Category: Politics of Fear

Where Are The Activists?

And why aren’t they out in the streets? Why isn’t every bank office, and every legislature, “occupied?”

The NYT reported on their NYT/CBS News poll on income inequality. It found that Americans are broadly concerned about inequality of wealth and income despite the improving economy. Among the findings:

Nearly six in 10 Americans said government should do more to reduce the gap between the rich and the poor.

Inequality is no longer a partisan issue. The poll found that inequality is important to almost half of Republicans and two-thirds of independents, suggesting that it is likely to be a central theme in next year’s general election. We are already seeing populist appeals by politicians of both parties who are trying to capitalize on the sense among Americans that the economic recovery benefited only a handful at the very top.

Sadly, the surveillance society has changed the costs and benefits of protests. The Occupy movement was crushed with a coordinated 17 city paramilitary crackdown. In this day of background checks as a condition to get a job, a misdemeanor arrest for protesting can make you unemployable. You can find yourself on any one of a variety of official lists that cannot be challenged because of secrecy laws; there are sham arrests like those conducted at Occupy Wall Street or, at the NYC Republican convention in 2004 by then-Mayor Bloomberg.

And the financial services industry seems to be able to get cops to come in and round up people on their behalf.

It is not enough to gather in the street. Once you are there and gathered, it must lead somewhere, there must be a goal. Admittedly, the problem with activism is that the fight is to change perceptions and narratives, and progress toward those goals is slow, and rarely concrete and visible.

It’s astonishing today to see how Americans have been conditioned to think that political action and engagement is futile. The Wrongologist was a demonstrator when the reverse occurred, when activism in the 1960s produced significant advances in civil rights for blacks and women, and eventually led the US to exit the Vietnam War. But today, when activism is an option, quite a few argue that there is no point in making the effort, that we as individuals are powerless. Yet, what Richard Kline wrote about protest in 2010 still applies:

The nut of the matter is this: you lose, you lose, you lose, you lose, and [then] they give up. As someone who has protested, and studied the process, it’s plain that one spends most of one’s time being defeated. That’s painful, humiliating, and intimidating. One can’t expect typically, as in a battle, to get a clean shot at a clear win.

What activism does is change the context, and that change moves the goalposts on your opponent. It also raises the political price for governments that make bad decisions. Demonstrations helped stop LBJ and Nixon from making a few bad decisions. The same principle could apply to the Conservative’s desire to kneecap Social Security, Medicare and Obamacare while they hand out more baubles to their rich friends. This kind of class inequality is deeply un-American, but it has big political benefactors in both parties.

We can’t use the protests of the 1960s as a model in today’s political environment. Back then, power feared the people. Power feared the people because there was a free press to publicize and record events. The White House press confronted presidents; they didn’t pander, or act as stenographers as they do now.

That no longer exists. The press has been destroyed by corporate consolidation and foreign ownership. Investigative reporting and the institutions that nurtured and supported it were alive and well.

In the 1960s, few local politicians would refuse a permit for a peaceful demonstration, if in fact, a permit was even required. That is no longer true. No permit, no demo. The arrogance of power is demonstrated repeatedly right in front of cameras and reporters; the police harass and provoke, restrain and intimidate at peaceful demonstrations. They also create incidents to blame on demonstrators, which are dutifully captured by the cameras.

If one unit of protest worked in 1965, we need 10 units today to achieve similar results. In the meantime, reflect on this quote from a noted demonstrator:

“When the idea is a sound one, the cause a just one, and the demonstration a righteous one, change will be forthcoming”–Martin Luther King, Jr.

See you on Sunday.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 31, 2015

Get a cup of coffee and ponder a few things on this Sunday.

First, from the NYT’s Upshot, data-driven news you can use: Clinton vs. Sanders voting record. Top line numbers, they voted the same way 93% of the time. However, the 31 times that Ms. Clinton and Mr. Sanders disagreed happened to be on some the biggest issues of the day, including measures on continuing the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, an immigration reform bill and bank bailouts during the Great Recession. Bernie was opposed to all these actions.

Second, recycled neo-con viewpoints from the Washington Post Editorial Board on the Obama administration’s strategy in Iraq and for ISIS: (brackets by the Wrongologist)

The Obama administration has been unable to induce [Iraq’s] Abadi government to deliver desperately needed arms…to the Sunni tribes and Kurdish forces. Yet it [the Obama administration] simultaneously refuses to deliver materiel directly to those fighters, on the grounds this might undermine the Abadi government.

