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NYT Editorial Slams "Disgraceful" CIA Exploitation of Paris Attacks, But Submissive Media Role Is Key |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=29455"><span class="small">Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept</span></a>
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Thursday, 19 November 2015 09:53 |
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Greenwald writes: "A truly superb New York Times editorial this morning mercilessly shames the despicable effort by U.S. government officials to shamelessly exploit the Paris attacks to advance long-standing agendas."
CIA director John Brennan. (photo: Pablo Martinez Monsivais/AP)
NYT Editorial Slams "Disgraceful" CIA Exploitation of Paris Attacks, But Submissive Media Role Is Key
By Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept
19 November 15
 truly superb New York Times editorial this morning mercilessly shames the despicable effort by U.S. government officials to shamelessly exploit the Paris attacks to advance long-standing agendas. Focused on the public campaign of the CIA to manipulate post-Paris public emotions to demonize transparency and privacy and to demand still-greater surveillance powers for themselves, the NYT editors begin:
It’s a wretched yet predictable ritual after each new terrorist attack: Certain politicians and government officials waste no time exploiting the tragedy for their own ends. The remarks on Monday by John Brennan, the director of the Central Intelligence Agency, took that to a new and disgraceful low.
The editorial, which you should really read in its entirety, destroys most of the false, exploitative, blame-shifting claims uttered by U.S. officials about these issues. Because intelligence agencies knew of the attackers and received warnings, the NYT editors explain that “the problem in [stopping the Paris attacks] was not a lack of data, but a failure to act on information authorities already had.” They point out that the NSA’s mass surveillance powers to be mildly curbed by post-Snowden reforms are ineffective and, in any event, have not yet stopped. And most importantly, they document that the leader of this lowly campaign, CIA chief John Brennan, has been proven to be an inveterate liar:
It is hard to believe anything Mr. Brennan says. Last year, he bluntly denied that the CIA had illegally hacked into the computers of Senate staff members conducting an investigation into the agency’s detention and torture programs when, in fact, it did. In 2011, when he was President Obama’s top counterterrorism adviser, he claimed that American drone strikes had not killed any civilians, despite clear evidence that they had. And his boss, James Clapper Jr., the director of national intelligence, has admitted lying to the Senate on the NSA’s bulk collection of data. Even putting this lack of credibility aside, it’s not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.
Indeed, what more powers could agencies like the CIA, NSA, MI6 and GCHQ get? They’ve been given everything they’ve demanded for years, no questions asked. They have virtually no limits. Of course it’s “not clear what extra powers Mr. Brennan is seeking.” It’s like trying to buy a Christmas gift for Paris Hilton: what do you give to an omnipotent, terrorism-exploiting agency that already has everything it could ever dream of having?
Space constraints likely required the NYT editors to leave several specific CIA lines of deceit unmentioned. To begin with, there’s literally zero evidence that the Paris attackers used encryption. There are reasons to believe they may not have (siblings and people who live near each other have things called “face-to-face communications”).
Even if they had used encryption (which, just by the way, the U.S. government funds and the GOP protected in the 1990s), that would not mean we should abolish it or give the U.S. government full backdoor access to it — any more than face-to-face plotting means we should allow the government to put monitors in everyone’s homes to prevent this type of “going dark.” Silicon Valley has repeatedly said there’s no way to build the U.S. government a “backdoor” that couldn’t also be used by any other state or stateless organization to invade. And that’s to say nothing of all the lies and false claims that I documented several days ago embedded in the Snowden-is-to-blame-for-Paris trash — a low-life propaganda campaign that is not principally about Snowden but really about scaring Silicon Valley out of offering encryption lest they be viewed as ISIS-helpers.
But there’s one vital question the NYT editors do not address: Why do the CIA and other U.S. government factions believe — accurately — that they can get away with such blatant misleading and lying? The answer is clear: because, particularly after a terror attack, large parts of the U.S. media treat U.S. intelligence and military officials with the reverence usually reserved for cult leaders, whereby their every utterance is treated as Gospel, no dissent or contradiction is aired, zero evidence is required to mindlessly swallow their decrees, anonymity is often provided to shield them from accountability, and every official assertion is equated with Truth, no matter how dubious, speculative, evidence-free, or self-serving.
Like many people, I’ve spent years writing about the damage done by how subservient and reverent many U.S. media outlets are toward the government officials they pretend to scrutinize. But not since 2003 have I witnessed anything as supine and uncritical as the CIA-worshipping stenography that has been puked forward this week. Even before the Paris attacks were concluded, a huge portion of the press corps knelt in front of the nearest official with medals on their chest or who flashes covert status, and they’ve stayed in that pitiful position ever since.
