Who Do You Trust Less Now?

Trey Smith

The American public finds itself in an odd predicament. The two major institutions in our lives -- the government and corporations -- have both shown themselves to be entirely untrustworthy. The former is untrustworthy because they crave power...and wealth, while the latter is untrustworthy because they crave wealth...and power. It begs the question: Who do you trust less now?

We've learned recently (or had confirmed) that our own government is spying on us. Suspicion, guilt or innocence doesn't matter. If you live in the US, some form of the government is doing their damnedest to peek under the covers. At the very same time, they are doing everything in their power to keep what they are doing in our names from us. Our lives have become an open book; their lives have become a closed book.

Not only are they snooping into every corner of our lives, but they have shown time and time again that they don't represent us. Money rules politics and so their sole goal as representatives of the people simply is to serve those who write the biggest checks. Who writes the biggest checks? Those connected to multinational corporations!

Some of these mega corporations are in the communications biz. They are acting indignant that the recent NSA revelations are informing the public that they -- more often than not -- are in bed with the government snoops. "We only do what they make us do," they cry. "Your privacy is our primary concern."

Really?

This from an industry that regularly snoops on consumers on its own? Even if our government was populated by saints who would never in one million years think of spying on its own citizens, computer and internet companies have been doing this for years! Back in 2007, Computerworld's Jaikumar Vijayan wrote about the snooping done by Microsoft.

Deep inside my computer, in a place Microsoft apparently doesn't want me to find very easily, is an ever-growing file called index.dat that's been relentlessly storing my Internet Explorer browsing history from the time I started using this computer. It can tell me what site I was browsing five minutes ago, just as surely as it can tell me where I was a year ago at this time. I don't want it to track my online habits, but I don't matter. It doesn't care. Even if I clear my browsing history or delete Temp files, index.dat is still going to store that stuff anyway. And if I used Outlook or Outlook Express for e-mail, it would be logging all the messages I've sent or received, too.

How about Google? They've been accused of snooping through Gmail.

Google's attorneys say their long-running practice of electronically scanning the contents of people's Gmail accounts to help sell ads is legal, and are asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit that seeks to stop the practice.

In court records filed in advance of a federal hearing scheduled for Thursday in San Jose, Google argues that "all users of e-mail must necessarily expect that their emails will be subject to automated processing".

The class action lawsuit, filed in May, says Google "unlawfully opens up, reads, and acquires the content of people's private e-mail messages" in violation of California's privacy laws and federal wiretapping statutes.

So, which is worse? Snooping to make billions of dollars or snooping to control the population? In both cases, it comes down to power and money. The more the government and corporations know about us, the more they can seek to control us and the more controlled we become, the more they can rob us blind!!

Why Fear Terrorists When There Are Banjo Players Running Amok

Trey Smith

What follows below is a snippet from a disturbing report out of Philadelphia with video footage of what transpired. It is appalling, to say the least! (See if you can spot THE moment the person being manhandled a) resists arrest and b) assaults a federal officer.)

The US has yet to launch President Obama’s latest war crime of massively bombing Syria (a country that does not threaten this nation) and already federal police thugs, in this case National Parks Service Rangers, have violently arrested an Iraq War Veteran who was peacefully playing her banjo in the shade on Independence Mall in Philadelphia following an anti-war protest and march.

Emily Yates, an activist with the group Iraq Veterans Against the War (IVAW), and a professional folksinger and banjo player, can be seen in this video [below], peacefully standing plucking her instrument when she is ordered to move by a group of Park Rangers. When she asks them (politely) why she has to move off of federal park property that is open to the public, she is not given any explanation. Then at one point, she is grabbed from behind roughly without warning and slammed, bent over, across the wooden top of a park bench, with several large rangers pinning her down, and with her hands wrenched behind her back, as they try to place metal cuffs on her wrists.

As she struggles to breathe with all that pressure on her forcibly bent-over form, a senior officer can be heard telling her to “relax” and to “stop resisting” -- though with three men piled on top of her, it is clear she is not resisting..

Yates was held in a federal lockup for two days before an arraignment on Monday, at which she was charged with disorderly conduct, resisting arrest and, most seriously, “assaulting a federal officer.” The latter charge, absurd when matched up against the video of the arrest, is a felony carrying a heavy jail sentence.

One is reminded of those black jokes about police ramming arrested persons head first into the sides of patrol cars and then charging them with damaging public property, or punching handcuffed victims in the face and then charging them with banging their heads into the officer’s fist. It is impossible to view the above video and see any evidence of “assault.” Nor could Yates have been assaulting the larger scrum of rangers who were all over her prone body later when she can be seen being held on the ground, screaming for help, as angry spectators shouted from the sidelines for the rangers to let her go, to “stop strangling her” and to call for a medic.

Yates’ attorney, Larry Krassner, offered TCBH! a statement on the case saying: “Emily is a six-year military veteran who served honorably for two tours in Iraq. She has PTSD. She was arrested and injured by federal officers for no good reason. The US government owes its veterans better treatment than this, even when they happen to be opposed to further war in Syria.”

