Friday, July 05, 2013

Ed Snowden -- a tough topic for a superficial US press

Glenn Greenwald (Guardian) noted Wednesday night:

 The first NSA story to be reported was our June 6 article which exposed the bulk, indiscriminate collection by the US Government of the telephone records of tens of millions of Americans. Ever since then, it has been undeniably clear that James Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, outright lied to the US Senate - specifically to the Intelligence Committee, the body charged with oversight over surveillance programs - when he said "no, sir" in response to this question from Democratic Sen. Ron Wyden: "Does the NSA collect any type of data at all on millions or hundreds of millions of Americans?"
That Clapper fundamentally misled Congress is beyond dispute. The DNI himself has now been forced by our stories to admit that his statement was, in his words, "clearly erroneous" and to apologize. But he did this only once our front-page revelations forced him to do so: in other words, what he's sorry about is that he got caught lying to the Senate. And as Salon's David Sirota adeptly documented on Friday, Clapper is still spouting falsehoods as he apologizes and attempts to explain why he did it.
How is this not a huge scandal? Intentionally deceiving Congress is a felony, punishable by up to 5 years in prison for each offense. Reagan administration officials were convicted of misleading Congress as part of the Iran-contra scandal and other controversies, and sports stars have been prosecuted by the Obama DOJ based on allegations they have done so.


Wednesday found Brad Plumer (Washington Post) attempting a media critique and failing.  Why?  The most obvious reason is he felt the need to do a reach around on Ben Smith.  There's no reason to cite Ben or to expand on Ben's thoughts/fears.  Plumer says a few critics feared whistle-blower Ed Snowden would overwhelm the NSA revelations and that Ben Smith was one of them.

So he runs with what Smith said (which wasn't that original but when you're try to do a reach around in the online circle jerk, you just care about links).

And he offers 'proof' via what was on Twitter and what's being searched on Google.  Apparently actual media analysis -- such as looking at what the big three commercial broadcast TV evening news programs or doing or a sample of newspapers or anything original that might have required Plumer to put in more than five minutes of 'research' before writing was too much.

There wasn't even time for honest thought which is how Plumer comes to offer this:

 Maybe that’s not too surprising. The Snowden story is, after all, genuinely fascinating — not least after he disappeared into the bowels of Moscow’s Sheremetyevo Airport and was then thought to be hiding on the president of Bolivia’s plane (he wasn’t, in turned out).


What's missing here?

Oh, that's right, the fact that the administration can't shut up about Ed Snowden.

That's what's driving the Ed Snowden story, the administration's actions.

That's why he's a story.

But somehow, the daily State Dept press briefings, the remarks by John Kerry and by Barack Obama and by Nancy Pelosi and Diane Feinstein and on and on and on . . . don't factor into Plumer's 'analysis.'  Nor does the full force of the US government being brought down on an American citizen who's yet to be convicted of any crimes.  Did Plumer miss Amnesty International's statement this week? Maybe so.  Here it is:

 The US authorities’ relentless campaign to hunt down and block whistleblower Edward Snowden’s attempts to seek asylum is deplorable and amounts to a gross violation of his human rights Amnesty International said today.
“The US attempts to pressure governments to block Snowden’s attempts to seek asylum are deplorable,” said Michael Bochenek, Director of Law and Policy at Amnesty International. “It is his unassailable right, enshrined in international law, to claim asylum and this should not be impeded.”
The organization also believes that the National Security Agency (NSA) whistleblower could be at risk of ill-treatment if extradited to the USA.
“No country can return a person to another country where there is a serious risk of ill-treatment,” said Bochenek.
“We know that others who have been prosecuted for similar acts have been held in conditions that not only Amnesty International but UN officials considered cruel inhuman and degrading treatment in violation of international law.”
Senior US officials have already condemned Snowden without a trial, labelling him both guilty and a traitor, raising serious questions as to whether he’d receive a fair trial. Likewise the US authorities move to charge Snowden under the Espionage Act could leave him with no provision to launch a public interest whistle-blowing defence under US law.
"It appears he is being charged by the US government primarily for revealing its - and other governments’ - unlawful actions that violate human rights,” said Bochenek.
“No one should be charged under any law for disclosing information of human rights violations. Such disclosures are protected under the rights to information and freedom of expression.”
Besides filing charges against Snowden, the US authorities have revoked his passport – which interferes with his rights to freedom of movement and to seek asylum elsewhere.
“Snowden is a whistleblower. He has disclosed issues of enormous public interest in the US and around the world. And yet instead of addressing or even owning up to these actions, the US government is more intent on going after Edward Snowden.”

