone prosecuted by the Justice Department.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And it’s all of these ingredients that I’ve just described that WL revealed, and that has shaped the outcome and driven the WL controversy are the same things I would talk about no matter what political controversy you asked me to talk about, whether it be Civil Liberties erosions; or what’s happening in Wisconsin, or anything else. And that’s why I say that the title, the topic, the individual episode that you chose to focus on, is valuable only as a window into how our political culture, how political factions all function.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">The last point I want to make is why I think that WL is such a vital topic, not just in terms of the light that it shines on our political process, but in terms of what’s at stake.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">I actually do believe that the battle over WL will easily be one of the most politically consequential conflicts of our generation, if not THE most politically consequential. I think that we’re just at the very insipient stages of this conflict, and that how it plays out is still very much still to be determined. I think what’s at stake is whether or not the secrecy regime that is the linchpin for how the American government functions, will continue to be invulnerable and impenetrable or whether it will start to be meaningfully breached. And I also think that internet freedom, the ability to use the internet for what has always been its ultimate promise, which is to have citizens band together in a way that no longer needs large corporate and institutional resources, to subvert and undermine the most powerful factions to provide a counter weight to them, whether that internet freedom will be preserved.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And this is why I think that: we have in general, when you talk about politics and you look at political discussions, what typically is focused on are these internecine day-to-day conflicts that are partisan in nature. What are Republicans and Democrats bickering about? What reason today is the left and the right at one another’s throat? What is it that’s dividing the citizenry and making the citizenry divisive and unable to band together to defend their common interest? These are the kinds of controversies that fill cable news shows; that occupy pundits and political chatterers, and all of that.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">By and large, all of that is completely inconsequential. In fact, I shouldn’t say that. It actually is consequential. It has a purpose. The purpose is to distract all of us from what really matters in terms of how the government functions. What matters in terms of how the government functions has very little to do with whether Democrats or Republicans win the last election, or the next election. And it has very little to do with who sits in the White House, what individual occupies the oval office. I don’t mean to suggest those things are irrelevant, they’re not, they matter in marginal and sometimes more ways.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">But what they don’t have anything to do with is the permanent power faction that runs the US and runs the governments with which the US is allied, this consortium of government and corporate power that I talked about earlier. What’s really interesting is, it used to be case that if you stood up in front of an audience and said that what really is running the government of the US is not the political parties that win elections, but this secret consortium of government and corporate power, a lot of people would look at you like you were some sort of fringe paranoid maniac, it would be a self marginalizing act to talk about that. But I don’t actually think that’s the case very much longer, and that’s because a lot of mainstream sources have confronted those realities, because it’s impossible to turn away from them.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">I mean you could of course go back to the famous 1956 farewell speech of Dwight Eisenhower, who is hardly a fringe figure. He was a four star, a five star general, and a two term elected Republican president and he warned about exactly that. He called it the military industrial complex, of course. But he described how the merger of government and corporate power in the national security state context was threatening to subvert democracy because it would become vastly more powerful and unaccountable than anything that was actually still responsive to democratic forces. And yet, it’s odd that something that someone like Dwight Eisenhower warned about became for a long time taboo to talk about. I think in the post 9/11 world, this merger has become so overt, so conspicuous, so pervasive that its impossible to hide it any longer.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">So earlier this year, or the end of last year, the Washington Post had a three part series that got very little attention because it covered this topic too well. People just didn’t know quite how to process it, especially people who go on television and talk about the news of the day. It was called Top Secret America. It was written by Dana Priest, who’s one of the widely hailed and highly decorated establishment reporters, along with William Arkin. What it describes is exactly what I just described, which is a vast apparatus of corporate and government power that is so unaccountable and so secret and so sprawling and so powerful that not even the people ostensibly running it know what it is composed of or what it does or what it entails. This is the faction that is truly exerting power in the US when it comes to most of the significant policies.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">So, people become confused, and frustrated and angry and confounded and disheartened when they elect a Democratic president like Barack Obama who ran on a platform of change and delivered so little of it; and who continues to extend and bolster the very policies against which he railed while he was running.