|
Noam Chomsky: Social Media Have Not Eroded the Power of Corporate Media |
 |
|
Tuesday, 05 May 2015 13:47 |
|
"Chomsky argues that though it's true that the internet provides opportunities that were not easily available before, the traditional media system hasn't fundamentality changed very much."
Professor Noam Chomsky, linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist and activist. (photo: Va Shiva)
Noam Chomsky: Social Media Have Not Eroded the Power of Corporate Media
By Seung-yoon Lee, Byline
05 May 15
 hree decades ago, Professor Noam Chomsky, who is seen by some as the most brilliant and courageous intellectual alive and by others as an anti-US conspiracy theorist, penned his powerful critique of the Western corporate media in his seminal book Manufacturing Consent, with co-author Edward S Herman. The book had a profound impact on my perception of the mainstream media in my teenage years, and was crucial in some ways to my decision to start Byline with my co-founder Daniel Tudor. By cutting out the advertiser and political bias of the proprietor, we believed that crowdfunding had the potential to democratise the media landscape and support independent journalism.
In “Manufacturing Consent,” Noam Chomsky posits that Western corporate media is structurally bound to “manufacture consent” in the interests of dominant, elite groups in society. With “filters” which determine what gets to become ‘news’ – including media ownership, advertising, and “flak”, he shows how propaganda can pervade the “free” media in an ostensibly democratic Western society through self-censorship. However, lot has changed since then. We now have the Internet. The so-called legacy media organisations which have been “manufacturing consent” according to Chomsky are in massive financial trouble. Has any of his analysis changed? I recently interviewed Noam Chomsky at his MIT office, to find out his views on the current media landscape.
Seung-yoon Lee: Twenty-seven years ago, you wrote in ‘Manufacturing Consent’ that the primary role of the mass media in Western democratic societies is to mobilise public support for the elite interests that lead the government and the private sector. However, a lot has happened since then. Most notably, one could argue that the Internet has radically decentralised power and eroded the power of traditional media, and has also given rise to citizen journalism. News from Ferguson, for instance, emerged on Twitter before it was picked up by media organisations. Has the internet made your ‘Propaganda Model’ irrelevant?
Noam Chomsky: Actually, we have an updated version of the book which appeared about 10 years ago with a preface in which we discuss this question. And I think I can speak for my co-author, you can read the introduction, but we felt that if there have been changes, then this is one of them. There are other [changes], such as the decline in the number of independent print media, which is quite striking.
As far as we can see, the basic analysis is essentially unchanged. It’s true that the internet does provide opportunities that were not easily available before, so instead of having to go to the library to do research, you can just open up your computer. You can certainly release information more easily and also distribute different information from many sources, and that offers opportunities and deficiencies. But fundamentally, the system hasn’t changed very much.
Seuny-yoon Lee: Emily Bell, Director at the Tow Center for Digital Journalism at Columbia Journalism School, said the following in her recent speech at Oxford: “News spaces are no longer owned by newsmakers. The press is no longer in charge of the free press and has lost control of the main conduits through which stories reach audiences. The public sphere is now operated by a small number of private companies, based in Silicon Valley.” Nearly all content now is published on social platforms, and it’s not Rupert Murdoch but Google’s Larry Page and Sergei Brin and Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg who have much more say in how news is created and disseminated. Are they “manufacturing consent” like their counterparts in so-called ‘legacy’ media?
Noam Chomsky: Well, first of all, I don’t agree with the general statement. Say, right now, if I want to find out what’s going on in Ukraine or Syria or Washington, I read The New York Times, other national newspapers, I look at the Associated Press wires, I read the British press, and so on. I don’t look at Twitter because it doesn’t tell me anything. It tells me people’s opinions about lots of things, but very briefly and necessarily superficially, and it doesn’t have the core news. And I think it’s the opposite of what you quoted – the sources of news have become narrower.
So for example, take where we are now, Boston. Boston used to have a very good newspaper, The Boston Globe. It still exists but it’s a pale shadow of what it was twenty or thirty years ago. It used to have bureaus around the world, fine correspondents, and some of the best journalism on Central America during the Central American wars, and good critical journalism on domestic events and on many other topics. Go to a newsstand and have a look now. What you see is local news, pieces from the wire services, some pieces from The New York Times, and very little else.
Now that’s happened around the country, and in fact, around the world. And it’s a narrowing of these sources of journalism about what’s happening on the ground. That doesn’t mean that reports in the NYT have to be read uncritically, or those in The Guardian or The Independent or anywhere else. Sure, they have to be read critically, but at least they’re there. There are journalists there on the scene where major events are taking place and, now there are fewer of them than before, so that’s a narrowing of the sources of news. On the other hand, there is a compensating factor. It’s easier now to read the press from other countries than it was twenty years ago because of instead having to go to the library or the Harvard Square International Newsstand, I can look it up on the Internet. So you have multiple effects. As far as Silicon Valley is concerned, say Google, I’m sure they’re trying to manufacture consent. If you want to buy something, let’s say, you look it up on Google. We know how it works. The first things on the list are the ones that advertise. That doesn’t mean that they’re the most important ones. But it’s a reflection of their business model, which is of course based on advertising, which is one of the filters [in our model], in fact.
