Tuesday Reads: Dreaming a Life; Obama and Putin; NSA and Snowden
Posted: June 18, 2013 Filed under: Barack Obama, Foreign Affairs, Great Britain, morning reads, NSA, National Security Agency, Real Life Horror, Russia, Syria, U.S. Politics | Tags: Carol Morley, Charles Pierce, checks and balances, Dick Cheney, Dreams of a Life, Edward Snowden, FISA court, G-8 summit, Glenn Greenwald, John Aravosis, Joyce Carol Vincent, leakers, mysterious deaths, Richard Nixon, Vladimir Putin, whistleblowers 29 Comments
Good Morning!!
I’m going to begin with an article I came across yesterday while reading the Guardian. It’s about a story from 2006 that I remembered and sometimes think about–a woman whose skeletonized body was found in her apartment three years after she died.
On 25 January 2006, officials from a north London housing association repossessing a bedsit in Wood Green owing to rent arrears made a grim discovery. Lying on the sofa was the skeleton of a 38-year-old woman who had been dead for almost three years. In a corner of the room the television set was still on, tuned to BBC1, and a small pile of unopened Christmas presents lay on the floor. Washing up was heaped in the kitchen sink and a mountain of post lay behind the front door. Food in the refrigerator was marked with 2003 expiry dates. The dead woman’s body was so badly decomposed it could only be identified by comparing dental records with an old holiday photograph of her smiling. Her name was revealed to be Joyce Carol Vincent.
Joyce Carol Vincent
How could such a thing happen? So often we hear sad stories like this and never get any answers to our questions. In this case, filmmaker Carol Morley decided to find out who Joyce Carol Vincent was, and she has made a documentary about her quest called Dreams of a Life. She writes:
In a city such as London, home to 8 million people, how could someone’s absence go unnoticed for so long? Who was Joyce Vincent? What was she like? How could she have been forgotten?
News of Joyce’s death quickly made it into the global media, which registered shock at the lack of community spirit in the UK. The story ran on in the British press, but still no photograph of Joyce appeared and little personal information.
Soon Joyce dropped out of the news. I watched as people discussed her in internet chatrooms, wondering if she was an urban myth, or talking about her as though she never mattered, calling her a couch potato, and posting comments such as: “What’s really sad is no one noticed she was missing – must have been one miserable bitch.” And then even that kind of commentary vanished.
But I couldn’t let go. I didn’t want her to be forgotten. I decided I must make a film about her.
She began by placing advertisements in newspapers asking anyone who knew Joyce to come forward. It turned out that Joyce had lots of friends over the years. She had been engaged to be married before she died, and she had also spent some time in a battered women’s shelter. Eventually, Morley was able to talk to many people who had known Joyce. She describes her journey in the Guardian article. It’s an amazing story, and I hope you’ll go read the whole thing.
Follow me below the fold for some news and opinion…
Monday Reads: Some Populist Pokes at the Eyes of the Privileged
Posted: June 17, 2013 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: corporate corruption, environmental destruction, reprouductive rights, right to privacy 51 CommentsGood Morning!
I thought I’d take a few looks at what should be done differently in this country if we indeed we’re interested in progressing as an entire nation. It seems these days the only folks that progress are the politicians and their owners. So, hold on here, we go.
Why is no one calling for an investigation of Booze Allen Hamilton?
Booz Allen reacted with anger in a press statement released hours later:
“News reports that this individual has claimed to have leaked classified information are shocking, and if accurate, this action represents a grave violation of the code of conduct and core values of our firm.”
Core values? Let’s examine Booz Allen Hamilton’s track record.
In February 2012, the US air force suspended Booz Allen from seeking government contracts after it discovered that Joselito Meneses, a former deputy chief of information technology for the air force, had given Booz Allen a hard drive with confidential information about a competitor’s contracting on the first day that he went to work for the company in San Antonio, Texas. US air force legal counsel concluded (pdf):
“Booz Allen did not uncover indications and signals of broader systemic ethical issues within the firm. These events caused the air force to have serious concerns regarding the responsibility of Booz Allen, specifically, its San Antonio office, including its business integrity and honesty, compliance with government contracting requirements, and the adequacy of its ethics program.”
It should be noted that Booz Allen reacted swiftly to the government investigation of the conflict of interest. In April that year, the air force lifted the suspension – but only after Booz Allen had accepted responsibility for the incident and fired Meneses, as well as agreeing to pay the air force $65,000 and reinforce the firm’s ethics policy.
