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Saturday, January 21
The Politics of Domestic Spying
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 21 Jan 2006 08:26 AM CST
 The Politics of Domestic Spying
The Daily Iowan
by Nicholas Johnson (used with permission)
Nicholas Johnson, who held three presidential appointments in the federal government during the 1960s and 1970s, now teaches communications law at the UI College of Law and maintains nicholasjohnson.org.
President Bush's authorization of NSA spying on American citizens raises issues more deserving of books than a column. Topping the list are potential political abuses that would make President Richard Nixon's bungled burglary of the Democratic Party's Watergate offices look like a kindergarten prank.
Other issues abound.
Why not monitor everything? It's tough to get search warrants if you don't know whom, what, or where you want to search.
But does it work? Is it cost effective?
How many freedoms are we willing to sacrifice in the name of "protecting our freedoms"?
Does spying violate Fourth Amendment protection from "unreasonable" searches?
Does it taint the FISA court's process?
Was Congress adequately briefed? Did the president violate the law?
Even if the president's actions are an unconstitutional, impeachable offense, does that justify news stories that threaten national security? Who leaked his secret decision, anyway?
But, let's focus on the possible political abuses. It's no longer enough to say, "Why should I care about spying, if I'm doing nothing wrong?"
The secret NSA, once said to stand for "No Such Agency," is the National Security Agency. Larger than the CIA, its surveillance technology is unrivaled. Its encryption crackers include the world's largest collection of mathematicians.
Experts on a CBS "60 Minutes" segment described how the NSA's global fish net, Echelon, covers all of Planet Earth, monitoring airwaves and optic fiber, picking up everything from e-mail and faxes to cell phones and baby monitors. Of course, even the NSA's staff isn't large enough to sort through overwhelming flows of data. So, it uses the world's largest supercomputers to pluck from that haystack the needles of programmed patterns, names, voices, key words, or phone numbers.
Originally focused overseas, Bush's secret order permitted the NSA to spy on Americans. Are your communications being spied on? Well, yes and no. Your communications are probably captured and analyzed. But the odds are they're not being spotlighted.
Why worry about potential political abuses? Because they've already occurred. Nixon's impeachment included old-fashioned wiretapping for political advantage. The "60 Minutes" Echelon experts revealed:
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher used the technology to spy on her Cabinet -- with deniability. Canadians did it for her.
Europeans documented concerns our government passed information to Boeing that caused Airbus to lose airplane sales to Saudi Arabia.
Princess Diana's affairs suddenly reached the British tabloids after the NSA started monitoring her opposition to our land mines.
A former NSA employee admitted listening to Sen. Strom Thurmond's phone calls.
NSA abuses led to the Church Committee's 1970s investigations and laws prohibiting domestic spying. NSA's Office of Security Services tracked 75,000 Americans between 1952 and 1974. During the 1960s, its project "Shamrock" examined Americans' telegrams. There was a "watch list" of Vietnam War opponents.
Today, the NSA examines billions of items. Similar "data mining" was proposed for the "Total Information Awareness" project.
If the technology is used to track drug dealers as well as terrorists, if it can help American corporations gain advantage over foreign competitors, imagine what it could do in a political campaign. If such abuses have already occurred in the past, how realistic is it to think they're not going on now?
"Trust but verify?" How would we even know if abuses occurred during our congressional and presidential elections? The NSA is, after all, an agency with virtually no transparency and oversight that secretly reports to the Commander in Chief.
In 1949, George Orwell warned us of trends he saw unfolding by 1984 - his book's title. Now, 22 years later, the NSA's technology is more powerfully intrusive than even he imagined. The slogan of Orwell's fictional government, "Big Brother is watching you," is fiction no more.
What of his main character's ultimate realization that "he loved Big Brother?" Still fiction? Or have Americans already come to accept, if not love, the NSA's "protecting us from terrorism?" Have you?
_______________
Nicholas Johnson
nicholasjohnson.org
(source)
Thursday, January 19
A 'True Revolution of Values'
by
Caroline Vernon
on Thu 19 Jan 2006 04:35 PM CST
A 'True Revolution of Values'
By Michael Eric Dyson
www.beliefnet.com
Martin Luther King, Jr., warned America about the danger of unquestioning national pride. How far have we come?