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">There are lots of reasons why that is, and part of it is because politicians are inherently unprincipled, and get into office and want to preserve their own power. They think that the power that other people exercise which was a threat, in their hands is not only something that could be trusted but could be used as a force for good. All of those reasons are true. But, what is really true is that this powerful faction that exists, this enormous consortium of government and corporate power is at least as powerful and probably much more so, than any single politician, even the “most powerful man on earth” or whatever we call the president these days. So, even if he wanted to change these things, and I think he doesn’t, even if he wanted to he probably couldn’t.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">What this faction relies upon more than anything else to preserve their power and to carry out the actions they undertake, is this wall of secrecy, this regime of secrecy. It is that secrecy that enables them to operate in the dark and therefore operate without any constraints, moral, ethical, legal, or any other kind. This is not a new concept. If you look at what political theorists have always talked about for centuries, if you look at what the founders talked about, the gravest threat to democracy and to a healthy government is excessive secrecy, because people are human beings, and human nature is such that if you operate in the dark, you will start to abuse your power.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">That’s why, central to the whole design of our country, was that there would be these institutions that would prevent that from happening. They would be adversarial to political power. You would have the Congress that would investigate and exert oversight. We would have the media, the glorious Fourth Estate that would serve as a bulwark against abuse. We would have the Courts that would ultimately hold people accountable under the constraints of law at least, if nothing else worked. And each of these institutions have utterly failed, especially, though not only, especially in the post 9-11 world to bring about any meaningful transparency to what the national security and the surveillance state is doing. They operate fully without accountability, without constraint and with total compunction to do what they want.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">[49:22] So, WL, is one of the very, very, very few entities that has proven itself capable of breaching that wall of secrecy. That is why it is one of the very few entities that has finally put some degree of meaningful fear in the heart of this national security state. For that reason and that reason alone is all I need. That is why I think a defense of WL has become so vital and so crucial and such an obligation on the part of anybody who believes that this regime of secrecy is so harmful.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">Now if you look at the instances of serious government abuse over the past decade, and even longer, what you’ll find is that the lynchpin, the enabler for all of them is secrecy. So, if you look at the Bush Administration’s creation of a worldwide torture regime, or its spying on American citizens without the warrants required by law, or Dick Cheney meeting with energy executives early on to formulate the nation’s energy policies to benefit only that group, or how the government excluded any dissenting intelligence in the lead up to the Iraq war to make the case as though it was somehow airtight, or even going back to Viet Nam, when the government knew the war they were waging was unwinable, even as they were assuring the American public they were making progress and then Daniel Ellsberg released the secret documents showing that. It’s always secrecy that enables this level of abuse. It’s the same thing in all of the animal kingdom. Cockroaches at night scamper around in the kitchen and the minute you turn on the light, they run and hide. That is what transparency and light does to people.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">One of the things about it is you can have whistleblowers, and we have had whistleblowers without WL, but there are a couple of features about WL that make it so unique and such a threat. One of the unique features is that it provides full anonymity. It doesn’t even know the identity of the people who are leaking to it, unlike say, the NYT, which always knows the identity of their sources and thus could be compelled at some point to disclose it to the government. And they have been compelled to do so. WL does not know the identity of who it is who’s leaking to them, and unless somebody goes around and boasts that they are the leaker it’s virtually impossible for the government, no matter how much force they bring to bear, to discover the identity</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">More importantly, WL is a stateless organization. Unlike the NYT or the Washington Post or The Guardian or Der Spiegel, or El Pais or any of the other newspapers around the world, WL does not physically exist in any state, and therefore can’t be subject to the laws of that state. It can’t, therefore, be dragged into court and compelled to disclose information about their sources, even if they had it. But, what’s more important still about this statelessness is that unlike American newspapers, which will acknowledge as Bill Keller, the executive editor of the NYT recently did, in an article he wrote about WL, they will acknowledge that even though they try to be objective, their allegiance is a patriotic and nationalistic one. They are loyal to the US government, and their editorial judgments are shaped by what advances or undermines American interests. They therefore don’t disclose things many times on the ground that disclosure will harm American policy, even though that policy is improper. So, the NYT learned that the Bush Administration was spying without warrants and they sat on that story for a year because Bush told them to, until Bush was safely reelected. Or, the Washington Post learned that the CIA was maintaining a network of CIA black sites throughout Eastern Europe, a violation of every precept of international law on American treaties. Although they finally wrote about it, they concealed the specific nations where those black sites were located because the CIA told them that if they disclosed the nations it would prevent them from continuing to operate those prisons. So they withheld the information that enabled that illegal policy to continue.