Tag: Corporate Hegemony

National Security and Surveillance State, Inc.

July 23, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Even though “alternative media” has been covering the story for years, the increasingly vast, inefficient and unaccountable post 9-11 national security and surveillance apparatus is so out of control that now even war-enabling, torture denying, neocon propaganda rags are sounding alarms about it…

The Washington Post published a three part series entitled “Top Secret America”. Part 1, focuses on the explosion of government funding on surveillance and security, Part 2 focuses on the government’s dependence on profit-driven private enterprise, and Part 3 describes one particular office park filled with (privileged and out-of-touch) spys.

Here are some of the highlights of the report:

* Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.

* An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.

* In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.

* Many security and intelligence agencies do the same work, creating redundancy and waste. For example, 51 federal organizations and military commands, operating in 15 U.S. cities, track the flow of money to and from terrorist networks.

* Analysts who make sense of documents and conversations obtained by foreign and domestic spying share their judgment by publishing 50,000 intelligence reports each year – a volume so large that many are routinely ignored.

Here is a map illustrating the proliferation of public and private work locations in “Top Secret America”:

The report reveals that the situation is so out of control that even Defense Secretary Gates and CIA Director Panetta worry about it in front of reporters – they admit it is out of control. But of course their interests are not the same as the rest of the country.

One of the worst things about the situation is that this secret, inefficient bureaucracy is that it is payed for by taxpayers – in a time of starving schools and home foreclosures, it is basically a jobs program designed to help out people who specialize in surveillance, killing and propaganda services to the government.

I say “one of the worst” because the worst thing is clearly this:

Relying upon profit-driven industry for the defense and intelligence community’s “core mission” is to ensure that we have Endless War and an always-expanding Surveillance State.  After all, the very people providing us with the “intelligence” that we use to make decisions are the ones who are duty-bound to keep this War Machine alive and expanding because, as the Post put it, they are “obligated to shareholders rather than the public interest.”

Above are images from some of the “anti-deception” toys developed by private “defense” contractors.

On the left, “a thermal-imaging camera to measure changes in facial temperature, which can help determine whether a person is lying. Some data suggests that a person who is lying may register a temperature increase near the inside corner of the eye. The scientists hope to use such cameras for security screenings at airports, train stations, border crossings, stadiums or large events.”

On the right, “A computer-generated avatar is being developed to test how interviewees respond to different interviewers. Scientists at the Defense Academy for Credibility Assessment (DACA) can manipulate the avatar’s physical attributes, including hair and eye color, complexion, skull and forehead shape, and even the sound of the avatar’s voice to create an interviewer of any age, race and gender.”

This is a fruitful line of research because, they claim,  “young Hispanic males have a very difficult time lying to older Hispanic females.” So, you know, if you want to do “credibility assessment” on a young Mexican man, you should make the Avatar be a older Mexican woman.

PS: Here are some follow-ups to this story:

the lack of impact this story has had, on

G20 Toronto 2010 – Agent Provocateurs and A Dystopian Future

July 3, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Inside a security perimeter that cost Canadian taxpayers over a billion dollars, G20 world leaders met to screw over their own most vulnerable populations.

While most of the corporate media focused on burning cop cars and protester “violence” (property damage), others suspected the real crime was what was taking place inside the meeting.

More disturbing than the “smashed windows and burned cop cars,” writes Naomi Klein, are the “smashed social safety nets and burned good jobs in the middle of a recession”:

How else can we interpret the G20’s final communiqué, which includes not even a measly tax on banks or financial transactions, yet instructs governments to slash their deficits in half by 2013. This is a huge and shocking cut, and we should be very clear who will pay the price: students who will see their public educations further deteriorate as their fees go up; pensioners who will lose hard-earned benefits; public-sector workers whose jobs will be eliminated. And the list goes on. These types of cuts have already begun in many G20 countries including Canada, and they are about to get a lot worse.

Meanwhile, outside the perimeter, people who gathered to object were subjected to the largest mass arrest in Canadian history.