Then the Jeff Bezos team trots out Iran bogeyman:

Meanwhile, US officials watch as Iran continues to provide massive direct support to Shiite militias, including forces the US has designated as terrorist organizations.

Finally the neo-con wet dream of more troops on the ground emerges, repeating John McCain’s view:

Mr. Obama should bolster them with more US advisers, including forward air controllers, and more air support. He should insist that Mr. Abadi open a weapons pipeline to Sunni and Kurdish units. Perhaps most important, Mr. Obama should make his priority eliminating the Islamic State — as opposed to limiting US engagement in Iraq.

What we know: Experienced Iraqi army officers, who were largely Sunni, were left jobless when the Iraqi army was disbanded in 2004. Some of them joined ISIS. And Iraq’s current army officers are incompetent and corrupt appointees of an incompetent and corrupt Iraqi government. No matter what equipment we provide to the Iraqi army, all the Iraqi army will be capable of doing is spending our money and losing on the field of battle.

The editors of the WaPo have an agenda that isn’t serious about Iraq. The Iraqis do not lack weapons. We have spent nearly $40 billion on weapons and training. What money can’t buy is the will to fight. The Iraqi army apparently doesn’t have a lot of that.

If what the WaPo and Republicans really are saying is that more American men and women should die in Iraq for a country whose soldiers flee at the first sight of ISIS, then they should say that.

Let’s fight an endless war with money we don’t have. Great idea. Go ahead, you can now have your flashback to Vietnam.

On to a few cartoons.

Obama’s ISIS conundrum in a nutshell:

COW ISIS Bombing

FIFA’s story inspires others:

COW FIFA BustFIFA gets 47 count indictment:

COW Soccer Match

Texas floods delay Texas policy:

COWTexas Floods

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

One-third of Nigeria’s rescued girls are pregnant:

COW Nigeria Pro-Life

 

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Tribes of America

We have two tribes in America, largely represented by our two political parties. The parties debate the correct course for the country, without any chance of reaching compromise. One of the parties has begun acting like insurrectionists.

Over the past 40 years, the Republican Party has transformed into a party that flouts the law when it is in the majority, and threatens disorder when in the minority:

• No Democrat has called for secession, as Rick Perry did
• No Democrat defied the Supreme Court by sending in the National Guard and provoking a confrontation with police, as Jeb Bush did during Schiavo
• No Democrat is so anti-science that they believe that if women are “legitimately raped,” they will be protected from pregnancy, as Todd Akin did
• No Democrat has said, what Mike Huckabee has said: The Supreme Court is only that…it is not the Supreme Being. It cannot overrule God…when it comes to life, and when it comes to the sanctity of marriage, the court cannot change what God has created
• No Democrat has suggested that states disregard EPA rules on coal plant emissions while various court challenges occur, as Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell did

Politicians keep their jobs because they win elections, and a politician who openly admits that he only believes in democracy if it achieves his desired ends, is at minimum, a radical, or more likely, is an insurrectionist.

There is a precedent for the actions of today’s Republican Party. It is the antebellum Southern Democrats of John C. Calhoun, who threatened to nullify federal legislation, and who later led the fight to secede from the union over slavery.

The homeland of today’s right-wing insurgency is the very same place where the last insurgency originated: The Old Confederacy. History offers some geographical perspective: The South had an almost unbroken control of the Federal Government from 1789 until secession. Our presidents were either Southerners, or when they were Northerners like Pierce and Buchanan, they were puppets of Southern senators and cabinet members.

For 70 years, the Supreme Court had a majority of Southern justices. With the aid of Northern allies and the three-fifths rule, the South continuously controlled one or both houses of Congress. The 15 Slave States, with a white population of not quite eight million, had 30 Senators, 90 Representatives, and 120 electoral votes, while the state of New York, with a population of four million had two senators, 33 representatives, and 35 electoral votes.

Lincoln’s election in 1860 left the South in control of both houses of Congress, and until 1863, Lincoln and the Republicans would have been powerless to pass legislation hostile to the South. Through its control of the Senate, the South could have blocked the confirmation of any Lincoln appointee whom it considered unfriendly. In spite of this, and notwithstanding Lincoln’s repeated assurances that he would not, directly or indirectly, interfere with slavery where it already existed, the South seceded.