Michael Eric Dyson, best-selling author, ordained Baptist minister, and professor of religion at the University of Pennsylvania, says it was Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life inspired him to "embrace social redemption through the written word." In his latest book, "Pride," excerpted below, Dyson explores King's role as an American prophet.
The voice of the dissenter is often the conscience of the nation. Christian theologian Reinhold Niebuhr’s prophetic voice rang forth in the first half of the twentieth century; Martin Luther King Jr.’s voice was a clarion call for freedom and democracy in the century’s closing half.
"God didn’t call America to do what she’s doing in the world now," King thundered from his Atlanta pulpit exactly two months before his death at the hands of a cowardly racial terrorist. "God didn’t call America to engage in a senseless, unjust war." Here, of course, King referred to the Vietnam War, and he took a lashing in public for his dissenting views. He was accused of being unpatriotic. He was charged with moral treason. Other black leaders like Roy Wilkins and Whitney Young lambasted him (though they later came to acknowledge, as did the nation, that King’s views were courageous and correct). And yet, King was one of the greatest patriots this nation has produced. He proved it by giving his life in a fight to defend this country’s best side against its worst. As we struggle for ethical guidance in the shadow of terrorism and war, it is good to remember that dissent helps national flourishing and aids in clarifying our political vision. If King’s actions against war prove anything, it’s that there’s a huge difference between patriotism and nationalism. Patriotism is the critical affirmation of one’s country in light of its best values, including the attempt to correct it when it’s in error. Nationalism is the uncritical support of one’s nation regardless of its moral or political bearing.
Patriotism "often takes the form of beliefs in the social system and values of one’s country. Expressions of nationalism, on the other hand, are often appeals to advance the national interests in the international order." This latter version of an insular and narrowly conceived national pride is expressed in the slogan, “my country, right or wrong.” Too often nationalism has prevailed over patriotism in expressions of national pride. The confusion between the two has blurred the difference between love and worship of country, a distinction King never failed to make.
In a commencement address at Lincoln University in 1961, King praised the American dream and the Declaration of Independence, saying that “seldom if ever in the history of the world has a sociopolitical document expressed in such profoundly eloquent and unequivocal language the dignity and the worth of human personality.” And when he gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech before the Lincoln Memorial in 1963, King reaffirmed that his dream was “deeply rooted in the American dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ‘We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.’ ”
But King understood the contradictions at the heart of American society. In his Lincoln University commencement address, King said “since the founding fathers of our nation dreamed this noble dream, America has been something of a schizophrenic personality, tragically divided against herself.” America, King understood, preaches democracy but practices its selective application. Moreover, King understood the perils of an isolationist nationalism that celebrates one’s country at the expense of recognizing one’s global citizenship. In such a case, loyalty to nation might turn vicious, demanding that one subordinate moral principle to narrow national self-interest. In his church sermon, King said that in Vietnam, America had “committed more war
crimes almost than any nation in the world.” And we wouldn’t stop it “because of
our pride and our arrogance as a nation.”
To read the rest of this article, click here:
Tuesday, January 17
Civil Liberties Groups File Lawsuits Over Domestic Spying
by
Linda Thieman
on Tue 17 Jan 2006 03:27 PM CST
 Civil Liberties Groups File Lawsuits Over Domestic Spying
Muslim American Society
NEW YORK, Jan 17 - Civil liberties groups fired double-barreled lawsuits
at George W. Bush, challenging the legality of his domestic
eavesdropping program and demanding its immediate suspension. The
suits were filed in New York by the Center for Constitutional Rights
(CCR), and in Detroit by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), and
a host of other advocacy groups, reports Agence France-Presse (AFP). [Yes, of COURSE, the report comes from outside this county.]
Calling
it an "illegal and unconstitutional program" of electronic
eavesdropping on American citizens, both actions sought an injunction
that would prohibit the government from conducting surveillance of
communications in the United States without judicial warrants....
[How would they be able to enforce an injunction against something that is being done secretly, I wonder?]
CCR
legal director Bill Goodman noted that the legal action was being taken
a day after the national holiday celebrating black civil rights leader
Martin Luther King, who was the focus of FBI wiretaps for years.
"We are saddened that the illegal electronic surveillance that once
targeted that great American has again become characteristic of our
present government," Goodman said.
"As was the case with Dr. King, this illegal activity is cloaked in the guise of national security.