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">WL doesn’t do that. They have no allegiance to the US government. Their allegiance is to transparency and disclosure. So, sources know that if they disclose something to the NYT, it’s very likely that the NYT will conceal it, or will edit snippets of it and release only those in order to protect the interests and policies of the US government. WL will not have that allegiance. They have a true journalistic purpose which is to bring transparency to the world.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">And then, finally what you see is the reform potential with WL. The amount of information which has been released over the past year is extraordinary. And although journalists have talked about how there’s quote nothing new in these documents was the claim made for a while to dismiss its importance. On one hand WL is a great threat to national security and compromising all that was good in the world. On the other hand nothing they were disclosing was remotely new and it was all everything we already knew. That conflict never got reconciled. It didn’t need to.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">But, the reality is that the documents WL has disclosed has not only made huge headlines in the US, but in almost every country around the world. What’s really interesting is that Bill Keller, the afore mention NYT executive editor, although a hardcore critic of WL, in that article said, that some of the documents released by WL, allegedly disclosed to WL by Bradley Manning, exposed just how corrupt and opulent the royal family in Tunisia was, and that that helped fuel and accelerate the uprising in Tunisia, which was of course the catalyst for the rest of the uprisings in the middle east. So, if you look at the chat logs that have been disclosed, where Bradley Manning supposedly confessed that he was the source of these documents, what he says about why he did that was that he believed that only WL would provide the level of disclosure needed to bring about the kind of transparency that would make people, not just in the US, but in the world, realize the level and magnitude of corruption of the people in power. And that this could not help but trigger very serious uprisings and reforms: exactly what is happening is exactly what he said he hoped to achieve through this leak. That’s why what David said in his introduction sounds like it may be satirical or hyperbole, but I think it’s really true. I’ve said the same thing, as well, that if Julian Assange or Bradley Manning were awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, it would certainly be a far more justifiable award than the one that was given in 2009 to the American president.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">I have one more point that I just want to make, that I think underscores this whole controversy. And that is, as I said earlier, that I saw the WL controversy as a war over the regime of secrecy and whether it would be preserved or subverted and over internet freedom as well. The people who are most threatened by WL are well aware of the fact that you can not stop the technology that WL has developed. Even if you did send a drone to kill Julian Assange and everybody else associated with WL, the template already exists. It’s not all that difficult to replicate WL’s system for anonymity and for disclosure. In fact, there are other entities already popping up that will simply substitute for WL and replace what they’re doing. The Pentagon knows that. The National Security State knows that. They know that they can’t create secrecy practices that will protect them against these kinds of disclosures, as well. So, their strategy is to escalate the climate of intimidation and deterrence, so that would-be whistle blowers in the future think twice and a third time and a fourth time when they discover illegal and deceitful actions about exposing it to the world.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">So you see, in response to WL, and a variety of other whistle blowers, the Obama administration waging what is clearly the most unprecedented aggressive war to prosecute whistle blowers, people who exposed waste and corruption and law breaking in the Bush era, have been prosecuted with extraordinary aggression by the Obama DoJ, even though Obama, when he ran for president, hailed whistle blowers as patriotic and courageous, and said that whistle blowing needs to be fostered and protected, he’s currently heading a war, the likes of which we have never seen, to put people who whistle blow, who expose the wrong doing of the powerful, into prison, and to expose who they are and detect them.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">On top of that, you have a war being waged on WL. The Justice department is obsessed with the idea of prosecuting WL, even though they have done nothing that newspapers everyday also don’t do, which is expose government secrets that they receive from their source. And they’ve done things like subpoena the twitter accounts of anyone associated with WL including a sitting member of the Icelandic Parliament who was once associated with WL, causing a little mini diplomatic crises, at least as much of a crises as can be caused with Iceland.