Snowden Again

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath and affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

Don't you think this should be required reading for James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and General Alexander, head of the National Security Agency?

Eugene Robinson, in The Washington Post (7.4.13), detailed some of the egregious violations of the Fourth Amendment. Our government has collected information about billions of our phone calls, and perhaps, has recorded some or all of them. He asks the right question: under what authority was this information compiled? The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court is supposed to oversee this operation, but its proceedings and rulings are secret. So we don't know. We do know that the government has requested more than 30,000 surveillance warrants and the court has refused only 11. Check my math, but that's .037%. 

That's right: .037%

So we don't know what information is being collected, for what purpose, and for how long. In essence, then, this is a lawless operation since the people, i.e. us, are not permitted to know any of these purposes or even whether the information is being or has been collected. It's a blank check to a Star Chamber court, completely and irrevocably antithetical to the Constitution and the American experience.

Policemen, and secret policemen, always want more information in order to "protect" their society from threats, both internal and external. In fact, the best way to protect us would be to put us in a dark cell, completely protected

Outrage!

George F. Will Hits a Wall in Berlin

Just what was it about President Obama and his speech in Berlin that so bothered George F. Will, reactionary wordsmith of the Right? Was it the President's demeanor? Was it the mention of arms control? The President said that we cannot ignore the intolerance and extremism that provides the fuel for terrorism. George's sneer was that terrorists create intolerance and extremism - basically Obama is too dumb to understand this crucial distinction. The next insulting sneer was that Obama was ignorant of Iran's and North Korea's nuclear programs. As if he could be. Remember when the Right insisted that a President shouldn't be criticised while on foreign soil? But that during the tenure of the Toxic Texan, not the unprincipled usurper, elected twice now. Which does remind me, has anyone heard of Mitt Romney or Paul Ryan lately?

This president seems to get under George's white, white skin. I looked at his article again and decided that the old hot buttons of the Cold War, so beloved by the Right, no longer produce the same frisson of angst and terror. The President mentioned arms control - that means cuts in the military, spelling financial hardship for arms makers and investors. The President is looking at the reasons why terrorists flourish in some venues across the globe. Again, for George, apostasy! He thinks that Americans have a God-given right to kill terrorists and anyone , really, who disagrees with our unquestionably generous policies. And then Obama talked about the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs. Yes, they are dangerous, but the central question is why these two countries, certainly not very properous or advanced, should devote so much of their Gross National Product to the production of nuclear bombs. Might these projects have something to do with fear? In the past has the United States threatened either or both countries? Does anyone remember Mohammad Mossadegh or the Korean War? Yes, George wants a no-nonsense, heavily armed America that brooks no opposition to its sway, you know, just like Ronald Reagan. Talking with opponents, considering long term solutions to problems, looking unblinkingly at the mistakes we've made - not for George.

I think that these considerations sparked George's tantrum. He was the one who hit the wall in Berlin, not President Obama.

The Atlantic Naval War: December, 1941 - June, 1942

Yesterday I watched Part II of The U-Boat War on You Tube. Again it confirmed my suspicion that many aspects of the Second World War have yet to be discovered.

After the gratuitous declaration of war by Germany on December 11, 1941, Admiral Doenitz, Commander of U-boats, dispatched five submarines to the East Coast of the United States to intercept and sink American and British shipping. They arrived at their patrol stations about January 10th. They were astounded to see that U.S. cities still had not dimmed their lights at night; Allied freighters and tankers were clearly outlined against the lights, providing easy targets for the marauding U-Boats. Later they extended their patrols to the Gulf of Mexico, especially the waters off Galveston, from which most American tankers sailed. The next five months were the "Happy Time" of the German U-boats. They sank over 400 ships off the East Coast of the United States. And this in spite of the fact that British Intelligence was reading U-boat radio traffic and had provided these intercepts to the American Navy. But Admiral King, then Commander-in-chief, United States Fleet, was an Anglophobe and did nothing with this incredibly valuable information. He also refused to institute convoys for vessels sailing northward to New York and Canadian ports where they would be convoyed to England. Admiral King remarked that convoys only provided grouped targets for the submarines, ignoring the plain fact that shipping losses from convoyed ships were significantly less that unconvoyed. The English even sent over four destroyer escorts to show the Americans how to detect and attact the U-boats. One of them, the HMS Bedfordshire, was sunk with all hands by a submarine. Their aid was not accepted. In late February, 1942, the lights of coast cities were dimmed, only after June was there a complete blackout. But even with the dimmed lights U-boat Captain Hardegen said they could clearly see the ships limned against the light. Only in June was there a complete blackout. Also in late May Admiral King consented to convoys, even with rag-tag escorts made up of small motorboats and volunteers.

King successfuly defended himself later, saying that lack of resources forced him to make the decisions he did. But then hindsight is always more effective than foresight.

Four hundred ships went down with over 4000 crewman lost.

So It Is True!

"I'm not going to be scrambling jets..."

President Barack Obama June 27, 2013

When asked about what the U.S. intended to do about Edward Snowden, the President began his reply with the above words.