Goodman
portrayed [Bush] as a man on an unprecedented power grab at the expense
of basic democratic principles, reports the Associated Press
(AP). "In reality, it reflects an attempt by the Bush administration to exercise unchecked power without the inconvenient interference of the other co-equal branches of government," said Goodman. [Amen to that.]
Click here to read the complete article.
Al Gore: A Consitution in Crisis
by
Linda Thieman
on Tue 17 Jan 2006 05:29 AM CST
 Al Gore: A Consitution in Crisis
AlterNet.org
Gore Accuses Bush of Breaking the Law by Authorizing Spying
The
following is the text of a speech delivered by Al Gore in Washington,
D.C. yesterday, January 16, 2006. The former vice president was
introduced by former Republican congressman Bob Barr, an
arch-conservative advocate of privacy rights.
Congressman Barr and I have disagreed many times
over the years, but we have joined together today with thousands of our
fellow citizens - Democrats and Republicans alike - to express our
shared concern that America's Constitution is in grave danger.
In spite
of our differences over ideology and politics, we are in strong
agreement that the American values we hold most dear have been placed
at serious risk by the unprecedented claims of the Administration to a
truly breathtaking expansion of executive power.
As we
begin this new year, the Executive Branch of our government has been
caught eavesdropping on huge numbers of American citizens and has
brazenly declared that it has the unilateral right to continue without
regard to the established law enacted by Congress to prevent such
abuses.
It is imperative that respect for the rule of law be restored.
So, many
of us have come here to Constitution Hall to sound an alarm and call
upon our fellow citizens to put aside partisan differences and join
with us in demanding that our Constitution be defended and preserved.
Click here to read the entire text of Vice President Gore's speech.
Monday, January 16
On Martin Luther King, Jr.'s Birthday, Hope Gets the Last Word
by
Trish Nelson
on Mon 16 Jan 2006 12:59 PM CST
 On Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr., Hope Gets the Last Word
AlterNet
By Cornel West
This
essay appeared in "The Impossible Will Take a Little While: A Citizen's
Guide to Hope in a Time of Fear," edited by Paul Rogat Loeb.
"He who has never despaired has no need to have lived." -Goethe
A
specter of despair haunts late 20th-century America. The quality of our
lives and the integrity of our souls are in jeopardy. Wealth inequality
and class polarization are escalating – with ugly consequences for the
most vulnerable among us…
This
bleak portrait is accentuated in black America. The fragile black
middle class fights a white backlash. The devastated black working
class fears further underemployment or unemployment. And the besieged
black poor struggle to survive.
Over 30 years after the cowardly murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., black America sits on the brink of collective disaster.
Yet most
of our fellow citizens deny this black despair, downplay this black
rage and blind themselves to the omens in our midst. So now, as in the
past, we prisoners of hope in desperate times must try to speak our
fallible truths, expose the vicious lies and bear our imperfect witness.
In 1946,
when the great Eugene O'Neill's play The Iceman Cometh was produced, he
said America was the greatest example of a country that exemplifies the
Biblical question, "For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain
the whole world but lose his own soul?"
There's a sense in which [young people] today are in an
anti-idealist mode and mood. They want to keep it real. And keeping it
real means, in fact, understanding that the white supremacy you thought
you could push back permeates every nook and cranny of this nation.
The
country is in deep trouble. We've forgotten that a rich life consists
fundamentally of serving others, trying to leave the world a little
better than you found it. This is true at the personal level. But
there's also a political version, which has to do with what you see
when you get up in the morning and look in the mirror and ask yourself
whether you are simply wasting your time on the planet or spending it
in an enriching manner.
We need
a moral prophetic minority of all colors who muster the courage to
question the powers that be, the courage to be impatient with evil and
patient with people, and the courage to fight for social justice. In
many instances we will be stepping out on nothing, hoping to land on
something. That's the history of black folks in the past and present,
and of those of us who value history and struggle
To live is to wrestle with despair yet never to allow despair to have the last word.
~ ~ ~
Adapted
from Cornel West, Restoring Hope: Conversations on the Future of Black
America (Beacon Press, 1997), and from West's comments in bell hooks
and Cornel West, Breaking Bread (South End Press 1991). Cornel West's
newest book is Democracy Matters (Penguin Books).
