Reagan, Khamenei, the Old Evil Empire – Into the Shadows, All

08 Sunday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Political Spychology, Politics, Psychology

Tags

closed society, dictatorship, diplomacy, open society, paternalism, politics, privileged knowledge, public knowledge

It seems like only yesterday.

Perhaps that’s because, and this for all the blood and treasure spent since then, it is still yesterday and yesterday remains captive to yesterday’s drives, experiences, and transmitted inter-generational cultural programming.

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President Ronald Reagan – Address on Iran-Contra – YouTube – Posted 3/17/2008.

* * *

▶ Ronald Reagan Evil Empire Speech (Excerpt) – YouTube – 3/8/2013.

* * *

The Iran-Contra Affair – 1986-1987

One of the most complicated and intrigue-filled scandals in recent decades, the Iran-contra affair dominated the news for many months. It consisted of three interconnected parts: The Reagan administration sold arms to Iran, a country desperate for materiel during its lengthy war with Iraq; in exchange for the arms, Iran was to use its influence to help gain the release of Americans held hostage in Lebanon; and the arms were purchased at high prices, with the excess profits diverted to fund the Reagan-favored “contras” fighting the Sandinista government in Nicaragua.

Washingtonpost.com Special Report: Clinton Accused – 1998 (?)

Strangely, the page on my Chrome browser looks like garbage until copied down (fair use – one paragraph) to ASCII text.

* * *

The event in the year 1358 was a counterattack. Our courageous and religious youth attacked the U.S. embassy and discovered the truth and identity of this embassy, which was the Den of Espionage, and presented this fact to people throughout the world.

In those days, our youth called the U.S. embassy the “Den of Espionage”. Today, after the passage of 30-plus years since that day, the name of U.S. embassies in countries which have the closest relationship with America – that is to say, European countries – has become the den of espionage. This means that our youth are 30 years ahead of the rest of the world. This event was related to America as well. These three events were related, in different ways, to the government of the United States of America and its relations with Iran. Therefore, the 13th of Aban – which is tomorrow – was named “Day of Fighting Against Arrogance”.

The Office of the Supreme Leader, Sayyid Ali Khamenei – 11/3/2013

* * *

He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used hissimple lifestyle and behaviour to criticise the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt society. He declared himself a cosmopolitan. There are many tales about him doggingAntisthenes‘ footsteps and becoming his faithful hound.^[3] Diogenes made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and slept in a large ceramic jar^[4] in the marketplace. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He embarrassed Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaged his lectures. Diogenes was also responsible for publicly mocking Alexander the Great.

Diogenes of Sinope – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/8/2013.

* * *

The investigations were effectively halted when President George H. W. Bush (Reagan’s vice president) pardoned Secretary of Defense Caspar Weinberger before his trial began.[2]

Reagan administration scandals – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/8/2013.

* * *

The scandal began as an operation to free the seven American hostages being held in Lebanon by a group with Iranian ties connected to the Army of the Guardians of the Islamic Revolution. It was planned that Israel would ship weapons to Iran, and then the United States would resupply Israel and receive the Israeli payment. The Iranian recipients promised to do everything in their power to achieve the release of the U.S. hostages. The plan deteriorated into an arms-for-hostages scheme, in which members of the executive branch sold weapons to Iran in exchange for the release of the American hostages.[2][3] Large modifications to the plan were devised by Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North of the National Security Council in late 1985, in which a portion of the proceeds from the weapon sales was diverted to fund anti-Sandinista and anti-communist rebels, or Contras, in Nicaragua.[4][5]

While President Ronald Reagan was a supporter of the Contra cause,[6] the evidence is disputed as to whether he authorized the diversion of the money raised by the Iranian arms sales to the Contras.

Iran–Contra affair – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/8/2013.

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Who are you going to trust?

Will that trust be based on clan, family, or tribe?

National identity?

Aesthetic, ideological, or religious affinity?

Flattery and patronage?

Money?

Fear?

______

▶ Skyfall – M Government speech (HD) – YouTube – Posted 1/13/2013.

How safe to do you feel?

How adult do you feel?

What is being kept from you?

Certainly from journalism’s second row seat to history, I ask what can be known or with confidence inferred by sifting and revisiting news — and what may be imagined in the widening gaps between surface coverage of many elements and their untapped depths.

In Pakistan, which information environment practically guarantees no one can know much of anything with confidence, one expects the floating of wild conspiracy theories, the kind that turn events upside-down and deliver them on a plate labeled “CIA-Mossad”.

In the open societies, Great Britain and the United States foremost, one expects such behavior to be minimized rather than encouraged, and yet we’re scratching our heads over growing “black budgets” and many things happening seemingly off the page as well as “off the hook”.

Of course, I’m reading spy novels, so perhaps that enthusiasm has begun to contaminate my appreciation of RT, CNN, Al Jazeera, Time . . . .

😉

______

▶ Video: Teary-eyed Putin addresses 110,000 crowd near Kremlin – YouTube – Posted 3/4/2012.

What price loyalty?

For whom?

For what?

And what is being protected or represented?

For how long?

______

I ask questions about many things that can’t be seen.

One cannot “see” psychology and political psychology — no sign ever hangs over a politician announcing that he may be “DICTATORIAL”, “DISINGENUOUS”, or “DISSIMULATING”, and yet memory serves for recalling milestones and other moments, puzzling moments, sometimes, and fitting them back together.

Then such signs start to emerge from out of the fog, we start to test them again.

How could Ronald Reagan, for example, a show business alumnus, fumble so badly on the Lebanese hostage crisis as to not be aware of Oliver North’s behind-the-scenes machinations to cut a deal somewhere inside the Iran-Soviet-South American political line?

The fair good Republican story begs credibility.

The Lebanese hostage drama was not third-page lead and flip to the back of the “A section” stuff: it was front page all the way, and the President, the Republicans’ most beloved, seems nonetheless to have dropped the reins.