I would add it owes its citizens, veterans or not, better treatment than this too, especially in this particular location, of all places.

Independence Mall is a three-block piece of property run by the National Park Service in Philadelphia. A favored spot for tourists from all over the nation and the world, with the restored Independence Hall at one end, where the Declaration of Independence and Constitution were written and where the Bill of Rights was passed into law, protecting freedom of speech and assembly, and the Constitution Center at the other end, where the US Constitution and its guarantees of freedom are celebrated, it is also a favored locale for protest actions, such as the protest and march against a US attack on Syria, which took place just before Yates’ arrest.

The brutal assault on this peaceful folksinger offers a stark view of the reality of America’s burgeoning police state, set as it was against the image of the building where America’s founding documents offered the hope for such a different kind of state.
~ from Park Rangers Brutally Arrest Iraq War Vet at Anti-Syria Bombing Demo by Dave Lindorff ~

Bit by Bit - Chapter 20, Part 21

Trey Smith

Yang Tzu, on his way to Sung, stopped for the night at an inn. The innkeeper had two concubines, one beautiful, the other ugly. But the ugly one was treated as a lady of rank, while the beautiful one was treated as a menial. When Yang Tzu asked the reason, a young boy of the inn replied, "The beautiful one is only too aware of her beauty, and so we don't think of her as beautiful. The ugly one is only too aware of her ugliness, and so we don't think of her as ugly."

Yang Tzu said, "Remember that, my students! If you act worthily but rid yourself of the awareness that you are acting worthily, then where can you go that you will not be loved?"
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Self-confidence is a good thing, but it is not without its dangers. It is important to have enough confidence in yourself to tackle all the twists and turns that this life has to offer. However, if your confidence becomes too pronounced, then it spills over the brim of the cup to become arrogance and pride.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

Shh! Dammit!

Trey Smith

In relation to last night's post about the efforts of the US and British intelligence agencies widespread and well-funded efforts to decrypt all encrypted communications, it turns out that reporting this revelation involved a courageous act of journalism. While it is understandable that spy agencies wouldn't want the public to know that they actively are working to make private communications difficult or near too impossible, these agencies asked (or demanded) that their secrets remain hidden.

Intelligence officials asked the Guardian, New York Times and ProPublica not to publish this article, saying that it might prompt foreign targets to switch to new forms of encryption or communications that would be harder to collect or read.

The three organisations removed some specific facts but decided to publish the story because of the value of a public debate about government actions that weaken the most powerful tools for protecting the privacy of internet users in the US and worldwide.

Let's be honest here. This new revelation may well cause "bad guys" to change the way they communicate. Many of them may have been shocked to read the level to which these agencies have already compromised encrypted communications. To make the case that the "bad guys" already assumed that this was going on is, to my mind, a bit disingenuous.

But I firmly side with these three publications because this is information the general public needs to know. Why? Because it appears that these spy agencies target the innocent far more frequently than they target the terrorists. These programs need to be discussed and debated. You can't do that if you don't know about them in the first place.

~

On its most fundamental level, as Bruce Schneier writes,

Government and industry have betrayed the internet, and us.

By subverting the internet at every level to make it a vast, multi-layered and robust surveillance platform, the NSA has undermined a fundamental social contract. The companies that build and manage our internet infrastructure, the companies that create and sell us our hardware and software, or the companies that host our data: we can no longer trust them to be ethical internet stewards.

This is not the internet the world needs, or the internet its creators envisioned.

The internet could have played a role in democratizing the world. It allows for the free flow of information and the ability of citizens the world over to communicate with each other. But a free flow of information is something the world elites fear more than anything else. They may say their number one fear is terrorism, but what causes them to shake in their boots the most is the fear that the general public will figure out what they are really up to! If we figure it out...who knows what might happen!

Nothing Is Scared Anymore...Except Unmitigated Power

Trey Smith

On Wednesday, I noted how the Syrian "situation" had scrubbed the troubling issues surrounding the NSA programs from the headlines. I mentioned that I believe that one reason President Obama appears in no rush to ask that Congress be reconvened earlier than scheduled to vote on the measure authorizing the US to bomb Syria is the administration's hope that the controversy surrounding Syria will keep spygate off the front pages. I also stated that there was one bug in the ointment: Glenn Greenwald.

Well, that bug -- along with fellow reporters at The Guardian, ProPublica and the New York Times -- have raised their heads to present us with new revelations.

US and British intelligence agencies have successfully cracked much of the online encryption relied upon by hundreds of millions of people to protect the privacy of their personal data, online transactions and emails, according to top-secret documents revealed by former contractor Edward Snowden.

The files show that the National Security Agency and its UK counterpart GCHQ have broadly compromised the guarantees that internet companies have given consumers to reassure them that their communications, online banking and medical records would be indecipherable to criminals or governments.