Not everybody was convinced about the new regime. “Unethical behavior brought on by the revolving door created problems for Booz Allen, but now the revolving door may have come to the rescue,” wrote Scott Amey of the Project on Government Oversight, noting that Meneses was not the only former air force officer who had subsequently become an executive in Booz Allen’s San Antonio office.
So, corruption is rampant in these organizations that only exist to expand government destruction of civil liberties. But, let’s not forget that a lot of these organizations also are responsible for our economic bad health. Rampant corruption is part and parcel of the financial industry. As our ability and desire to produce real stuff has fallen, so our national experience shows we have gambling houses for financial institutions eager for extraordinary returns. And, it’s all for profits of a few.
This reminds us of something I fear is often forgotten – that our economic troubles did not begin with the financial crisis of 2007-08 but rather pre-dated them.
My chart shows this. It shows that firms were loath to invest long before the crisis. Capital spending fell relative to retained profits in the early 00s and stayed very low by historical standards. This reflects the “dearth of domestic investment opportunities” in western economies of which Ben Bernanke spoke in 2005. This is, of course, a cause of the weak income growth of which the IFS speaks; firms’ reluctance to spend held down wage and employment growth. The “Great Moderation” might have led to irrational exuberance in financial markets, but it certainly did not unleash a boom in corporate animal spirits and real investment.
In fact, one could argue – as Ravi Jagannathan has (pdf) – that the financial crisis is not the cause of our woes but rather a symptom of this underlying problem. The story goes something like this.
After 1997, Asian economies wanted to run big current account surpluses, either as a policy of export-led growth or in order to rebuild reserves depleted by the 97 crisis. By definition, this meant they were net savers, which put incipient downward pressure upon global interest rates. In a parallel universe, these high savings might have financed a boom in real capital spending in the west. But because firms couldn’t see good investment opportunities, this didn’t happen.Instead, the lower interest rates fuelled a housing boom and the hunt for yield led to strong demand for mortgage derivatives. These bubbles in housing and derivatives then burst, giving us the crisis.
In this way, we’ve seen what Marx saw in the 19th century – that a lack of profitable opportunities in the real economy pushes people down “the adventurous road of speculation, credit frauds, stock swindles, and crises.”
Our state is a pretty good example of what happens to people and the natural environment if the only driving force in a decision is profit of the owners. Here’s some information on the chemical plant explosions we recently experienced near the place I taught for a few years during grad school.
Back-to-back explosions at chemical plants only miles apart along the Mississippi River have given pause to those who live in the shadows of America’s dirtiest industries.
On Thursday, an explosion at a chemical plant in Geismar, La., owned by Williams Cos. Inc. led to two deaths and injuries – some serious – to dozens of others. Then late Friday, another explosion at a chemical plant just a few miles away in Donaldsonville claimed one life and injured eight people after a nitrogen tank exploded during an offload.
“The incident involved the rupture of an inert nitrogen vessel during the off-loading of nitrogen,” a news release from the company, CF Industries, said. “There was no fire or chemical release nor is there any threat or hazard posed to the community.”
Hundreds of industrial plants, many that either produce or consume poisonous and explosive chemicals, line rivers and bayous throughout the South, but in few places as heavily as around New Orleans and the Mississippi River.
Some 311 chemical manufacturers employing 15,727 people currently exist in the parishes that line the Mississippi from Baton Rouge to its mouth. That number excludes the large numbers of oil refineries and plastics manufacturers in the area.
To be sure, locals welcome jobs that pay an average of more than $40,000 a year. But explosions like the ones that roiled the river this week remind many of the dangers, both to human life and the environment, such jobs bring.
In late 1996, the Tulane Environmental Law Clinic (the Clinic) took on representation of a community group called St. James Citizens for Jobs and the Environment in a controversial challenge to Shintech Inc.’s proposed construction of a polyvinyl chloride plant in Convent, Louisiana. After the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) granted a petition to veto the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality’s issuance of an air permit to Shintech,1 Shintech changed its plans and located a downsized facility elsewhere in Louisiana.2
The Shintech dispute sparked a national controversy, featured on national television news shows and, ultimately, in a cable-television movie called “Taking Back Our Town.”3 A common postscript to retellings of the Shintech story is a statement that the Clinic essentially paid for its contribution to St. James Citizens’ success with its life—suffering retaliatory restrictions that supposedly would prevent it from ever representing a group like St. James Citizens again.4 In fact, the Clinic has continued to represent St. James Citizens and similar clients and continues to enjoy its fair share of successes and to weather its share of defeats.5
We continue to have efforts to suppress protection of people, animals and environments from the abuse of the petro-chemical industry. They create huge costs to taxpayers, people and the environment, yet many governments refuse to ensure these costs are recoverable and the loss of life and natural gifts prevented.