* * *

At ABC News, where I worked at the time, one of our camera crews had been granted access to the Oval Office the previous night. We had video of Carter, looking grim and exhausted in a cardigan, consulting with his aides until, quite literally, it was time to dress for the inauguration of his successor. Those images and live shots of desperate diplomacy, followed by the stately run-up to the transfer of power in Washington, played on one side of the screen. The preparations for departure from Mehrabad played on the other.

The Iranians stage-managed the drama down to the last second. Precisely at noon, just as Reagan began to recite the oath of office, the planeload of Americans was permitted to take off. The Iranians’ message was blunt and unambiguous: Carter and his administration had been punished for America’s sins against Iran, and Reagan was being offered a conciliatory gesture in anticipation of improved behavior by Washington.

30 years after the Iran hostage crisis, we’re still fighting Reagan’s war – 1/21/2011.

“The Iranians” are still stage-managing “down to the last minute” the dramas in which they star themselves. That is part of the “malignant narcissism”, a part of control, a part of the guaranty of continuing “narcissistic supply” from one’s ever awed (and battered and intimidated) subjugated others.

* * *

The original reason for the hostage-taking seems to have been “as insurance against retaliation by the U.S., Syria, or any other force” against Hezbollah, which is thought responsible for the killing of 241 Americans and 58 Frenchmen[7] in the Marine barracks and embassy bombings in Beirut.[8] Other reasons for the kidnappings or the prolonged holding of hostages are thought to be “primarily based on Iranian foreign policy calculations and interests” particularly the extraction of “political, military and financial concessions from the Western world”,[9] the hostage takers being strong allies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.

Lebanon hostage crisis – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia – as viewed 12/8/2013.

* * *

The Reagan’s [STET] made Americans feel good about themselves and about what we could accomplish. Obama’s arrogance by appointing 32 leftist czars and constantly bypassing congress is impeachable. Eric Holder is probably the MOST incompetent and arrogant DOJ head to ever hold the job. Could you envision President Reagan instructing his Justice Department to act like jack-booted thugs?

Presidents are politicians and all politicians are known and pretty much expected to manipulate the truth, if not outright lie, but even using that low standard, the Obama’s have taken lies, dishonesty, deceit, mendacity, subterfuge and obfuscation to new depths. They are verbally abusive to the citizenry, and they display an animus for civility.

A Black Reporter Summarizes Barack Obama! | LETVENT.COM – 11/7/2013

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The divide between what an American President may know and what the American public may be allowed to know in the way of day-to-day foreign relations and states of affairs seems to widen with the growth and the heightened presence of the “Islamic Small Wars” and the concomitant development of an immense intelligence bureaucracy laden with missions the public doesn’t need to know about – or shouldn’t — until afterward, perhaps, and denoted affirming as regards American patriotism.

The acknowledged and most galling of the world’s dictatorships and still feudal societies don’t have this issue: they know what they’re about, and their subjects do as well, and that’s a sad state wherever it’s found; the states navigating between open democracy and paternalist nationalism or resurgent absolutism do have this issue, for certainly Moscow’s internal opposition has been tracking what has been and continues to be taken from them since the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Long opposite in stance, the United States may no longer be immune itself to cultivating suspicion throughout its constituency.

I neither condemn, demonize, nor patronize President Obama and have long noted, not alone, the need in even informal open source research to separate surface from what may be gathered and sifted as regards separate items of interest and their management.

Lo and behold, for example, where Obama has been roundly accused of abandoning Israel, throwing it “under the bus” (so I read too often), Israel holds sway over the critical cockpit avionics of the F-35 program, has developed with U.S. support long-distance refueling capability, and has access to “bunker busting” (tunneling-exploding) bombs. Even though it appears contentious and stressed, I believe the American-Israeli relationship close, rather than not, and laudable given the general stakes involved for democracy, the fruits of The Enlightenment, and the general well being — measurable by indicators of improved qualities in living — of others worldwide.

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Nonetheless, the American body politic may be slipping collectively into the land of innuendo, far right and left, and have less and less insight — or energy for developing insight — into the White House’s essential American rationality (or rejection of it).

Cock-a-doodle-do about Reagan or Obama, align with the Tea Party or the New Old Now Old, Lost, and Far Out Left, the policy axis may not align with either filter.

On the surface, for example, the Obama Administration has decried the “military coup” in Egypt (that would be Obama, the secret member of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ever clever “Manchurian Candidate” out to get “America, the Prise”) but the Egyptian military, Israel, and the United States would seem on some same kind of page as regards Iran, Hamas, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Muslim Brotherhood.

While the political cant went that-a-way –> . . . the politicians, their armed forces, their wealthy benefactors and partners — do add “large swaths of their constituencies” — hold some central constructs together out of the light.

One might say of highest-level privileged conversations, whether taking place in “open societies” or decidedly closed or closing ones, that they are all taking place somewhere “in the shadows”.

* * *

WASHINGTON — When Shiite Muslim terrorists hijacked a TWA jet and took 39 Americans hostage in Beirut four years ago, then-President Ronald Reagan’s public stance was clear: There would be no negotiations with terrorists.

But in private, the U.S. position was quite different. Reagan quietly encouraged Israel to make a deal with the terrorists, to exchange Israeli-held detainees for American hostages–and that is how the TWA captives were released, as the first step in a massive swap of prisoners across Israel’s northern border.

HOSTAGE CRISIS IN LEBANON : Deal With Terrorists? U.S. Policy Not Totally Clear – Los Angeles Times – 8/2/1989.

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Dark Spaces – Darker Empires

06 Friday Dec 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Free Speech, Political Spychology, Politics

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contemporary feudalism, criminal enterprise, criminal societies, Harding, mafia state, political psychology, political spychology, politics, Russia, secret societies, spies, spying, Wikileaks

Arms trafficking, money laundering, personal enrichment, protection for gangsters, extortion and kickbacks, suitcases full of money and secret offshore bank accounts in Cyprus and Switzerland: the cables unpick a dysfunctional political system in which bribery alone totals an estimated $300 billion a year, and in which it is often hard to distinguish between the activities of government and organized crime.

Harding, Luke. Expelled: A Journalist’s Descent Into the Russian Mafia State. P. 233. Guardian Books, 2011; New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2012.