“Any forced transfer to the USA would put him at risk of human rights violations and must be challenged,” said Michael Bochenek.



And, let's be clear, it's not 'fascinating' that a whistle-blower is seeking asylum and having so many problems being granted sanctuary, it's horrifying.  And what was done to President Evo Morales' plane was shocking and will have international ramifications for many years to come. Maybe a little less trash TV in his writing would let people  take Plumer a little more seriously?  Maybe not.  He does hail from The New Republic, after all.


And maybe that, more than anything else, explains why his writing is so superficial?

He can take comfort and hide behind the fact that the 'editorial board' of USA Today offers similar sentiments.  Then again, has anyone taken USA Today's "our view" seriously in decades?  For most of us, they lost all credibility when "our view" insisted Bill Clinton needed to resign.  Over sex?  Grow up.  For anyone wondering, no, "our view" never called for Bully Boy Bush to resign or be impeached over starting the illegal Iraq War.   USA Today has some strong reporters working for it but it's editorials are always a joke.

Contrast his surface writing with Catherine Hart's historical approach at Huffington Post Canada (and at the Straight):

 The U.S. National Security Agency has been in hot water for the last few weeks, as whistleblower Edward Snowden exposed a massive online spying system that has been vacuuming up huge amounts of communications data from U.S. and foreign citizens. Over half-a-million people have rallied against the warrantless spying, and demonstrations are taking place on the ground today.
But Snowden is far from the first whistleblower -- in fact, Techdirt claims that the battle against overly broad court orders for spying goes back to 1790 and the creation of the Fourth Amendment. And the sounding of the alarm over NSA surveillance has been going on for at least the last 10 years.
The NSA surveillance machine originates with William Binney, the brilliant NSA analyst behind "ThinThread," a version of the algorithm that the intelligence agency uses for its spying activities. However the NSA's version has been stripped of all the privacy protections Binney had built in. Binney resigned from the NSA in 2001 in protest at what he suspected was the misuse of his work, but the spying continued. In September 2002 he filed a complaint with the Pentagon's Inspector General, in collaboration with fellow analyst J. Kirk Wiebe, computer scientist Ed Loomis, and Diane Roark, a member of the Select Committee on Intelligence which oversees the NSA. Still nothing was done.


Yesterday, Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! did a Fourth of July special on whistle-blowing.
Smith feared whistle-blower Ed Snowden  And, if you're in a streaming mood, you can also drop back to June 16th when reporters Peter Eisler and Susan Page (USA Today) hosted a video chat with NSA whistle-blowers Thomas Drake, William Binney and J. Kirk Wiebe  and with Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project. 






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Thursday, July 04, 2013

Only Moqtada seems to grasp Brain Drain II is possible

Donna Gorman (Huffington Post) writes of her husband year long deployment with the State Dept in Iraq which began this morning:

 
Our youngest child, 5-year-old Ainsley, has taken it the hardest. She snuck into our bedroom last night, as per usual, threw her arms around her daddy and said, "I don't want you to die in Baghdad, daddy."
What the what? She's 5. Let me tell you, neither of us was quite sure how to respond to that small trauma. We didn't think she even understood that he was leaving, let alone sophisticated enough to process the fact that we're sending him into harm's way. We knew it was going to be hard on our sons, who are 13 and almost 10, and who know exactly what's going on in Iraq and in the region. We figured our 7-year-old daughter might have some questions for us: After all, she's still traumatized by the duck-and-cover that we lived through here at the Embassy in Jordan just two years ago. But Ainsley? We didn't even try to explain it to her.
Explain to the other kids, yes. They all know their daddy is a policeman of sorts -- a federal agent with the State Department's Diplomatic Security Service. They usually see him in a suit and tie, but they've also seen him dressed in his federal agent gear. They've seen his office, with its cool gadgets and photos of him and his colleagues at work. They've eavesdropped on many a dinner conversation and phone call, when riots and shootings and all manner of bad guys are discussed. And of course they've seen him run out the door in a hurry when some emergency crops up. So, they know what he does for a living, and they are proud of his work. But I didn't realize, not until that late night comment from my baby, that even she understands the risks he is about to face because of his job.


And since the US-started illegal war in 2003, Iraq is a land of risks. Monday kicked off the month of July.  In the first three days of the month, Iraq Body Count counts 122 violent deaths.

