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Photo by: joanneleon. May, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. May, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. May, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. May, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. May, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. May, 2013.
Photo by: joanneleon. May, 2013.
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HAVE I TOLD YOU LATELY THAT I LOVE YOU -- VAN MORRISON
News & Opinion
All hell broke loose last night when Glenn Greenwald released a copy of a top secret court order that tells Verizon to give all phone records to the government on a daily basis. The order begins in April and ends in July. We don't know if this is something that gets renewed on a regular basis or not, nor do we know if there are similar court orders for other telecoms. Personally, I think this is an ongoing thing and every telecom gets one through a set of continuous FISA secret court orders as some kind of kabuki court process to provide cover for themselves and the telecoms.
Meanwhile, a whistleblower technician also revealed, years ago, that they are also collecting the full content of all electronic communications, everything, not just phone records meta data, at the main switches like the one in San Francisco. But now there is a 215 order on the daily collection of Verizon meta data, in black and white, that could be taken to a real court.
Even here in the comments at dkos, you can see that some people are surprised. Perhaps they thought that this president would not continue the Bush policies, I don't know. Many Americans will be surprised to see the proof, I guess. This is another case where we are not surprised that the govt. is spying on the American people, but up until now we had information from whistleblowers but no hard proof (that I know of). This is part of the hard proof. I hope it's part of a succession of items of proof. Glenn released his story in the Guardian at some point in the evening and sent out a tweet tagged as "Breaking". The "Breaking" tag was unusual for him, and it was a bit of an understatement. By midnight it looked like every major news agency had it. At some point it was trending on Twitter in a couple of topics and that is still happening today. It's the lead story in the New York Times, Guardian, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and probably every major newspaper and web site in the country, and some other countries.
No one misses the fact that as a leaked, top secret court order is splashed across the internet and the front pages of newspapers and sites, Bradley Manning, a war crimes whistleblower, is on trial for his life, John Kiriakou, a torture program whistleblower, is sitting in jail, and just recently, the White House declared open season on the freedom of the press with their "co-conspirator" accusations against a journalist, and other targeting of AP journalists, that allowed them to scoop up communications of news media organizations via DoJ warrants. How many of the people involved in this, all the way to the top, are people who swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution, and break that oath every day when they perpetrate this overly broad, illegal interpretation of the PATRIOT Act?
The Guardian piece, in Glenn's "Comment is Free" section column and on the front page:
Revealed: NSA collecting phone records of millions of Americans daily
Exclusive: Top secret court order requiring Verizon to hand over all call data shows scale of domestic surveillance under Obama
The National Security Agency is currently collecting the telephone records of millions of US customers of Verizon, one of America's largest telecoms providers, under a top secret court order issued in April.
The order, a copy of which has been obtained by the Guardian, requires Verizon on an "ongoing, daily basis" to give the NSA information on all telephone calls in its systems, both within the US and between the US and other countries.
The document shows for the first time that under the Obama administration the communication records of millions of US citizens are being collected indiscriminately and in bulk – regardless of whether they are suspected of any wrongdoing.
Greg Mitchell uses the term that a lot of us have been using for a long time now. Hey! President Obama! It was a cautionary tale, not a set of freaking guidelines!
Orwellian
UPDATE: NBC: White House today won't confirm facts but defends practice. AP with more on offiical response. NYT finally covers--and puts it at top of site. Al Gore calls it obscenely outrageous here. A what the EFF response. Charlie Savage of NYT tweets: "Kind of 'renders quaint' this letter a week ago to NYT from Verizon re orders for our bureau's call logs specifically http://goo.gl/...
I think a new term could be coined, "Bushwellian" or "Cheneywellian". This defense from the president sounds exactly like the Bush/Cheney administration. Is every Verizon customer a terrorist suspect?! They need to do better than that. The political crisis management consultants and the rapid response team probably pulled an all nighter. Perhaps another, more convincing set of talking points will be released after they get some more caffeine. Also, their response gives more reasons to suspect that there are matching court orders out there for other telecoms and that this is an ongoing thing.
White House defends Verizon call records request
The Obama administration is defending itself against charges it secretly obtained records for Verizon phone calls made in the United States, arguing that the policy is a vital tool in monitoring terrorists and has the approval of “all three branches of government,” according to a senior administration official.