Today, the two parties are still the two tribes that were created out of secession, and the same political dynamic prevails today. The civil war map looks starkly similar to the political bases of both parties today, with the addition of the new Randians in the Upper Midwest.

This tribe now includes Republicans, the Tea Party and right-wing conservatives. They now control 36 state legislatures that are trying to eliminate abortions, remove environmental protections, enhance gun rights, and privatize education, all of which need a weak federal government in order to succeed. Time to call it what it is: A domestic insurgency by America’s right wing tribe.

After the Civil War, we passed the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, ending slavery, formalizing birthright citizenship, creating black male suffrage, and guaranteeing equal protection under the law. Later, after the Great Depression, we enacted laws to protect the people from financial abuses by businesses and corporations. With Civil Rights legislation, the federal government protected citizens from abuses at the hand of businesses as well as local governments.

Much of these will be unwound if the insurgency succeeds.

What good are policy proposals in the face of an insurgency? We no longer have fellow citizens, we have enemies. We do not have common views, we have religious, racial, class, and political factions.

When we see each other as enemies, we are the Middle East, we can no longer work together for the common good.

We should deal with our tribal issues at home instead of trying to fix the tribal issues in the Middle East.

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Sec Def Carter Says What Politicians Can’t

After Ramadi fell to ISIS, Mr. Obama said in an interview with the Atlantic, that the fall of Ramadi was a “tactical setback” in the US effort to defeat ISIS but said, “I don’t think we’re losing.” Then, because something real had to be said, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said it:

What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight…They were not outnumbered. In fact, they vastly outnumbered the opposing force, and yet they failed to fight. They withdrew from the site, and that says to me, and I think to most of us, that we have an issue with the will of the Iraqis to fight ISIL and defend themselves.

He captured the essence of the problem:

We can give them training, we can give them equipment — we obviously can’t give them the will to fight…But if we give them training, we give them equipment, and give them support, and give them some time, I hope they will develop the will to fight, because only if they fight can ISIL remain defeated.

This was all too much for the Republicans, who are attacking President Obama’s “failed” strategy for dealing with ISIS. John Bolton said on Fox News Sunday: “We’re losing. There’s no doubt about it.” John McCain, on CBS’s Face the Nation: “We need more troops on the ground. We need forward air controllers”.

The Republican 2016 candidates also attacked Obama’s strategy, but said little about what they would do differently. Those who have spoken out, want thousands of US troops back in Iraq.

• Lindsey Graham and Rick Santorum want to deploy 10,000 American troops in Iraq as part of a coalition with Arab nations
• Jeb Bush thinks additional American soldiers would have prevented ISIS from gathering strength in recent years. But an American-led force now? “I don’t think that will work,” he said last Friday
• Marco Rubio described his strategy against ISIS with a line from the movie “Taken” — “we will look for you, we will find you, and we will kill you”
• Scott Walker and Rick Perry are open to a combat mission
• Rand Paul wants boots on the ground — as long as they are “Arab boots on the ground”

The Republicans offer “more troops” and movie quotes. They seem to say, “It matters not if you win or lose, it’s where you place the blame”. They also want us to believe that the “surge” defeated the Iraqi insurgency back in the day, and that if Obama had just stayed in Iraq, ISIS wouldn’t be there today.

It’s just more Republican delusion about a country we broke and can’t put back together.

Def Sec Carter was correct to rebuke the Iraqis for cutting and running at Ramadi. The Iraqi military and police forces outnumbered the attacking ISIS forces by 10 to 1, and were more heavily armed. Yet they still ran away as fast as their US-provided ground vehicles would carry them. The Iraqi forces have pointed out that they did not have as much air support as they wanted.

Ok, but it is fair to point out the total lack of air support available to ISIS forces. Any army, like the Iraqis who have air support, when facing an enemy who fights without air support, and finds itself unable to overcome that enemy, is probably fighting poorly.

The military situation is that ISIS and the Iraqi Shias are evenly matched in weaponry, and the Iraqi army has superior numbers. ISIS uses their arms and smaller numbers better, and leads their fighters more skillfully. What is keeping the Iraqi army from using the mobile, combined arms operations tactics that ISIS executes routinely? Is it lack of US air support? Lack of Iranian support?