 Today, July 4th, the violence didn't stop in Iraq.  National Iraqi News Agency reports 2 Kirkuk bombings left two people injured, Dr. Inaam Kamal was shot dead in Baghdad while in her car, another Baghdad car with doctors was attacked resulting in 1 being killed and the other injured (later the injured doctor died),  a Tikrit roadside bombing injured one person, a Falluja armed attack left two Iraqi soldiers injured, another Falluja armed attack left three police officers injured, a third Falluja armed attack left 1 civilian dead and another injured, 1 person was shot dead in downtown Mosul, a Mosul bombing left two Iraqi soldiers injured, and a Tuz Khormato car bombing has left 5 of Nouri's federal police dead and another twenty-one people injured. All Iraq News adds that a Tirkit bombing claimed the lives of 3 Iraqi soldiers and 1 police officer (with two more injured).  That's 14 reported deaths and thirty-four reported injured.



All Iraq News notes that the doctor injured died for a total of 3 doctors killed in Baghdad today and that the Parliament's Health and Environment Committee "discussed several amendments on Physicians Protection Law preparing for a vote to be endorsed by Parliament."  Alsumaria adds that Moqtada al-Sadr declared these attacks cannot be allowed, called for an immediate investigation into the attacks on the three doctors and declared that Iraq cannot allow the hands of terrorism to target and impair the medical community."  If you missed it, recent violence has required Iraq to utilize hospitals in other countries.  The "brain drain" in the early years of the war has not been repaired and has left Iraq without a sufficient number of medical providers.  Nouri's been prime minister for seven years now.  Why the hell he didn't implement fast track programs of training is a question the Iraqi people should be demanding answers to.  Instead, he continues to try to pad out Iraq's medical community by importing nurses from other countries.  At a time when Iraqis face massive unemployment and with all the billions Iraq sits on, there was plenty of time, plenty of people to start up a nursing program that could have turned out LVNs and RNs very quickly and had them working in the hospitals instead of importing nurses into the country.

Iraq can't afford more violence aimed at doctors.  That's what Moqtada's smart enough to grasp although it escapes Nouri.  A second brain drain is possible.  Violence is again increasing in Iraq.  Today, 3 doctors were killed in Baghdad.  This is the sort of thing that can lead to a panic.  If you're a doctor in Iraq and you've told yourself things will get better, you've said you want to honor the Iraqi people and you've stayed?  The violence has never ended and at some point -- when doctors are being targeted again -- you have to ask yourself exactly how much longer you can wait for the violence to end?  For some, it won't take much to push them out of Iraq at this point.

Monday it was learned that the September elections in the KRG would no longer include presidential elections for the Kurdistan Regional Government.  Instead, KRG President Massoud Barznai's term would be extended by two years and the presidential vote would take place in 2015.  Tuesday, details of the deal were published and the two-year-extension meant that there would be no third term for Barzani.  The KRG Constitution forbids a third term.  But that was not retroactive.  Barzani was already in his first term when that was implemented.  So technically, he could have run for another four year term.  Instead the PUK (President Jalal Talabani's party) and the KDP  (Barzani's party) agreed to give him two more years in the current term.  Last week, Alsumaria noted that a poll found 69% of the KRG residents wanted Barzani to serve a third term.  From Tuesday's snapshot:

  

The reason for the massive support (69%) in the poll had to do with that and it had to do with the fact that Iraqi President Jalal Talabani's fate remains a question mark.

 Last December,  Talabani suffered a stroke.   The incident took place late on December 17th (see the December 18th snapshot) and resulted in Jalal being admitted to Baghdad's Medical Center Hospital.   Thursday, December 20th, he was moved to Germany.  He remains in Germany currently.  At the end of May, photos popped up --   Al Mada ran a photo of Jalal Talabani seated outdoors with his medical team -- to refute rumors that Talabani was worse than was being let on.  Repeated assertions that he would return to Iraq shortly have yet to pan out.

There are two main political parties in the KRG: the PUK and the KDP.  They transfer power back-and-forth rather easily.  With the question mark around Jalal currently, it's not a surprise that his PUK would side with the KDP and would most likely argue that this is a stability issue -- important as calls for Jalal to be replaced include a small number of calls for him to be replaced with a Shi'ite (which would strip the Kurds of the ceremonial post of president which carries little weight but a great deal of international prestige).



If you're in the KRG, this isn't the time for a change.  Not while the fate of Jalal Talabani continues to be a question mark.  Despite constant talk since May that Jalal would return to Iraq shortly, he remains in Germany.  He's still not gone before a camera to make a statement.  No one knows the real status of his health.  At such a time, people are going to crave stability.  So the extension of Barzani's term by two years is not going to be a problem now (if he's ineffective in the next two years, complaints may arise after the fact -- currently only minor third parties are complaining). 