The fact that the large majority of these protesters were non-violent and within their rights is obscured by the sensational property destruction by black bloc (so called) anarchists.

The actions of the black bloc are then used to justify the broad crackdown on legal dissent, and it is important to note that manifestations of the group have in the past been infiltrated by police agent provocateurs.  This is not conspiracy:  Canadian police have admitted to posing as black bloc protesters in 2007, after they were outed by a union leader on video shot at a protests in Quebec.

This tradition seems to have continued outside the G20 in Toronto, whence video has emerged suggesting black bloc agent provocateurs being protected by the police.  See, as further illustration, also this level-headed photojournalist make the case that the property destroying “anarchists” got a green light from the police:

Setting aside the issue of police agent provocateurs, the experience of some other participants is worth noting.

David Ker Thomson describes his experience and suggests that “Toronto is the World“:

We have seen the future.  This is it.  More troops, more brutality, more police pretending to be protestors and smashing whatever they want at $80/hour, more acceptance from a population that will submit to any limitation on its freedom as long as it can pay someone to make them feel temporarily safe.

And despite the presence of agent provocateurs, he goes on to challenge the bourgeois left for  being scandalized by mere broken glass:

Is there anything more smug than bourgeois people offering to be scandalized by broken glass?  The slightest disintegration of their spectacle unnerves them.  “Violence!” they cry.

…

We’re not fighting a few irritable fat cops with nightsticks anymore.  The wall is impenetrable.  We are losing.  The leaders have floated to the top as scum always does, and we are drowning.

Another participant, Matt Shultz, who was arrested for possession of paint balloons, describes in detail his experience “Inside Torontanamo” and warns of the detention center’s intended effect:

Let me be very clear on this: the point of this exercise was two-fold, first, to traumatize the activists (check), second, to normalize this kind of thing with the cops. And let me also be clear: check. Many, even most of the cops seemed totally fine with it. The casual, collaborative, efficient and impersonal sadism of it was really appealing to some of them and everyone in this country wants to ask themselves if Torontanamo is something they’d like to see more of in Canada because make no mistake, it’s in the planning stages.

And for those who are persuaded by corporate shills that the G20 protesters have no coherent target, try listening to Maude Barlow speak on the issue. And here is some more good coverage.

…and the kissing couple come from this collection of images.

Two Wheels Better Than Four

June 2, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Over the weekend the BP’s “Green Curve” gas station at Olympic and Robertson was once again the target of a collective protest, this time by a Critical Mass of Los Angeles bike riders.

After the demonstration, certain dickless piglets harassed the bike riders as they passed through Hollywood, and then tackled a videographer who caught an incident on tape:

WeHo Daily first covered the story here, the laist picked it up here, KPCC here.  The LAPD met with an LA bicycle advisory committee yesterday to discuss the incident, which the LA.streets blog covers here.

Los Angeles Critical Mass has a twitter feed here, where you can get updates on the story and info about future rides, etc.

Meanwhile the ecocide in the gulf will continue to unfold over the next decades.  Google has tool that can be used to compare the current size of the oil spill to the size of your own city.  Here is ours:

BP, cont.

May 18, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Here is a short video document I produced of the collective action at BP’s “Green Curve” station in Los Angeles last Wednesday:

The sad story of the Deepwater Horizon spill continues, of course. 60 Minutes has some decent coverage here, including an interview with a survivor of the initial blast.

Firedoglake has a page devoted to developments here, as does the UK Guardian here.

Leaks

May 14, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

BP

May 10, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

But the latest episode in a sad history of oil operations.  This current disaster will result in several disastrous and long term effects.

Democracy Now covers the important angles of this story – how the government exempted BP from environmental review despite its dismal environmental record, noting its lobbying and greenwashing campaigns as well as its  role in the 1953 overthrow of democracy in  Iran,

Nikolas Kozloff reviews the role of Obama’s secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar. (I can’t help but succumb to a flash of schadenfreude for President Centrist since this disaster comes right on the heels of this.) And here is a bit about the Halliburton connection.