The agencies, the documents reveal, have adopted a battery of methods in their systematic and ongoing assault on what they see as one of the biggest threats to their ability to access huge swathes of internet traffic – "the use of ubiquitous encryption across the internet".

Those methods include covert measures to ensure NSA control over setting of international encryption standards, the use of supercomputers to break encryption with "brute force", and – the most closely guarded secret of all – collaboration with technology companies and internet service providers themselves.

Through these covert partnerships, the agencies have inserted secret vulnerabilities – known as backdoors or trapdoors – into commercial encryption software.

The files, from both the NSA and GCHQ, were obtained by the Guardian, and the details are being published today in partnership with the New York Times and ProPublica. They reveal:

• A 10-year NSA program against encryption technologies made a breakthrough in 2010 which made "vast amounts" of data collected through internet cable taps newly "exploitable".

• The NSA spends $250m a year on a program which, among other goals, works with technology companies to "covertly influence" their product designs.

• The secrecy of their capabilities against encryption is closely guarded, with analysts warned: "Do not ask about or speculate on sources or methods."

• The NSA describes strong decryption programs as the "price of admission for the US to maintain unrestricted access to and use of cyberspace".

• A GCHQ team has been working to develop ways into encrypted traffic on the "big four" service providers, named as Hotmail, Google, Yahoo and Facebook.

Supposedly, all these programs are needed to combat a small number of current or potential terrorists. As I mentioned in a post this morning, we are regularly told that we have severely wounded al-Qaeda and its associate forces. Many reports suggest that their numbers continue to shrink and that their operational structure is in disarray. If all these things are true, why is it that we must compromise the rights of world citizens to rein in this ragtag band of murderous militants?

Why is it so damn important for the US and British intelligence services to have access to yours and my bank records? Medical records? Online purchases? Material checked out from the local library? Routine communications?

By itself, this rampant overkill suggests that terrorism is NOT the real target. No, it suggests that the real target is absolute control of the vast majority of the world's population. It suggests that nothing is sacred (or private) anymore...except unmitigated power. It suggests that almost everything the powers that be think and do is not for anyone else to know and what the rest of us think and do is no longer private.

If you don't believe that absolute power corrupts absolutely, how do you explain these massive surveillance programs that lump the guilty and innocent together in one all-encompassing net?

Bit by Bit - Chapter 20, Part 20

Trey Smith

Chuang Chou was wandering in the park at Tiao-ling when he saw a peculiar kind of magpie that came flying along from the south. It had a wingspread of seven feet and its eyes were a good inch in diameter. It brushed against Chuang Chou's forehead and then settled down in a grove of chestnut trees. "What kind of bird is that!" exclaimed Chuang Chou. "Its wings are enormous but they get it nowhere; its eyes are huge but it can't even see where it's going!" Then he hitched up his robe, strode forward, cocked his crossbow and prepared to take aim. As he did so, he spied a cicada that had found a lovely spot of shade and had forgotten all about [the possibility of danger to] its body. Behind it, a praying mantis, stretching forth its claws, prepared to snatch the cicada, and it too had forgotten about its own form as it eyed its prize. The peculiar magpie was close behind, ready to make off with the praying mantis, forgetting its own true self as it fixed its eyes on the prospect of gain. Chuang Chou, shuddering at the sight, said, "Ah! - things do nothing but make trouble for each other - one creature calling down disaster on another!" He threw down his crossbow, turned about, and hurried from the park, but the park keeper [taking him for a poacher] raced after him with shouts of accusation.

Chuang Chou returned home and for three months looked unhappy." Lin Chu in the course of tending to his master's needs, questioned him, saying, "Master, why is it that you are so unhappy these days?"

Chuang Chou said, "In clinging to outward form I have forgotten my own body. Staring at muddy water, I have been misled into taking it for a clear pool. Moreover, I have heard my Master say, `When you go among the vulgar, follow their rules!' I went wandering at Tiao-ling and forgot my body. A peculiar magpie brushed against my forehead, wandered off to the chestnut grove, and there forgot its true self. And the keeper of the chestnut grove, to my great shame, took me for a trespasser! That is why I am unhappy."
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Focus can be a good thing, but it is not without its dangers. While it is important to concentrate on the matter at hand, if we have tunnel vision, we can find ourselves in a predicament simply because dangers can arise outside our immediate range of vision and, because we are so focused on one thing, we don't see them in time to avert or sidestep them.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

Severely Wounded, But Not Crippled

Trey Smith

In an increasingly phantasmagorical world, here’s my present fantasy of choice: someone from General Keith Alexander’s outfit, the National Security Agency, tracks down H.G. Wells’s time machine in the attic of an old house in London. Britain’s subservient Government Communications Headquarters, its version of the NSA, is paid off and the contraption is flown to Fort Meade, Maryland, where it’s put back in working order. Alexander then revs it up and heads not into the future like Wells to see how our world ends, but into the past to offer a warning to Americans about what’s to come.