(Click here to read the entire story)
Friday, January 13
A Call to Action on Samuel Alito
by
Caroline Vernon
on Fri 13 Jan 2006 04:00 PM CST
 A Call To Action - Judge Samuel Alito
by Caroline Vernon
Progressive Action for the Common Good
www.qcprogressiveaction.org
Calling all Progressive Activists....
Call on
Senate Democrats ASAP to stand together and block Judge Alito’s confirmation
with every means at their disposal!
Call Senator Harkin, Senator Durbin,
and Senator Obama at:
1-800-426-8073
Senator Grassley is on the
Senate Judiciary Committee so please be sure to also let him know that you
oppose Samuel Alito's confirmation to the US Supreme Court.
Send
emails through their websites:
obama.senate.gov/contact/,
durbin.senate.gov/sitepages/contact.htm,
harkin.senate.gov/contact/contact.cfm,
http://grassley.senate.gov/index.cfm?FuseAction=Contact.Home
Or send postal letters to:
SENATE OFFICE BUILDING WASHINGTON DC, 20510
Progressive Action for the Common Good and other organizations such as QC NOW, ACLU, NAACP,
QC Federation of Labor, Democracy for the Quad Cities, and Churches United
Justice Issues Committee are organizing a letter writing campaign.
Please assist us in our efforts by writing a letter to the Editor of
your local newspaper as well as the Des Moines Register, The NY Times,
and Newsweek.
Send Letters to:
letters@qconline.com, letters@rcreader.com, opinions@qctimes.com,
letters@dmregister.com, letters@nytimes.com, letters@newsweek.com
Or click here to use a feature on the Democratic Party website that provides you with most of your local newspapers.
Here
is more information for your review:
Judge Alito has regularly ruled against civil rights and civil liberties claims. For example, Judge Alito:
Wrote a
dissent in Planned Parenthood v. Casey arguing that a state's spousal
notification requirement did not unduly burden a woman's right to
privacy, a position later rejected by the Supreme Court;
Joined a
dissent arguing that a student-led prayer at a high school graduation
ceremony did not violate the Establishment Clause;
Wrote
several dissents arguing for tighter standards for plaintiffs seeking
trial on their race, gender and disability discrimination claims;
Dissented
from a decision ruling that the strip search of a suspect's wife and
ten-year-old daughter exceeded the scope of the search warrant and was
therefore unconstitutional;
Rejected
a death row inmate's ineffective assistance of counsel claim where the
trial counsel had failed to uncover substantial mitigating evidence — a
decision later reversed by the Supreme Court; Dissented from an /en
banc/ ruling in a death penalty case arguing that the prosecution had
unconstitutionally used its peremptory challenges to exclude all the
black prospective jurors;
Wrote a
dissent arguing that a policy prohibiting all prisoners in long-term
segregation from possessing newspapers, magazines or photographs unless
they were religious or legal did not violate the First Amendment.
It is,
of course, impossible to summarize a fifteen-year judicial career in a
few bullet points. But it is also fair to say that these highlighted
decisions illustrate a broader pattern of judicial decision-making. By
and large, Judge Alito's opinions make it more difficult for plaintiffs
alleging discrimination to prevail, easier for the government to lend
its support to religion, and harder to challenge questionable tactics
by the police and prosecution.
Judge
Alito has also taken a narrow view of congressional power in two
noteworthy cases. First, Judge Alito held that Congress had exceeded
its power under the Fourteenth Amendment by requiring the states to
provide time off for sick employees under the Family and Medical Leave
Act. Several years later, the Supreme Court rejected a similar claim in
upholding a parallel provision of the FMLA. Second, Judge Alito argued
in dissent that Congress had exceeded its power under the Commerce
Clause by making it a federal crime to possess a machine gun. This
narrow view of the Commerce Clause could have implications in future
civil rights cases.
I encourage you to read the ACLU's full report
at:
http://www.aclu.org/scotus/2005/23308res20060103.html
Thanks
for all you do!!!!!
Saturday, January 7
Pentagon Keeps Database of Youthful War Talent
by
Trish Nelson
on Sat 07 Jan 2006 11:00 AM CST
 Pentagon Keeps Database of Youthful War Talent
MinutemanMedia.Org
by Jim Hightower
Hey, youngsters – Uncle Sam not only wants you, he's got your number!
Not yet sure what you want to do in life? Why not get paid and see an
exotic part of the world while you're getting it all together? Yes, you
could summer in sunny Iraq...and be a part of our exciting occupation
forces there, where there's never a dull moment!