* * *

Among the most striking allegations contained in the cables, which were leaked to the whistleblowers’ website WikiLeaks, are:

• Russian spies use senior mafia bosses to carry out criminal operations such as arms trafficking.

• Law enforcement agencies such as the police, spy agencies and the prosecutor’s office operate a de facto protection racket for criminal networks.

• Rampant bribery acts like a parallel tax system for the personal enrichment of police, officials and the KGB’s successor, the federal security service (FSB).

WikiLeaks cables condemn Russia as ‘mafia state’ | World news | The Guardian – Luke Harding – 12/1/2010.

In the list excised, there are more bullets (no puns intended).

* * *

Snowden’s father, Lon, also expressed his gratitude to Russian President Vladimir Putin for protecting his son from the legal consequences of having violated his NSA confidentiality obligations.

Human Rights Watch analysts also took note of the irony of the Kremlin coming to the defense of a self-styled champion of privacy and free speech rights.

“He cannot but be aware of the unprecedented crackdown on human rights that the government has unleashed in the past 15 months,” Rachel Denber, the rights group’s expert on Russia and other former Soviet states told the Associated Press by email.

WikiLeaks cheers Snowden asylum in Russia; rights groups dubious – latimes.com – 8/1/2013.

* * *

Is it just a coincidence that former NSA analyst Edward Snowden, a valuable intelligence asset, ended up in the hands of Russia’s security services?

Or did WikiLeaks, the “anti-secrecy” organization that has taken responsibility for Snowden, send him there in collaboration with the Russians?

Did WikiLeaks Sell Out Snowden To The Russians? – Business Insider – 9/3/2013.

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Who do you trust?

Throw away God; give up on one humanist ideology or another: what’s left?

Money.

Are governments businesses?

Who do they serve?

Among those served, what are they serving?

* * *

In the capitalist democracies, most expect private businesses to keep proprietary the business processes, relationships, and technologies that enable their sales, investment strategies, and accumulations of wealth distributed back to stakeholders or to the public in the form of consumer spending. As regards governments, they may be expected to keep secret fundamental military and security edges involving security intelligence and operations. These days, whether with billions networked through criminal pacts or blacked out for “black ops” budgets, governments, known criminal or not, would seem to be transitioning into deeply feudal empires — not of, for, or by The People but of, for, and by Some (Very Enriched) People.

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Spanish police arrested four people Friday suspected of laundering large sums of money from Russian criminal gangs as part of a network they said may be linked to Semion Mogilevich, one of the FBI’s ten most wanted fugitives.

The arrests took place in the Mediterranean coastal town of Lloret de Mar near Barcelona, which has a large Russian community and is popular with tourists from the country, police said in a statement.

The four are suspected of tax fraud, document falsification and money laundering.

Spanish police break Russian mafia money laundering ring < Spanish news | Expatica Spain – 1/25/2013.

* * *

MOTHERBOARD: Let’s start with public perception. People believe the Taliban is fueling the drug trade in Afghanistan. To what extent is this true, and why is it so widely believed?

The Taliban are players in the Afghan drug trade, but minor ones in relative terms. Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is to look at the value of the annual drug trade within Afghanistan, which is about $3 billion. The Taliban capture only about 5 to 10 percent of those profits. The bulk of the profits is appropriated by other groups, such as traffickers, government and police officers, as well as warlords.

What’s Wrong With the Taliban-Heroin Narrative: A Chat With Julien Mercille | Motherboard – n.d., 2012.

Web searched first-page reference to data on the Taliban’s narcotics trafficking seems to trail off for 2013, but relayed at the bottom of this post, there’s combat footage from early 2013 posted just six days ago.

Reference Pakistani Political Attitudes, Taliban, Arab Influence, Heroin, Cash, UAE, and The Marines | BackChannels – 11/11/2013.

No pun intended here either: the impression as regards the latest admixtures of crime and politics is getting rich.

According to American national intelligence watcher Tim Shorrock (reference: Spies for Hire), the annual bill for U.S. security-oriented intelligence efforts approximates $52 billion, not that the distribution is known. The social integration of the state’s population with its defense and security sectors may suffice for trust — are we going to trust our neighbors or not? — but the informational dark space created by the development of a large population of government-employed or contracted secrets keepers may not bode well for democracy.

Who is getting that intelligence budget?

On what basis?

To what end?

Shorrock’s sturdy journalism illuminates many paths in the national security intelligence complex, but as seems true today in Russia, the public may be told that it’s being served, but given the enormity of the spooky business and its continuing growth in its institutional aspect, public also has room – more cause – to suspect otherwise.

This is not to impugn the American intelligence community: by and large, we still trust our neighbors.

With help from books like Spies for Hire, the privileges known to the free press and more affirmed than not (so far as I know — and infringements by government gets play in the press pretty damned quick), and the web, it’s not that hard getting a glimpse of the cobbling developed to counter the narcotics trade, the terrorism business, and other contributors to international crime.

Still, the more a government privileges a class with secrets-keeping powers, the more paranoia it may inspire in those who are not of it.

* * *

But, without naming names, Medvedev said Russia should be careful about freeing people convicted of crimes like hooliganism – the charge in the Pussy Riot case – and theft, which was the indictment against Khodorkovsky.

“Our people really are not much inclined, for example, to conduct acts of amnesty for individuals involved in violent crimes, for individuals who committed crimes against society, including hooliganism,” Medvedev said in a TV interview.

Putin dampens amnesty chances for Khodorkovsky, Pussy Riot | Reuters – 12/6/2013.

In political Russia, it appears deflection has become a high art.

The Khodorkovsky case has become legend and no realist expects more from the Kremlin then in its realpolitik the continued expression of absolute power that has dogged the matter from before the arrest stage and forward.

▶ Khodorkovsky – Official Trailer [HD] – YouTube – Posted 11/28/2011.

I’ve chided Pussy Riot (no, children, we do not take bawdy shows into churches without a big, friendly invitation) but most watchers feel the Kremlin’s punishment back-to-the-gulag! vulgarity bespeaks itself of criminal callousness.