One group is mobilizing for a day of protests and calling for the seizure of BP’s assets.

Yes We Can Drill Baby Drill

April 3, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

WGP_Obama_DrillingOn the heels of his pushes for so-called “clean coal” technology and guaranteed loans for nuclear power  plants, President Obama this week decided to reverse a longstanding ban on offshore drilling and “announced an expansive new policy that could put new oil and natural gas platforms in waters along the southern Atlantic coastline, the eastern Gulf of Mexico and part of Alaska.”

This move by Obama-the-President is to be expected by now insofar as it completely reverses the position of Obama-the-Senator and Obama-the-campaigner. (See for example here, although he did begins to capitulate as the campaign wore on.)

This is the latest latest expression of Obama’s deep seated bipartisanism fetish, which absurdly seeks to curry favor with those “conservatives” who do will not cooperate with him on principle by selling out those progressives who can be taken for granted because they have no principle. But regardless of the political value of the decision, the Economist argues it is bad environmental / engergy policy:

The problem runs deeper than David Roberts’s point (“The impact on oil prices will be ‘insignificant,’ says the Energy Information Administration, and it won’t make America any less dependent on foreign oil, either”). It runs deeper than Frances Beinecke’s point (“Better running cars and more efficient use of existing oil fields can help us make the transition into the 21st century without harming marine life or marine jobs.”) It runs deeper than John Broder and Clifford Krause’s point (“Risk Is Clear in Drilling; Payoff Isn’t“). The fundamental problem is this: there is a finite amount of fossil fuel. The more of it we find and burn, the more carbon we put into the atmosphere, and the more severe the greenhouse effect becomes. Once the carbon is in the atmosphere, it stays there. If we want to limit climate change, what we have to do, one way or another, is to leave fuels in the ground wherever possible, not find and burn them.

Environmental groups are angry, of course, and kool-aid drinkers are finally waking up:

“Its like a kick in the face” says Jonathan Ruiz of Florida International University.  Jonathan campaigned for Obama for fourteen months, and now he’s livid about today’s announcement by the administration to open half the east coast to offshore drilling.

(By the way, thanks to Stephen Colbert for the title of this post.)

Compromise or Capitulation?

March 22, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

H.R. 3590 was passed 219 – 212, with no Republican votes. In the end, Obama’s “bipartisanship” fetish gained nothing and lost the possibility of what he said he stood for as a Senator.

As the final vote on the Health Insurance Reform Bill in the House approached, all the “progressive” Representatives who had promised not to vote for any bill without a public option broke their pledges and voted for it anyway, clearing the way for another massive corporate giveaway in the form of a mandate to buy private health insurance policies with no meaningful regulatory agency.

(The final holdout was Dennis Kucinich, and his capitulation throws into higher relief his institutional function – something I first began to notice in 2004, when, as an anti-war candidate riding the tide of anti-war activism in the wake of Bush’s war crimes, Kucinich effectively led his anti-war supporters into the pro-war, corporatist Democratic Party and then encouraged them to vote for the pro-war Kerry / Edwards ticket.)

Senate Democrats are turning coat as well – Bernie Sanders has reversed his pledge to force an up / down vote on the public option during reconciliation – in exchange for vague assurances that there will be a vote later, a possibility for which one would be ill-advised to hold one’s breath.

These capitulations demonstrate (once again) the incredibility of threats on the part of putatively progressive Democrats to act according to principle. Not so for those on the right, whose threats are credible and therefore warrant Executive Orders which promise to limit funding for abortions.

Glenn Greenwald points out how the Democrats’ Scam is now even more transparent, and how Rahm Emmanuel’s strategy of ignoring progressives has been vindicated.

Meanwhile, right wing talk show clowns are developing a narrative that suggests I have it all wrong and that this mandate to buy corporate health insurance is really a trojan horse for delivery of a universal public healthcare system.