I use Google all the time, I’m happy it’s there. But just as when I read The New York Times or the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal knowing that they have ways of selecting and shaping the material that reaches you, you have to compensate for it. With Google, and others of course, there is an immense amount of surveillance to try to obtain personal data about individuals and their habits and interactions and so on, to shape the way information is presented to them. They do more [surveillance] than the NSA.
Seung-yoon Lee: In his essay “Bad News about News,” Robert G. Kaiser, former Editor of the Washington Post says, “News as we know it is at risk. So is democratic governance, which depends on an effective watchdog news media. Both have been undermined by changes in society wrought by digital technologies—among the most powerful forces ever unleashed by mankind.” Not only are the biggest news organisations like the New York Times, and the Washington Post (which was sold to the founder of Amazon for US$250 million, a small fraction of its worth just a few years before), and others are financially suffering and lack a clear roadmap for survival, but also numerous local newspapers across the United States and United Kingdom are shutting down every week. I know you see some of these organisations as “manufacturers of consent,” but how can we fund quality journalism in this new digital age?
Noam Chomsky: How is the BBC funded?
Seung-yoon Lee: By the public.
Noam Chomsky: And take the United States. When the United States was founded, there was an understanding of the first amendment that it has a double function: it frees the producer of information from state control, but it also offers people the right to information. As a result, if you look at postwar laws, they were designed to yield an effective public subsidy to journals in an effort to try to provide the widest range of opinion, information, and so on. And that’s a pretty sensible model. And it goes back to the conception of negative and positive liberty. You have only negative liberty, that is, freedom from external control, or you have positive liberty to fulfill your legitimate goals in life – in this case, gaining information. And that’s a battle that’s been fought for centuries. Right after the Second World War, in the United States, there was major debate and controversy about whether the media should serve this double function of giving both freedom from x amount of control – that was accepted across the board – and additionally, the function of providing the population with fulfilling its right to access a wide range of information or opinion. The first model, which is sometimes called corporate libertarianism, won out. The second model was abandoned. It’s one of the reasons why the US only has extremely marginal national radio businesses compared to other countries. It relates to what you’re asking–an alternative model is public support for the widest possible range of information and analysis and that should, I think, be a core part of a functioning democracy.
Seung-yoon Lee: In the absence of a good business model, new media organisations from Buzzfeed to Vice have pioneered so-called “native advertising,” a form of online advertising that seeks to fool the consumer into believing that they are reading “editorial” content rather than paid advertisements. Basically, they are advertorials. Ironically, even a progressive newspaper like The Guardian publishes sponsored content from Goldman Sachs. What’s your view on native advertising?
Noam Chomsky: This [native advertising] is exaggerating and intensifying a problem that is serious and shouldn’t even exist in the first place. The reliance of a journal on advertisers shapes and controls and substantially determines what is presented to the public. Again, if you go back to our book, it’s one of the filters. And if you look back, the very idea of advertiser reliance radically distorts the concept of free media. If you think about what the commercial media are, no matter what, they are businesses. And a business produces something for a market. The producers in this case, almost without exception, are major corporations. The market is other businesses – advertisers. The product that is presented to the market is readers (or viewers), so these are basically major corporations providing audiences to other businesses, and that significantly shapes the nature of the institution. You can determine by common sense that it would, but if you investigate it up front as well, it does [bear out], so what you’re now talking about is an intensification of something which shouldn’t exist in the first place.
Seung-yoon Lee: I was shocked to see that the global PR firm Edelman did some research on whether readers can actually tell whether what they are reading is an advertisement or an article… and 60% of readers didn’t notice that they were reading adverts.
Noam Chomsky: And that’s always been true. The effect of advertiser reliance and public relations firms is noticeable in the nature of what the media produce, both in their news and commentary. And how could it be otherwise, that’s the market.
Seung-yoon Lee: Recently, The Guardian and The Washington Post revealed widespread secret surveillance by the National Security Agency through Edward Snowden. Such reporting surely undermines the idea of what you would call the ‘elite interest’ that dominates the government and private sector. Does this case undermine your propaganda model or is it an exception to the rule?