In Medvedev’s above cited statement, the infantilizing of the Russian people by way of a paternalist stance should be as clear to neutral onlookers as the heightened projections of criminality. “Pussy Riot” may indeed be a vulgar noun, but the girls are not the evil ones; as for Khodorkovsky, he appears to have leaned westward with Yukos and in the direction of integrity (gasp!).

Since the late 1990s, Khodorkovsky had taken steps to transform Yukos along the lines of western business models. These steps included the introduction of corporate transparency, the adoption of western accounting standards, the hiring of western management, the creation of an independent board of directors with a corporate governance subcommittee, corporate growth through mergers and acquisitions, and increased western investments. These actions had marked Khodorkovsky as an outspoken leader who was pro-western and challenged the non-transparent means by which government and business operated in the Russian energy sector. These practices, along with the possibility of Yukos selling a major stake to Exxon Mobil or Chevron, deeply unsettled the Kremlin.

Legal | Mikhail Khodorkovsky – as viewed 12/6/2013.

With Russia as with Syria as with, not so oddly, Islamic Jihad in large part, one may expect the patina of legitimate cause to wear away before the eyes of a widening and more profoundly comprehending global public. Even so obvious, so visible, however, one wonders about the better options available to that same public.

One may note that Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe has survived decades in power without a shred of statewide legitimacy left intact, but the crowds of those patronized, the money involved (for himself and those to whom he distributes spoils) has proven sufficient to lead him into his 90s with probably a fairly good night’s sleep.

No conscience?

No cares.

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FNS – NSA and the Missing Telcos and Other News in Political Spychology

21 Thursday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Fast News Share, Free Speech, Journalism, Political Spychology

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NSA, political spychology, politics, spying

This broad and unprecedented alliance, united to demand more transparency and accountability around the NSA’s access to our personal data, stood behind me as I delivered my testimony. But do you know who didn’t have my back? Who hasn’t stepped up to support surveillance transparency, much less surveillance reform? Who, despite—or because of—being as deeply involved as anyone can be in the NSA’s dragnet, has had nothing to say other than “no comment”?

The telcos.

The Weekly Wonk | Liberal Brain Freeze & Security Narcissists – 11/21/2013.

* * *

Also in the news this morning:

The crisis — triggered by reports that Australian spies tried to tap the phones of the Indonesian president, his wife and ministers — has pushed ties between Jakarta and Canberra to their lowest level since Australia sent troops to restore order in East Timor in 1999.

Jakarta has recalled its ambassador from Canberra and President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono Wednesday ordered cooperation suspended in several areas, including on people-smuggling, military exercises and sharing intelligence.

Indonesia halts Australia drills as protesters call for ‘war’ – The West Australian – 11/21/2013.

* * *

It is one thing for former politicians such as Alexander Downer to turn on the ”left-wing” Guardian for ”shamelessly dribbl[ing] out this material to maximise the pain and embarrassment to the Western alliance”.

It is another for journalists, particularly ones who are vociferous champions of a free press, to fall into line.

Spies, journalists and inconvenient truths – 11/21/2013.

The Daily Dot – How the NSA ranks its international spying partners – 11/5/2013.

ECHELON – “ECHELON is a term associated with a global network of computers that automatically search through millions of intercepted messages for pre-programmed keywords or fax, telex and e-mail addresses. Every word of every message in the frequencies and channels selected at a station is automatically searched” (Federation of American Scientists).

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REF – “First they came for the journalist . . . .”

15 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Fast News Share, Free Speech, Journalism, Political Spychology, Referral

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campus spying, college spying, confidentiality, free press, intelligence, political spychology, spies, spying, Swofford

What is in my head is my intellectual property. There will be no flash drive, no research notes, nothing to find that is digital. I am done with digital archives. As an ethical journalist I must retain source confidentiality. But more importantly, I must quarantine information that is incomplete, of a sensitive nature, or simply not ready for redistribution to the general public. They are coming for the journalist…

First they came for the journalist… | Pakistan Press Foundation (PPF) – Tammy Swofford – 11/8/2013.

Web-based “open source” political analysis from the “second row seat to history” (mine) need not be either so paranoid or secretive: our sources are indeed out in the open.

For the journalist — the real journalist — on the street, however, and chasing diplomacy and war stories, or just the inside track on, say, the Muslim Brotherhood, the worry with what to do with the HUMINT equivalent of a powder keg of new information would seem worth consideration in association with all channels digital and vulnerable to prying robots.

The right-side of the American political psyche, that which has made a fetish of the demonizing of President Barrack Hussein Obama (oh my), has been scratching its collective head — at least the part of it that is not a part of Booz Allen and other Beltway Incognitos feeding at the annual $52 billion Black Budget trough — over the American capacity for snooping through the e-mail and such.

Reminder: Edward Snowden is now working for Vladimir Putin in a post-revolutionary Russia being driven back toward the familiars of authoritarian oligarchy and nascent Big Brother Government.

Putin’s Snowden strategy: three views | World | DW.DE | 12.11.2013

Never mind Uncle Sam.

Uncle Mao and Uncle Vlad and a lot of other uncles — even if fictitious like Uncle Bond — have their own share of questions, relevant technology, and college and graduate students (!) through which to answer them.

Foreign Spies Target U.S. Universities as FBI Seeks Campus Help: Surveillance – Bloomberg – 4/5/2012

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“Political Spychology” has become a rich field for mining from outside the fringe of the secret clearance-holding community.

I mentioned “college and graduate students” tongue-and-cheek before having a look-see on the web. In fiction, of course, and common academic history, there’s often the beatnik handing out the socialist newspaper on the corner, and there’s no end to student agitprop for this cause and that. Le Carré employs them regularly (in real space, I’m on the final wandering pages of A Perfect Spy). Today’s student spies would seem beyond political agitation: in fact, it’s better not to agitate at all while quietly picking up the secrets of the technology universe and sending some home, perhaps, before their time.