No where has the suppression of so many by so few been felt than in the area of women’s health. No less than 300 bills have been introduced this year that restrict women’s access to birth control, abortion, and basic family planning and health care.
State legislatures across the country have enacted an avalanche of restrictions that deny women of their reproductive rights. Just this year alone, more than 300 anti-abortion measures have been introduced in the states — in direct violation of the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.
The anti-abortion legislation is an unprecedented assault on a woman’s right to make decisions about her body and health. At least 185 anti-abortion laws have been enacted since 2011, and the likelihood that more will be passed this year are very real.
“Half of pregnancies are unintended,” Elizabeth Nash told Lawyers.com. She is the state issues manager for the Guttmacher Institute. “Instead of trying to figure out why and preventing women from being put in the situation to need an abortion, we’re doing nothing but putting all these restrictions in place to make it harder to access services when they are needed.”
The laws are the result of the 2010 elections, when droves of conservative and tea party candidates were voted into the state legislatures. The result has been a surge of radical and unconstitutional laws that choke off reproductive rights.
For example:
- Eleven states have passed abortion bans, making it illegal to get an abortion at 20 weeks after fertilization, or as early as 12 weeks in Arkansas and six weeks in North Dakota. Women are often unaware they are pregnant within this time. Roe v. Wade provides a right to abortion up to 24-26 weeks, when the fetus is viable.
- Eight states have passed “personhood” laws, giving the zygote legal rights. These laws could make an abortion a crime — regardless of rape, incest or the life of the mother.
- Eight states require the doctor to give the woman false information, such as requiring doctors to tell women that having an abortion increases their risk of suicide. Scientific research refutes this claim.
- In 26 states, women are required to receive anti-abortion “counseling” followed by a waiting period before they’re allowed to undergo an abortion.
There is a pattern of increased control of individual rights and of usurping national assets in the name of corporate profits. It’s been systemically enshrined in law at all levels of government. It is hard to be complacent in the face of these assaults. We await this week the decision of the Supreme court on issues central to GLBT rights in this country. It seems there are few government institutions that aren’t corrupted by religious nuts, anti-science nuts, and profit-addicted corporations. Whatever happened to our rights?
What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Friday Reads
Posted: June 14, 2013 Filed under: morning reads | Tags: free speech, homophobia, immigration, Marco Rubio, SCOTUS 32 Comments
Good Morning!
So, I am trying to get with it again. Seems like it’s always something. Grades to get in. Issues with my elderly father. Daughters so busy that I seemed to have slipped their minds. Doctor’s appointments. I am going to try to take this weekend to catch up with reality. I should also make a point of going out and enjoying my home city which is one of the great places of this country.
Speaking of reality, there is so much weirdness around the issue of immigration these days that I thought I’d post on it. I live in what can only be described as the melting pot of all the melting pots in the country. It is what makes us unique in the world. We’ve got a unique cuisine, culture, and music because we just soaked it all in from every one else and put it out there to grow. But, there’s a lot of people that are scared of that kind of thing. Just smell that Gumbo! Listen to that Jazz! Embrace the dancers of a second line! None of that would exist without the blending of Africans, Caribbeans, Americans, and all kinds of Europeans!
In the land of tabloid terrors, immigrants loom large. Flick through the pages or online comments of some of the racier newspapers, and you’ll see immigrants being accused of stealing jobs or, if not that, of being workshy and “scrounging benefits”.
Such views may be at the extreme end of the spectrum, but they do seem to reflect a degree of public ambivalence, and even hostility, towards immigrants in a number of OECD countries. Anecdotal evidence is not hard to find. A columnist from The Economist reported this encounter between a British legislator and one of his constituents, Phil: “‘I’m not a racist,’ says Phil, an unemployed resident of the tough Greenwich estate in Ipswich. ‘But we’ve got to do something about them.’”