NINA reports today:


President of Kurdistan Region, Massoud Barazani, discussed with members of the politburos of the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) and the Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK), recent decision passed by the Region's Parliament extending his tenure as the Region's President, as well as the Constitution and elections issues.
A statement issued on Thursday, July 4, by the Region's Presidency said that Barazani chaired a joint meeting of the politburos of KDP and PUK, discussing a number of issues, the Constitution, the Region's Parliamentary elections, the Region's Presidency, as well as issues related to the Region's Parliament.
It added that in the coming days, Barazani is to continue his consultation with other Kurdish forces in this regards.


Dar Addustour reports that Barzani returned to the KRG late Wednesday (he had been meeting with various leaders in Europe) and that today's meeting including 5 leaders of Talabani's PUK complaining about Talabani's absence, complaining about the PUK structure and complaining that they were having difficulty getting money from the party for their election campaigns (elections are to be held in September -- it's July now, were I running and having problems getting funding from the party, I'd be complaining too).  Among the loudest complainers?  Barham Salih who is the Deputy Secretary of the PUK.





Bonnie reminds that Isaiah's The World Today Just Nuts "Pants On The Ground"  went up yesterday.  Today Kat's "Kat's Korner: Maps is so much better when he's original" went up.

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Some rumors never die

Why did the Iraq War start?

Because of a hatred of Muslims on the part of the Bush family.

That's the argument made in a story published by the Iraq Times. In 1830, the report asserts, George Bush -- grandfather of Bully Boy Bush (George W. Bush) -- wrote a book attacking Islam.


I think it is important to follow stories like this.  What they say -- beyond facts -- is that there is an audience for such a claim and that goes to the way the United States is viewed in Iraq.

Because I've tried to figure who the hell they're talking about in this article for over an hour and a half so we're writing it about it now.  The report in the Iraq Times is false.

Did you know the Bush family was part of the anti-slavery movement? I didn't.  So good for them for that.

The Iraq Times argues that Bush's grandfather wrote a book attacking the Muslim faith and praising Christianity. George W. Bush -- Bully Boy Bush -- is the grandson of Prescott Bush who was a US senator.  They're not talking about Prescott, he couldn't have written a book in the 1830.  Prescott's father (George HW's grandfather) was Rev. James Smith Bush.  He did write books on faith.  But couldn't have written the 1830 book because he was born in 1825.  Which takes us to his father Obadiah Bush who was an abolitionist (I did not know that until I got stuck in the rabbit hole of research).

1796 to 1859 is the life span the Iraq Times gives for the unnamed Bush.  Obadiah Bush was born in 1797 so that's close. But he's not known to write any books.  Maybe it's the Walker side of the family?  George E. Walker was born 1797 so that's close.  Thomas Walker (a slave trader) was born 1758.  Neither Walker is know to have penned books.


They keep using George Bush as the name.  The Library of Congress notes this book from 1830 written by a George Bush:


View LC holdings for this title in the:  LC Online Catalog     View this record in:  MARCXML | MODS | Dublin Core

The life of Mohammed; founder of the religion of Islam, and of the empire ...

LC control no.22022541
Type of materialBook
Personal nameBush, George, 1796-1859.  » More like this
Main titleThe life of Mohammed; founder of the religion of Islam, and of the empire of the Saracens.
Published/CreatedNew-York, Printed by J. & J. Harper, 1830.
Description261 p. front. (fold. plan) 16 cm.
SubjectsMuḥammad, Prophet, -632.  » More like this
LC classificationBP75 .B8 1830



This George Bush, "Rev George Bush," also has the right dates (born in 1796, died in 1859).

And if you're interested in reading the book -- I'm not, I don't have that kind of time -- you can read it online at the Internet Archive -- click here.  You can buy it Amazon (why you would, I don't know -- especially on Kindle when the Internet Archive offers it for free).


If  Rev George Bush was a grandfather, great-grandfather, great-great grandfather of Bully Boy Bush, it wouldn't necessarily indicate anything about how Bully Boy Bush felt about Muslims.  I will applaud the Bush family for having an abolitionist in its ranks but I won't pretend that this had any real impact on Bully Boy Bush or the way he viewed the world.

But the Rev George Bush is not a grandfather or immediate relation to Bully Boy Bush or his father or his father's father or . . .