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">You see as well what has happened to Bradley Manning, which David described and I’ve written endlessly about, and won’t repeat, but, what they want essentially to do, is to take that climate of fear that I began by talking about, that made so many people who read what I wrote petrified of donating money to WL, even though they have the absolute legal and constitutional right to do so. They want to take this climate of fear and drastically expand it. This is what the Bush torture and detention regime were about. Everybody knows that if you torture people you don’t get good information. It was never about that. Disappearing people and putting them into orange jumpsuits, and into legal black holes and water boarding them and freezing them and killing detainees was about signaling to the rest of world that you can not challenge or stand up to American power, because if you do, we will respond without constraints, and there is nothing anybody can or will do about it. It was about creating a climate of repression and fear to deter any would be dissenters or challengers to American power. And that is what this war on whistle blowing and this war on WL is about as well.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">They don’t want, more than anything, for anybody to get the idea that they can start doing what WL is doing, to start exposing those in power who engage in wrong doing. That is their biggest fear, because they know that if that mechanism exists, they can no longer continue to do the things that they are doing. So, this war on WL, this war on whistle blowers, is about forever ending really the one avenue that we’ve had over the past decade for learning about what our government and their corporate partners do, which is the process of whistle blowing. If they succeed, that regime of secrecy will become much more intensified. That deterrent will endure for a long time. But if WL is successfully defended, if these efforts are warded off, then one of the most promising means of bringing accountability and transparency that we’ve seen in a very long time, will be preserved. And that’s why I talk about WL so much, why I write about it so much and why I think it’s so important.</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">So, thank you very much for listening. [1:01:45]</span></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span" ><b><span class="Apple-style-span">Please don't miss the follow-up discussion with Glenn and David Barsamian. It can be found <a href="http://eyestir.blogspot.com/2011/03/glenn-greenwald-with-david-barsamian.html">here</a></span>.</b></span></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><span class="Apple-style-span">With much thanks to "<a href="http://j.mp/eq7LNF">harpie</a>" for the transcript.</span></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p><p style="margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 0px; padding-top: 0px; padding-right: 0px; padding-bottom: 0px; padding-left: 0px; border-top-width: 0px; border-right-width: 0px; border-bottom-width: 0px; border-left-width: 0px; border-style: initial; border-color: initial; outline-width: 0px; outline-style: initial; outline-color: initial; font-weight: inherit; font-style: inherit; font-size: 13px; font-family: inherit; vertical-align: baseline; "><br /></p><p style="font-weight: inherit; font-size: 1.3em; font-family: georgia, serif; "></p></div></span></div>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-50332269512304389012011-01-15T17:27:00.002-05:002011-01-15T17:46:14.553-05:00Tom Delay goes down for 3<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/TTIjmCkPDgI/AAAAAAAACdk/l5AgCBYmhJs/s1600/bagman.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 236px; height: 400px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/TTIjmCkPDgI/AAAAAAAACdk/l5AgCBYmhJs/s400/bagman.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562547626186837506" border="0" /></a><br /><h3 class="headline md">But who is the Capo di tutti capi?</h3> <div class="deck md"> <p>Inquiring minds want to know.</p> <p>This whole story reads like an article about a takedown of the Gambino family.</p> <p>Delay is thug, a hood. But he is just a bag man.</p> <p>Anyone think that the rot stops with Tom?</p> <p>If it's wrong to take a bribe, then it's wrong to give one. When will they indict the lobbyists?</p><p><br /></p><p><br /></p> </div>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-65496585439795276232011-01-15T16:15:00.004-05:002011-01-16T02:44:20.094-05:00"Gun" Violence in PakistanObama is very very upset over the shooting victims in Arizona. Especially the kids. The speech was good.<br /><br />Many dead kids in Pakistan due to Predator drone attacks. Very few alleged al Qaeda dead. This year Predator attacks will be stepped up to include militants.<br /><br />What could go wrong?<br /><img alt="http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Drones-kill-innocent-people.jpg" src="http://www.veteranstoday.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Drones-kill-innocent-people.jpg" /><br />http://jahanzebjz.tumblr.com/post/2753963879/victims-of-us-drone-attacks-<br />in-pakistan-drone<br /><br />President Obama has already ordered twice as many unmanned drone attacks as his predecessor, George W. Bush. Few notice and even fewer care.<br /><br />Guns don't kill people. Predator drone attacks kill people.Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-26068048555074839902011-01-15T15:51:00.001-05:002011-01-15T16:03:22.639-05:00Shootout in Arizona<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/TTILjducDaI/AAAAAAAACdc/DyRwlFrmNI4/s1600/gun%2B103.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 278px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/TTILjducDaI/AAAAAAAACdc/DyRwlFrmNI4/s400/gun%2B103.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5562521193658715554" border="0" /></a><br /><p><b>November 1881</b> <b>Ordinance No. 9</b></p> <dl><dd>"To Provide against Carrying of Deadly Weapons" (effective April 19, 1881).</dd><dd><b>Section 1.</b> "It is hereby declared to be unlawful for any person to carry deadly weapons, concealed or otherwise [except the same be carried openly in sight, and in the hand] within the limits of the City of Tombstone.</dd><dd><b>Section 2:</b> This prohibition does not extend to persons immediately leaving or entering the city, who, with good faith, and within reasonable time are proceeding to deposit, or take from the place of deposit such deadly weapon.