This line of reasoning is peddled to Tea Baggers who fear “government control of their lives”, but a slightly modified version is sold to Kool-Aid drinkers as well – that this massive public buy-in to private insurance is somehow a first step on the road to a public program, or even more absurdly, to single payer.

FireDogLake breaks down what is in the health care bill here, and what needs to be fixed here.

Watch a debate between Kucinich and Nader here; Scott Creighton berates Kucinich here.

Update: Chris Hedges concurs.

Update 2: Apparently, after Obama signs the health insurance bill into law, it goes back to the Senate for tweaking – whereupon any single Senator can offer a public option amendment.  This would not threaten the bill, and the amendment could be passed by a simple majority. Here is a petition targeting a likely candidate.

“Personhood” and the 14th Amendment

March 4, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

Welcome to the relaunch of The World’s Got Problems. We have been dark for a few weeks but of course the darkness of the world’s problems continues unabated.  So in this inaugural post of the relaunch, I will take a step back and look at certain recent developments as they relate to what I find to be an underlying problem – the dominant political culture’s selective and variable application of the 14th Amendment and the concept of “personhood”.
WGP_Person_2

Three Fifths of a Person

The United States, at its best, is a political order based on Enlightenment principles of human rights and liberty. But compromises were made at the very beginning, most notoriously by writing slavery into the Constitution. In Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 a distinction is made between “free Persons” and “other Persons”:

“Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons.”

The “other persons” were of course the population of black slaves, not so distant ancestors of the current President’s wife and children, who counted as 3/5ths of a “free Person” for the sake of determining appropriate levels of taxation and representation in the House.

After the Civil War, this “3/5th Compromise” was rendered moot by the 13th Amendment’s abolition of chattel slavery, while the 14th Amendment superseded Acricle 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution and guaranteed “due process” and “equal protection” to every “person”.

Corporate Personhood

What is good enough for a freed slave is good enough for a corporation, apparently – within only a couple of decades, “equal protection” began to be applied to non-human “legal persons”.  In 1886, before hearing arguments for Santa Clara County vs. Southern Pacific Railroad, Chief Justice Morrison Waite asserted from the bench:

“The court does not wish to hear argument on the question whether the provision in the 14th Amendment…applies to these corporations. We are all of the opinion that it does.”

Although this “obiter dictum” was not officially part of the Court’s decision, court reporter (and former railway president) Bancroft Davis included it in his summary – and it has served as faux precedent ever since.  From Mother Jones:

After Santa Clara, federal judges began granting more and more rights to nonliving “persons.” In 1922, the Supreme Court ruled that the Pennsylvania Coal Co. was entitled to “just compensation” under the Fifth Amendment because a state law, designed to keep houses from collapsing as mining companies tunneled under them, limited how much coal it could extract. In 1967 and 1978, businesses prevailed in Supreme Court cases citing the search-and-seizure provisions of the Fourth Amendment as protection against fire and workplace safety inspections.

Corporate lawyers have also taken a shine to the First Amendment. In 1978, the Supreme Court agreed with corporations claiming that the state could not limit their political spending in an antitax campaign. Almost two decades later, a federal appellate court struck down a Vermont law requiring that milk from cows treated with bovine growth hormone be so labeled. Dairy producers had a First Amendment right “not to speak,” the court said. In California, Nike invoked the First Amendment to fight a lawsuit arguing that the company’s public relations materials misrepresented sweatshop labor conditions.

Most recently, the Retail Industry Leaders Association has relied on the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause to fight Maryland’s Wal-Mart law, designed to force the company to expand its spending on employee health care. The retail group has also sued Suffolk County, New York, which last fall passed a similar ordinance aimed at nonunionized supermarkets.

Which brings us to last month when the Supreme Court reasserted the application of legal “personhood” to corporations in their ruling on Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which overturns previous campaign finance law and grants corporations (and unions) the right to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence federal elections.