The leading cable news networks, when they haven’t been spewing outright bigotry and fearmongering, have hosted one general and CIA official after the next to say whatever they want without the slightest challenge. Print journalists, without the excuse of the pressures of live TV, have been even worse: Article after article after article does literally nothing other than uncritically print the extremely dubious claims of military and intelligence officials without including any questioning, contradiction, dissenters, or evidence that negates those claims.
Snowden headline from Politico Magazine. (photo: The Intercept)
None of the facts the NYT pointed to this morning to show Brennan is lying and misleading are esoteric or obscure. They’re all right out in the public domain. Countless other people have raised them. But so many journalists steadfastly exclude all of that from their “reporting.” Especially after a terror attack, the already sky-high journalistic worship of security officials skyrockets. Many journalists are in pure servant-stenography mode, not reporting and definitely not questioning claims that emanate from the sacred mouths of these Pentagon and CIA priests. Just look at the reports I cited to see how extreme this obsequious behavior is. What can excuse “reporting” like this?
This, of course, is how propaganda is cemented: not by government officials making dubious, self-serving claims (they’ll always be motivated to do that), but by people who play the role of “journalist” on TV and in print acting as their spokespeople, literally suppressing all the reasons why the officials’ claims are so questionable if not outright false.
Kudos to the NYT editors for pulling no punches this morning in making all this deceit manifest. But the real culprits aren’t the government officials spewing this manipulative tripe but the journalists who not only let them get away with it but, so much worse, eagerly help.
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The TPP and the New Global Corporate Government |
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Thursday, 19 November 2015 09:42 |
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Rasmus writes: "TPP is first and foremost a political document. TPP is the latest salvo fired by global corporations against national and popular sovereignty, against Democracy itself."
Japanese farmers holding placards against TPP participate in a rally against Japan's prime minister Shinzo Abe's administration in Tokyo, Japan, June 13, 2015. (photo: Reuters)
The TPP and the New Global Corporate Government
By Jack Rasmus, teleSUR
19 November 15
“A new type of trade agreement.” It’s a new type all right.
 he TPP agreement just recently released is a document of 5,554 pages. There are 30 separate chapters, not counting special ‘annexes’ and schedules. Then there’s a ‘secret guidance’ document, not yet released, which apparently even members of the US Senate still haven’t seen, according to US Senator, Jeff Sessions.
Of course, there are official executive summaries of the 5,554 pages, notably by the U.S. Trade Representative’s Office, and statements by President Obama. But readers won’t find out what the TPP is really about in these documents, which are designed to ‘market’ TPP to the public. In fact, these ‘for public consumption’ puff pieces are replete with misrepresentations, ‘spin’, and outright lies.
However, one statement by Obama is correct. He calls TPP “a new type of trade agreement”. It’s a new type all right.
The TPP is not simply an economic document, about trade in goods, services and, investor money capital flows. TPP is first and foremost a political document. TPP is the latest salvo fired by global corporations against national and popular sovereignty, against Democracy itself. The key to understanding how TPP is about global corporations setting up their own global government is contained in its Chapters 27 and 28.
In chapter 27, TPP provides for a new executive-legislative body whose decisions will usurp national and state-local legislative functions and representative democracy — already under serious attack everywhere by corporate money and other initiatives. And in chapter 28, TPP provides for a new kind of global corporate court system, run by corporate-friendly lawyers and hirelings who will make decisions which cannot be reviewed, appealed or challenged in existing court systems of any TPP member country. TPP ‘courts’ will take precedence over US and other national court systems, already under heavy attack by corporate forces vigorously promoting arbitration as a means by which to bypass the formal judicial system in the US.
TPP ‘Commission’ As Global Corporate Legislature-Executive Institution
Chapter 27 establishes a TPP Commission, composed of ministers or officials who oversee the operation of TPP and its future evolution. For the TPP is being called a ‘living agreement’, meaning it will change as new members join. What is not explained, however, is whether once it is ratified by Congress, will representatives get to ‘ratify’ each time it is changed? Or just once at the outset, thereafter allowing corporate lawyers, CEOs, and corporate-owned bureaucrats to change it anyway they please later?
According to TPP, the Commission members function as a kind of corporate global ‘Politburo’, a legislative committee of the Multinational Corporations of the TPP members, with yet to be defined accompanying executive powers. No separation of powers here.