He arrives in Washington on October 23, 1962, in the middle of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a day after President Kennedy has addressed the American people on national television to tell them that this planet might not be theirs -- or anyone else’s -- for long. ("We will not prematurely or unnecessarily risk the costs of worldwide nuclear war in which even the fruits of victory would be ashes in our mouth, but neither will we shrink from the risk at any time it must be faced.") Greeted with amazement by the Washington elite, Alexander, too, goes on television and informs the same public that, in 2013, the major enemy of the United States will no longer be the Soviet Union, but an outfit called al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), and that the headquarters of our country’s preeminent foe will be found somewhere in the rural backlands of... Yemen.

Yes, Yemen, a place most Americans, then and now, would be challenged to find on a world map. I guarantee you one thing: had such an announcement actually been made that day, most Americans would undoubtedly have dropped to their knees and thanked God for His blessings on the American nation. Though even then a nonbeliever, I would undoubtedly have been among them. After all, the 18-year-old Tom Engelhardt, on hearing Kennedy’s address, genuinely feared that he and the few pathetic dreams of a future he had been able to conjure up were toast.

Had Alexander added that, in the face of AQAP and similar minor jihadist enemies scattered in the back lands of parts of the planet, the U.S. had built up its military, intelligence, and surveillance powers beyond anything ever conceived of in the Cold War or possibly in the history of the planet, Americans of that time would undoubtedly have considered him delusional and committed him to an asylum.

Such, however, is our world more than two decades after Eastern Europe was liberated, the Berlin Wall came down, the Cold War definitively ended, and the Soviet Union disappeared.
~ from And Then There Was One by Tom Engelhardt ~

It amazes me that, no matter how frequently we're told that al-Qaeda has been seriously wounded, it continues to be such a supposedly feared enemy. It is like the cat with nine lives. No matter how many higher ups we neutralize, the threat never diminishes.

Think about the number of reports within the last decade. We took out the head -- one bin Laden -- and several operational commanders and yet the War on Terror hasn't skipped a beat. This represents a weird paradox for the US Commander-in-Chief (Bush or Obama). To prove that our military might is needed and capable, the president must announce successes in our continuous war against the Axis of Evil. He must show that we are wounding our supposed adversary. But he can't tell us that we've crippled them...because if al-Qaeda was said to be crippled, then the rationale for our continued militarization and increased mass surveillance would be greatly lessened.

Accordingly, he must straddle the line between saying that we are winning this war, BUT the war itself is far from over. Yes, we hold the upper hand, but our hand must remain on the throttle, lest we lose our superior position.

So, we continue to build the largest military and mass surveillance system the world has ever known in order to combat ragtag outfits skulking around in caves and other out of the way locales. It seems a bit surreal, doesn't it?

Why Is a Short-Term Agonizing Death More Heinous Than a Long-Term One?

Trey Smith

On a recent episode of The Young Turks, comedian Jimmy Dore made what I think is a great point. 

US leaders are all up in a tizzy because they allege that President Assad used chemical weapons on his own people in Syria. President Obama has termed this usage as crossing a "red line." Secretary of State John Kerry has stated repeatedly that the vast majority of the world has decided that the use of chemical weapons is not acceptable. Chemical weapons are weapons of mass destruction.

But what about depleted uranium?

In a manner of speaking, depleted uranium could be considered a chemical weapon as well. It is the chemical properties of this vile substance that often leads to long-term health issues and agonizing deaths. The chief difference between a poisonous gas versus depleted uranium is that the former tends to kill more quickly, while the latter can take years or, sometimes, decades.

Of course, there IS another important difference: The US regularly uses depleted uranium on the battlefield. Since whatever the US does is right and just, no one can criticize us for utilizing a weapon that leads to agonizing deaths.

Dore's point is that we are in no position to be the final arbiter on this issue. IF the Syrian government is guilty of this crime against humanity, then we are guilty 100 times over! If the Syrian government is guilty of killing hundreds of people with gas, then we are even more guilty of compromising the lives of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis as well as tens of thousands of our own troops!

If people believe that it is okay to bomb Syria for their crime, would you feel the same way if another nation decided to punish the US for our crimes against humanity?

Bit by Bit - Chapter 20, Part 19

Trey Smith

"And what do you mean by saving, `man and Heaven are one'?"

Confucius said, "Man exists because of Heaven, and Heaven too exists because of Heaven. But man cannot cause Heaven to exist; this is because of [the limitations of] his inborn nature. The sage, calm and placid, embodies change and so comes to his end."
~ Burton Watson translation ~

I often reference the Grand Mystery because, regardless of what anyone says, none of us has any idea how or why life came to be...or if it even did! We don't know what causes things or if there is an entity or process that causes anything. We don't even know if life is an illusion, some sort of dream.