</dd><dd><b>Section 3:</b> All fire-arms of every description, and bowie knives and dirks, are included within the prohibition of this ordinance."</dd><dd><b>Ordinance No. 7, Section 1:</b></dd><dd>"Any establishment, house of prostitution or other place open to the public and it shall be the duty of any officer to enter such place and at once arrest such persons as he may then find engaged in or causing such breach of the peace." (effective April 12, 1881).</dd></dl><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral" target="_blank">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/<wbr>Gunfight_at_the_O.K._Corral</a><br /><br /><br />The gunfight at the O.K. Corral actually started because Cowboys (the Cowboys were a gang) were trying to come into Tombstone with guns. That was not allowed. That was the proximate cause of the fight, but the background is they hated each other for a variety of reasons.<br /><br />It's 120 years later, and these asses are still arguing about guns.Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-48107322745117631642010-08-21T20:44:00.018-04:002010-09-05T22:44:10.949-04:00Cutting Spines, the logical terminus of "Getting Tough"<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/THC3i-w8OFI/AAAAAAAACYY/AQHgTA8CCUc/s1600/Terrehaute_gurney.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 400px; height: 264px;" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/THC3i-w8OFI/AAAAAAAACYY/AQHgTA8CCUc/s400/Terrehaute_gurney.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508104155865823314" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;font-family:verdana;"><span style="font-size:130%;"><span style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);">A Saudi judge is reported to have asked hospitals if it is possible to cut the spinal cord of the man, found guilty of paralysing another man in a fight -- </span><a style="color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-11045848">BBC</a></span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br /></span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Prime Minister Stephen Harper has passed legislation that reflects his "get tough" position on crime. Getting tough would imply that there is some ultimate standard that we are not applying, some perfect punitive goal that would constitute ultimate justice. </span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">So what is the logical consequence of getting tough? Stop me if you see anything on this list that Harper or Vic Toews would not approve of.</span> <div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Death penalty for murder? Check. </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">Death penalty for 'rape'? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; ">Check.</span> </div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Life sentences for serious crimes? Check. </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">3 times you're out? Check. </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">No parole? Check. </span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">Harsh conditions in prison? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; ">Check.</span> </div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Prison rape an acceptable part of the punishment </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; ">Check.</span> </div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Forced labour - check</span> <span style="font-family:verdana;">Corporal punishment? </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: verdana; ">Check.</span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Bad food, starvation diet? Check.</span> </div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">No tv's. Check.</span> </div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;">Severing someone's spine because he paralyzed a man in a fight? Check?</span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"><br /></span></div><div><span style="font-family:verdana;"></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">Severing spines, eye for an eye, = getting tough? Shocking yes, but how far off the mark is it from Harper's 'dream' system? I don't think that Harper would go so far as that, nor would most Canadians. But this is the logical consequence of path we are on. If Harper gets his American style justice system we might not be severing spines but we will be executing people.<br /><br /><span style="font-family:verdana;">The illustration used for this story is an official US government image of </span></span><span style="font-family:verdana;">the gurney used to perform executions at Terre Haute Penitentiary by lethal injection.</span> Lethal injection is a perfect example of the medicalization of punishment.<br />PD-USGOV.</div>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-60747172694970911112010-07-14T21:41:00.005-04:002010-07-20T23:35:10.216-04:00Great infographic on the failed drug warThe truth about the war on drugs is obvious. It's failed. In the process it has destroyed many people.<br /><br /><a href="http://wp.me/prCF6-Kt"><img src="http://standardmadness.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/war-on-drugs.jpg" alt="The War on Drugs" border="0" width="500" /></a><br />[Via: <a href="http://www.medicalbillingandcoding.org/">Medical Coding Certification</a>]<br /><br />See also: Glenn Greenwald, <a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=10080">Cato report</a> on the success of drug decriminalization in Portugal.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">On July 1, 2001, a nationwide law in Portugal took effect that decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin. Under the new legal framework, all drugs were "decriminalized," not "legalized." Thus, drug possession for personal use and drug usage itself are still legally prohibited, but violations of those prohibitions are deemed to be exclusively administrative violations and are removed completely from the criminal realm. Drug trafficking continues to be prosecuted as a criminal offense.