Maybe it is a marked inferiority in leadership. How about a lack of competence in tactics, logistics, maintenance and supply, not to mention nepotism and chronic corruption?

This is not our fight, and it never was. Now that the apple cart is upside down, and the Sunnis and Shias are at each other, there is absolutely no place in this for the US. At the end of the day, we need to have both Sunni and Shia friends in the ME.

Bravo, Secretary Carter!

Keep our politicians real whenever they try to posture about the ME and ISIS.

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Maximizing Shareholder Value

The Guardian highlights a report by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) about the level of global subsidies paid by governments to the fossil fuel industry:

Fossil fuel companies are benefiting from global subsidies of $5.3tn (ÂŁ3.4tn) a year, equivalent to $10m a minute every day, according to a startling new estimate by the International Monetary Fund.

That’s $5.3 trillion per year. The subsidy estimated for 2015 is greater than the total annual health spending of all the world’s governments. The subsidy is created by polluters not paying the many costs imposed on countries by the burning of coal, oil and gas. These include the harm caused by air pollution.

The IMF said that ending subsidies for fossil fuels would cut global carbon emissions by 20%. They argue that ending the subsidies would also slash the number of premature deaths from outdoor air pollution by 50%, or about 1.6 million lives a year.

It is difficult to get behind the IMF headline to the methodology that leads to their findings. They are basically estimating how much damage global warming is doing and listing that as a government subsidy. The benefits that fossil fuels have delivered to mankind are massive. The pro-fossil fuel argument is that if you could put a price on these things, it would outweigh the $5.3 trillion figure by many thousands of times.

That is true, but the argument misses the point. We need fossil fuels. We use fossil fuels. The issue is why are the costs socialized, while the profits are privatized?

This again highlights the moral and intellectual bankruptcy of the “Maximize Shareholder Value” movement in corporate governance. The 1970-era Clean Air and Water Acts and the 1980-era Superfund, TSCA, and RCRA Acts were among the first attempts to shift the costs of the socialized pollution costs back onto the corporate and municipality originators. Ironically, given today’s political environment, all of the major environmental acts (except the 1980 Superfund) were signed into law by Republican presidents Nixon and Reagan.

In the IMF report, China provided $2.3 trillion of the subsidies. The US was 2nd with $700 billion.

China will be focusing on reducing their pollution and other impacts as their society gets wealthier. Once people’s basic needs are met, they will be looking to improve their lot, and breathing in poisonous smog and living next to putrid water will not be high on their list of desires. As an example, it only took 25 years after the end of WW II for Americans to insist on an improved environment.

And all of the above ignores the costs of wars to keep the fossil fuel supply lines open, as well as the regular costs of our defense and intelligence establishments, and the destruction of democracy as necessary collateral damage.

All that for something we burn. Along with our tax dollars, that is.

Cartoon of the Day: The real truth about DC’s Think Tanks:
Think TanksLinks:

Hillary Clinton on Trade Agreement: “I have been for trade agreements, I have been against trade agreements.” Anybody want syrup with those waffles?

Is Japan becoming extinct? The Japan Times wonders what the projected drop in the country’s population says about its future. They cite a report, “Local Extinctions”, which says that that 896 cities, towns and villages throughout Japan are facing extinction by 2040. Factoid: In 2013, 8.2 million of the more than 60 million homes nationwide were empty, and 40% percent of the 8.2 million empty homes were not being offered for sale or rent.

Here’s how much of your life the United States has been at war. The link shows a ginormous chart of how many years of your life were in wartime. For the Wrongologist, it is 43.8% of his life.

Millions of tiny spiders rained from the sky in Australia. Residents of Goulburn, Australia woke one day this month to find their town shrouded in silken webs, while millions of tiny spiders rained down from above. Apparently this is called “Spider rain.” It happens when large groups of arachnids migrate all at once, using a technique called “ballooning.” Creepy much?

After decades of maintaining a minimal nuclear force, China is re-engineering its long-range ballistic missiles to carry multiple warheads, or MIRVs. China has had the technology for decades, but the decision to put three or more warheads atop a single missile is recent. So far, China has declined to engage in talks with the US about their decision to deploy MIRVs. If America treats China like an enemy, then China WILL BE our enemy. Maybe that’s what the Pentagon and CIA want. They need something to justify their big budgets, and their secret slush funds.