This story has been trending on Twitter since last night. Right now it's got three slots.
This story was also big yesterday. Should we expect to see Panetta thrown into a solitary confinement cell in Quantico and declared an enemy of the state? Will Pat Fitzgerald be indicting him for outing an undercover ground commander? Will he be in a cell next to John Brennan who blew the cover of a British/Saudi double/triple agent when he was bragging to the press about how we had "inside control" of the Undie Bomber 2.0 operation? (and then Obama's DoJ blamed the AP for disclosing it, which they didn't do, Brennan did, and yet DoJ proceeded to spy on the AP offices and hoover up all their communications for an extended period)?
Do go read this article. Leon Panetta was hoping that Al Pacino would play him in the movie. No kidding. POGO also has a link to an unreleased version of the report linked in this article (PDF). I can't excerpt enough of it to illustrate the apparently intense pressure to keep this report under wraps after it had been prepared for release. I think the logical assumption is that this administration, in the middle of the crackdown on the media and whistleblowers and the trial of Bradley Manning, another whistleblower, does not want the world to see more of its hypocrisy about how they use leaks of classified information themselves when it is politically convenient, protect their own when they mistakenly leak classified information, and yet they relentlessly pursue anyone else who does it, to the ends of the earth and even to the grave. And also keep in mind that the information that Panetta revealed was classified as TOP SECRET. That Collateral Murder video that Manning released wasn't even classified.
Unreleased: Probe Finds CIA Honcho Disclosed Top Secret Info to Hollywood
The Defense Department Inspector General’s office has been sitting on a report that former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta disclosed “TOP SECRET” information and other sensitive details two years ago at an event attended by a “Hollywood executive” working on the movie Zero Dark Thirty.
In June 2011, when he was director of the Central Intelligence Agency, Panetta discussed the information at a CIA headquarters event honoring participants in the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, according to an unreleased report drafted by the Inspector General’s office and obtained by the Project On Government Oversight (POGO).
“During this awards ceremony, Director Panetta specifically recognized the unit that conducted the raid and identified the ground commander by name,” the draft report says. “According to the DoD Office of Security Review, the individual’s name is protected from public release” under federal law, the report says.
[...]
The fact that the IG’s office has not released its findings has caused consternation among the office staff, people familiar with the probe told POGO. Within the office, there was a push to make findings public as early as a year ago, sources speaking on condition of anonymity said. Last fall, the office took steps toward releasing some version of the report, including putting it through a Pentagon vetting process and preparing talking points to explain the contents, a person familiar with the investigation said.
When you are in big political trouble, do a foreign trip and imitate an iconic president to make Americans feel warm and fuzzy and allow them to forget that you're spying on every single thing they say or write and everywhere they go.
Obama to give speech at Berlin's Brandenburg Gate
WASHINGTON--President Obama will deliver a speech to Berlin during his visit there later this month at the historic Brandenburg Gate, the White House has confirmed.
"President Obama will speak about the deep and enduring bonds between the United States and Germany, the vital importance of the transatlantic alliance, and the values that bind us together," White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said in a statement about the June 19 speech.
We also found out yesterday about the Susan Rice and Samantha Power appointments. Note that both Rice and Power are infamous interventionists. They, along with Hillary Clinton were blamed or given credit for, or provided cover for Obama on -- whichever way you'd like to look at it -- for the intervention in Libya. This piece is by Micah Zenko, a very astute fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. He sent the link out in a tweet, prefaced by "Why the Syria military options that intervention advocates propose won't work". I take this to mean that Power and Rice are again banging the drum for war in Syria or a no-fly zone at the very least, which is exactly what John McCain is calling for (to give you an idea of how neocon they are). Zenko really knows what he is talking about. He also gave one of the most insightful analyses of the recent Orwell speech that Obama gave, and he came to those conclusions immediately, having appeared on the Charlie Rose show on the very night of the speech.
My take on it... Obama doesn't want to be seen as the person who sent our troops into yet another disastrous "intervention" situation, and another situation where the "rebels" are Al Qaeda associates. But he has a big problem, apparently, because he has already pronounced that Assad must be removed from power or must step down. Personally, I don't understand why the king of the world can't just change his mind and decide that it's not in the best interest of the people who he represents (cough), but experts in foreign policy don't seem to think that he can, and that he has to have some kind of face saving move.
