http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EBd8T--kIU
Did the left use election machines to elect Obama? Some on the right are making the case (see extended entry). While at the same time, it appears that the Government has digitized records of phone conversations, married them with financial records, and is keeping them in a database for use by their "analysts." (Wonder how Spitzer got arrested so fast?)
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/nsa-whistlebl-1.html
We are in the interim. If Obama is smart he'll have these allegations investigated and any perpetrators exposed and prosecuted. But odds are he'll not see this threat for what it is. So for the next 3-7 years we'll be lulled into sleep. Torture lite might continue, just no waterboarding. People might still disappear, but only "national security threats." And all our words will be recorded by machines. Then when the Michelle Bachman's of the world come into office again, possibly exploiting huge reservoirs of fear and loathing, these things will be ready to use again -- having never even been turned off.
Chris
Voting and the CIA:
"According to top CIA cyber security experts, a majority of voting machines are not secure, and can easily be hacked. The CIA reports that any voting machine that is connected to the Internet can be easily hacked by an outsider, and even though most states have banned the use of WiFi cards in voting machines, a clever hacker could easily install one without it being detected. One expert even said that computerized electoral systems can be manipulated at five stages, from altering voter registration lists to posting results. But this CIA review wasn’t the result of the faulty voting machines that plagued Ohio in 2004, or ones in Florida in the 2000 election. No, this review was because the CIA was afraid that a foreign country might try to hack into our voting machines and change the outcome of an election. And they’ve wasted no time trying to once again vilify their least favorite South American leader – Hugo Chavez – by claiming that the socialist leader might have actually hacked into and changed the results of a recent election. Its nice to know that our government finally cares about the sanctity of elections and making sure every vote is accurately counted, its just a shame that they only care about these things in other countries."
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4EBd8T--kIU
Data mining our conversations:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/nsa-whistlebl-1.html
McConnell:
“There’s no spying on Americans,” former Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell insisted to the New Yorker last year.
But Tice's assertions this week contradict these claims.
With regard to the surveillance of journalists, Tice wouldn't disclose the names of the specific reporters or media outlets he targeted when he worked as an analyst for the NSA but said in the part of the program he covered, "everyone was collected."
"They sucked in everybody and at some point they may have cherry-picked from what they had, but I wasn't aware of who got cherry-picked out of the big pot," he said.
The purpose, he was told, was to eliminate journalists from possible suspicion so that the NSA could focus on those who merited further surveillance. But Tice said on Wednesday that the data on journalists was collected round-the-clock, year-round, suggesting there was never an intent to eliminate anyone from the surveillance.
New York Times reporter James Risen, who co-authored that paper's 2005 story on the warrantless wiretapping program with colleague Eric Lichtblau, suspects he could have been among those monitored, because Bush Administration officials obtained copies of his phone records, which they showed to a federal grand jury. The grand jury is investigating leaked information that appeared in Risen's 2006 book State of War about a CIA program, codenamed Operation Merlin, to infiltrate and destabilize Iran's nuclear program. Risen doesn't know if his records were obtained by the FBI with a legitimate warrant or through the NSA program that Tice described.
Risen told Olbermann that the NSA program to monitor journalists was likely intended to be used to ferret out and intimidate possible sources "to have a chilling effect on potential whistleblowers in the government to make them realize that there's a Big Brother out there that will get them if they step out of line."
Who else might have been among those targeted by the NSA?
"Senator Jay Rockefeller (D-West Virginia) said, in a separate interview, that he could very well have been targeted, too....."
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2009/01/nsa-whistlebl-1.html
Why should we care that we had mass murderers and torturers in the White House?
Why?
Part of it is because it is not only something that is a high crime and very violent, but something that damages our credibility abroad, recruits terrorists, is terror, and doesn't work:
"Detainee's Harsh Treatment Foiled No Plots Waterboarding, Rough Interrogation of Abu Zubaida Produced False Leads, Officials Say"
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/28/AR2009032802066.html?hpid=topnews
"When CIA officials subjected their first high-value captive, Abu Zubaida, to waterboarding and other harsh interrogation methods, they were convinced that they had in their custody an al-Qaeda leader who knew details of operations yet to be unleashed, and they were facing increasing pressure from the White House to get those secrets out of him."
"The methods succeeded in breaking him, and the stories he told of al-Qaeda terrorism plots sent CIA officers around the globe chasing leads."
"In the end, though, not a single significant plot was foiled as a result of Abu Zubaida's tortured confessions, according to former senior government officials who closely followed the interrogations. Nearly all of the leads attained through the harsh measures quickly evaporated, while most of the useful information from Abu Zubaida -- chiefly names of al-Qaeda members and associates -- was obtained before waterboarding was introduced, they said."