From the above cited Bloomberg link:

Foreigners on temporary visas make up more than 40 percent of graduate students in science and engineering at leading universities such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology. China sent 76,830 graduate students to U.S. universities in 2010-11, more than any other country and up almost 16 percent from the prior year. While the vast majority of international students, researchers and professors come to the U.S. for legitimate reasons, a small number — voluntarily or under pressure — may be supplying information to intelligence services. In addition, more Americans are heading overseas for schooling, becoming potential targets for recruitment by foreign governments.

The Jihad obsessives stir the mud in the water some as they make their way upstream into the inner circles of Arab-Muslim and Islamofascist worldviews and for that may well have cause for worry as regards state tapping. Be that as it may be, government at every level would seem out ahead of them, and that as perhaps it should be.

The Associated Press has revealed the New York City Police Department monitored Muslim college students at schools throughout the Northeast, including Yale University and the University of Pennsylvania. In one case, the NYPD sent an undercover agent on a whitewater rafting trip in upstate New York, where he recorded students’ names and noted in police intelligence files how many times they prayed.

Spying on Campus: New York Police Caught Monitoring Muslim Student Groups Throughout Northeast | Democracy Now! – 2/21/2012

* * *

When on October 1, 2013, Samantha Bowden crept unannounced into the classroom of University of Central Florida communications professor Jonathan Matusitz, she wasn’t hoping to advance her education on the sly. Rather, Bowden, the communication and outreach director for the Florida branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-FL), was doing something of which Campus Watch has been frequently accused, but has never done: spying on a professor in an effort to embarrass him and, with luck, even harm his career.

Spies in the Classroom: CAIR vs. Campus Watch | FrontPage Magazine – 10/28/2013.

Related Reference

The Department of Homeland Security Helped Itself to a Journalist’s Documents | VICE United States – 10/28/2013.

NZ Disputes Report That it Spied on Journalist | InHomelandSecurity.com – News & Analysis of Critical Issues in Terrorism & Homeland Defense – 7/29/2013: WELLINGTON, New Zealand (AP) — “New Zealand on Monday disputed a newspaper report saying its military conspired with U.S. spy agencies to monitor a freelance journalist in Afghanistan, a report that has provoked concerns over how surveillance programs revealed by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden might be used to spy on reporters.”

Department Of Homeland Security Schemed To Spy On Political Opponents – 2/18/2012.

Is Homeland Security Spying on You? | The Investigative Fund – 6/6/2013: “ITRR turned its attention to law-abiding activist groups including Tea Party protesters, pro-life activists, and anti-fracking environmental organizations. The bulletins included information about when and where local environmental groups would be meeting, upcoming protests, and anti-fracking activists’ internal strategy.”

Homeland Security Given Green Light to Monitor American Journalists | TheBlaze.com – 1/9/2012:

Under the National Operations Center (NOC)’s Media Monitoring Initiative that emerged from the Department of Homeland Security in November, Washington has writtenpermission to collect and retain personal information from journalists, news anchors, reporters or anyone who uses “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”

According to DHS, the definition of personal identifiable information can consist of any intellect “that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual.”

* * *

U.S. spy agencies mounted 231 offensive cyber-operations in 2011, documents show – Washington Post – 8/30/2013

* * *

Information Warfare: The New Russian Cyber War Force – 9/8/2013: “Noting what’s going on in China and the United States, the Russians have decided to catch up.”

US, Russia to install “cyber-hotline” to prevent accidental cyberwar | Ars Technica – 6/18/2013.

Category:Russian intelligence agencies – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Category:Foreign Intelligence Service (Russia) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Russian influence operations in the United States – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sergei Tretyakov (intelligence officer) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

* * *

Cyberwarfare/Cyberintelligence thread – Military Current Events – tank-net.com – 3/28/2009

Chinese intelligence activity abroad – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “The United States believes the Chinese military has been developing network technology in recent years in order to perform espionage on other nations. Several cases of computer intrusions suspected of Chinese involvement have been found in various countries including Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, India and the United States.”

* * *

Spies for Hire: The Secret World of Intelligence Outsourcing: Tim Shorrock, Dick Hill: 9781400157723: Amazon.com: Books

Warily, Schools Watch Students on the Internet – NYTimes.com – 10/28/2013.

[VIDEO] College students ask President Obama to spy on FOX NEWS employees – 6/17/2013.

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Putin on Stage – Bright Lights: Big Emerging Online Global Civilization

12 Tuesday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Political Spychology, Politics, Psychology, Russia

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democracy, dictatorship, freedom of speech, political repression, political resilience, politics, pop, Putin, Russia, time warp

Since Vladimir Putin returned to the presidency he never really left, Russia’s descent into neo-Soviet authoritarianism has become daily more brazen. Dissidents are once again being put on show trials that call up the ghosts of Joseph Brodsky, Andrei Sinyavsky, and Yuli Daniel. Laws are being jammed through the Duma with the express purpose of making Western-minded Russians fear that they will be arrested for spying for foreign powers.

Rights in Russia: Navalny and the Opposition | World Affairs Journal – November/December 2013.

* * *

The state media regulator Roskomnadzor filed a motion with the court in early October to have the agency’s license revoked, accusing the agency of publishing videos with foul language, according to reports in the local and international press.

Moscow court revokes news agency’s license – Committee to Protect Journalists – 10/31/2013.

Russia as patient has taken a turn for the worse.

While Putin’s machinery poses its challenges to foul language (and gay pride, judging by the latest), it would seem to welcome every opportunity to further abuse basic human rights and democratic values. By way of doing what it has been doing — and doing it better — it has inspired its opposition locally, online, and worldwide.

The MediEval Empire is back!

And it is fast returning Russians to the status of loyal — more and more frequently, barely tolerated — subjects.

Ah, the glory.

The funny thing is, predictably, with Al Qaeda operating in Syria, Putin remains an heroic standard bearer for decency and freedom despite what the Putin-armed Assad regime has done to Syrians (don’t look — at least put it off twenty more seconds) and what Putin’s editing of laws may be doing (are) to Russia’s vast and under-served constituency.

Still, the disappointment . . . .