When you get right down to it, we really don't know much of anything. We don't even know if there is anything to know.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

Obama Debates Himself in Real Time

Trey Smith

When I was in high school, I was on the Debate Team (though, surprisingly, I wasn't very good at it at the time). The chosen topic for that year was the Electoral College. Before the debate competition season commenced, debaters would research the pros and cons of the subject matter and create huge "index card" databases of arguments on either side of the question. At a debate event, each team would draw to see if they would be arguing pro or con for each match.

And that's the thing. As you squared off against your opponents, you had one position to argue. Based upon your opponents strategy, you would alter your team's strategy accordingly. The best debate teams were those who were best able to counter the opposing team's arguments. It is a really straightforward concept.

After reading what President Obama said in Stockholm yesterday at a gathering of world leaders, I am guessing that Barack has never been on a debate team. In the course of a few minutes, he argued both sides of the same issue! At one moment, he said,

It is important for us to get out of the habit of just saying we'll let the president stretch the boundaries of his authority as far as he can and Congress will sit on the sidelines and snipe.

However, in the same set of remarks, he also said,

As commander-in-chief I always preserve the right and the responsibility to act on behalf of America's national security. I do not believe that I was required to take this to Congress but I did not take this to Congress just because it's an empty exercise. I think it is important to have Congress's support.

So, on the one hand, he agrees with his critics by saying that a president shouldn't be allowed to "stretch the boundaries of his authority." On the other hand, he submits that he has the [constitutional] right to stretch those boundaries as far as he sees fit!

Obviously, quote #1 was a throwaway position, a meager attempt to satisfy those who believe in constitutional safeguards. What he really believes is contained in quote #2. Phrased a different way, he is taking this matter -- attacking Syria -- before Congress to give them the opportunity to agree with him! If they don't, then he's going to do what he believes he is empowered to do anyway.

Gone From the Headlines and All But Forgotten

Trey Smith

There is nothing like the prospects of war to scrub the nation's headlines of uncomfortable subject matter. For the better part of this summer, the NSA and the ubiquitous mass surveillance programs were the lead story more days than not. A crescendo was building for a major confrontation between the White House and Congress. And then, in a seemingly blink of an eye, the NSA story basically disappeared.

Today, I perused several major news sites. Almost none of them -- save for The Guardian and even their coverage was far down the page -- featured even one news report or commentary on spygate. It's as if this once mucho important story is no longer important at all.

This is not to suggest the Syrian "situation" solely was conjured up to direct the public's attention elsewhere. But it should go without saying that the timing of this "situation" couldn't have been more fortuitous for the Obama administration and other backers of the mass surveillance programs. While polls repeatedly have shown that the American public does not agree with the Obama administration's assessment and strategy re Syria, this subject has replaced the NSA both in the mainstream media and in general conversation.

Americans tend to exhibit a short attention span -- the mainstream media's attention span is even shorter -- and so I think Team Obama is hoping to milk the Syrian "situation" for as long as possible in the hopes that the NSA story can be buried once and for all. This notion is buttressed by the fact that a) Obama decided to "consult" with Congress before pushing the button and b) he didn't call Congress back to Washington sooner to deal with this "grave" issue. By waiting for Congress to reconvene September 9 as previously scheduled, the Syrian "situation" will be predominate the headlines for the next week or more.

The only bug in this strategy is Glenn Greenwald. If he breaks another major NSA-related story this week, then Syria and the NSA will duke it out for top billing, though I am confident the subservient US mainstream media will follow Obama's lead to bury the latter.

Bit by Bit - Chapter 20, Part 18

Trey Smith

"And what do you mean by saying, `No beginning but has its end'?"

Confucius said, "There is a being who transforms the ten thousand things, yet we do not know how he works these changes. How do we know what is an end? How do we know what is a beginning? The only thing for us to do is just to wait!"
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Since we only are able to see a very myopic portion of the cosmos, we have no idea whatsoever how long or wide it might be. The entirety of life on earth may be little more than a centimeter on a line stretching to infinity!

From what I can see, transformation is the one constant of existence. If life has been and will be ever transforming, concepts like beginning and end are just arbitrary distinctions conjured up by the human mind. While such concepts may aid us in a quasi comprehension of the world, it doesn't mean that either actually exists.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

Two Reports -- Starkly Different Conclusions

Trey Smith

At this juncture, there seems to be agreement from many sources that chemical weapons exploded in a Damascus suburb last month. The major question that remains is: Who is responsible? 

President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry have stated loudly that it was the Assad government and they point to a report released by the White House that is strong on assertions, but lacks any hard documentation.  It basically says that the US intelligence community thinks it happened this way and, as long as they are fairly sure, that's close enough.

But there is another report that paints a completely different picture.  MintPress News -- an organization I have never heard of -- has posted an article, Syrians In Ghouta Claim Saudi-Supplied Rebels Behind Chemical Attack, that states the "attack" was not the result of Syrian government forces.  Unlike the White House report, they actually quote people on the ground in Syria and provide other analysis.

My point is not that the MintPress News reports PROVES that the White House report is wrong, only that it goes to show that the question of responsibility remains up in the air.  In fact, each "report" may be nothing more than two bits of slanted propaganda:  One side pushing for US military action and the other pushing against the same.