</span> Glenn GreenwaldBill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-70482362725083734062010-02-11T12:55:00.003-05:002010-02-13T03:00:22.343-05:00I just got buzzed or, Help! I am being followed!If Google went down tomorrow, I'd pretty much have to kill myself. I use Gmail for my business because it available to me anywhere, and my ability to organize and integrate it with my other data and apps is stunningly useful. And no spam.<br /><br />I use Google Street View to check out businesses that might have a use for my rear projection digital signage business line, which is designed to be displayed in windows. I "go" down the street looking for businesses that have a suitable window and then I contact them. Saves hours of riding around, and it's free.<br /><br />I have a lot of my business information and important documents stored on Google docs, which I also use to collaborate on projects. This blog is on Google. I use their calendar, their "to do" list. It just goes on and on.<br /><br />Today I hooked up Google Buzz, it was easy, too easy, just like the rest of the Google happy dust. To my surprise (shock?) I am being "followed" by someone I don't know - but who once posted on this blog. And with several hundred other "contacts" I am sure that this is just the beginning.<br /><br />What can he see? According to Google:<br /><br />"Your Google Reader shared items, Picasa Web public albums, and Google Chat status messages will automatically appear as posts in Buzz. To edit your connected sites or change privacy settings, view connected sites."<br /><br />Is even this too much? Sure I have public Picasa albums, I use Google reader (Feedly actually, but they are integrated into the matrix, sorry Google), but I don't know... this just feels invasive.<br /><br />What really bothers me though, is that unlike our other shadowy masters, Steve and Bill, I know almost nothing about about Sergei and Larry, other than they are very smart and very very rich. Jesus, they might even be Republicans! Are you scared yet?<br /><br /><span style="font-weight: bold;">"Don't be evil", Google motto.<br /></span><br />Larry and Sergei have information, lots of it. Absolute power and all that.<br /><br />Google indexes every word on every web page in the world.<br /><br />Google, or "The Google" as I like to call them - is a problem.<br /><br />Every email I send, they store. Every email I get, they store. Their robots read my mail to serve me ads. You too. Is that all they do? Who knows? Google does!<br /><br />Has Barack Obama ever visited bigtits.com, or made some intemperate remarks about white people in his emails? I have no idea, but Sergei and Larry do, and if he did, they could, if they so chose, blackmail him, with that one little data point, they would, in effect, own the President. You too of course, same for all the senators and members of the congress, one false step on line and the Google has got your number.<br /><br />They have all the passwords. They know where you went and what you searched for. And it's not going away. Can Larry and Sergei resist using the 'ring of power' , the largest database of personal information ever assembled? Are they as good and Bilbo and Frodo?<br /><br />If you don't believe me, just Google it.Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-65123981384155601482010-02-09T11:00:00.002-05:002010-02-09T11:03:02.585-05:00Gil Scott Heron, extraordinary new recordingI don't work for the record companies, so it's just from me when I say that this new album by Gil Scott Heron is something very special. Have a listen. Then have a Listen. <br /><br /><br /><object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=9,0,0,0" width="300" height="500" id="videoplayer.prt1" align="middle"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="movie" value="http://gilscottheron.net/widget/gilscottheronalbum.swf"><param name="quality" value="high"><param name="bgcolor" value="#000000"> <embed src="http://gilscottheron.net/widget/gilscottheronalbum.swf" quality="high" bgcolor="#000000" width="300" height="500" name="videoplayer.prt1" align="middle" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer"></embed></object>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-90119605875986407002010-01-08T17:32:00.002-05:002010-01-08T17:38:19.629-05:00Happy New Year. Real men go to Sana´aIt's a new year. A new decade. Still no agreement on climate change. Obama is still bombing, most lately in Yemen, the new front in the now official "war on al-Qaeda".<br /><br />And it's been almost a decade since 911, and still no new investigation. Still though, there is hope.<br /><br />Someone just sent me this, the latest "Hitler Rants..." video, which is well on it's way to being the most edited video clip in history.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/EbRc1BhXjvA&hl=en_US&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/EbRc1BhXjvA&hl=en_US&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-6129926751262650742009-10-12T17:33:00.002-04:002010-01-06T10:59:14.626-05:00For those of you how believe Obama will get rid of nukes or something... Onward to Mars!It's an absolutely hilarious idea. Obama is going to get rid of nukes! When? How? <p>Remember when someone told Bush that Mars was a planet, and that people could go there, and he said that sounded swell, and that America should go! This is like that. Bullshit.</p> <p>A lofty sounding "goal" for the proles to chew on. Nothing more.</p> <p>Of course the irony, the cosmic irony, is that contrary to popular belief, nuclear weapons actually do prevent war! Does anyone here doubt that WWIII would not have broken out over: Korea, Suez, Vietnam, Cuba, etc if it were not for the fact that had the central actors actually had gone at one another, we'd all be dead? Why has North Korea not been attacked? Nuclear weapons! Why did America not attack China? Yup. Why did America not attack Russia? Same reason!</p> <p>WWII is pretty good proof that we did not need nukes to wipe out civilization. The most deaths caused by bombing were not at Hiroshima or Nagasaki, the most deaths caused by bombing were at Dresden, and Tokyo. Today, we can kill much better than that, a global war, even without nuclear weapons would easily destroy billions of lives, not to mention our environment.