Noam Chomsky: For the propaganda model, notice what we explain there very explicitly is that this is a first approximation – and a good first approximation – for the way the media functions. We also mention that there are many other factors. In fact, if you take a look at the book ‘Manufacturing Consent’, about practically a third of the book, which nobody seems to have read, is a defence of the media from criticism by what are called civil rights organisations – Freedom House in this case. It’s a defence of the professionalism and accuracy of the media in their reporting, from a harsh critique which claimed that they were virtually traitors undermining government policy. We should have known, on the other hand, that they were quite professional.
The media didn’t like that defence because what we said is – and this was about the Tet Offensive – that the reporters were very honest, courageous, accurate, and professional, but their work was done within a framework of tacit acquiescence to a propaganda system that was simply unconscious. The propaganda system was ‘what we’re doing in Vietnam is obviously right and just’. And that passively supports the doctrinal system. But on the other hand, it was also undermining the government. It was showing that government claims are false. And take, say, the exposure of Watergate, or the exposure of business corruption. One of the best sources of information on business corruption is the businessperson. The media do quite a lot of very good exposes on this, but the business world is quite willing to tolerate the exposure of corruption. The business world is also quite willing to tolerate exposure of governments intervening in personal life and business life in a way that they don’t like, as they don’t want a powerful and intrusive state. That’s not to criticise The Guardian and The Post for providing an outlet for the Snowden/Greenwald material – of course they should have, they’re professional journalists. There are a lot of factors, but we picked out factors we think are very significant but not all-inclusive, and as a matter of fact, we gave counter-examples.
Seung-yoon Lee: And do you think this is a counter-example, in some sense
Noam Chomksy: It’s not a counter example, it’s a demonstration that there are other things. That in addition to the major factors, there are also minor factors which we discussed, like professionalism and professional integrity, which is also a factor.
Seung-yoon Lee: Do you think that crowdfunding can help make journalism more independent?
Noam Chomsky: I think it’s a good general principle that almost anything that increases the variety and range of available media is beneficial. Of course, this particular approach will have its own problems. Every approach does. There’s no ideal type with no problems connected with it, but in general the wider the range of variety of what’s available, the better off you are.
Seung-yoon Lee: Can I ask your opinion on Charlie Hebdo? What do you think of this ‘freedom of speech no matter what’ principle?
Noam Chomsky: Well, I think we should strongly support freedom of speech. I think one of the good things about the United States, incidentally, as distinct from England, is that there is much higher protection of freedom of speech. But freedom of speech does not mean a lack of responsibility. So for example, I’m in favour of freedom of speech, but if somebody decided to put up a big advertisement in Times Square, New York, glorifying the sending of Jews to gas chambers, I don’t think it should be stopped by the state, but I’m not in favour of it.
Seung-yoon Lee: Also, regarding the specific incident of Charlie Hebdo, do you think the cartoonists lacked responsibility?
Noam Chomsky: Yes, I think they were kind of acting in this case like spoiled adolescents, but that doesn’t justify killing them. I mean, I could say the same about a great deal that appears in the press. I think it’s quite irresponsible often. For example, when the press in the United States and England supported the worst crime of this century, the invasion of Iraq, that was way more irresponsible than what Charlie Hebdo did. It led to the destruction of Iraq and the spread of the sectarian conflict that’s tearing the region to shreds. It was a really major crime. Aggression is the supreme international crime under international law. Insofar as the press supported that, that was deeply irresponsible, but I don’t think the press should be shut down.
 |
|
Is Lincoln Chafee's Campaign About More Than Attacking Clinton? |
|
|
Tuesday, 05 May 2015 13:45 |
|
Galindez writes: "There is a clear need for debate in the Democratic Party nominating process. Clinton should be tested and challenged. But I hope Lincoln Chafee is not in the race just take down Hillary Clinton."
Lincoln Chafee. (photo: Lincoln Chafee/ABC News)
Is Lincoln Chafee's Campaign About More Than Attacking Clinton?
By Scott Galindez, Reader Supported News
05 May 15
 hen I started seeing reports that Lincoln Chafee was considering a run for president, I wondered why. I didn’t even know he had left the Republican Party and joined the Democrats. Then I came across a column by Matt Bai, and it clicked: Chafee might not be in this race to win, he might be in the race to stop Hillary Clinton. As Bai correctly points out, candidates like Howard Dean end up losing because they attack the frontrunner too much and are seen as too angry.
While Martin O’Malley has staked out positions to the left of Clinton, he has refrained from attacking her. Although it is true that the Republicans are working overtime in the attack-Clinton arena, for Clinton to be derailed, someone in the Democratic debates will need to play that role. If O’Malley wants to be the one who becomes the alternative to Clinton, it would be best for him to keep his hands clean. Bernie Sanders has not run a negative ad in his entire political career, and has refrained from any attacks on the presumptive nominee. He will continue to stick to the issues.