As readers know, I tend to be highly skeptical of government pronouncements and I am highly skeptical of their conclusions in terms of Syria.  However, as noted above, I am completely unfamiliar with the MintPress, so I don't know how much credence to give to their report.  For all I know, they could have made up their "interviews" with local people.

But looking at these two reports, at least MintPress provides some rationale for their conclusions, while the White House simply makes a slew of assertions without providing any actual evidence to back them up.

Obama Is Destroying the Profitabilty of American Business?

Trey Smith

If you listen to those wacky conservatives, President Obama is a threat to economic prosperity because he is destroying the profitability of American business. According to them, it is more than obvious the man is a dyed in the wool socialist bent on destroying American economic might from the inside out! Since this is so readily apparent, economic statistics back them up on this accusation?

In a word, no. In fact, the answer is a resounding, HELL NO!

As Robert Oak reports,

The BEA released corporate profits for Q2 2013 along with GDP. Corporate profits after tax increased 2.6% from Q1 2014 to $1,830.4 billion. Corporate profits after tax are also up 5.8% from a year ago. Corporate profits as a percentage of GDP are at an all time high and after tax profit margins per unit are also soaring to the stratosphere.

Corporate profits after tax just hit a record high as a percentage of GDP, while wages are at their lows as a percentage of nominal gross domestic product. Workers are clearly getting less and less of the American economic pie, while corporate profits continue to soar.

Did you get that? While conservatives moan that capital is severely constrained, the truth of the matter is the exact opposite.

So, what should this tell us? Almost all the complaints boil down to one word: G-R-E-E-D. The greedy bastards aren't satisfied with raking in all-time highs. They want to set new records as fast as they can. And it's not like Obama's economic policies are hindering them!

Bit by Bit - Chapter 20, Part 17

Trey Smith

"And what do you mean when you say that it is hard to be indifferent to the benefits of man?"

Confucius replied, "A man sets out on a career, and soon he is advancing in all four directions at once. Titles and stipends come raining down on him without end, but these are merely material profits and have nothing to do with the man himself. As for me, my fate lies elsewhere. A gentleman will not pilfer, a worthy man will not steal. What business would I have, then, trying to acquire such things? So it is said, There is no bird wiser than the swallow. If its eyes do not light upon a suitable spot, it will not give a second look. If it happens to drop the food it had in its beak, it will let it go and fly on its way. It is wary of men, and yet it lives among them, finding its protection along with men in the village altars of the soil and grain."
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Fame tends to be fleeting and power can evaporate in an instant. Status and influence can disappear in a wisp of air. If a person's life is built upon acquiring and maintaining such things, you are inviting stress into your bosom. The more you seek to have, the more you will one day lose.

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

People as Throwaway Pawns

Trey Smith

The reason a missile attack on Syria is proving so unpopular on both sides of the Atlantic has nothing to do with neoimperial hubris. The reason is that it is a bad idea. "Punishing" a dictator for killing his own people by simply killing more of his own people seems beyond cruel. It seems stupid. It leads nowhere.

Public opinion may be a poor guide to the minutiae of state policy. But that opinion has been saddled with two long wars, both failures. As a result, leaders in London and Washington (and possibly Paris) have been sufficiently nervous to pass decision to their national assemblies. In British the result was a rebuff. In Washington, President Obama has decided to refer Syria to Congress and France's president, François Hollande, may do likewise.

In the attacks on Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya, the goal of western intervention was at least clear. It was to topple a regime. Since the UN forbids such overt aggression against member states, action must be dressed up as humanitarian or to enforce UN resolutions. But everyone knows what is the intended outcome.

In Syria, an attack would be in retaliation for a proven breach of international law on chemical weapons. No one has the will to topple the Assad regime. Action is described as merely punitive and a "deterrent", directed purely at a past incident of a chemical massacre. This is gesture war. It will not punish the guilty, such as members of the Assad regime, who should be arraigned before a war crimes court. It will merely destroy buildings and kill people. It seems peculiarly pointless.
~ from The West's Threat to Attack Syria Is an Idiotic Gesture by Simon Jenkins ~

If revelations about the US drone program have taught us anything, it is that missiles or bullets shot from drones aren't half as precise as government leaders pretend they are. Drone operators frequently have no clue who they have just killed and injured.

And that's why it is beyond idiotic to think that missiles fired into Syria will help their situation in any way, shape or form. Personally, I wouldn't term this strategy as idiotic; inhumane is the word I would choose.

In order to "punish" the Assad regime for something no one is even sure they are responsible for, the US wants to kill innocent Syrians. And let's be clear about this. If the US employs missiles, innocent citizen WILL be killed and maimed. It is the nature of the beast.

Basically, President Obama and Secretary of State Kerry are advocating a strategy that treats the people of Syria -- mainly the poor who don't the wherewithal to get out of harm's way -- as throwaway pawns on the geopolitical chess board. To score some sort of political points, both men are willing to sacrifice some "faceless" people. And I'm sure they will try to browbeat members of Congress to allow them to play this deadly game.