More important, TPP is totally silent on questions like how will the Commission be determined? What are the terms of office of its members? Who chooses them and how? Can they be relieved and, if so, by whom and according to what process? To whom are they accountable? Can they meet in secret? What are the rules for decision making under which they’ll operate? The TPP is silent on all these questions. How convenient. Perhaps something addressing these questions exists in the mysterious ‘guidance document’ no one has seen yet. But don’t bet on it.
Most important, it appears the decisions by the Commission are not subject to review, let alone reversal, by Congress or any other existing government legislature. According to the US Congressional Record of November, 10, 2015 at least one US Senator has raised the warning that “we are empowering the TPP countries to create a new Congress of sorts” and a supra-national Commission that “will not be answerable to voters anywhere.”
TPP Korporate Kangaroo Kourts
But TPP proposes not only to negate existing government legislative and executive functions. It even more directly attacks existing judicial institutions and functions. Chapter 28 sets up an independent court system, or tribunals, which will make decisions that existing national Judicial systems cannot review or overturn. These tribunals are officially called ISDS panels, for ‘Investor-State Dispute System’, each of which is composed of three ‘trade’ and expert representatives. But once again, as in the case of the Commission, Investor-Corporate representatives selected by whom? How? For what terms? Representing whose interests? Etc.
Let’s call them what they are: ‘Korporate Kangaroo Kourts’, that will do most of their work in secret. TPP language allows them to conduct public hearings in public, but it also allows them the option to conduct hearings in total secrecy as well. Guess which they’ll prefer? TPP indicates KKKs may ‘consider’ requests from the public to provide written views—but consider does not mean ‘must’. It also says final reports will be available to the public—but that’s after their final decisions have been made. Furthermore, “the initial report will be confidential,” while the final report to the public is “subject to the protection of any confidential information in the report.” What’s finally released to the public will no doubt look like extensive ‘black outs’ in a typical US Freedom of Information Act request.
Here’s another problem: The ISDS-KKK courts allow corporations and investors to sue national governments—i.e. legislatures or executive regulatory agencies—that may try to pass laws or establish rules to protect workers, the environment, or whatever investors and corporations consider interfere with their ability to make profits under the TPP. The TPP suits will claim the US government violated the TPP treaty, even though the corporation’s dispute may in fact be between the Investor-Corporation and a state or local government.
This means technically that a corporation-investor that owns farmland in California, for example, can sue the state for imposing water rationing in the drought. That rationing would of course interfere with their profit making under TPP. Or how about a foreign owned restaurant chain in Los Angeles, which just passed a city ordnance calling for a $15 minimum wage? Under TPP, moreover, neither the state of California nor Los Angeles will be able to appear as a direct party to the TPP suit to defend itself, since disputes under TPP are restricted to the Corporation-Investor vs. the national government. So much for local democracy as well under TPP.
Corporate ‘Dual Power’ vs. Democracy
All governments exercise legislative, judicial, and executive functions. The TPP establishes on behalf of global corporations all the above. But TPP establishes those functions at the direct expense of existing government institutions, popular sovereignty, and the very idea of democratic representation. TPP’s Commission establishes a corporate pan-global legislature by corporate committee with unknown executive powers as well. Its KKKs clearly violate Article III of the US Constitution establishing an independent judiciary.
The signing of the TPP agreement in Atlanta, Georgia, on Oct. 4, 2015, represents in a sense the founding “Constitutional Convention” of global corporate government. For the economic Corporate Form has clearly ‘outrun’ the political Government Forms with which it has coexisted for the past two centuries.
All forms of revolution, they say, occur based on the emergence of ‘dual power’ and new sets of institutions attempting to replace the old. Chapters 27 and 28 of the TPP represent the seed of that emerging corporate dual power. So maybe its time for some new popular forms of ‘dual power’ to stop them as well.
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My White Neighbor Thought I Was Breaking Into My Own Apartment. Nineteen Cops Showed Up. |
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Thursday, 19 November 2015 09:41 |
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Wells writes: "I learned that the Santa Monica Police Department had dispatched 19 officers after one of my neighbors reported a burglary at my apartment. It didn't matter that I told the cops I'd lived there for seven months, told them about the locksmith, offered to show a receipt for his services and my ID."
Fay Wells, author of this column. (photo: Kyle Monk/The Washington Post)
My White Neighbor Thought I Was Breaking Into My Own Apartment. Nineteen Cops Showed Up.
By Fay Wells, The Washington Post
19 November 15
The place I call home no longer feels safe.
 n Sept. 6, I locked myself out of my apartment in Santa Monica, Calif. I was in a rush to get to my weekly soccer game, so I decided to go enjoy the game and deal with the lock afterward.
