[Marxism] On surveillance: would you buy used-up credibility from this president?

[Ralph Johansen <mdriscoll@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

So the headline today in the New York Times, "Reported Drop in 
Surveillance Spurred a Law.", brings us the Democrats' rationale for 
caving in and supporting a draconian, far-reaching citizen-surveillance 
bill pushed by the Bush administration. It wasn't just that they would 
lose vacation-time until they passed it because Bush had the power to 
hold them indefinitely in session: it went deeper than that, says this 
lead article.

Wow! This gets more ominous by the day.

How much more gullible will they expect us to get? How much worse is in 
store?

And what do they make of the polls reporting extraordinarily low 
opinions of the president, the Congress, their wars and the media? Will 
that level of disaffection make any difference at all? How much of that 
is personally felt and therefore running deep? Not much? How shallow is 
American political sentiment? Does it only flow from the maladroitness 
on the administration and consequent divisions at the top reflected in 
media comment? And the limited exposure through the press to American 
casualties?

Does anger at the Democrats for supposedly betraying their electors cut 
anything, with no effective overt protest and no other perceived 
recourse, including no other party to go to?

I noticed how in the AFL-CIO-sponsored Democrat debates the other night 
in Chicago, Kucinich was the only one saying anything that made any 
remote sense, and yet, with only lightly scattered applause, cameras 
panned to what appeared to be a jeering, taunting union audience in 
response. Kucinich portrayed as short, funny-looking loser-pariah, as 
shaped by media. The mega-bucks, well-financed, "successful businessman" 
Ross Perot, though fairly similar in appearance and preaching instead 
populist rightwing drivel, of course didn't get that level of dismissal.

And would we believe a NYTimes that duly reported administration spin 
that led to Americans' support for the Iraq invasion and occupation, and 
which has been ratcheting up hysteria and disinformation to get us into 
a war with Iran? And beyond, Pakistan, Venezuela, today intimations of a 
draft, and still more mayhem and bloodshed?

“There was an intentional manipulation of the facts to get this 
legislation through,” said Senator Russ Feingold of Wisconsin, a 
Democrat on the Intelligence Committee who voted against the plan.

The White House, Mr. Feingold said Friday in an interview, “has 
identified the one major remaining weakness in the Democratic Party 
[sic], and that’s its unwillingness to stand up to the administration 
when it’s making a power grab regarding terrorism and national security.”

Are we to imagine that this entity called "Al qaeda" is flapping around 
sending traceable, conspiratorial messages through the US or even 
international internet and phones, with all the hoopla and alarums that 
they've seen in the past six years about the threat of terrorism and 
ongoing surveillance, and the use of wiretaps and forced disclosure of 
their custom by private and so-called common carriers? If they're that 
stupid, what's to worry? And no mention of any of this by the NYTimes.

What Mike McConnell, Bush, Cheney and Gonzales's security czar, has 
reportedly said, fully expecting to be believed, is that "eavesdroppers 
were collecting just 25 percent of the foreign-based communications they 
had been receiving a few months earlier." With their track record of 
lies and exaggeration, and their flouting of the Constitution and laws 
so far, what credence does Bush's "straightshooter" (in the NYTimes's 
words) deserve from the thoroughly gulled, fleeced, apparently 
fear-ridden American people?

And Bush has said that this is a "permanent war on terror." The duration 
of this surveillance, fellow Americans, in case the connection hasn't 
been clear, is therefore forever.

According to Senator Feinstein, explaining her vote for the FISA bill, 
"The intelligence community is deeply concerned that chatter among 
suspected terrorist networks is up. I am concerned as well. We are 
living in a period of heightened vulnerability, and must give the 
intelligence community the tools they need to protect America."

She also reports that in a letter to her from McConnell he says that if 
this legislation is enacted, "there will be intense oversight of 
activities conducted under the Act. There are extensive training, 
compliance, and other procedures in place at agencies to ensure our 
activities are conducted according to law. The relevant agencies have 
Inspectors General staffs with the appropriate clearances, training, and 
technical background to ensure that activities are reviewed and audited."

Trust us...

Guess whose oversight? Not a court, not the Congress, not any 
independent or representative body, but rather insiders, appointed by 
the same administration which is conducting the surveillance - they are 
the trusted guardians who will provide the restraint. And what record at 
all, and at best highly classified and inaccessible, will be kept to 
hold anyone accountable, now or later? Especially now that the 
administration no longer feels any need to respond to Congressional 
oversight or inquiry?