See you on Sunday.

 

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Are We Now Borg?

On Monday, Reuters reported about the ISIS takeover of Ramadi in Iraq. They quote Secretary of State John Kerry, who said Ramadi was a “target of opportunity,” that could be retaken in a matter of days, and US officials insisted there would be no change in strategy despite a failure to make major advances against ISIS. They also reported that Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior Iranian official, said Tehran was ready to help confront Islamic State, and he was certain the city would be “liberated”.

Pat Lang at Sic Semper Tyrannis made a great point about deceptive propaganda that is directed at a country’s own people. He was talking about the US and that John Kerry and our General in Iraq, Gen. Thomas Weidly used exactly the same talking points. Col. Lang makes a case that the US Military’s embrace of “Thought Control†occurred after America lost the Vietnam War. This from Lang: (emphasis and brackets by the Wrongologist)

It came to be an article of faith that “Information Operations,” (propaganda = IO) and “Kinetic Operations” (shooting people as necessary) were equally effective ways to wage war. This belief led to an exaggerated faith in the IO side of COIN [Counterinsurgency Operations]…and [our] repeated attempts to change…the basic beliefs of the many different peoples of the earth who simply do not want to be changed by foreigners.

And we have conclusive evidence it hasn’t worked in the Middle East. Lang continues:

As a result of this kind of thinking we have done all kinds of foolish things. Among them, we situated outposts in totally hostile parts of Afghanistan next to villages from which our men would never be able to defend themselves.

And we were told that if we followed COIN, we would win in Afghanistan and Iraq. But we didn’t win. And now in Iraq, Syria and Yemen our government continues to spin us. The government narrative is that all is well, defeat at Ramadi is nothing but “a momentary setback”. This theme is propagated, while they tout a raid in Syria (see below in Links) as a distraction from what now appears to be a catastrophe in the making in Iraq.

Kerry has emerged as our “Baghdad Bobâ€. Increasingly, it seems that we are in a phase where our government tries to intervene in all aspects of our lives to keep people believing in our geopolitical strategy, whether it is Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Iran or Yemen.

When information operations (IO) came into vogue, truth was buried by the narrative. Somehow, the American public became a legitimate target for national IO. Lang closes by comparing us to the Borg:

When you are part of the Borg you eventually come to believe that the talking points are the only reality and that defeat is evidence of impending victory. Locutas said that resistance is futile.

Talking points won’t protect our Republic, they will hasten its demise.

Today’s Links:

US officials leak information about their ISIS raid that’s more sensitive than anything Snowden ever leaked. Over the weekend, the US government announced that Special Forces soldiers entered Syria to conduct a raid that killed an alleged leader of ISIS, Abu Sayyaf. In the process, anonymous US officials leaked classified information that the New York Times published. As to the “growing network of informants†the Times quotes, maybe the US wants the ISIS to believe they have traitors in their midst….

World’s longest and highest glass-bottom bridge to open in China. The foot bridge spans two cliffs in China’s Zhangjiajie Grand Canyon. It is 1,410 feet long and 20 feet wide, hovering over a 984-foot vertical drop. This may not be for the vertigo-challenged.

NYC police Chief Bill Bratton to assign 450 NYPD cops to fight terrorism that may come from the ISIS. Apparently ISIS is selling loose cigarettes on Staten Island.

Forbes reports on all 50 states ranked by the cost of weed. States where recreational marijuana use is legal are also the states where marijuana is least expensive. This is also the case in Canada, where weed can be bought legally from places like speed greens at an inexpensive price. If you would like to grow your own weed then you may want to check out grow tents for weed. Mr. Market says that’s what was supposed to happen. In four states where pot has been legalized or decriminalized–Washington, Oregon, Colorado and Alaska, the price of an ounce has fallen below $300, compared with the nationwide average of $324. Oregon leads with a price of $204/ounce.

Florida GOP approves winner-take-all presidential primary for March 15, 2016. This makes FLA a BFD, especially for Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio. It means the guy who finishes 2nd in Florida will have a hard time winning the Republican presidential nomination from the guy who finishes first.

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Sunday Cartoon Blogging – May 17, 2015

The “knowing what we know now” argument from the right wing talkers was all over the news this week. They are trying to help Jeb Bush walk back his brother’s decision to invade Iraq. It is a revisionist attempt to explain the past decisions of the Bush administration with the added benefit of indicting Hillary Clinton. After all, while a Senator from NY she voted to invade.