Peering out from behind the bars of the closed and censored USSR, during the Perestroika period, we young journalists felt an incredible urge for freedom. While we were all ready to make sacrifices for that prize, none of us could not imagine in our worst nightmares that in a free Russia journalists could be killed for their work. Media professionals could be censored in USSR, fired, jailed or even exiled – but not killed. We also believed – and our Western counterparts with whom we were shared this belief – that the collapse of the Iron Curtain and the end of the Cold War would herald in a new era of free expression and independent talented journalism would inevitably flourish across Europe and Central Asia. East and West, we would create a bright liberated information space stretching undimmed from the Atlantic to the Pacific. We failed utterly to anticipate and foresee how corrupt authorities and criminal gangs would develop new forms of censorship and pressure to bring our dream so violently to heel.

Nadezhda Azhgikhina: Combating Impunity in the Digital Age – Human Rights in Russia – 11/11/2013.

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I shouldn’t, really, but I feel compelled to put these next two items side by side:

Russia’s Putin nominated for Nobel Peace Prize – Washington Times – 10/2/2013:

The Russian advocacy group International Academy of Spiritual Unity and Cooperation of Peoples of the World nominated Mr. Putin, characterizing his forged agreement with Syrian President Bashar Assad — to turn over admitted chemical weapons cache to international authorities — a world-class and prize-worthy piece of diplomacy, United Press International reported.

Artist Mutilates Self as Putin Paralyzes Russia – Bloomberg – 11/12/2013:

On Nov. 10, Russian performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky undressed on Moscow’s Red Square, right in front of Lenin’s tomb, sat down and nailed his scrotum to the pavement.

Reactions to the radical act, which Pavlensky meant to be a “metaphor of the apathy, political indifference and fatalism of modern Russian society,” ranged from disbelief to mockery. A police source told state-owned news agency RIA Novosti that the action constituted normal behavior “for a mentally ill person.”

Make of that what you will — ouch! — and otherwise enjoy the references.

Netflix has it, so I’m off to watch the Khodorkovsky documentary.

Additional General Reference

Institute of Modern Russia

Institute of Modern Russia (Facebook)

Khodorkovsky (2011) – IMDb

Lenin, Stalin and Their Victims: Archive Footage | Video | RIA Novosti – video (3:03) – 10/30/2013 – “Day of Remembrance for Victims of Political Repression”.

Michael Weiss | World Affairs Journal

One day in the life of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – FT.com – 10/24/2013.

Pavel Khodorkovsky

Pavel Khodorkovsky: Charlie Rose (11/07): Video – Bloomberg

Names You Need To Know: Pavel Khodorkovsky – Forbes – 5/9/2011

Pyotr Ofitserov: The Man Who Stood Beside Navalny To The Bitter End – VOA – 7/13/2013.

Russia: Drop Charges for Aiding Dying Patient | Human Rights Watch – 11/11/2013.

Russia: Drop Suits Against Independent Groups | Human Rights Watch – 11/6/2013.

Russia: TV Crew Reporting on Sochi Olympics Harassed | Human Rights Watch – 11/5/2013: “From October 31 to November 2, 2013, Russian traffic police stopped Øystein Bogen, a reporter for TV2, and cameraman Aage Aunes six times while the men were reporting on stories in the Republic of Adygea, which borders Sochi to the north along the Black Sea coast. Officials took the journalists into police custody three times. At every stop and in detention, officials questioned the journalists aggressively about their work plans in Sochi and other areas, their sources, and in some cases about their personal lives, educational backgrounds, and religious beliefs. In several instances they denied the journalists contact with the Norwegian Embassy in Moscow. One official threatened to jail Bogen.”

Russian Union of Journalists – Main Page; Russian Union of Journalists : The Other Russia: “News from the Coalition for Democracy in Russia.” Note: Items listed in several categories — I have not checked all — seem to trail off in early 2013.

The Bell | The Interpreter

The Interpreter

The stage illusion laid bare | openDemocracy – by Peter Pomerantsev – 7/8/2013. Review of Ben Judah’s Fragile Empire: How Russia Fell In and Out of Love with Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Pastukhov | openDemocracy

Vladimir Putin: his place in history | openDemocracy – by Vladimir Pastukhov – 2/9/2012

Vladimir Putin

No shame in protesting against pro-Putin conductor, Valery Gergiev » Spectator Blogs – 11/12/2013.

Putin’s All-Purpose Weapon – NYTimes.com – by Masha Gessen – 9/30/2013.

Vladimir Putin, Through Western Eyes (Photos) | News | The Moscow Times – 9/27/2013.

Wikipedia Reference Section — Putin’s Accusers and Accused (You Figure Out Which is Which)

Alexander Bastrykin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alexei Navalny – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boris Berezovsky (businessman) – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Dmitry Medvedev – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Edward Snowden – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

NSA leaker Snowden gets Russian Web technology job – latimes.com – 10/31/2013.

Guardian faces fresh criticism over Edward Snowden revelations | Media | theguardian.com – 11/10/2013.

Investigative Committee of Russia – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Sergey Sobyanin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mikhail Khodorkovsky – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Paul Klebnikov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pussy Riot – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Related Late Breaking News

Jailed Anti-Kremlin Punk Rocker Launches New Appeal | Russia | RIA Novosti – 11/7/2013: “Tolokonnikova’s husband, Pyotr Verzilov, said he had been informed the Pussy Riot band member was being relocated to a prison colony in the territory of Krasnoyarsk, located 3400 kilometers (2100 miles) east of Moscow, but authorities have yet to confirm that information.”

Pussy riot member Nadezhda Tolokonnikova now missing for more than three weeks – with her disappearance sparking fears some of the Greenpeace 30 could also be ‘lost’ – Europe – World – The Independent – 11/12/2013.

Pussy Riot leader lost in Russia’s prison system, husband says – latimes.com – 11/10/2013.

Sergei Magnitsky – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Georgy Satarov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rights in Russia (organization)

Rights in Russia (Facebook)

Nadezhda Azhgikhina: Combating Impunity in the Digital Age – Human Rights in Russia – 11/11/2013.

United Russia – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Viktor Bout – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia; incidentally, recently back in the news: Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout’s U.S. conviction upheld | Reuters – 9/27/2013; Arms Dealer Viktor Bout ‘in New Appeal’ to U.S. Supreme Court | News | The Moscow Times – 11/8/2013.