Surveys offer further evidence: For example, a 2011 study in five European countries and the United States found that at least 40% of respondents in each country regarded immigration as “more of a problem than an opportunity”. More than half the respondents in each country also agreed with the proposition that immigrants were a burden on social services. This sense that immigrants are living off the state appears to be widespread. But is it true?
New research from the OECD indicates that it’s not. In general across OECD countries, the amount that immigrants pay to the state in the form of taxes is more or less balanced by what they get back in benefits. Even where immigrants do have an impact on the public purse – a “fiscal impact” – it amounts to more than 0.5% of GDP in only ten OECD countries, and in those it’s more likely to be positive than negative. In sum, says the report, when it comes to their fiscal impact, “immigrants are pretty much like the rest of the population”.
The extent to which this finding holds true across OECD countries is striking, although there are naturally some variations. Where these exist, they largely reflect the nature of the immigrants who arrive in each country. For example, countries like Australia and New Zealand rely heavily on selective entry, and so attract a lot of relatively young and well-educated immigrants. Other countries, such as in northern Europe, have higher levels of humanitarian immigration, such as refugees and asylum-seekers.
That said, there’s been a general push in many countries in recent years to attract better educated immigrants, in part because of the economic value of their skills but also because such policies attract less public resistance. For example, a survey in the United Kingdom, where resistance to immigration is relatively high, reported that 64% of respondents wanted to reduce immigration of low-skilled workers but only 32% wanted fewer high-skilled immigrants. Indeed, one objection that’s regularly raised to lower-skilled immigrants is the fear that they will live off state benefits.
But, here again, the OECD report offers some perhaps surprising insights. It indicates that low-skilled migrants – like migrants in general – are neither a major drain nor gain on the public purse. Indeed, low-skilled immigrants are less likely to have a negative impact than equivalent locals.
So what connects homophobia, Marco Rubio and US immigration Policy? Basically, the connection is outright discrimination for any GLBT who wants to be an American. Rubio has threatened to leave negotiations on immigration if any GBLT rights are included. He also says it should be legal to fire any one for their sexual orientation.
Florida Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, a co-author and key proponent of the Senate immigration bill, said he will revoke his support if an amendment is added that allows gay Americans to petition for same-sex spouses living abroad to secure a green card.
“If this bill has in it something that gives gay couples immigration rights and so forth, it kills the bill. I’m done,” Rubio said Thursday during an interview on the Andrea Tantaros Show. “I’m off it, and I’ve said that repeatedly. I don’t think that’s going to happen and it shouldn’t happen. This is already a difficult enough issue as it is.”
The amendment, introduced by Vermont Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy, would grant green cards to foreign partners of gay Americans. Leahy originally introduced the measure during the Senate Judiciary Committee markup of the bill, but he withdrew it under pressure from Republican lawmakers who said it would reduce the chance of the bill passing.
Why does he think that firing any one for sexual orientation is also on target?
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), who is touted as a top GOP presidential prospect in 2016, thinks it should be legal to fire someone for their sexual orientation.
ThinkProgress spoke with the Florida Senator at the opening luncheon of the annual Faith and Freedom Forum on Thursday and asked him about the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA), a bill to make discrimination against LGBT individuals illegal across the country.
Though Rubio bristles at the notion of being called a “bigot,” he showed no willingness to help protect LGBT workers from discrimination. “I’m not for any special protections based on orientation,” Rubio told ThinkProgress.
KEYES: The Senate this summer is going to be taking up the Employment Non-Discrimination Act which makes it illegal to fire someone for being gay. Do you know if you’ll be supporting that?
RUBIO: I haven’t read the legislation. By and large I think all Americans should be protected but I’m not for any special protections based on orientation.
KEYES: What about on race or gender?
RUBIO: Well that’s established law.
KEYES: But not for sexual orientation?
Watch the video at the link for his astoundingly bigoted answer.
The US Congress has just been told that Syria has used chemical weapons on its rebels. What does this mean for the US and for our allies?
The Obama administration, concluding that the troops of President Bashar al-Assad of Syria have used chemical weapons against rebel forces in his country’s civil war, has decided to begin supplying the rebels for the first time with small arms and ammunition, according to American officials.
The officials held out the possibility that the assistance, coordinated by the Central Intelligence Agency, could include antitank weapons, but they said that for now supplying the antiaircraft weapons that rebel commanders have said they sorely need is not under consideration.