The reframe says that a decision based on “what we knew then” was righteous, that everyone who looked at the same information would have come to the same decision. These guys continue to defend the invasion, despite the fact that we know it was based on lies. Iraq was not a good faith mistake. Bush and Cheney didn’t sit down with the intelligence community, ask for their best assessment of the situation, and then reluctantly conclude that war was the only option.

They decided before the dust of 9/11 had settled to use it as an excuse to go after Saddam. As evil as he was, he had nothing to do with the attack. To make a case for the short little war they expected to fight, they deliberately misled the public, making an essentially fake case about Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) and insinuating that Saddam was behind 9/11. From Lambert Strether:

And we played whack-a-mole with one fake WMD story after another: The yellowcake. The drones. The white powder. Judy Miller. Curveball. Cheney at the CIA. As soon as we would whack one story, another would pop up. And then Colin Powell, bless his heart, went to the UN and regurgitated it all (to his subsequent regret). Only subsequently did we come to understand (from the Downing Street Memo) that “the facts and the intelligence were being fixed around the policy,” and that the reason it felt like we were playing whack-a-mole is that we were; Bush’s “White House Iraq Group” was systematically planting stories in our famously free press.

Yet the Neo-cons, including Jeb Bush, say they would still make the same decision.

Bush harkens back to a government that believed its own spin doctoring to the point where it wasn’t able to see the difference between a sales pitch and the hard evidence coming from the Intelligence community. Given the totality of the outcome of these decisions: America nearly bankrupted, hundreds of thousands dead, total conflagration in the Middle East, he spent the week dancing around, saying the intelligence was faulty, but everyone believed it. And saying while you wouldn’t do it now, you would have done it then, is moral depravity.

According to the neo-cons, Obama did it:

COW Obama Did It

Jeb mansplains:

COW Jebs Answer

This week, Obama met with our ME “allies”:

COW ME Strategy

Amtrak off the rails indicts America:

COW Train Wreck

GOP’s new budget is springtime for the 1%:

Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press
Clay Bennett, Chattanooga Times Free Press

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Trade Deal is still up in the air:

COW Trade Deal

 

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Exactly Who Does the FBI Work For?

The Keystone Pipeline has been off the radar for a few months, but The Guardian brought it back this week with an article describing the FBI’s bad behavior towards activists who are against Keystone:

The FBI breached its own internal rules when it spied on campaigners against the Keystone XL pipeline, failing to get approval before it cultivated informants and opened files on individuals protesting against the construction of the pipeline in Texas, documents reveal.

The documents connect the investigation of anti-Keystone activists to other “domestic terrorism issues” in the agency. The FBI files also suggest that the Houston part of the investigation was opened in early 2013, several months after a high-level strategy meeting between the agency and TransCanada, the company building the pipeline.

The Guardian hired Mike German, a former FBI agent, to help decipher the documentation. German said they indicated that the agency had opened a category of investigation that is known in agency parlance as an “assessment”. An “assessment” was an expansion of FBI powers after 9/11. Assessments allow agents to open intrusive investigations into individuals or groups, even if they have no reason to believe they are breaking the law. German, now a fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said:

It is clearly troubling that these documents suggest the FBI interprets its national security mandate as protecting private industry from political criticism

The Wrongologist wrote about this very issue in February 2015, making several points:

• The FBI was meeting with and surveilling anti-Keystone pipeline activists in the US.
• The FBI indicated publicly (and untruthfully) that they could only conduct investigations when they had reason to suspect criminal activity.
• The FBI failed to disclose that they had changed their mission statement. Instead of listing “law enforcement” as its primary function, as it had for years, the FBI fact sheet started listing “national security” as its chief mission.

At the time, we reported that the FBI was essentially doing pre-emptive security work for a Canadian corporation. From Charlie Pierce:

The FBI has no business dropping in on citizens who have not committed a crime, nor are they suspected of having committed one, and especially not at the behest of a private multinational concern.

That would be a foreign private concern. More from Pierce:

Names are going into a file…This never has worked out well in the area of political dissent in this country, and, given the fact that we now have a staggering network of covert domestic intelligence-gathering and a huge government law-enforcement apparatus, it’s unlikely to work out well in the future…

Finally, the new Guardian report states that the FBI said it was compelled to

take the initiative to secure and protect activities and entities which may be targeted for terrorism or espionage.