Vladislav Surkov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yury Luzhkov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Wikipedia Reference Section – A Glance at Dissidents of the Soviet Era

Andrei Sakharov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Andrei Sinyavsky – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Joseph Brodsky – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mihail Chemiakin – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “With his colleagues from the museum he organized an exhibition in 1964, after which the director of the museum was fired and all the participants forced to resign. In 1967 he co-authored with philosopher Vladimir Ivanov a treatise called “Metaphysical Synthesism”, which laid out his artistic principles, and created the “St. Petersburg Group” of artists . In 1971 he was exiled from the Soviet Union for failing to conform to Socialist Realism norms.”

Mikhail Baryshnikov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Mstislav Rostropovich – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia: “Rostropovich fought for art without borders, freedom of speech, and democratic values, resulting in harassment from the Soviet regime. An early example was in 1948, when he was a student at the Moscow Conservatory. In response to the 10 February 1948 decree on so-called ‘formalist’ composers, his teacher Dmitri Shostakovich was dismissed from his professorships in Leningrad and Moscow; the then 21-year-old Rostropovich quit the conservatory, dropping out in protest.”

Natan Sharansky – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Pyotr Grigorenko – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Rudolf Nureyev – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Soviet dissidents – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia (section contributing source)

Vasily Aksyonov – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yelena Bonner – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yuli Daniel – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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All of that above: barely a morning’s drag-and-drop with a hint or two of actual writing in it . . . . I like it although it could change that old book title and jazz and music line “That was then, this is now” to “That was then: THIS is still THEN.”

_____

Perhaps we could have both for a while — then, now, and then.

And now.

▶ The Monkees – That Was Then, This Is Now (Version 1) – YouTube

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Another Note on Intelligence as a Language Issue

06 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Philology, Philosophy, Political Spychology, Politics, Psychology, Religion

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

intelligence, philology, poetry, religion, religious thought, spying

The urgent post-9/11 intelligence directive became: “Do more, do better, do it differently, and do it now.” In the wake of the Boston Marathon bombing—a scant two months before Snowden’s first leaks—the FBI was accused of not doing enough to track suspected terrorist sympathizers (even though those suspicions had come from the Russian intelligence service formerly known as the KGB). Two events, two contradictory reactions by the American public: one demanding that the government take action to identify and defeat terrorist threats, the other wary and untrusting of that same government.

What It Takes: In Defense of the NSA | World Affairs Journal – November/December 2013.

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Burning Man 2013 : Truth is Beauty – YouTube – Posted 9/2/2013.

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When old age shall this generation waste,
Thou shalt remain, in midst of other woe
Than ours, a friend to man, to whom thou say’st,
‘Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.’

625. Ode on a Grecian Urn. John Keats. The Oxford Book of English Verse

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Truth IS beautiful.

Deception is what is ugly.

Those who promote fear and do so with deceit also on occasion promote the “black swan” theory, the idea that nature produces an improbable event — like life on earth, for example, or two schnooks setting off compression cooker bombs cruelly designed to cut the legs from beneath marathon runners.

The grim review of improvised explosive devices deployed to encourage the adoption of “Islamic values” — or to discourage and subjugate others in the name of Islam — suggests such events are less “black swans”, or “bolts out of the blue” — another trite analog that works — than whole flocks of malevolent black crows.

Sorry crows.

We know when Hitchcock isn’t maligning you, you’re actually playful creatures.

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In online chatyping, the subject of secrecy in Jihad / anti-Jihad activities and other spheres has come up, and I’ve playfully suggested the obvious: change computers and location, persona and voice.

Simple.

The day of the jackals has arrived.

Revert thoughts and data to paper — then burn the paper and rely on memory.

Some professions, say the performing arts, place premiums on memorization as the fundamental part of the craft.

Notably, in English literary arts, a part of the graduate examinations involve questions about who you know and what you know about them, but “who” and “them” may number among the thousands of characters of historic fictions.

In Arabic literature, I am guessing, the “who” and “them” may be the souls legend from earlier generations.

Indeed, my favorite correspondent on many subtopics Islamic suggests that operational code will only drill more deeply into remote corners of Islamic scripture, commentary, and law. The scholars of interest (believing themselves ” . . . more powerful against the devil than one thousand worshipers”) would seem suspected of having their own communications, command, and control language subculture, and that in Arabic, within the depths of Arabic, and tucked away and harbored like precious and useful intellectual metal.

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Beginning with George Washington’s first State of the Union Address, in which he requested a secret fund for clandestine activities, intelligence has been an instrument to achieve the broad goals of the American people and the policies advanced by their duly elected representatives.

What It Takes: In Defense of the NSA | World Affairs Journal (as cited above)

Deception is easy.

Put on a mask and other elements of costume; alter the walk and the talk; step out of primary character and into some other creature; and work it for a while.

Truth is hard.

One has to live with it and in the company of others who challenge and entertain about the same observations and perceptions. If, whatever it may be, proves relentlessly reliable and obstreperously valid — true! and whether we like it or not — it acquires a stability all its own and needs no help by way of arms, punishments, and threats.

The truth is not belief but a stubborn “is” and unmindful and uncaring of whatever human investment may be in it or not.

In the quotation section to the left of where you’re reading, you will find this from Maimonides:

“Truth does not become more true if the whole world were to accept it; nor does it become less true if the whole world were to reject it.”

And I thought I was being original.

Be that as it may, the deceitful, I believe, persist in bending truth to will, the better to beatify and glorify themselves, to make themselves legend, eternally regarded — and that if not in greater social realities than their own heads and small and deeply isolated circles.

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In recent months also, I have read of lineage traced back to King David, an argument for the divine allocation of the right to rule over others.

No cyber or real space visit to a sanitarium was involved.

As a Jew, I have been gently but firmly reminded of God’s demands for animal sacrifice and the restoration of Judaism to literal Levitican standards.

Again, no cyber or real space visit to a sanitarium was involved.

If such beliefs, levers, and sentiments have been suspended by mind in the language cherished by some minds, in just how many heads do the same arrangements persist?