If you are 16 to 25 years old, chances are you'll soon be receiving
such a sales pitch from the Army. How will recruiters find you? Easy –
thanks to a new database secretly built by the Pentagon, they know
where you live. They also know your phone number. And your social
security number, your email address, your height and weight, your
grades in school, your ethnicity...and so much more.
The Pentagon's "Joint Advertising
Market Research
Studies Division" (did you know they had one of those?) brags that this
superdandy database is "arguably the largest repository of
16-to-25-year-old youth data in the country, containing roughly 30
million
records." It includes the names and personal info on 3.1 million
graduating high school seniors and 4.7 million college
students - possibly
including you or someone you know. All this is to be used to target,
reach, and
recruit young folks to fill the troop quotas for George W's war in Iraq.
There are, however, two little glitches with the Pentagon's
sweeping new database. First, it was illegally compiled... Second, (and more
alarming to mothers and fathers) the private data allows military recruiters to
intrude surreptitiously into people's homes and put a sales job on their
children. As one appalled mom says: "It's a direct shot to someone's child
without consent from a parent."
To help shut down this illegal, intrusive database, call the Electronic Privacy Information Center: 202-483-1140.
(Source)
Jim Hightower is the best-selling author of "Thieves In
High Places: They've Stolen Our Country And It's Time To Take It Back," on
sale now from Viking Press. jimhightower.com
This article is provided free of charge by MinuteManMedia.org to progressive media outlets everywhere.
Wednesday, January 4
Skirmishes in the Information Wars
by
Caroline Vernon
on Wed 04 Jan 2006 04:00 PM CST
Skirmishes in the Information Wars
By Mike Whitney
Online Journal Contributing Writer
onlinejournal.com
There
are only two weapons in the imperial tool chest: force and deception.
The brutal colonial occupation of Iraq has provided us with a lavish
example of the former, but the twin-axel of deception is more abstruse
and difficult to pin down. Sure, there's the flagrant propaganda that
floods right-wing radio and political talk shows, but that tells us
little about the state-sponsored disinformation-programs that permeate
every area of American life.
We now
know that the Bush administration authorized massive illegal spying
operations and is actively engaged in planting pro-American stories in
the foreign press. These suggest that the administration's overall
theory of information management is much more extensive then originally
imagined. In fact, news and information manipulation is at the
forefront of Bush's war on terror, a comprehensive strategy to control
of every bit of information a citizen hears, sees or reads from cradle
to grave. It is information warfare on a scale that would make George
Orwell cringe.
It is
only in this context that we can see that the threats made by George
Bush to bomb Al Jazeera are completely consistent with the
administration's overall approach. Controlling information is seen as a
military necessity and those who fashion an alternate narrative are
Washington's sworn enemies. In this respect, we can understand how Al
Jazeera would have to be destroyed to pave the way for greater
democracy.
When we
observe the isolated incidents of the Bush information strategy it
seems disjointed and incoherent. How does the killing of journalists in
Iraq connect to the "Swift-boating" of Dan Rather or Richard Clarke in
the American press?
How does
Condi Rice's new Edward R. Murrow Journalism Program for aspiring
American propagandists relate to blowing up of Al Jazeera facilities in
Kabul and Baghdad?
How does
the dissemination of false stories in the foreign press connect to the
massive surveillance operations being carried out home and abroad?
Until we
are able to combine the many disparate parts of the Bush information
strategy, we are at risk of seeing these illegal activities as mere
aberrations and not as vital cogs in the machinery of the police state.
There is
nothing arbitrary about the massive cloud of secrecy that has settled
on the Bush administration. The government has built an impervious wall
around itself that conceals the venality of the principle characters
and avoids the transparency required for a healthy democracy.
Conversely,
the administration has defended its use of the various investigative
agencies; including the CIA, the Defense Dept., the NSA, and the FBI,
to probe every area of American life. In fact, the USAPATRIOT Act's new
provisions (National Security Letters and "lone wolf" clause)
completely dispose of the 4th Amendment's right to privacy (or
"probable cause"), allowing the government to spy on anyone it sees
fit. The recent revelations that government organizations have been
spying on antiwar activists, Quakers and environmentalists, strongly
suggests that Bush is now vacuuming up every bit of available
information on political enemies real or imagined.
Is anyone really surprised?
To read the rest of this article, click here:
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