It has been speculated that one of the reasons that Edward Snowden didn't fly to Havana aboard Aeroflot was the danger that the aircraft would be intercepted by U.S. fighters and forced down on U.S. soil. Snowden would then be removed and arrested and the plane allowed to fly on. From the above statement alone we can infer that this "solution" was discussed at the very highest levels of our government.

Query: just what does Snowden have that NSA, CIA, and the other alphabet security agences are so terrified of? Let there be no mistake: absolutely terrified is the the right word.

Irony Level Low: Texas

On April 17, 2013, an ammonium nitrate storage site at the West Fertilizer Company in West, Texas, exploded, causing the death of 15 people, injury to 160 others, and the destruction of more than 150 buildings.

The plant operated with little or no federal or state oversight.

Although the plant did have 1 million dollars of insurance, it is not nearly enough to cover the damages. Texas law allows fertilizer plants to operate without any liability insurance even when they store highly explosive chemicals.

At the time of the explosion Texas Governor Rick Perry was in Illinois touting his state's lack of oversight, claiming that this "red tape" impedes profit and expansion. Industry: move to Texas and avoid supervision.

After the explosion, however, Texas asked the federal government to cover, 100%, the costs to the community for damages and emergency response. FEMA declined to pay 100% of this disaster relief for West, Texas, having determined that the state and local governments have sufficient resources, 17 million dollars, to pay for uninsured public infrastructure damages. FEMA had already paid the Texas 51 million for debris removal and emergency services.

Governor Rick Perry was outraged. FEMA should have paid it all.

Let me get this straight. The state of Texas arrogantly claims that state and federal supervision, even of dangerous chemicals, impedes the free flow of commerce and constitutes a burden upon free enterprise. Profit and initiative rule. But after a major accident such as the West Fertilizer Company explosion we, the taxpayers of the rest of the country, are expected to bail out the state, which glories in its faux free enterprise ideology. Also the state of Texas leads the nation in the number and amount of incentives that it gives businesses. From this I infer that what the taxpayers of Texas don't pick up, the taxpayers in other states are liable.  

Say what?

Pour decourager les autres

Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath and affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched and the persons or things to be seized.

That seems clear enough, doesn't it?

Edward Snowden did the nation a service by exposing the clear violation of American rights. The government has no right to listen to my phone calls, to find out who I called, or when I called. There is no "probable cause" to seize this information. And who has sworn an oath or affirmed that this information was needed in a warrant? We are not given those names.

But then why the fury and ever increasing anger of government officials as Snowden eludes them? First, of course, the NSA and the other spooks have nearly become unmanned by Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden -their secrets, so assiduously kept from the American people, have been partially, I emphasize partially, exposed. And so our government must punish these miscreants, these "whistleblowers", lest they provide a model. Manning and Snowden must be punished "pour décourager les autres," to paraphrase Voltaire. And yet, the intensity of the chase gives rise to another suspicion: that Snowden may have evidence of even more egregiously illegal government snooping - after all, if NSA can intercept simple telephone information, it can certainly intercept the calls themselves. Those giant computers (they may be located in Fort Huachuca, Arizona) capable of millions of calculations per second can certainly "listen" to a phone call and determine, by voice print, who called and who was called. It is but a short step to recording the calls themselves. Then too, he may have evidence that the government has used the U.S. Census or other privileged information for its own purposes, whatever they may be.

George again

June 24, 2013

George Again

Sigh. George F. Will is at it again. His bromides against Obama, that, that, black man in the White House, (emphasis on WHITE), have become frissons of rage and frustration. I'm surprised that George and his ilk even recognize Obama as a human being, let alone a political leader. But, as has always been true, George forgets or distorts recent history,

From his June 23, 2013 article, "Obama Hits a Wall in Berlin."

"Napoleon said: "If you start to take Vienna - take Vienna." Douglas MacArthur said that all military disasters can be explained by two words: "Too late."¹

Well, George, with your true and tested military acumen...ah, you DID support the Iraq war, did you not...and with the above strictures in mind, how do you rate the political and military leadership of our Doofus-in-Chief, George W., in reference to the aforementioned Iraq war? How does "take Vienna" or "too late" fit in when discussing the horrible mistakes of that war? What was the result of that conflict? Billions spent, thousands of American soldiers dead, a fractured country, immense debt, and for what?

 

Our Prussian Feldherr from upstate Illinois prefers not to answer this question.

That finished, G.F. commented on Obama's speech in Berlin:

""As I've [President Barack Obama, ed.] said, Angela and I don't exactly look like previous German and American leaders." He has indeed said that too, before, at least about himself. It was mildly amusing in Berlin in 2008, but hardly a Noel Coward-like witticism worth recycling."

Even a Obama's mild jokes are redundant, low-quality, and silly. Compared to Noel Coward I suppose that Obama and his speechwriters aren't that witty or amusing, but then...has George looked at questions and remarks of Generalissimo Flubya - they weren't exactly Noel Coward-like, in fact, they sometimes didn't even make sense.

What a Beltway world George lives in!

¹ Did General Douglas MacArthur, darling of the Right, say this before, during, or after the November/December 1951 disaster in North Korea?