So obviously, to spell it out, aside from absence of any justification 
in the first place, with no outside oversight who is to prevent this 
surveillance from including whatever persons or groups in the US (or 
anywhere else for that matter) the arrogant unaccountable Bush people 
(or their power-arrogating successor executives of whatever party) 
decide they want to monitor?

And needless to say, after six years of huffing and puffing, fuming and 
bombing, appointing new and consolidated bureaucratic agencies and 
throwing money, and senseless death and destruction, still no one among 
the leaders, pundits, wisemen and opinion makers has ever deigned to ask 
or give a straight answer in any public forum to the squirmingly obvious 
question, why is all this happening.

By supporting Bush and this legislation the atrocious, complicit Dianne 
Feinstein and other Democrats like her (including her junior colleague 
Boxer, whose craven abstention was in the context the equivalent of 
support for Bush), have bought us a truly frightening pig in a poke. 
Bill of Rights protections, habeas corpus, what remained of the Posse 
Comitatus Act, all are out the window, in a flurry of hysteria and 
disinformation. As those on many discussion lists have been saying, but 
as the evidence rapidly accumulating further bears out, we appear to be 
well on our way toward an authoritarian state.

And the explanation, easily available, has to do with assuring at least 
fifty more years of unhindered, unquestioned American hegemony, by any 
means conceivably possible as Brzezinski, Huntington and others have 
openly counseled (to each other, in effect, but on the public record). 
Hegemony means increasingly safe passage, access to all available cheap 
labor, investment opportunities, cheap grants of credit, tax and 
environmental impunity, and other privileges through all governments and 
their financial houses, interpenetration of all management and 
boardrooms, all trade routes, abrogation of domestic public interest 
oversight through NAFTA-like treaties, compliant rulers everywhere fully 
hospitable to American dictates, American bases wherever feasible, 
unopposed, and the open door to whatever US corporate interests call 
for. That's what security means. And whose security?

In a way our response to this outrage so far kind of reminds me of the 
1930s spinner of urban folktales Damon Runyon's story about the little 
guy five feet tall with the big derby down around his ears, and the 
hulking Harry the Horse, hanging around on the streets in Brooklyn. The 
way I remember it, Harry, six feet four, takes the little guy's derby 
from his head, holds it chest high above the LG's head, takes out a pair 
of dice, shakes and says, "Ten's my point. He shakes the dice again into 
the raised derby and says, "Ten I got. Pay me."

The LG takes five dollars from his pocket, hands it over, looks up at 
Harry the Horse with an obsequious smile and says, "Do you do it the 
hard way?" (hard way for those not in the know is two fives).

Ralph Johansen


New York Times <http://www.nytimes.com>
Reported Drop in Surveillance Spurred a Law
By ERIC LICHTBLAU
JAMES RISEN and MARK MAZZETTI
Published: August 11, 2007

WASHINGTON, Aug. 10 — At a closed-door briefing in mid-July, senior 
intelligence officials startled lawmakers with some troubling news. 
American eavesdroppers were collecting just 25 percent of the 
foreign-based communications they had been receiving a few months earlier.

Congress needed to act quickly, intelligence officials said, to repair a 
dangerous situation.

Some lawmakers were alarmed. Others, jaded by past intelligence 
warnings, were skeptical.

The report helped set off a furious legislative rush last week that, 
improbably, broadened the administration’s authority to wiretap 
terrorism suspects without court oversight.

It was a surprising victory for the politically weakened White House on 
an issue that had plodded along in Congress for months without a clear 
sign of urgency or resolution. A flurry of talk in the last three weeks 
on intelligence gaps, heightened concern over terrorist attacks, 
burdensome court rulings and Congress’s recess helped turn the debate 
from a slow boil to a fever pitch.

For months, Democrats had refused to give the administration new 
wiretapping powers until the White House agreed to turn over documents 
about the National Security Agency program to eavesdrop on some 
Americans’ international communications without warrants.

The White House refused to back down, even after Congressional subpoenas 
were issued. The administration ultimately attracted the support it 
needed to amend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act from moderate 
Democrats who felt pressed to act before the recess.

For the White House and its Republican allies, the decision by the 
Democratic-controlled Congress to act quickly was critical to 
safeguarding the country this summer as intelligence officials spoke of 
increasing “chatter” among Qaeda suspects.

Full: <http://www.nytimes.com>

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