Supplying weapons to the rebels has been a long-sought goal of advocates of a more aggressive American response to the Syrian civil war. A proposal made last year by David H. Petraeus, then the director of the C.I.A., and backed by the State Department and the Pentagon to supply weapons was rejected by the White House because of President Obama’s deep reluctance to be drawn into another war in the Middle East.
But even with the decision to supply lethal aid, the Obama administration remains deeply divided about whether to take more forceful action to try to quell the fighting, which has killed more than 90,000 people over more than two years. Many in the American government believe that the military balance has tilted so far against the rebels in recent months that American shipments of arms to select groups may be too little, too late.
Some senior State Department officials have been pushing for a more aggressive military response, including airstrikes to hit the primary landing strips that they said the Assad government uses to launch the chemical weapons attacks, ferry troops around the country and receive shipments of arms from Iran.
But White House officials remain wary, and on Thursday Benjamin J. Rhodes, one of Mr. Obama’s top foreign policy advisers, all but ruled out the imposition of a no-fly zone and indicated that no decision had been made on other military actions.
Mr. Obama declared last August that the use of chemical weapons by the Syrian government would cross a “red line” that would prompt a more resolute American response.
So what does the latest Supreme Court Decision on free speech mean? Oddly enough, it means no protests in their front yard!
The Supreme Court has come up with a new regulation banning demonstrations on its grounds.
The rule approved Thursday comes two days after a broader anti-demonstration law was declared unconstitutional.
The new rule bans activities such as picketing, speech-making, marching or vigils. It says “casual use” by visitors or tourists is not banned.
That may be a way of addressing the concern posed by a federal judge who threw out the law barring processions and expressive banners on the Supreme Court grounds.
The judge said the law was so broad that it could criminalize preschool students parading on their first field trip to the high court.
The president of the Rutherford Institute, which challenged the law on a protester’s behalf, calls the new rule “repugnant” to the Constitution.
The Supreme Court on Thursday issued a new regulation barring most demonstrations on the plaza in front of the courthouse.
The regulation did not significantly alter the court’s longstanding restrictions on protests on its plaza. It appeared, rather, to be a reaction to a decision issued Tuesday by a federal judge, which narrowed the applicability of a 1949 federal law barring “processions or assemblages” or the display of “a flag, banner or device designed or adapted to bring into public notice a party, organization or movement” in the Supreme Court building or on its grounds.
The law was challenged by Harold Hodge Jr., a student from Maryland who was arrested in 2011 on the Supreme Court plaza for wearing a large sign protesting police mistreatment of blacks and Hispanics.
Lawyers representing the Supreme Court’s marshal told the judge hearing Mr. Hodge’s case that the law was needed to allow “unimpeded ingress and egress of visitors to the court” and to preserve “the appearance of the court as a body not swayed by external influence.”
But Judge Beryl A. Howell of Federal District Court in Washington ruled for Mr. Hodge. “The absolute prohibition on expressive activity in the statute is unreasonable, substantially overbroad and irreconcilable with the First Amendment,” she wrote, adding that the law was “unconstitutional and void as applied to the Supreme Court plaza.”
The Supreme Court addressed the constitutionality of the law in 1983, in United States v. Grace, saying it could not be applied to demonstrations on the public sidewalks around the court.
On the grand plaza in front of the courthouse, however, Supreme Court police have been known to order visitors to remove buttons making political statements.
The regulation issued Thursday, which the court said was “approved by the chief justice of the United States,” requires visitors to “maintain suitable order and decorum within the Supreme Court building and grounds.” It bars demonstrations, which it defines as “picketing, speech making, marching, holding vigils or religious services and all other like forms of conduct that involve the communication or expression of views or grievances, engaged in by one or more persons, the conduct of which is reasonably likely to draw a crowd or onlookers.”
So, that is my offering this morning. I’m headed to the doctor but will be around later! What’s on your reading and blogging list today?
Thursday Reads: Rainbows, Wildfires, Gangsters, Spies, and Superheroes
Posted: June 13, 2013 Filed under: corruption, Crime, Criminal Justice System, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Arthur "Bucky" Barrett, Boston Bruins, Brian Kelley, Chicago Blackhawks, CIA, double rainbow in Boston, FBI, James "Whitey" Bulger, Jay Carney, John Martorano, Kevin Weeks, Stephen Flemmi, trials 29 Comments
Double rainbow over Boston, evening of June 12, 2013
Good Morning!!