"Moreover, within weeks of his capture, U.S. officials had gained evidence that made clear they had misjudged Abu Zubaida. President George W. Bush had publicly described him as "al-Qaeda's chief of operations," and other top officials called him a "trusted associate" of al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and a major figure in the planning of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. None of that was accurate, the new evidence showed. "....
"The application of techniques such as waterboarding -- a form of simulated drowning that U.S. officials had previously deemed a crime -- prompted a sudden torrent of names and facts. Abu Zubaida began unspooling the details of various al-Qaeda plots, including plans to unleash weapons of mass destruction."
All of which were said just to stop the pain.
Abu Zubaida's revelations triggered a series of alerts and sent hundreds of CIA and FBI investigators scurrying in pursuit of phantoms. The interrogations led directly to the arrest of Jose Padilla, the man Abu Zubaida identified as heading an effort to explode a radiological "dirty bomb" in an American city. Padilla was held in a naval brig for 3 1/2 years on the allegation but was never charged in any such plot. Every other lead ultimately dissolved into smoke and shadow, according to high-ranking former U.S. officials with access to classified reports.
"We spent millions of dollars chasing false alarms," one former intelligence official said.
Despite the poor results, Bush White House officials and CIA leaders continued to insist that the harsh measures applied against Abu Zubaida and others produced useful intelligence that disrupted terrorist plots and saved American lives.
Two weeks ago, Bush's vice president, Richard B. Cheney, renewed that assertion in an interview with CNN, saying that "the enhanced interrogation program" stopped "a great many" terrorist attacks on the level of Sept. 11.
"I've seen a report that was written, based upon the intelligence that we collected then, that itemizes the specific attacks that were stopped by virtue of what we learned through those programs," Cheney asserted, adding that the report is "still classified," and, "I can't give you the details of it without violating classification."
Since 2006, Senate intelligence committee members have pressed the CIA, in classified briefings, to provide examples of specific leads that were obtained from Abu Zubaida through the use of waterboarding and other methods, according to officials familiar with the requests.
The agency provided none, the officials said.
Staff researcher Julie Tate contributed to this report. "
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/28/AR2009032802066.html?hpid=topnews
Cheney deserves his day in court.
Note, since I wrote this several scandals have erupted over even worse behavior than I describe here. There was the mass murder of 2000 Taliban soldiers by our allies in Afghanistan, covered up in 2003. There was a "Presidents Wire Tapping" program which was instituted before 911, and never disclosed to Congress. And there was a program to murder and kidnap "enemies" extrajudicially and extra-legally, which apparently also wasn't disclosed to Congress.
Further reading:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y-uuZhZzRkI&feature=player_embedded
Further listening:
Obama hasn't been too willing to follow up on the evidence from Cheney, Bush etceteras... comments and recent releases. But torture is still an international crime and Spain, at least, is considering prosecutions:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090329/ts_nm/us_spain_usa_torture_2
"MADRID (Reuters) – Spanish prosecutors may decide this week whether to press ahead with a probe into six former Bush administration officials in connection with the torture of detainees at the U.S. military's Guantanamo Bay prison, court sources said.
The criminal investigation into the officials, who include ex-U.S. Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, would likely focus on whether they violated international law by providing a legal justification for the torture.
Spanish prosecutors were asked to review the case by Baltasar Garzon, a High Court judge who came to world prominence when he issued an international warrant for the arrest of former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet in 1998.
Garzon asked for the review following a complaint filed by Spanish lawyers, who could pursue the case in court even if prosecutors decide not to take it further, as occurred in the Pinochet case.
Spain's law allows it to claim jurisdiction in the case because five Spanish citizens or residents who were prisoners at Guantanamo Bay say they were tortured there.
The U.S. detention camp in Cuba was set up to hold foreigners captured after U.S.-led forces invaded Afghanistan to root out al Qaeda and its Taliban protectors in response to the attacks of September 11, 2001 against the United States.
In one of his first acts in office, U.S. President Barack Obama set a one-year deadline for shutting the prison where about 245 people are still detained and which has been widely viewed by the international community as a stain on the U.S. human rights record.
According to Spanish law prosecutors recommend whether to proceed with cases and determine whether any trial would come under the jurisdiction of the High Court.
While there is no set deadline for a decision, a recommendation could come before Friday, a court official said.
One of the lawyers who filed the complaint which triggered the review told Reuters:
"It's not that we think the High Court might accept the complaint, they must accept it," Gonzalo Boye said."