Jim Webb is not going to raise the kind of money needed to stay in the race long enough, and will be easily dismissed as a Reagan appointee who opposes affirmative action. Chafee won’t have to raise large amounts of money to stay in long enough to do damage to Clinton. In 2005, he was the 8th wealthiest senator, worth over 55 million dollars.
Chafee has already begun to take aim at Clinton. “Expediency seems to be a word that is associated with Senator Clinton on important issues,” he said about her recent changes on issues like trade, same-sex marriage, and driver’s licenses for undocumented immigrants. Chafee said Clinton is someone who would “put her finger into the air and see which way the wind is blowing, and then make a decision on an important issue.” When it comes to Iraq, Chafee becomes animated, raising his arms as he speaks. “The Iraq War is a perfect example. Now, I did my homework. And now we live with the consequences. She (Clinton) did not do her homework and got it wrong. It was a bad vote.”
I think Howard Dean, Jerry Brown and others were in it to win, and while his motives are speculation on my part, Chafee too may believe he can win.
Although I don’t see a path to the nomination for Chafee, I will admit that as I began to research his record I expected him to be to the right of Jim Webb. Both have been Republicans in the past. However, after looking closer, I have to conclude that Chafee is to the left of Webb. Chafee’s record is very mixed. A quick look at the thousands of ratings put out by various organizations show very inconsistent patterns. Chafee had high ratings by labor, conservative groups, liberal groups, the John Birch Society, and Americans for Democratic Action. He is pro-choice, supports privatizing Social Security, and is a hawk when it comes to defense spending – but he was a leading opponent of the Iraq war. Here is why I think he is to the left of Webb but to the right of O’Malley and Hillary Clinton:
Israel
Chafee, who is on the advisory board of J Street, is not an AIPAC soundbite Democrat. J Street calls for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories and for a two state solution. According to Wikipedia, in Congress Chafee was described as a “particularly strong opponent” of AIPAC. Chafee has criticized what he has characterized as a Biblical influence on U.S. policy with respect to Israel. He has said he opposes the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank.
Gun Control
The NRA gave Chafee an F, which gives him a huge leg up on Jim Webb.
Democracy
This is one of those head-scratchers. Chafee wants to be a Democrat but he supports Voter ID laws. There isn’t an issue that benefits the Republicans more. Voter ID laws are not about preventing non-citizens from voting, they are about limiting votes from the poor.
Economy
It looks to me like Chafee wasn’t a 100% RINO (Republican in name only). His economic policies are not as liberal as his positions on social issues. He consistently opposes raising corporate taxes and supports privatizing Social Security.
He advocated pay-as-you-go budgeting. Chafee: “I’m all for tax cuts as long as we can cut our spending. The difficulty has been that we cut the taxes but we don’t cut our spending. We’ve had some tremendous unforeseen costs – with 9/11, the war in Iraq & Afghanistan, and Katrina. I think we should prepare for those, and I don’t believe tax cuts, as long as we’re not cutting our spending, is a wise course to take. During the 1990s, we had something called ‘pay as you go.’ We would not enact any spending programs that we couldn’t pay for with revenue.”
Immigration
Chafee supported the Kennedy/McCain immigration reform legislation. He supports guest worker programs that give a path to citizenship. He opposed building a wall along the border with Mexico.
Education
Back to the right on education, Chafee supports school choice and vouchers for private schools. He believes in local control over education.
We could keep going back and forth, right to left, but we might get whiplash.
I hope Lincoln Chafee becomes a responsible candidate and is not in the race just take down Hillary Clinton. There is a clear need for debate in the Democratic Party nominating process. Clinton should be tested and challenged. I’m not saying Lincoln Chafee shouldn’t attack her, but his campaign needs to be about more than attacking Hillary Clinton.
Scott Galindez attended Syracuse University, where he first became politically active. The writings of El Salvador's slain archbishop Oscar Romero and the on-campus South Africa divestment movement converted him from a Reagan supporter to an activist for Peace and Justice. Over the years he has been influenced by the likes of Philip Berrigan, William Thomas, Mitch Snyder, Don White, Lisa Fithian, and Paul Wellstone. Scott met Marc Ash while organizing counterinaugural events after George W. Bush's first stolen election. Scott will be spending a year covering the presidential election from Iowa.
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
|
|
|
FOCUS | The Wars Come Home |
|
|
Tuesday, 05 May 2015 11:44 |
|
Gould-Wartofsky writes: "As the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan continue, the US government has brought home its thoroughly militarized and surveillance-heavy forces. The counterinsurgency thinking used in Iraq and Afghanistan is now being used by police and other domestic agencies against Americans."