A few hours and a visit from a locksmith later, I was inside my apartment and slipping off my shoes when I heard a man’s voice and what sounded like a small dog whimpering outside, near my front window. I imagined a loiterer and opened the door to move him along. I was surprised to see a large dog halfway up the staircase to my door. I stepped back inside, closed the door and locked it.
I heard barking. I approached my front window and loudly asked what was going on. Peering through my blinds, I saw a gun. A man stood at the bottom of the stairs, pointing it at me. I stepped back and heard: “Come outside with your hands up.” I thought: This man has a gun and will kill me if I don’t come outside. At the same time, I thought: I’ve heard this line from policemen in movies. Although he didn’t identify himself, perhaps he’s an officer.
I left my apartment in my socks, shorts and a light jacket, my hands in the air. “What’s going on?” I asked again. Two police officers had guns trained on me. They shouted: “Who’s in there with you? How many of you are there?”
I said it was only me and, hands still raised, slowly descended the stairs, focused on one officer’s eyes and on his pistol. I had never looked down the barrel of a gun or at the face of a man with a loaded weapon pointed at me. In his eyes, I saw fear and anger. I had no idea what was happening, but I saw how it would end: I would be dead in the stairwell outside my apartment, because something about me — a 5-foot-7, 125-pound black woman — frightened this man with a gun. I sat down, trying to look even less threatening, trying to de-escalate. I again asked what was going on. I confirmed there were no pets or people inside.
I told the officers I didn’t want them in my apartment. I said they had no right to be there. They entered anyway. One pulled me, hands behind my back, out to the street. The neighbors were watching. Only then did I notice the ocean of officers. I counted 16. They still hadn’t told me why they’d come.
Later, I learned that the Santa Monica Police Department had dispatched 19 officers after one of my neighbors reported a burglary at my apartment. It didn’t matter that I told the cops I’d lived there for seven months, told them about the locksmith, offered to show a receipt for his services and my ID. It didn’t matter that I went to Duke, that I have an MBA from Dartmouth, that I’m a vice president of strategy at a multinational corporation. It didn’t matter that I’ve never had so much as a speeding ticket. It didn’t matter that I calmly, continually asked them what was happening. It also didn’t matter that I didn’t match the description of the person they were looking for — my neighbor described me as Hispanic when he called 911. What mattered was that I was a woman of color trying to get into her apartment — in an almost entirely white apartment complex in a mostly white city — and a white man who lived in another building called the cops because he’d never seen me before.
After the officers and dog exited my “cleared” apartment, I was allowed back inside to speak with some of them. They asked me why I hadn’t come outside shouting, “I live here.” I told them it didn’t make sense to walk out of my own apartment proclaiming my residence when I didn’t even know what was going on. I also reminded them that they had guns pointed at me. Shouting at anyone with a gun doesn’t seem like a wise decision.
I had so many questions. Why hadn’t they announced themselves? Why had they pointed guns at me? Why had they refused to answer when I asked repeatedly what was going on? Was it protocol to send more than a dozen cops to a suspected burglary? Why hadn’t anyone asked for my ID or accepted it, especially after I’d offered it? If I hadn’t heard the dog, would I have opened the door to a gun in my face? “Maybe,” they answered.
I demanded all of their names and was given few. Some officers simply ignored me when I asked, boldly turning and walking away. Afterward, I saw them talking to neighbors, but they ignored me when I approached them again. A sergeant assured me that he’d personally provide me with all names and badge numbers.
I introduced myself to the reporting neighbor and asked if he was aware of the gravity of his actions — the ocean of armed officers, my life in danger. He stuttered about never having seen me, before snippily asking if I knew my next-door neighbor. After confirming that I did and questioning him further, he angrily responded, “I’m an attorney, so you can go f— yourself,” and walked away.
I spoke with two of the officers a little while longer, trying to wrap my mind around the magnitude and nature of their response. They wondered: Wouldn’t I want the same response if I’d been the one who called the cops? “Absolutely not,” I told them. I recounted my terror and told them how I imagined it all ending, particularly in light of the recent interactions between police and people of color. One officer admitted that it was complicated but added that people sometimes kill cops for no reason. I was momentarily speechless at this strange justification.
I got no clear answers from the police that night and am still struggling to get them, despite multiple visits, calls and e-mails to the Santa Monica Police Department requesting the names of the officers, their badge numbers, the audio from my neighbor’s call to 911 and the police report. The sergeant didn’t e-mail me the officers’ names as he promised. I was told that the audio of the call requires a subpoena and that the small army of responders, guns drawn, hadn’t merited an official report. I eventually received a list from the SMPD of 17 officers who came to my apartment that night, but the list does not include the names of two officers who handed me their business cards on the scene. I’ve filed an official complaint with internal affairs.