What was read?

What was heard?

What was consequently formulated (about royal bloodlines, say, or irrational obligations and rituals)?

While I believe the human capacity for language invention and the invention of language-congruent cultural behavior bounded only by the necessities of place and responses to them plus desire and its many facets, I believe also that symbolic arrangements in language may be mapped, comprehended, and remapped. When that remapping has taken place in the natural development of a culture, and, say, “twerking” makes its way from youth novelty to something boring old grandmother used to do, we note the remarkable ability and flexibility English has for adaptive evolution; when force comes to erase or overlay a culture and its language, we think of that as cultural warfare and the prize is what is prised from the possession of the minds targeted.

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In Tim Shorrock’s Spies for Hire, the annual budget cited for secret U.S. intelligence operations in their totality was $52 billion.

I hope there is some money in that green ocean for poets.

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Alfred Hitchcock’s”The Birds” in 1 minute, and 40 seconds. – YouTube – Posted 12/4/2006.

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Update: Israel, Turkey, and the Attack on Targets Near Latakia, Syria

01 Friday Nov 2013

Posted by commart in Asia, Conflict - Culture - Language - Psychology, Islamic Small Wars, Israel, Journalism, Middle East, Political Spychology, Politics, Regions, Syria, Turkey

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Tags

airbase attack, Israel, Latakia, Syria

Perhaps Israel is keeping mum, neither claiming nor denying responsibility for the destruction of a Syrian air base between Wednesday evening and Thursday morning this week.

As suggested on this blog, there are so few (to none) of objective observers in the battle space that those following the war news in mainstream media and the more seasoned defense journals online needs must accept that the perception of events may be a part of the province of intelligence interests.

‘Turkey behind strike on Latakia airbase in Syria’ | The Times of Israel – 11/1/2013.

In the deeply paranoid and suspicious atmosphere attending the fighting in Syria, which has been overrun by spies and riven by the separate interests of small cabals, throwing a little more “not knowing” into the mix adds to the bloody mischief already in full swing.

—The Israeli government and military establishment have declined to comment on the reports, although one Israeli official told Reuters he thought Israel had carried out the strike, but wasn’t certain.—

It appears that not even general Israeli military staff know what happened.

Very hush hush.

I’m sure the spy novelists are having a field day with every facet of Syria’s continuing meltdown.

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A Note on the U.S. Domestic Submerged Black Intelligence Behemoth

29 Tuesday Oct 2013

Posted by commart in Political Spychology

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Tags

abuse of power, global, national security, spying, U.S.

What is in my head is my intellectual property. There will be no flash drive, no research notes, nothing to find that is digital. I am done with digital archives.

Correspondence with Tammy Swofford, former LCDR USN, a nurse at Baylor Hospital and in her “spare time” a columnist for the Daily Times Pakistan and Economic Affairs Pakistan.

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The top-secret world the government created in response to the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.

A hidden world, growing beyond control | washingtonpost.com – Updated to September 2010.

Top Secret America | washingtonpost.com — video: first narration: “You think you know America, but you don’t know top secret America.”

Monitoring America | washingtonpost.com

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From inducing paranoia in the bloggorati to upsetting the presidents of foreign states, the world would seem to have a yet emerging issue in the proliferation of every form of intrusive information extraction (or shall we just call it “spying”).

May no signal, whether contained or transmitted by gadget, tablet, computer, or phone, go unrecorded, even if unremarked.

As suggested by Ms. Swofford, the countermeasure to all of this may be to abandon electronic repositories and minimize note keeping.

Create no trails.

* * *

Even on the cusp of dissection, which complete dissection The Washington Post has done quite well, one notices the menage made between elements of the national defense, intelligence, and law enforcement communities. In essence, and as regards terrorism, the ultimate behavior of interest — whether it has to do with, say, breaking into parked vehicles at a mall during the holiday shopping season or blowing up the same mall — is criminal behavior.

Even so —

Maryland State Police and federal agents used a search warrant in an unrelated criminal investigation to seize the private reporting files of an award-winning former investigative journalist for The Washington Times who had exposed problems in the Homeland Security Department’s Federal Air Marshals Service.

Armed agents seize records of reporter, Washington Times prepares legal action – Washington Times – 10/25/2013.

On the U.S. domestic frontier of this new Black Intelligence Behemoth, opportunities for mischievous, suspicious, and vindictive behavior would seem rife. Appearing in the news earlier this year:

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds – The Washington Post – 8/15/2013.

Feinstein: NSA hasn’t ‘intentionally abused its authority’ – 8/16/2013.

* * *

The practice isn’t frequent — one official estimated a handful of cases in the last decade — but it’s common enough to garner its own spycraft label: LOVEINT.

NSA Officers Spy on Love Interests – Washington Wire – WSJ – 8/23/2013.

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The power garnered by NSA may make one wonder about the clout of the annual $52-billion intelligence industry overall.

From The Washington Post:

Generally, the NSA reveals nothing in public about its errors and infractions. The unclassified versions of the administration’s semiannual reports to Congress feature blacked-out pages under the headline “Statistical Data Relating to Compliance Incidents.”

Members of Congress may read the unredacted documents, but only in a special secure room, and they are not allowed to take notes. Fewer than 10 percent of lawmakers employ a staff member who has the security clearance to read the reports and provide advice about their meaning and significance.

NSA broke privacy rules thousands of times per year, audit finds – The Washington Post – 8/15/2013.

It appears here that a substantial part of government of, for, and by the people has been supplanted by what will probably remain unknown persons but much like ourselves . . . but how much, we don’t know and won’t.

The leader of the secret court that is supposed to provide critical oversight of the government’s vast spying programs said that its ability to do so is limited and that it must trust the government to report when it improperly spies on Americans.

Court: Ability to police U.S. spying program limited – The Washington Post – 8/15/2013.

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I know this post will look haphazard and slap-dashed, but it’s just a glance at a profound shift in boundaries enabled by reliance on electronic communications and data processing. In turn, and goosed by 9/11, the same appears to have given birth to a black intelligence campus of monstrous scale.