Firefighters battle a blaze after rioters plunged part of Baltimore into chaos, torching a pharmacy, setting police cars ablaze and throwing bricks at officers. (photo: Matt Rourke/AP)
The Wars Come Home
By Michael Gould-Wartofsky, TomDispatch
05 May 15
 ast week, as Baltimore braced for renewed protests over the death of Freddie Gray, the Baltimore Police Department (BPD) prepared for battle. With state-of-the-art surveillance of local teenagers’ Twitter feeds, law enforcement had learned that a group of high school students was planning to march on the Mondawmin Mall. In response, the BPD did what any self-respecting police department in post-9/11 America would do: it declared war on the protesters.
Over the course of 24 hours, which would see economically devastated parts of Baltimore erupt in open rebellion, city and state police would deploy everything from a drone and a “military counter attack vehicle” known as a Bearcat to SWAT teams armed with assault rifles, shotguns loaded with lead pellets, barricade projectiles filled with tear gas, and military-style smoke grenades. The BPD also came equipped with “Hailstorm” or “Stingray” technology, developed in America’s distant war zones to conduct wireless surveillance of enemy communications. This would allow officers to force cell phones to connect to it, to collect mobile data, and to jam cell signals within a one-mile radius.
“Up and down the East Coast since 9/11, our region has armed itself for that type of emergency,” said Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake. She was defending her police department’s acquisition of this type of military technology under the Department of Defense’s now infamous 1033 Program. It sends used weaponry and other equipment from the battlefields of the country’s global war on terror directly to local police departments across the country. “But it’s very unusual,” Mayor Rawlings-Blake added, “that it would be used against your own citizens.”
It is, in fact, no longer unusual but predictable for peacefully protesting citizens to face military-grade weaponry and paramilitary-style tactics, as the counterinsurgency school of protest policing has become the new normal in our homeland security state. Its techniques and technologies have come a long way in the years since Occupy Wall Street (and even in the months since the first protests kicked off in response to the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri). Here, then, is a step-by-step guide, based on the latest developments in the security sector, on how to police a protest movement in the new age of domestic counterinsurgency.
1. Equate Dissidents With Domestic Terrorists.
Since 2012, law enforcement and intelligence agencies have repeatedly sought to link street activism with domestic terrorism and radical activists to “violent extremists.” For instance, one memo from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Office of Intelligence and Analysis attempted to tie events in Ferguson last year to recruitment efforts by the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS): “Although at this time, violence in Ferguson has largely subsided... radical Islamists [have] used social media to urge others... to conduct Jihad.” A separate arm of DHS, the Threat Management Division, issued an ominous warning around the same time:
“Currently there is no indication that protests are expected to become violent. However, current civil unrest associated with the incident in Ferguson, MO, presents the potential for civil disobedience... Absent a specific actionable threat, you should refer to the list of suspicious activity indicators in identifying and mitigating threats. Some of these behavioral indicators may be constitutionally protected activities.”
Earlier this year, amid the fallout from the refusal of a grand jury to indict a police officer in the Eric Garner “chokehold” death, New York City Police Department (NYPD) Commissioner Bill Bratton proposed the creation of a new special ops unit he called the Strategic Response Group. It was to be “designed for dealing with events like our recent protests, or incidents like Mumbai or what just happened in Paris.” The group would be “equipped and trained in ways that our normal patrol officers are not,” and outfitted “with the long rifles and machine guns.” Though Bratton, facing a public outcry, later walked his statement back, his conflation of events involving unarmed protesters and armed militants was clearly no coincidence.
In recent years, the war on dissent has hit ever closer to home, with police departments importing some of the practices first pioneered in counterterrorism operations overseas.
One of these is the use of “black sites” for the temporary disappearance and detention of political dissidents. Anti-war activists learned this lesson firsthand during May 2012 protests against the North American Treaty Organization (NATO) Summit in Chicago, when nine demonstrators were arrested by the police and transported to a warehouse in Homan Square. Three would be held incommunicado for nearly 24 hours, shackled to a bench and kept in a wire cage before being charged with material support for terrorism, conspiracy to commit terrorism, and possession of incendiary devices -- devices constructed with the assistance of undercover officers in what turned out to be an elaborate act of entrapment in the run-up to the NATO Summit.
2. Arm the Police With “Less-Lethal” Weapons (Which Can Actually Create More Lethal Situations).
Under the 1033 Program, more than 460,000 pieces of “controlled property” -- that is, military-grade weaponry and other equipment -- have been transferred from the Pentagon to local police departments since 1997. That includes 92,442 small arms, 44,275 night-vision devices, 5,235 light armored cars, 617 tank-like vehicles, and some 616 aircraft. More than 78,000 such transfers were reported for 2013 alone. As the White House admitted in a recent report, programs like 1033 “do not necessarily foster or require civil rights/civil liberties training,” and “generally lack mechanisms to hold [law enforcement] accountable for the misuse or misapplication of equipment.”