To many, the militarization of the police is primarily abstract or painted as occasional. That thinking allows each high-profile incident of aggressive police interaction with people of color — Michael Brown, Eric Garner, Freddie Gray — to be written off as an outlier.
What happened to them did not happen to me, but it easily could have. The SMPD sent 19 armed police officers who refused to answer my questions while violating my rights, privacy and sense of well-being. A wrong move, and I could have been shot. My complaint is not the first against the department this year. This spring, the local branch of the NAACP and other concerned residents met with SMPD to discuss several incidents of aggressive policing against people of color. The NAACP asked SMPD for demographic information on all traffic, public transportation and pedestrian stops; so far, the department has promised to release a report of detailed arrest data next year.
The trauma of that night lingers. I can’t un-see the guns, the dog, the officers forcing their way into my apartment, the small army waiting for me outside. Almost daily, I deal with sleeplessness, confusion, anger and fear. I’m frightened when I see large dogs now. I have nightmares of being beaten by white men as they call me the n-word. Every week, I see the man who called 911. He averts his eyes and ignores me.
I’m heartbroken that his careless assessment of me, based on skin color, could endanger my life. I’m heartbroken by the sense of terror I got from people whose job is supposedly to protect me. I’m heartbroken by a system that evades accountability and justifies dangerous behavior. I’m heartbroken that the place I called home no longer feels safe. I’m heartbroken that no matter how many times a story like this is told, it will happen again.
Not long ago, I was walking with a friend to a crowded restaurant when I spotted two cops in line and froze. I tried to figure out how to get around them without having to walk past them. I no longer wanted to eat there, but I didn’t want to ruin my friend’s evening. As we stood in line, 10 or so people back, my eyes stayed on them. I’ve always gone out of my way to avoid generalizations. I imagined that perhaps these two cops were good people, but I couldn’t stop thinking about what the Santa Monica police had done to me. I found a lump in my throat as I tried to separate them from the system that had terrified me. I realized that if I needed help, I didn’t think I could ask them for it.
Editor’s note: The Santa Monica Police Department told The Washington Post that 16 officers were on the scene but later provided a list of 17 names. That list does not match the list of 17 names that was eventually provided to the writer; the total number of names provided by the SMPD is 19. The department also said that it was protocol for this type of call to warrant “a very substantial police response,” and that any failure of officers to provide their names and badge numbers “would be inconsistent with the Department’s protocols and expectations.” There is an open internal affairs inquiry into the writer’s allegations of racially motivated misconduct.
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A Letter to the Future |
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Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=24462"><span class="small">Bill McKibben, EcoWatch</span></a>
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Thursday, 19 November 2015 09:39 |
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McKibben writes: "The first thing to say is, sorry. We were the last generation to know the world before full-on climate change made it a treacherous place. That we didn't get sooner to work slowing it down is our great shame, and you live with the unavoidable consequences."
Bill McKibben. (photo: 350.org)
A Letter to the Future
By Bill McKibben, EcoWatch
19 November 15
This letter to the future by Bill McKibben is part of the Letters to the Future campaign, a national effort to encourage people from all walks of life to write six generations into the future about climate change. The campaign puts a spotlight on the importance of world leaders agreeing to a global climate treaty at COP21 in Paris.
he first thing to say is, sorry. We were the last generation to know the world before full-on climate change made it a treacherous place. That we didn’t get sooner to work slowing it down is our great shame, and you live with the unavoidable consequences.
That said, I hope that we made at least some difference. There were many milestones in the fight—Rio, Kyoto, the debacle at Copenhagen. By the time the great Paris climate conference of 2015 rolled around, many of us were inclined to cynicism.
And our cynicism was well-taken. The delegates to that convention, representing governments that were still unwilling to take more than baby steps, didn’t really grasp the nettle. They looked for easy, around-the-edges fixes, ones that wouldn’t unduly alarm their patrons in the fossil fuel industry.
But so many others seized the moment that Paris offered to do the truly important thing: Organize. There were meetings and marches, disruptions and disobedience. And we came out of it more committed than ever to taking on the real power that be.
The real changes flowed in the months and years past Paris, when people made sure that their institutions pulled money from oil and coal stocks, and when they literally sat down in the way of the coal trains and the oil pipelines. People did the work governments wouldn’t—and as they weakened the fossil fuel industry, political leaders grew ever so slowly bolder.
We learned a lot that year about where power lay: less in the words of weak treaties than in the zeitgeist we could create with our passion, our spirit, and our creativity. Would that we had done it sooner!
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