So, here we go. The FBI, never a friend of civil liberties, has once again violated the law by spying on activists in the absence of any reasonable suspicion that these pose a threat to life and/or property. They shouldn’t be in a position to conduct an unauthorized witch hunt and they shouldn’t be able to just say there is a threat of terrorism.

How convenient that the Houston FBI office didn’t seek approval in advance for their investigation. Plausible deniability for those up the chain of command preserves cushy government pensions.

Our security state says it requires all of this very intrusive information-gathering in order to protect us. Yet we read again and again that some terrorist or another was known to law enforcement prior to their criminal acts, just as the FBI missed clear opportunities to stop the Boston Bombers.

We could all learn from Al Swearengen in Deadwood:

I don’t like the Pinkertons. They’re muscle for the bosses, as if the bosses ain’t got enough edge.

There is a name for what happens when the government’s law-enforcement powers are put at the direct convenience of private corporations. Fascism.

See you on Sunday.

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A Civil War Meditation

May 9th was the 150th anniversary of the end of the Civil War. It passed unnoticed in most national media. Despite Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, America’s black citizens were not truly free until MLK made us really see their problems during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960’s. In 1965, the 100th anniversary of the Civil War, the Voting Rights Act was passed.

The Voting Rights Act, along with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, were the largest step forward for equal rights in our nation’s history, certainly more important than the Emancipation Proclamation.

We are fascinated by the Civil War because it is an epic story. The American Republic was founded in 1789, and the nation only lives 72 years with slavery before it is torn apart by the argument over states’ rights, and the right to own slaves. We go on to fight a war that kills some 750,000 people, (equal to 7 million today). We then free 3.5 million people overnight, and then take years to try to put the country back together. Today, about 1 in 3 Americans can trace an ancestor to one side or the other in the Civil War. That adds up to about 100 million of our population who are remotely connected to the war.

What is sometimes lost in the story is that Lincoln, a Republican, introduced big government to America. At the start of the war, the country had a weak central government. Lincoln built the centralized state. Consider what Lincoln created:

• The first national income tax
• The first military draft
• The Quartermaster Corps, which became the 2nd largest employer in the country during the war, behind only the Union Army
• The largest confiscation of property in US history when he emancipated the slaves. Slave owners in the South lost $3.5 billion of net worth in the process
• A re-imagining of the US Constitution, passing the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, ending slavery, formalizing birthright citizenship, creating black male suffrage, and guaranteeing equal protection under the law. It can be said that these Amendments were a second American revolution.

Conservatives ask: “Where did big government come from?” It was invented by Lincoln, a Republican, to win the Civil War. If the Civil War ended with Constitutional Amendments that can be called a 2nd American Revolution, perhaps the Civil Rights and Voting Rights acts of the mid-1960’s was yet a 3rd American Revolution. And there may be other “revolutions” to come.

Yale University Professor of Civil War History, David Blight wrote in The Atlantic that the nation has never truly gotten over that conflict. He says that the great issues of the war were not resolved at Appomattox, and in a sense, not only is the Civil War not over, it can still be lost.

When we think about the legacy of the Civil War, one of the issues that we have re-visited since the Reagan era is the revival of a debate about states’ rights and the place of federalism in our Republic. This is a persistent legacy of the Civil War, the issue of state power versus federal power: does America owe its first loyalty to the Supremacy Clause of the Constitution, that says the Constitution, federal statutes, and treaties are “the supreme law of the land?” Or does the 10th Amendment come first, which states that the federal government possesses only those powers delegated to it under the Constitution?

Professor Blight says that the question we have to ask the states’ rights supporters is: “states’ rights to do what?” Or, “for whom and against whom?”

During the Civil War, the states’ rights argument was used to preserve the racial order in the South. Today, the states’ rights debate is hidden in the term “limited government”, versus the right’s categorization of “big government”.

Lately, conservative partisans have brought back “nullification”, but couched in near-Orwellian terms, such as “right to work,” or, “religious freedom.” We have 36 state legislatures controlled by Republicans that are trying to eliminate abortions, remove environmental protections, enhance gun rights, and privatize education, all of which need a weaker federal government to succeed.