The DHS has an even more expansive mandate to deliver the militarized goods to local law enforcement by way of its Homeland Security Grant Program (HSGP). In 2014 alone, the HSGP gave out over $1 billion in grant funding, with special provisions for “high-threat, high-density urban areas.” The list of DHS-authorized equipment provided to local police departments includes everything from Bearcats and helicopters to battle dress uniforms, body armor, ballistic helmets, and shields. Other agencies, like the Bureau of Justice Assistance (the funding arm of the Department of Justice), dole out hundreds of millions of dollars annually to police departments -- about 10% of which goes toward controlled equipment like armored vehicles, explosive devices, firearms, and “less-lethal” weapons like tear gas and TASERs.
This scenario has made for some lucrative investment opportunities. In the wake of the Baltimore riots, TASER International has seen its stock price spike. One market report noted that as “unrest spreads [and] as these issues continue to boil to the surface, investors are betting that will lead to more sales and profits.” After all, the market for less-lethal weapons alone is expected to more than double in the next five years, while the broader market for what are now called “homeland security products” is projected to grow to more than $107 billion by the year 2020.
Today, private arms developers are perfecting a new generation of “less-lethal” weapons: that is, weapons designed to incapacitate their targets but with a lower likelihood of fatalities. The latest model is known as the “Bozo bullet” for reportedly looking like a clown’s nose, and is currently undergoing its first test run in -- you guessed it -- Ferguson. It would allow the police to repurpose their service weapons at will, docking the “Bozo” on the barrel of a normal handgun to deliver a “less-lethal” payload. But critics argue that, by disarming the ordinary bullet of its psychological impact, such equipment will encourage police officers to reach for their guns more quickly and so serve to make the use of force more likely.
Meanwhile, peace officers in the thick of recent protests seem to be reaching for those guns ever more quickly, no matter how lethal the payload. At a December demonstration in downtown Oakland, California, an undercover officer was, for instance, photographed pointing a pistol at unarmed demonstrators. At a February march in Manhattan, a Port Authority officer was caught on video cocking a shotgun and asking protesters, “Are you scared?” In Los Angeles last summer, an officer with the Federal Protective Service, an agency of the Department of Homeland Security tasked with policing federal government facilities, admitted to actually opening fire with a handgun on a truck full of pro-Palestinian protesters.
3. Wage Wave Warfare.
Long-range acoustic devices (LRADs), also known as “sound cannons,” have been on American streets in times of protest since the Republican National Convention in 2004. Though the machine is capable of transmitting tones that can cause excruciating pain, until recently, its use against civilians had been limited to communicating police orders at a distance. That changed last year, when the LRAD’s “sound deterrent feature” -- originally designed for military use against “enemy combatants” in the Persian Gulf -- was deployed as an “area denial device” against protesters, first in the streets of Ferguson, then in the streets of Manhattan.
The sound cannon works as a form of wave warfare, concentrating and directing acoustic energy at a volume of up to 152 decibels. Even the NYPD’s own Disorder Control Unit has acknowledged that it can “propel piercing sound at higher levels than are considered safe to human ears.” It can also cause those subjected to it permanent hearing damage.
And this is just considered a beginning in what might be thought of as the domestic sensory wars. Novel forms of wave warfare are currently under development by the Pentagon’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Program. One such innovation, known as “Active Denial Technology,” works much like a microwave oven -- with the waves directed at the skin of a target to produce an “intolerable heating sensation.” A more portable version of this technology, branded the Assault Intervention System and sold by defense contractor Raytheon, has already been made available for domestic deployment in Los Angeles County.
Another innovation, known as “Skunk,” is a type of stink bomb that has been described by those in the know as an irresistible combination of “dead animal and human excrement.” In response to recent urban uprisings, police departments across the country are reported to be eagerly stockpiling the stuff. “We’ve provided some Skunk for the law enforcement agencies in Ferguson,” says Stephen Rust, program manager at a Maryland-based company that manufactures the malodorant. “I’m going to be able to drill [a target] with a round while I put him in the dirt. I can mark him with Skunk and he will be easy to locate when the crowd disperses.”
4. Replace Humans with Robots and Predictive Technology.
Increasingly, law enforcement is moving to replace human “deterrence” with robotic versions of the same -- remotely piloted aircraft, remotely operated vehicles, and other robotic platforms are to become domestic standbys in support of police surveillance missions and SWAT operations. Such platforms have been deployed, on the ground and in the air domestically, to conduct routine surveillance of protest activity, while in other countries they are already being weaponized with pepper spray and other projectiles.
From 2012 to 2014, the Federal Aviation Administration considered requests from at least 19 police and sheriff’s departments, as well as National Guard units in nine states, to fly drones in domestic airspace. The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) recently acquired two Draganflyer X6 drones for use during large protests and other “tactical events.” And while the NYPD has refused to release any documents on its own drone program, officials have stated that they are “supportive of the concept of drones, not only for police but for public safety in general,” and that they are currently looking into “what’s on the market, what’s available.”