</p> <p>No, nuclear weapons have prevented, not once but many times the utter destruction of the Earth. Obama probably does not know this, but it doesn't matter because he is entirely insincere about eliminating nuclear weapons. It's impossible for a dozen good reasons, and that he does know.</p> <p>If Obama actually is serious about getting rid of nuclear weapons, his idiocy will result in WWIII and be the death of us all. And for that he gets a Peace Prize?</p><p><a href="http://www.salon.com/opinion/feature/2009/10/10/nobel/index.html">reposted from Salon</a><br /></p>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-60011354970736506042009-09-28T00:33:00.007-04:002010-07-24T21:35:40.789-04:00Attack on Iran - Are "secret sites" the New Anthrax?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/SsA9mEClm8I/AAAAAAAACL0/GL3ZRi550hU/s1600-h/001powell_anthrax.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 315px; height: 217px;" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/SsA9mEClm8I/AAAAAAAACL0/GL3ZRi550hU/s400/001powell_anthrax.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5386372878464031682" border="0" /></a>I have been predicting it for years. As have many others, but the attacks on Iran's nuclear facilities hasn't happened. Why? <p>There is a debate over the attack, even in Israel. Even there, the serious military types worry that a strike, (actually weeks and weeks of strikes - see Kosovo) might be enough to trigger an Arab nations onslaught. And they worry about the hundreds of SRBM's that Iran could credibly place on Israeli targets. Never mind the certain disruption in oil supplies which would trigger a global economic catastrophe, which would be exponentially worse than the current one. And did I mention that Iran has dozens, if not hundreds, of hypersonic Russian and Chinese Sunburn, Mosquit and Silkworm ship killer missiles that could credibly destroy many of the American ships now operating in the Persian gulf?</p> <p>It also now seems that even though Cheney supported an attack, Bush did not. That matters. Without US acquiescence at least, and support at best, any Israeli attack would fail. So America is critical. And to date, no green light has been given.</p> <p>This does not mean that the fanatics, religious and otherwise, who occupy the Israeli government, won't make the calculation that if they attack, the United States MUST come in on their side to avoid, wait for it, ANOTHER HOLOCAUST.</p> <p>Meh, I tend to depend on the good old MAD doctrine which worked so well with those "crazy", "ëvil" Russkies. All this talk about a "suicidal" leadership is just propaganda. As Sting said, even the Russians love their children too.</p> <p>Is Ajad nuts enough to do it anyway? I don't think so, aside from the fact that he lacks the political power to order a strike, AND IS YEARS AWAY FROM HAVING A WEAPON! The real question is, Does Khameni want one? And the answer is that is that the Supreme Leader has declared atomic weapons "unislamic" .<br /></p><p>Khamenhi knows that it would be the literal end of Iran, and even if the former mayor of Tehran wanted to nuke Israel, the military would never comply. The Ayatollahs would have to be mad to support such an adventure, and they are not, despite all the press to the contrary. They would be annihilated as Hilary said. In fact if Iran were to nuke Israel, even I would support glassing the entire country as a lesson to the next lot of maniacs.</p> <p>The real danger will come from those "serious" journalists and politicians who will try to convince us that a "limited" strike is possible, just like the good old days at Osirak. Only those days are gone.</p><p>I think the real "fear" of an Iranian bomb is that the West and America in particular, will have to treat them as equals, and not "little people" who we can lord over and order around as we do with so many nuclear armless countries around the world.</p> <p>So it's on again, off again. The name of the game is Maniacs/fundamentalists vs the Sane. Unfortunately for us all, there are many pushing for an attack, whatever the cost, it is up to we the people, to push back even harder, with facts and appeals to morality and common sense, thin as the latter are on the ground. I see no other way forward.</p>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-88499108536921799202009-08-29T23:18:00.004-04:002009-09-19T01:20:37.288-04:00Sibel Edmonds on Mike Malloy, 911 bombshell, Bin Laden worked for the west<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="http://visibility911.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/sibel_edmonds-couch.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 433px; height: 576px;" src="http://visibility911.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/sibel_edmonds-couch.jpg" alt="" border="0" /></a><br />Sibel Edmonds, former FBI translator, and some say the "most gagged woman in America" has just revealed on the Mike Malloy show, to guest host Brad Friedman, that Osama Bin Laden had "intimate relations" with the intelligence community right up to 911.<br /><br />Lots wrong with that picture.<br /><br />http://letsibeledmondsspeak.blogspot.com/2009/07/sibel-edmonds-on-mike-malloy.html<br /><br />More at Blad blog: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7332<br /><br />Actual interview here: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7406Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-81541138896346635182009-06-18T01:54:00.005-04:002009-06-23T11:41:13.146-04:00Unobtrusive. Pervasive. LethalMAV's micro air vehicles. AKA suicide bombers that can fly!<br /><br />Remote controlled killing machines change everything! Going to war just got easy, and cheap! Does this mean more war? You bet!<br /><br />http://www.flightglobal.com/blogs/flight-international/2008/12/video-suicide-micro-air-vehicl.html<br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/CIvj_kaVqNU&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/CIvj_kaVqNU&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object><br /><br />Most people think aircraft when they think of remotely operated battle bots, but soon land and sea bots they will be everywhere as well. If you think that remotely controlled killing machines are frightening, just wait till the autonomous killing machines come on line!