Isn’t that a gorgeous photo? There was a double rainbow over Boston last night, and quite a few people took photos and videos of it. Here’s another shot of it over the harbor and seaport.
You can see more views of it here.
Some people said the rainbow must be a positive sign for the Boston Bruins, who are in the Stanley Cup playoffs against the Chicago Blackhawks. It didn’t work out that way though. The Blackhawks ended up winning game one, after what seemed like an endless triple-overtime hockey game.
In other local news, yesterday was the first day of the trial of 83-year-old Irish gangster James “Whitey” Bulger. Opening statements were apparently riveting. It’s a shame the federal courts won’t allow TV cameras, because this trial is going to be an incredible show. Yesterday both sides gave their opening statements. From The Washington Post:
BOSTON — The trial of James “Whitey” Bulger, the Irish mob boss who allegedly helped scratch out 19 lives and ran this city’s underworld aided by corrupt FBI agents, got underway Wednesday morning almost 20 years after he fled the city on the eve of his indictment.
Now 83 and with just a bit of white hair left, Bulger wore a long-sleeve green shirt and jeans and listened without displaying any reaction as prosecutors laid out their 32 charges against him in a packed South Boston federal courtroom near the gangster’s old hangouts.
“It’s a case about organized crime, public corruption and all types of illegal activities,” federal prosecutor Brian Kelly said during opening statements. “He was no ordinary leader. He did the dirty work himself. He was a hands-on killer.”
Kelly told the story of one of Bulger’s alleged murder victims, Arthur “Bucky” Barrett, who prayed for his life before he was led to a cellar stairwell. “Barrett’s going downstairs to lie down for a while,” Bulger told an accomplice. Barrett walked down the stairs, and Bulger shot him the back, Kelly said.
Bulger’s rise as the city’s brutal organized crime leader was aided and abetted by corrupt FBI agents, who brushed off Bulger’s racketeering and violence in exchange for his help as an informant to bring down the local mafia, according to a lengthy ruling by a federal judge and other investigations.
On the defense side, (Hartford Courant)
Bulger lawyer Jay Carney made it clear in his remarks to the jury that much of the crime boss’s defense will be spent trying to discredit the government’s three chief witnesses. They are close former Bulger associates who agreed to turn on him for leniency or other considerations.
Carney argued to the jury that the three — John Martorano, Stephen Flemmi and Kevin Weeks — will say whatever they think the government wants in order to protect their cooperation agreements. Among other things, he said, they are accusing Bulger of their crimes.
Martorano was sentenced to 14 years in prison for 20 murders. Weeks, once a Bulger protégé, got a shorter sentence for less serious offenses. Flemmi, Bulger’s long-time partner, got a life sentence, but was not exposed to possible death sentences for crimes in Florida and Oklahoma related to the gang’s attempt to takeover World Jai Alai, once one of the country’s largest pari-mutuel businesses.
Carney compared the federal prosecutors to chefs and the three witnesses to elaborately prepared meals.
‘What [we] are going to try to do is show you what happens in the prosecutors’ kitchen before the witness comes out,” Carney said.
I guess I’ve bored you with enough Boston news for today. Let’s see what’s happening in the rest of the world. Read the rest of this entry »
Tuesday Reads: The Snowden-Greenwald Show
Posted: June 11, 2013 Filed under: China, Civil Liberties, Civil Rights, Crime, Foreign Affairs, morning reads, U.S. Politics | Tags: Bob Cesca, Edward Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, Hong Kong, Matt Schiavenza, narcissism, NSA, political asylum, Russia, The Q Group, whistleblowers, Willard Foxton 99 Comments
Good Morning!!
Edward Snowden is still the top news story this morning. It’s starting to look as if he made a mistake by going to Hong Kong, unless his goal was to gain asylum from the Chinese government. Hong Kong is apparently not interested in fighting an extradition request from the U.S. But it’s also possible he saw Hong Kong as a springboard to other places in Asia where he could hide.
Matt Schiavenza writes at The Atlantic:
In a comment about the case published this morning, my colleague James Fallows brought up a salient point about Hong Kong: it isn’t a sovereign country, and remains very much a part of the People’s Republic of China — a country which notably lacks free speech or any right of political dissent. And while Hong Kong has a different currency, political structure, and legal system from the mainland, divisions between the two are actually far murkier than Snowden’s explanation indicates.