Support for such surveillance is on the rise. DHS has made millions of dollars available annually for “forward-looking” police forces to procure the latest robotic systems, along with “software upgrades, engine upgrades, arms, drive systems, range extenders, trailers, etc.” Also included is “surveillance/detection” equipment in which drone technology may be integrated with audiovisual systems and with “optics capable of use in long-range, sometimes long-term, observation."
In recent years, a new frontier has opened up with the advent of “predictive policing” (or “PredPol,” in industry parlance), which aims to use big data and complex algorithms to forecast when and where a crime is likely to be committed, and who might be a likely culprit. The practice started out as a project of the Army Research Office (a centralized science laboratory under the purview of the Pentagon), was converted to civilian use by Bill Bratton during his tenure as commissioner of the LAPD, and has since spread to over 150 departments nationwide.
Take the NYPD. In the immediate aftermath of the Occupy protests, the department entered into an unprecedented partnership with Microsoft to develop a predictive policing technology known as the Domain Awareness System. It “aggregates and analyzes existing public safety data streams in real time,” drawn from thousands of closed-circuit television cameras, license plate readers, and criminal history databases, and is intended to give intelligence analysts “a comprehensive view of potential threats.” Though we don’t yet know the extent to which it has been deployed during protests, we do know that Domain Awareness Systems have been popping up in protest hubs around the country, including Baltimore, Chicago, and Oakland.
5. Make “Friends” and “Follow” People.
Considered “open source intelligence” (or “OSINT”), social media networks like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube have proven veritable gold mines for intelligence analysts attempting to track protest events in real time. They have also provided police detectives with a rationale to question individual protesters about their political activities.
Just last week, we learned that amid the protests in New York City following the acquittal of the officers who killed Eric Garner, at least 11 arrestees were interrogated in this manner prior to their release from police headquarters, including several who were asked explicitly about their online activities on social media sites. As Deputy Commissioner Lawrence Byrne tells it, when detectives started seeing threats on social media, “The Detective Bureau began a process of interviewing defendants arrested during the protests... in an attempt to obtain information about the specific acts... as well as the general threat environment relating to such acts.”
Since 2012, the NYPD’s Intelligence Division has officially encouraged its employees to engage in “catfishing” on social media sites “for investigative or research purposes,” which, with the permission of police brass, may include “investigations involving political activity.” Increasingly, such catfishing has become common practice among police and private security forces nationwide. In Bloomington, Minnesota, for example, intelligence analysts working for the Mall of America’s Risk Assessment and Mitigation unit and in conjunction with members of the local Joint Terrorism Task Force (a collaborative intelligence operation anchored by the FBI) reportedly used fake Facebook accounts to build dossiers on at least 10 area activists. This was ahead of a protest on police accountability (or the lack of it) slated to take place on Mall of America property.
The Department of Homeland Security, for its part, continues to develop its Media Monitoring Capability to impressive effect, “leveraging news stories, media reports and postings on social media sites... for operationally relevant data, information, analysis, and imagery” including “partisan or agenda-driven sites” as well as those that “reflect adversely on DHS.” Many of the nation’s “fusion centers,” set up in the aftermath of 9/11 to encourage collaboration among intelligence agencies, have partnered with social media sites to monitor Occupy-style activism. “Such websites can provide crucial information during civil unrest,” notes Dale Peet, a veteran of Michigan’s statewide fusion center and now an employee of SAS, a private firm that performs social media analytics for the state.
And that’s only a beginning when it comes to social media surveillance. Its future is already being written in the labs of the Intelligence Advanced Research Projects Activity (IARPA), the national intelligence community’s blue-skies research arm. One recent project seeks to match online and offline “behavioral indicators,” including “ideology or worldview.” Another extracts geolocation information from posts, photos, and videos that users might prefer to keep private. Yet another, known as Open Source Indicators, analyzes social media data to “anticipate and/or detect significant societal events, such as political crises [and] riots.” The project’s goal, in the words of its true believers, is ultimately to “beat the news,” giving the government new leverage over alleged enemies of the state.
What we are seeing in the dark corners of cyberspace is of a piece with what we are seeing in the streets of our cities: the leading edge of a new age of domestic counterinsurgency. From black sites to Bearcats, sound cannons to stink bombs, drones to data mining, the component parts of a new police counterinsurgency program are being assembled with remarkable speed. While the basic architecture of this program has been in place ever since 9/11, it is being built up in new and ever more sophisticated ways. The point of all of this: to keep an eye on our posts and tweets, intimidate protesters before they hit the streets, pen them in on those streets, and ensure that they pay a heavy price for exercising their right to assemble and speak. The message is loud and clear in twenty-first-century America: protest at your peril.
|
|
Scalia and Alito: Have You No Sense of Decency, Sirs? |
|
|
Written by <a href="index.php?option=com_comprofiler&task=userProfile&user=31402"><span class="small">Bill Quigley, Reader Supported News</span></a>
|
|
Tuesday, 05 May 2015 08:05 |
|
Quigley writes: "The cruel, illogical, heartless and hateful arguments of Alito and Scalia give considerable support and inspiration to right-wing groups who literally demonize our sisters and brothers and sons and daughters who seek only to marry their same sex partners just like the rest of us."