Somebody Lacks a Sense of Humor

Trey Smith

On June 5, the Guardian posted the first of many documents, leaked by former contractor Edward Snowden, that detail NSA‘s spy practices. Two days later, [Dan] McCall put up a handful of T-shirts and bumper stickers for sale on the custom goods marketplace Zazzle, which distributes most of Liberty Maniacs’ goods. Each of those items had the NSA logo, plus a common joke as a slogan: “The only part of the government that actually listens.”

“Within an hour or two,” as McCall told the Daily Dot, Zazzle emailed him to say the shirt had been removed from the Zazzle site. (Zazzle didn’t respond to the Daily Dot’s request for comment, nor did the NSA.)

Zazzle’s first email, which McCall forwarded to the Daily Dot, said in part:

Unfortunately, it appears that your product, The NSA, contains content that is in conflict with one or more of our acceptable content guidelines.

We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly. …

Result: Not Approved

Policy Notes: Design contains an image or text that may infringe on intellectual property rights. We have been contacted by the intellectual property right holder and we will be removing your product from Zazzle’s Marketplace due to infringement claims.

~ from The Parody Shirt the NSA Doesn't Want You to Wear by Kevin Collier ~

Jeez! Somebody not only lacks a sense of humor, but obviously doesn't understand the concept of parody! I can tell you one thing. If I can work it into our budget, I want to buy either a shirt or a tote bag with this slogan on it. Heck, maybe both!

Bit by Bit - Chapter 20, Part 16

Trey Smith

Confucius was in trouble between Ch'en and Ts'ai, and for seven days he ate no cooked food. His left hand propped against a withered tree, his right beating time on a withered limb, he sang the air of the lord of Yen. The rapping of the limb provided an accompaniment, but it was without any fixed rhythm; there was melody, but none that fitted the usual tonal categories of kung or chueh. The drumming on the tree, the voice of the singer had a pathos to them that would strike a man's heart.

Yen Hui, standing with hands folded respectfully across his chest, turned his eyes and looked inquiringly at Confucius. Confucius, fearful that Yen Hui's respect for him was too great, that his love for him was too tender, said to him, "Hui! It is easy to be indifferent to the afflictions of Heaven, but hard to be indifferent to the benefits of man. No beginning but has its end, and man and Heaven are one. Who is it, then, who sings this song now?"

Hui said, "May I venture to ask what you mean when you say it is easy to be indifferent to the afflictions of Heaven?"

Confucius said, "Hunger, thirst, cold, heat, barriers and blind alleys that will not let you pass - these are the workings of Heaven and earth, the shifts of ever-turning things. This is what is called traveling side by side with the others. He who serves as a minister does not dare to abandon his lord. And if he is thus faithful to the way of a true minister, how much more would he be if he were to attend upon Heaven!"
~ Burton Watson translation ~

Shit happens. It doesn't matter how each of us chooses to live. Bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people. One of the great secrets of life is learning to roll with the punches!

To view the Index page for this series, go here.

BO Must Read This Blog!

Trey Smith

Back on Friday, I asked if Barack Obama was going to follow Britain's lead by allowing Congress to vote on whether or not the US should attack Syria. Up until that point, all signs pointed toward the President making a unilateral decision without any Congressional input. But just when it seemed like Obama was going to push the proverbial button, he blinked and said he would allow Congress to weigh in on the matter. To say the least, it is something of a perplexing about-face.

Dave Lindorff writes that overall opposition by the American public -- not simply my blog post on the matter -- caused Obama to have second thoughts.

Behind these flowery words is a hard reality: the president of the United States has been compelled to back down. Public opposition in the US and abroad to yet another war of choice launched against another middle eastern nation that poses no threat to this country has brought the American war machine, at least for the moment, to a screeching halt. In Europe and elsewhere, public pressure has forced leaders to back away from their initial reflexive support for a US strike on Syria. And according to Charles Blow of the New York Times, 50% of Americans oppose any US military action against Syria, with only 28% saying that an attack on Syria would be in America’s interest. Blow says this is the highest level of public opposition to war in three decades of US warmaking.

It is a time for celebrating the power of the people, but it is not a time for resting. The lobbying of members of Congress by the administration and the various interests that are pushing for war will be intense over the coming week or so. Public pressure on members of Congress to oppose any attack will have to be even more relentless and intense.

This madness can be stopped. We can see that now. But it can only be stopped if we keep the pressure on every member of Congress.

As much as I would like to pat ourselves on the back, I am still left with the question: Why did public opinion impact this singular issue?

Back during the health care debate, overwhelming majorities favored some type of universal health care and yet Obama pulled the plug on the watered down Public Option. Large numbers of Americans opposed almost all of the corporate bailouts as well as the "settlement" with mortgage financiers in regards to the illegal foreclosure of homes. In these cases, widespread public opposition didn't register at all with the president and his advisers.