Hong Kong is to some extent in control of its own legal decisions
But in the case of Edward Snowden, which is likely to involve an extradition request by the United States, the Basic Law is less clear. Hong Kong, unlike China, has an extradition arrangement with the United States. But China has the right to intercede in an extradition request if Beijing has an interest in “defense or foreign affairs.” In other words, if China wants to detain Snowden as a useful intelligence asset, Hong Kong couldn’t legally do much about it. And that illustrates an important part of Hong Kong’s current situation: its free speech and political dissent really only go as far as Beijing lets it.
According to Schiavenza,
it’s become increasingly clear that Snowden’s decision to go to Hong Kong was a serious miscalculation. The idiosyncratic territory may in some ways be a libertarian paradise of free speech, robust media, and low taxes, but is in no way independent of China. If Snowden’s ultimate goal were to damage the United States government as much as possible, then going to a Chinese territory would make some sense. But this obviously isn’t what he wanted; in The Guardian interview, Snowden disagreed with Glenn Greenwald’s characterization of China as an “enemy” of the United States by stressing the healthy trade relationship between the two countries. Aiding China — whose record of state surveillance and abrogation of civil liberties is inarguably worse than the United States — would go against the entire moral foundation of Snowden’s decision to leak the NSA secrets.
I’m still not convinced yet about Snowden’s motives. One thing I have concluded is that he’s a very narcissistic young man. I can’t believe he chose to leave without even explaining to his girlfriend and his family. He also chose to tell his story to a high narcissistic writer, Glenn Greewald. More on that later.
From USA Today: Edward Snowden’s travel options
HONG KONG — Whether Edward Snowden misjudged the odds of extradition from Hong Kong before revealing his identity here as the man who exposed secret U.S. surveillance programs may be irrelevant.
The National Security Agency contractor may have chosen to surface in the city for the same reason so many companies from the U.S. and other countries choose to use it for a regional base: It’s the best gateway to much of the world’s largest continent….
Hong Kong is connected to 180 cities in dozens of countries by some 850 flights a day. As the city’s investment development agency says on its marketing web site, “Easy and efficient regional travel is key to Hong Kong’s success as a regional centre.” Many of these countries have loose entry requirements for Americans.
He could go to Vietnam, the Phillippines, or any number of other Asian countries. Or perhaps he could go to Russia, which has already offered to consider a request for asylum from him.
USA Today also notes that Snowden has been “contacted by ‘countless people’ offering to pay for ‘anything [he] might need.'”
Meanwhile, an entity called “The Q Group” is trying to hunt Snowden down before he finds a safe harbor. From The Daily Beast:
Even before last week’s revelations by The Guardian newspaper that the National Security Agency (NSA) was collecting call records from telecommunications companies and had the ability to mine user data from major U.S. Internet companies, the NSA was already on the trail of the leaker, according to two former U.S. intelligence officers with close ties to the agency….
The people who began chasing Snowden work for the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, according to former U.S. intelligence officers who spoke on condition of anonymity. The directorate, sometimes known as “the Q Group,” is continuing to track Snowden now that he’s outed himself as The Guardian’s source, according to the intelligence officers….
The security and counterintelligence directorate serves as the NSA’s internal police force, in effect watching the agency’s watchers for behavior that could pose an intelligence risk. It has the authority to interview an NSA contractor or employee’s known associates, and even to activate a digital dragnet capable of finding out where a target travels, what the target has purchased, and the target’s online activity.
Are there more bombshells coming from Snowden? Glenn Greenwald says there are. According to TPM,
According to Greenwald, Snowden has provided the archives of “thousands” of documents and “dozens” are newsworthy. Greenwald has suggested in recent days that more revelations are imminent, saying Monday during an interview on MSNBC that “there’s a lot more coming.”
Dozens of hit out of thousands of documents doesn’t sound like a very good ratio to me, but I’m not a reporter.
On Glenn Greenwald, it seems the general consensus is that people either love him or hate him. Personally, I don’t hate him but I find him annoying and part of my suspicion of Snowden probably stems from my mixed feelings about Greenwald. In my opinion, he cares only about his own pet issues and disdains anyone who cares passionately about, for example, women’s rights, the environment, or the plight of people with less money and fewer choices than he has. I guess he’s a libertarian, but again only in terms of his own pet issues.