"The complaint filed by the Association for the Dignity of Inmates also names John Yoo, the former Justice Department lawyer who wrote secret legal opinions saying President George W. Bush had the authority to circumvent the Geneva Conventions, and Douglas Feith, the former undersecretary of defense for policy."
"The other Americans named are William Haynes II, former general counsel for the Department of Defense; Jay Bybee, Yoo's former boss at the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel; and David Addington, chief of staff and legal adviser to ex-Vice President Dick Cheney."
"Boye said the six Americans had well-documented roles in approving illegal interrogation techniques, redefining torture and abandoning the definition set by the 1984 Torture Convention."
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090329/ts_nm/us_spain_usa_torture_2
I've spent a few years arguing with dishonest people. When a person is fundamentally dishonest there comes a point where the arguments break down and there is no point in continuing to argue. I'm a stubborn guy, so I tend to think that facts, arguments, truthfulness, can eventually sway people. But such people don't want to be swayed. They aren't interested in facts. They usually are only interested in one thing -- looking like they are on top of the argument. Genuine principles can withstand logical, scientific, historical and anaecdotal tests. False ones can't.
I've found that usually they have defenders; "he's a nice guy offline," is a common line. Usually they are masters at turning an argument into a personal attack, or making it look like an argument about what, where, how is somehow an argument about who. They get upset if one intimates they may be thinking.
But fundamental dishonesty is fundamental dishonesty. It is a way of weighing reality based on authority. "I believe such and such" because "I'm a libertarian", 'I'm a conservative." As opposed to "I believe in these principles because of these reasons and therefore I support this approach" which is both an honest and a principled approach.
Unprincipled people are the source of corruption. The Bernie Madoffs of the world are a nuisance, but the Alan Greenspans, the Ayn Rands, and the Rush Limbaughs are the cause of troubles. Dishonesty may seem like a minor flaw in this day and age when almost everyone is hypocritical on occasion, but it is still important. Those whose allegiance to principle is surface, based on groundless faith, not based on facts; tend to cut corners, betray those principles (because they are arbitrary or superficial), or to ignore reality.
Free market theory is biting us in the rear end right now, not because all those principles are false, but because those who upheld them upheld them as groundless faith without validating them. There is no free market in crony capitalism. There is no way to create a free market without government intervention; architecture, construction, linking and policing. The essential theory is okay, it is the way that theory has been mashed up, mixed with the poison of selfishness, and turned into a marketable ideology that is at fault.
And those who uphold such so called "principles"; in an unexamined, authoritarian or literalist manner, are far from innocent Don Quixotes. They are dangerous people. You can tell in a conversation who has the genuine principles by who seeks power over the website, moderates the conversation, and steps on disagreement. I saw this discussing Buddhism first between Nichiren Shoshu and the Gakkai, later between both and outside "so called danto" folks, and since then among these outside groups as well. I have found my own principles tested and moderated them.
Lately I've found that some of those I argue with aren't willing to argue on a level playing field. Instead of dealing with issues and arguing with facts, they resort to lies, defamations, degrading comments, and eventually to shutting down conversation through censorship. This isn't just a Buddhist phenomena. For more than 20 years the conservative right has advanced the dishonest notion that those who reported the news were somehow "liberal." (Reporting truth in the face of lies I guess is liberal), and have been pushing alternative media such as Rush Limbaugh. Now they are using that power to shut down alternative sources of ideas as much as they can. We have to fight back.
There is a Polish proverb "neither hope too much, nor despair too much." I follow that motto. For that reason when things are going well, I generally start telling myself to be cautious. When things are going poorly, that is when I start hunting for silver linings. The past few months have been testing that. The fact is that we had a virtual dictatorship ("unitary Government") running the country into the ground for the last 8 years. We had a President using fear to generate power. We had internal spying. We had illegal and immoral activities. We had an administration that hated Democracy, hated Congress, and ran illegal operations "off the books." In the process he destroyed not only our Government but our economy.
Now we have a slightly better President. But our Government has been so badly damaged that I'm not sure that any human being can reverse that damage. Our economy is entering a Depression. The mainstream press has collapsed.
Listen to Seymour Hersh:
http://www.cce.umn.edu/media/greatconversations/hersh_jacobs_mondale/hersh_jacobs_mondale.mp3
Cheney ran operations off the books. He betrayed the Constitution. He seems to have found his own source of funds, and done some things with such secrecy that we still haven't found out about all of it. Bush and his friends knowingly encouraged a housing boom driven by predatory lending and fraudulent Credit Default Swaps, leveraged instruments, and piled up garbage paper. All that is burning off and melting down what is left of our economy.
It's hard to be hopeful, but that is the only antidote I can think of.
Chris