Antonin Scalia. (photo: unknown)
Scalia and Alito: Have You No Sense of Decency, Sirs?
By Bill Quigley, Reader Supported News
05 May 15
 n the 1940s and 1950s, countless people in the US were being bullied and brutalized by the anti-communist scare tactics and character assassinations of Senator Joseph McCarthy. The end of the McCarthy red-baiting era began when Joseph Welch stood up to McCarthy after he attacked a young lawyer on his staff. Welch was appalled by McCarthy's callous disregard and despite McCarthy's power, challenged him by stating: "Until this moment, Senator, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness." He concluded by saying "You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
In the recent marriage equality case, Supreme Court Justices Samuel Alito and Antonin Scalia argued that marriage equality opens the door to polygamy, underage sex, and incest between brothers and sisters. This is the modern equivalent of McCarthy red-baiting and deserves the same response.
The cruel, illogical, heartless and hateful arguments of Alito and Scalia give considerable support and inspiration to right-wing groups who literally demonize our sisters and brothers and sons and daughters who seek only to marry their same sex partners just like the rest of us.
Alito and Scalia give comfort to the likes of Rush Limbaugh who stated marriage equality leads to incest. To Rick Santorum who compares same sex relationships to bestiality and pedophilia. To the head of ironically named American Decency Association who claimed that gay rights is a satanic attack on the US. And to legions of other people and groups who practice hostility and violence against our sisters and brothers.
It is one thing to have these fringe haters outside on the courthouse steps. We allow the Ku Klux Klan and the Nazi parties to demonstrate out on the steps. It is another matter entirely when they are in the exalted position as members of the court and while there feeding the fires of hatred in their public arguments.
It is past time for family, friends, lawyers, legal associations and law schools to ask Alito and Scalia to halt and to answer the question "Have you no sense of decency, sirs?"
Alito, long criticized for being a cranky, malicious mouthpiece of the anti-gay movement, was at it again when the court heard the marriage equality case. Alito is already famous for visibly shaking his head and mouthing opposition to President Obama in his 2010 State of the Union address and for throwing a mini-tantrum when other justices dissent.
Alito argued that approving the right to marriage equality for gay and lesbian people would open the door for 12 year olds to marry, for brothers and sisters to marry, and make polygamy possible for four lawyers who all want to marry each other. Alito's problems are so often raised and widely known that they are characterized as his "polygamy perplex" by The New Yorker.
Alito's fallacious slippery slope arguments, transparently couched as questions, were so ridiculous that they prompted John Stewart to ask whether, in the case where women fought for the right to vote, Alito might have asked "What if one day a dog wants to vote? How about that ladies?"
Antonin Scalia, of course not to be outdone, argued that if marriage equality was recognized ministers would be forced to conduct such marriages even if their religious organizations opposed them. When Justice Sonia Sotomayor pointed out that no ministers have ever been forced to conduct gay marriages Scalia would not hear of it. When the lawyer arguing the case and Justices Breyer and Kagan pointed out that the First Amendment already protected priests, rabbis, imams and ministers from conducting marriages inconsistent with their religions, Scalia refused to concede. Scalia, like Alito, also asked if marriage equality means polygamy would have to be recognized.
As one wise friend pointed out, our country still has the Ku Klux Klan but we do not take their arguments seriously. And there are no respected people openly espousing their arguments on the Supreme Court. No respected person openly argues that blacks and whites should not marry. Nor do any people argue openly that women do not deserve the right to vote. Yet, there are people on the Supreme Court who continue to openly repeat the brutally crude applause lines of right-wing anti-gay hate groups. It is time that stopped.
It is time all people of good will stand up to the haters, especially those on the Supreme Court, and say, "Until this moment, Justices, I think I have never really gauged your cruelty or your recklessness... You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sirs? At long last, have you left no sense of decency?"
Reader Supported News is the Publication of Origin for this work. Permission to republish is freely granted with credit and a link back to Reader Supported News.
|
|
inally, conservatives have a real socialist to go crazy about. Instead of concocting dark fairytales about how Barack Obama, a very conventional liberal Democrat, is a secret Marxist who wants to destroy the American way of life, they can shriek about Bernie Sanders, the independent Vermont senator who has never shied away from the socialist label.