Anyway it seems there are lots of Greenwald haters out there. One is Willard Foxton of The Telegraph, who today has a piece called The problem with Glenn Greenwald and the creepy cult that surrounds him. Foxton isn’t quite sure why he can’t stand Greenwald.
Maybe it’s because of the enormous, turgid pieces he writes, complete with 500-word updates when people challenge him. Maybe it’s the run-ins he had with other British journalists while he was fanatically defending Julian Assange.
Maybe it’s the petty stuff, like the fact he insists on special rock-star privileges, like policing the comments beneath his articles himself and his reluctance to let his pieces be edited, prior to the NSA/Prism disclosures. Maybe it’s the things that suggest he’s a little odd, like self-searching his own name so he can pounce on people criticising him, or the accusations he’s used internet sock puppets to go after people anonymously.
Maybe it’s the devotion of his legion of fans who consider him to be the greatest and most fearless journalist on earth, who hate anyone who dares disagree with their idol. The last time I criticised him I got a barrage of online abuse – including memorably a 24-slide PowerPoint presentation explaining how the American security services had “got” to me, and how Greenwald was their number-one target. Maybe, as his adoring public have suggested, I’m either a homophobe or in the pay of the CIA. Perhaps both.
That said, I’m honest enough to admit that maybe it’s because I’m jealous of the success he’s had, and the stories he’s broken. I’m not the only one. You can practically hear the disdain in the New York Times’s tone here, where it describes him as a “blogger” for a “British News Website” (The Guardian).
What I think is more likely is I dislike him because he has built a huge platform with opinion writing, and now he’s blurring the line between opinion pieces and straight reporting. That huge platform he’s built means sources come forward to him from his vast base of followers, with real hard news stories, and then he insists on reporting them.
In line with the “creepy cult” notion, the Guardian actually published this fan-boy article about Greenwald today. Bizarrely, it asks readers to describe how they feel about Greenwald with a fill-in-the-blanks questionnaire! You have to see it to believe it.
Another writer who seems to strongly dislike Greenwald is Bob Cesca, who critiqued Greenwald’s scoop early on. He offered a few more comments on the Snowden/Greenwald story yesterday. Here are three of them.
–Once again, it’s nearly impossible to have a nuanced position these days. I bent over backwards to repeat my ongoing opposition to the growing surveillance state, and made it abundantly clear that my intent with the column was to question some of the problems with the reporting and why there were such glaring omissions and errors. But there’s an increasingly evident overlap between the kneejerking on the far-right and the kneejerking on the far-left (I will make an effort to point it out whenever I can) and too many people tend to blurt things out without reading or grasping what’s being said. Consequently, criticizing Greenwald makes me an Obamabot. End of story. The left is sliding into a very dangerous place right now, and I’ll definitely report back on this one.
–There are some questions emerging regarding Ed Snowden’s story. Why did someone who was disillusioned with Obama’s record on national security continue to work for Obama’s national security apparatus — for more than four years? Why did he escape to Hong Kong when it’s clearly not the free speech haven he claimed it was? If he prefers to seek asylum in Iceland, why didn’t he go there before the story went public? How did he attain the access to be able to “wiretap anyone?” I assume we’ll get answers to some of these questions. Maybe?
–Marc Ambinder wrote a blindly complicated article for The Week in which he explained what PRISM is. It’s essentially a program that analyses data. It doesn’t retrieve the data, it merely compiles it. He also explained that the way the NSA can have “direct access” is via servers that mirror the tech giant servers. So if the NSA requests information from Facebook about an account in Pakistan, Facebook creates a mirror that clones the real time date from that account. But that mirror site has to be hosted on a server and all of the tech giants denied giving the NSA access to their servers. More questions.
We’ll have to wait and see whether Snowden’s revelations are truly groundbreaking or not. But as Cesca writes, the “war on terror” must come to an end. If what’s happening now helps that happen, I’ll certainly cheer loudly. But I suspect the U.S. government will react by simply doubling down on its current policies.
I’ll end there. Now what are you reading and blogging about this morning? Please share your links on any topic in the comment thread.
peej
Carissa
bostonboomer
dakinikat
ecocatwoman
mablue2
Mama Lopez
peggysue22
quixote
skydancingguestblogger
Mona (aka Wonk the Vote)
Sky Dancing 
Recent Comments