<br /><br />UPDATE: "The U.S. Department of Homeland Security launched another unmanned surveillance aircraft over the Canadian border on Monday, this time in the Great Lakes area, to try to stem the flow of drugs, migrants and terrorists into the country, U.S. officials told CBC News." http://www.cbc.ca/canada/ottawa/story/2009/06/22/drone-great-lakes022.html<br /><br />Robot tanks next? You betcha! The annexation of Canada just got easier! Good job Obama!<br /><br /><object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/C62JSgJo39E&hl=en&fs=1&"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/C62JSgJo39E&hl=en&fs=1&" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-47033712940744445502009-02-21T14:18:00.004-05:002009-02-21T14:27:10.787-05:00Fabled Enemies -- Really Excellent Video on the 911 Attacks<embed id="VideoPlayback" src="http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-2144933190875239407&hl=en&fs=true" style="width: 400px; height: 326px;" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always" type="application/x-shockwave-flash"></embed><br /><br />From Jason Bermas, a co-producer of the legendary, if flawed, "Loose Change" series. Unlike others, Bermas focuses on evidence that the hijackers had training at American military bases, and high level assistance obtaining American visas.<br /><br />Comprehensive, mesmerizing, and chock a block with evidence and interviews.<br /><br />Full review <a href="http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/10/a-review-of-jason-bermass-fabled-enemies/">here</a>.Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-10935592.post-4312054524617913162009-01-23T23:09:00.008-05:002011-05-23T20:07:23.584-04:009/11 Truth, Lies @ Salon<div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/SXqXFL6cEgI/AAAAAAAABP8/YpqxxjmbGwI/s1600-h/coll_911_blog.jpg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5294710427280478722" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_scoFoyywwrI/SXqXFL6cEgI/AAAAAAAABP8/YpqxxjmbGwI/s400/coll_911_blog.jpg" style="cursor: pointer; float: left; height: 240px; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; width: 320px;" /></a>I often post over at Unclaimed Territory, Glenn Greenwald's blog at Salon.com.</div><br />
Oftentimes, the subject of 9/11 Truth comes up. Glenn is not too keen on this as it is disruptive and generally "off topic". And as he says it quickly degenerates into a shouting match between the two opposing camps.<br />
<br />
So today I offered to let people who want to discuss this in a more appropriate venue come here to Contumacious to discuss and of course YELL!<br />
<br />
It's all good. Let the chips fall where they may.<br />
<br />
My position is pretty clear, I don't buy the official story. I have no clear idea how they did it, as I am not privy to all the facts or the evidence, but I am sure that any good theory has to explain the facts, and my reading is that the official story fails to do this in many many ways.<br />
<br />
So if anyone from Salon, or anywhere else for that matter, has something to say. Please feel free to say it here.<br />
<span style="font-weight: bold;"><br />
UPDATE</span><br />
Some interesting links:<br />
<br />
Operation Northwoods, the first draft for the 911 attack? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods<br />
<br />
Pilots for 911 Truth: http://pilotsfor911truth.org/<br />
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Prof. David Ray Griffin video: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8797525979024486145&hl=en<br />
<br />
Architects for 911 Truth: http://www.ae911truth.org/<br />
<br />
UPDATE 2<br />
<br />
OPERATION<br />
<span style="font-style: italic;"><br />
Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war."</span> - James Bamford, Body of Secrets<br />
<br />
A big objection to 911 being an "inside job" is the sheer size of the operation, and the ability of the conspirators to maintain secrecy after the fact. The truth is we don't know how many people had to be in on it, because we don't know exactly what happened. It is true that in the past we have things like the Manhattan Project that even Harry Truman knew nothing about until he became President.<br />
<br />
Operation Northwoods is not a conspiracy theory, it happened but was rejected by President Kennedy. What this teaches us is that there were elements within the military, indeed the leadership of the military Admiral Leimnitzer was prepared to<br />
<br />
1) Start rumors (many). Use clandestine radio. <br />
(2) Land friendly Cubans in uniform "over-the-fence" to stage attack on base.<br />
(3) Capture Cuban (friendly) saboteurs inside the base.<br />
(4) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans).<br />
(5) Blow up ammunition inside the base; start fires.<br />
(6) Burn aircraft on air base (sabotage).<br />
(7) Lob mortar shells from outside of base into base. Some damage to installations.<br />
(8) Capture assault teams approaching from the sea or vicinity of Guantanamo City.<br />
(9) Capture militia group which storms the base.<br />
(10) Sabotage ship in harbor; large fires -- napthalene.<br />
(11) Sink ship near harbor entrance. Conduct funerals for mock-victims (may be in lieu of (10)).<br />
And this is just a partial list! If you want to read the whole story go <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Northwoods">here</a>.<br />
<br />
Did they think they could keep this a secret? Yes. Did they keep it a secret for almost 50 years? You bet.<br />
The parallels between what happened and what was planned in America, by Americans, in 1962 are massive.javascript:void(0)<br />
<br />
Update 2<br />
Excellent video that documents the use of Thermate at the WTC. <br />
H/T Frank!<br />
<br />
<iframe width="480" height="390" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/5d5iIoCiI8g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>Bill Owenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02682776677082673420noreply@blogger.com562