Via the Wayback Machine, the US State Dept issued this at the end of 2004:

You Are In: USINFO > Resource Tools > Identifying Misinformation

 

Is the Author of a Book Critical of Islam an Ancestor of President Bush?

Media allegations say that Life of Mohammed author is grandfather of President George W. Bush
The December 13, 2004, issue of the London-based, pan-Arab newspaper Al Hayat contains an article stating that Cairo’s Al-Azhar Islamic Academy wishes to ban a book critical of Islam authored by the alleged grandfather of President George W. Bush, who was also named George Bush.

Reuters carried a story on the controversy on December 13, 2004, describing the book’s author as an ancestor of the current president.

The facts on this allegation are as follows:
    •  U.S. biblical scholar Reverend George Bush did write a book titled Life of Mohammed in 1830.

    •  Reverend Bush was NOT the grandfather or a direct ancestor of the current president, as verified by the authoritative book Ancestors of American Presidents.

    •  President Bush’s grandfather was Senator Prescott Bush, who was born in 1895 and died in 1972.

    •  Two independent genealogies show Reverend Bush was the cousin of Obadiah Bush, who was the great-great-great grandfather of the current president. This makes the Reverend Bush a distant relative of the current president, five generations removed, but NOT his direct ancestor.

    •  The Life of Mohammed book was out of print from 1901 to 2002. The small Book Tree publishing house decided to reprint individual copies on demand in 2002 as "an interesting historical curiosity." It has sold only 50 copies since then.

    •  In the Al Hayat article, the Al-Azhar Department of Research, Translation, and Writings claims the book slanders Arabs and Muslims and describes them as being "degenerate races, insects, rats, and snakes."

    •  The book is available online, and is searchable by word. Word searches find no instances of the words "insect, insects, rat, rats, or snake," although in one section Reverend Bush does compare Muslims to locusts. There were two references to snakes, neither of them in a characterization of Arabs or Muslims. The word "degenerate" is used twice, both times in a characterization of the state of the Christian church at the time of Mohammed. There were 17 instances of the word "race," none of them in a characterization of Arabs or Muslims.

    •  The book is a product of its more parochial times and takes a harshly negative attitude toward Islam. It refers to Mohammed as an "impostor" and describes Islam as a "heresy" and "horrid superstition," although it reserves its strongest criticism for Roman Catholicism.

    •  These views have nothing to do with the attitudes of current President Bush, who is respectful of Islam as one of the world’s great religions, as evidenced in his remarks on September 17, 2001.

    •  The antiquated views of a 175 year-old book, which sold 50 copies in the past three years, should be viewed as an historical curiosity not reflective in any way of current U.S. views on Islam.
Created: 20 Dec 2004 Updated: 27 Jan 2005


You may have caught that in real time.  I didn't.  If I heard of it -- I don't remember hearing of it -- I would've immediately tuned out because I try to judge people by what they do, not what their family did or their ancestors. 

Bully Boy Bush started an illegal war (that Barack's continued) and millions have died.  I don't need to concern myself with what a cousin of a great-great-(great?)-grandfather of Bully Boy Bush's did anymore than I need to fret over what Ann Dunham was really doing in Indonesia while 'with' the Ford Foundation.  For the record, John Pilger's not lying.  Ann was working with the CIA. I didn't know Ann.  In the related time period, Elaine was dating a British diplomat.  We were in London at a function -- Elaine, her UK official and me -- when an ugly, fat woman with a loud voice, an American, made a beeline for us.  I hate that woman, I always have.  She's the kind of person who pretends to have a conversation but is really just pumping you for information.  (When Elaine and I used FOIA requests to get our files, we found that this woman we kept out of our lives was providing basic details about us during this London period.)

So at the UK function, Elaine's beau made a comment about the woman under his breath -- he made a comment under his breath in which the only conclusion was the woman was CIA -- and I immediately figured out what he was saying (he didn't care for her either).  He confirmed it and confirmed that she would be leaving England shortly because everyone knew she was CIA. 

This horrid woman would surface in the media in 2008 talking about Ann.  That woman was CIA, she was close to Ann then, Ann was CIA -- that explains why Ann went to Indonesia to begin with and she spent her time there spying for colonialism.   I've shared this story before --  at Third -- and I know Elaine has before at her site.  But since I'm noting it and linking to John Pilger, I want to point out that he's not crazy, he's telling the truth.   The fat, ugly woman (who also stank and I believe still stinks, I still avoid her though she pretends to be a lefty today) was considered 'pretty' in other cultures and slept with every man she could for the CIA. 






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