So, why did public opposition -- an opposition that did not include massive protests and demonstrations -- supposedly turn the tide in this case?

Not unexpectedly, the astute Glenn Greenwald provides the answer.

It's a potent sign of how low the American political bar is set that gratitude is expressed because a US president says he will ask Congress to vote before he starts bombing another country that is not attacking or threatening the US. That the US will not become involved in foreign wars of choice without the consent of the American people through their representatives Congress is a central mandate of the US Constitution, not some enlightened, progressive innovation of the 21st century. George Bush, of course, sought Congressional approval for the war in Iraq (though he did so only once it was clear that Congress would grant it: I vividly remember watching then-Senate Foreign Relations Chairman Joe Biden practically begging the Bush White House to "allow" Congress to vote on the attack while promising in advance that they would approve for it).

But what makes the celebratory reaction to yesterday's announcement particularly odd is that the Congressional vote which Obama said he would seek appears, in his mind, to have no binding force at all. There is no reason to believe that a Congressional rejection of the war's authorization would constrain Obama in any way, other than perhaps politically. To the contrary, there is substantial evidence for the proposition that the White House sees the vote as purely advisory, i.e., meaningless.

Recall how - in one of most overlooked bad acts of the Obama administration - the House of Representatives actually voted, overwhelmingly, against authorizing the US war in Libya, and yet Obama simply ignored the vote and proceeded to prosecute the war anyway (just as Clinton did when the House rejected the authorization he wanted to bomb Kosovo, though, at least there, Congress later voted to allocate funds for the bombing campaign). Why would the White House view the President's power to wage war in Libya as unconstrainable by Congress, yet view his power to wage war in Syria as dependent upon Congressional authorization?

More to the point, his aides are making clear that Obama does not view the vote as binding, as Time reports:

To make matters more complicated, Obama's aides made clear that the President's search for affirmation from Congress would not be binding. He might still attack Syria even if Congress issues a rejection.

It's certainly preferable to have the president seek Congressional approval than not seek it before involving the US in yet another Middle East war of choice, but that's only true if the vote is deemed to be something more than an empty, symbolic ritual. To declare ahead of time that the debate the President has invited and the Congressional vote he sought are nothing more than non-binding gestures - they will matter only if the outcome is what the President wants it to be - is to display a fairly strong contempt for both democracy and the Constitution.

Many Decades Later

Trey Smith

There are lots of "kooks" out there who refuse to accept the government's version of what took place on 9/11. Some say it was an inside job. Others contend that the US didn't act on intelligence it had in hand. Some say the towers that came down were the result of controlled demolitions, not airplanes flying into buildings. Some assert that a missile, not an aircraft, hit the Pentagon.

(Personally, I don't know what to believe. I don't accept the government's version, but I don't ascribe to a particular conspiracy theory.)

Whenever people doubt the veracity of the official story, countless others dismiss their theories or questions with a simple declaration: If what a given conspiracy theorist says is true, don't you think the truth would have leaked out by now? It is because the official version has stood up to the test of time that we should accept it as fact.

But here is the problem with that simplistic rationale: The true nature of events often does not come out for years...or decades. We often learn that the official storyline was a well-manufactured lie. Take, for example, the revelation concerning the CIA and Iran that came out 2 weeks ago.

Sixty years after the overthrow of Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh, a declassified CIA document acknowledges that the agency was involved in the 1953 coup.

The independent National Security Archive research institute, which published the document Monday, says the declassification is believed to mark the CIA's first formal acknowledgment of its involvement.

The documents, declassified in 2011 and given to George Washington University research group under the Freedom of Information Act, come from the CIA's internal history of Iran from the mid-1970s and paint a detailed picture of how the CIA worked to oust Mossadegh.

In a key line pointed out by Malcom Byrne, the editor who worked through the documents, the CIA spells out its involvement in the coup. "The military coup that overthrew Mossadeq and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of U.S. foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," the document says, using a variation of the spelling of Mossadegh's name.

While this might be the CIA's first formal nod, the U.S. role has long been known.

President Barack Obama acknowledged the United States' involvement in the coup during a 2009 speech in Cairo.

"In the middle of the Cold War, the United States played a role in the overthrow of a democratically elected Iranian government," the president said.

In 2000, then-U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright spoke of the intervention, and in the same year, the New York Times published what it said was a leaked 1954 CIA-written account of the overthrow.

Even if we take 2000 as the year that the truth of this matter was first revealed, that still is 47 years after the fact! That is 47 years in which conspiracy theorists were labeled as kooks. It is 47 years of people being told that, if the conspiracy theorists were correct, why hasn't the truth leaked out?

If we apply this formula to 9/11, then we really won't know what happened until 2048 (when I would be, if still alive, 91 years old).

Keep that in mind the next time someone tells you that this or that conspiracy theorist is a certifiable kook. That kook may turn out to be right...30 or so years down the road.