I think it's important to remember that he is, at the moment, trying a young soldier for being an enemy of the state because military reports that he leaked supposedly got into the hands of the crippled Osama bin Laden holed away in a compound in Pakistan, and on a regular basis he is blowing people to bits with drones and Hellfire missiles for being Al Qaeda "associated forces" or "adherents". How in the hell can he use our blood and treasure to help a Free Syrian Army that is mostly foreign militias and where the strongest militia is al Nusra, an Islamic extremist AQ associated force?
Let's hope that they don't do this and that this is just some "war theater" because this story is really surreal. It's just worrisome that the two warrior women faux humanitarian interventionists, especially Joan of Arc (you'll see below and btw it's funny how the way to advance in this admin. or get glory as "Maya" did, if you are a woman, is to be a woman warrior who's out for blood -- the new face of the US war machine?), are now in the picture and are being announced at this moment, just before the Geneva meetings. The Free Syrian Army has failed and at this point it looks like they have no chance of overthrowing Assad unless the US/NATO swoops in and does it for them. And if they do, there is no viable group of allied factions or exiles who can take over (like the Libyan transitional govt. did) despite months, years of trying to pull them together. In other words, it's a disaster.
But last week Obama leaked this trial balloon to the DailyBeast (yet another sanctioned leak of classified information when politically convenient for this admin.) And if the imperialists want to march forward on the road to Damascus, and then the road to Tehran, and want to complete a plan of redrawing the map of the new Middle East with Israel and others, they must never be deterred! And then there are all those war profiteering dollars to be considered too. I thought we were getting out of the Middle East, focusing on Africa and Asia and Cyber. Again, let's hope they don't do this and don't decide to try to appease the two apparently relentless factions at play.
The No-Plan Zone
Modest measures to aid the Syrian rebels won't topple Assad. And despite protestations, even Washington's hawks don't want to go further.
Last week, the Daily Beast published an "exclusive" news story supported by comments from two anonymous administration officials: "Obama Asks Pentagon for Syria No-Fly Zone Plan." The newsworthiness and hype surrounding such reporting was puzzling given that the military's operational plans for a no-fly zone (NFZ) in Syria were completed many months ago and have been refined as new information has become available. Of course, versions of these plans have also been briefed in detail to the White House on multiple occasions. Soon after the Daily Beast story ran, Pentagon spokesperson Dave Lapan felt compelled to declare: "There is no new planning effort underway." This failed effort to plant a story about White House interest in NFZ options for Syria is perhaps the most perfunctory effort ever to coerce a foreign leader -- in this case, Bashar al-Assad, before the forthcoming diplomatic discussions in Geneva.
From February, 2008. All I can say about the Susan Rice and Samantha Power appointments is, god save us from these kinds of war hawk faux humanitarian interventionists. They are the epitomy of the neoliberal - neocon intersection, perhaps more dangerous than either type of ideology on its own.
Samantha Power v. Jeremy Scahill: A Debate on U.S. Actions in the Balkans, the Independence of Kosovo, the Iraq Sanctions and Humanitarian Intervention
As Kosovo declares its independence, we speak to two people who have closely followed the situation in the Balkans. Samantha Power wrote extensively about Bosnia and Kosovo in her book A Problem from Hell: America and the Age of Genocide, which won a 2003 Pulitzer Prize. Jeremy Scahill is an independent journalist and Democracy Now! correspondent. He covered the NATO bombings of Kosovo and Yugoslavia for Democracy Now! in 1999.
Action
Crowd-Fund a Court Stenographer for Bradley Manning's Trial
The trial of Bradley Manning will have an enormous impact on press freedom and the rights of future whistleblowers. Help us crowd-fund enough donations so we can hire a court stenographer to take transcripts of the trial. The government refuses to make its transcripts available to the public.
Your donation to this project will be tax-deductible. You can also donate by check.
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Blog Posts and Tweets of Interest
Evening Blues
AP journalist being targeted by the White House:
The other AP journalist targeted by the White House:
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