For Chris Hedges, this marks the final nail in the coffin of democracy. We are now living in a state of “Inverted Totalitarianism“. You can find some some more analysis at the SCOTUSblog. (BTW, the “corporation” icon in the image above is taken from the excellent documentary, The Corporation.)

“Detainees” are not persons.

But while the Supreme Court assumes that corporations are included withing the set of “persons”, actual human beings are still being excluded from the category.

The Obama Administration, for example, decided last month to follow the Bush policy of imprisoning detainees without charges, denying them what the 14th Amendment guarantees to all “persons” – not just citizens.  Glenn Greenwald has analysis of this decision here, where he criticizes the hypocrisy of democratic leaders and liberal pundits who were opposed to these measures under Bush – but defend them now that their guy is in charge. Also, he points out the sad irony of the timing of this decision:

“…today is the one-year anniversary of President Obama’s Executive Order to close Guantanamo within one year — an anniversary the administration decided to celebrate not by fulfilling its terms, but instead by announcing that the central feature of Guanatanamo — indefinite detention with no charges — will continue indefinitely.”

Keep in mind that these “detainees” are merely terrorism suspects – but many have endured torture and years of imprisonment.  Although torture and imprisonment without trial are clearly unconstitutional, those “people” who ordered and legally justified torture brag about their accomplishments, teach at universities and work on their books – without any fear of reprisal.

The US versus THEM mentality that rose from the ashes of 9-11 is still operational under Obama, though it has become more insidious because it appears in intelligent, bipartisan blackface – and therefore now a largely unquestioned feature of “liberal” as well as “conservative” world-views.

Also, it is the perfect mirror of Al-Qaeda’s theological justification for slaughter of civilians – an “American Takfiris”

Homosexuals are people – more or less, sooner or later.

After the 14th Amendment was adopted, there was a wave of marriages between former slaves. But many southern states maintained miscegenation laws which prohibited marriages between the races. It wasn’t until Loving v. Virginia in 1967 that these laws were declared unconstitutional – again by appealing to the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.  According to that decision, marriage is one of the “basic civil rights of man”.

And yet gay people continue to be denied this right to in all but five of the United States, and the Federal Government does not recognize gay marriage due to the so-called Defense of Marriage Act signed into law by President Clinton.

The two lawyers on the opposite sides of Bush v. Gore are teaming up to challenge California’s Proposition 8 in Federal Court. You can listen to these strange bedfellows argue the case for marriage equality in an interview with Bill Moyers here. (Moyers, always the seeker of truth, plays devils advocate.)

Also, Gay people still can’t serve openly in the military, also a lingering Clinton policy.  Things look like they are turning around here, however, now that the top defense officials are seeking the end to “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”.

“If anyone has a better [corporate friendly] approach… let me know.”

February 10, 2010: J. Rosencrantz

WGP_better_approach

As a Senator campaigning for the Presidency, Obama called himself “a proponent of a single payer universal health care program.”

Even after being elected Obama admitted, in passing, that single payer would be the only way to insure every U.S. citizen – but moved instead to strike (not-so-secret) deals with big PhRMA and completely drop any challenge to the for-profit, private health “care” system.

This is what makes his recent State of the Union request for “a better approach” to healthcare reform so completely disingenuous:

OBAMA: “If anyone from either party has a better approach that will bring down premiums, bring down the deficit, cover the uninsured, strengthen medicare for seniors and stop insurance company abuses, let me know. Let me know. I’m eager to see it.”

WGP_better_approach-2Pediatrician Dr. Margaret Flowers took Obama at his word and went to the White House the next day with a letter urging the revival of the idea of  a “single payer” or a “medicare-for-all” system.

The Secret Service turned her away, but she tried to respond to the president’s request again the next day in Baltimore where she was arrested for trespassing.

Congratulations, Dr. Flowers, you are The World’s Got Problems Undersung HeroTM of the Month!

Hear her interviewed by Bill Moyers here.