And every time a politician of the South says she/he is “standing on principle” and pledges “a return to our founding principles of limited government and local control,” our progress from the time of the Emancipation Proclamation, through the New Deal reforms, to the 1960’s Civil Rights acts are again threatened.

50 years after the Voting Rights Act, we are finally aware that there are millions of Americans who have never fully accepted the verdict of Appomattox.

As Professor Blight said this week in a BBC lecture, as long as we continue to debate states’ rights, and as long as we continue to leave the “problem” of racism unresolved, we will need to study our Civil War.

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Drones: A Big Bad Nightmare

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), better known as the drone, is revolutionizing military power around the world. Despite the Pentagon’s Sequester, certain programs, like drone procurement have emerged unscathed, in part because the last two US administrations have embraced use of drones in combat theaters overseas. Meanwhile, a “drone caucus” has emerged in Congress that fiercely protects UAV funding and touts them as a way to help save money on defense, protect the lives of US soldiers, better patrol America’s borders, and assist domestic law enforcement agencies in surveillance.

In 2013, President Obama made a high-profile speech announcing plans to curb US use of drones. But events in the Middle East and North Africa, especially the rise of ISIS, have forced the US to shelve those plans. Yesterday, the Wrongologist reported that China was selling drones to Saudi Arabia. Consider this:

• More than 70 countries have acquired UAVs of different types. Of these countries, the US holds the largest share of UAVs
• 23 countries are reportedly developing armed UAVs
• The Teal Group forecasts an increase in global spending on UAVs from $6.6 billion in 2013 to $11.4 billion in 2022
• The Diplomat reports that China will be the largest UAV manufacturer over the next decade

Many countries want drones, and many will turn to China with its lower manufacturing costs, and similar drone technology. A report last year by the US-China Economic and Security Review Commission stated:

Chinese companies appear to be positioning themselves to become key suppliers of UAVs in the global market.

Chinese UAVs are especially attractive to countries in Africa and the Middle East given their low cost and China’s the lack of export restrictions compared with their Western competitors.

Even the new US drone export policy is not competitive with China, since it requires countries buying our armed drones to assure the US that they won’t use them to carry out illegal surveillance, that they will abide by international humanitarian laws, and that they use them for legal purposes. Just how will we enforce that? Will the US assign personnel to the control vans and centers to monitor each flight, or depend on self-reporting by foreign governments?

In the past year, drones have crashed onto the White House lawn, placed radioactive cesium on the roof of the Japanese prime minister’s office in Tokyo, and worked the battlefields in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen and Iraq.

It is a formidable weapon that we are only beginning to understand. The concern is that they can be used against a nation’s homeland, since they are hard to detect and difficult to bring down. With drone proliferation, what will the impact be if large public gatherings become indefensible targets? Will sporting events like the Super Bowl be “protectable” by the city and state that hosts the event? Probably not. So, will they have to be protected by the US military? Images of US military patrolling the streets around the Super Bowl would provide an Orwellian cast to the big game.

The small quad-copter commercial drones that anyone can purchase (for between a few hundred and a few thousand dollars) signal the biggest problem for the future. They are equipped with GPS technology and high-resolution cameras. They could carry (small) loads of plastic explosive, or even chemical weapons to a precise location and cause havoc. Jamming GPS signals could be an effective solution, provided we had some idea about a targeted area. Universal GPS jamming probably would be impractical, since GPS is so important to our everyday lives.

We don’t seem to have much of a clue as to what to do about this emerging threat.

How will we adapt when drones (commercial or military) become ubiquitous? What would be the societal impact? Fear is already a great driver of our domestic politics. It is difficult to imagine how much more of our 4th Amendment rights could be sacrificed to protecting us from terrorist drones. Armed drones deployed against a densely-populated Western country is a terrorist dream!

Drone design of the future is receiving huge amounts of venture capital. The current new idea is swarming drones. The US Navy is currently testing a weapon that can fire 30+ small armed drones at once. The Navy calls the program “Low-Cost UAV Swarming Technology”, or LOCUST. The Navy is also concerned about defending drone swarm attacks on its ships, since the vessels are relatively large targets.

Imagine if a terrorist could fire a “drone swarm” at Manhattan.

We won’t be putting this genie back in the bottle. Think of all the things that could possibly go (horribly) wrong by the US making drones the AK-47 of the future.

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