James Bamford for Wired: "The Secret War." All about General Keith Alexander, who is "director of the world's largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command" and presides over "his own secret military...the Navy's 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army," and the massive cyberwar complex he has built inside the US government.
I'm not even going to excerpt it. Just go read the whole thing. It's a must-read to truly understand the context of the surveillance story, which is only the tip of the iceberg.
Recommended Reading: The Secret War
Tweet of the Day
Is it a coincidence that the Middle East has blown up since Obama became president?
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 12, 2013
Welp, he's really got you there, Mr. President!
Y'all, I'm beginning to suspect that the hyperpartisanship which results in Democrats' apologism and Republicans' hyperbole and pretty much everyone failing to sufficiently hold to account a Democratic administration for shit they really should is a bad idea!
I am also beginning to suspect that Donald Trump has wadded-up paper towels soaked in 100-proof indecency where his brains should be.
In The News
[Content note: Suicide]
Thursday News and Weather:
Developing: A major explosion and fire occurred at a chemical plant southeast of Baton Rouge this morning.
An inspector who surveyed a Philadelphia building before it collapsed last week, killing six people, has completed suicide.
The town of West, Texas, will not receive disaster aid from FEMA to rebuild. WTF?
More terrible news out of Texas: A sweeping anti-choice bill has been introduced into the state legislature's special session.
Disturbing similarities are found in a veteran NYPD detective's confessions.
The CIA used modern art as a weapon of propaganda during the Cold War. Whut.
Sound the Alarms
[Content Note: Racism.]
Everybody panic: Census Benchmark for White Americans: More Deaths Than Births.
Deaths exceeded births among non-Hispanic white Americans for the first time in at least a century, according to new census data, a benchmark that heralds profound demographic change.Bad time to be a racist!
The disparity was tiny — only about 12,000 — and was more than made up by a gain of 188,000 as a result of immigration from abroad. But the decrease for the year ending July 1, 2012, coupled with the fact that a majority of births in the United States are now to Hispanic, black and Asian mothers, is further evidence that white Americans will become a minority nationwide within about three decades.
There's a lot to despise about the contemptible alarmism that accompanies stories like this one (see also: "Report: Asians fastest growing group" in today's Politico), but worst may be the reprehensible embedded pretense that white privilege is conferred by sheer numbers alone. That is not accurate. White people in the US will be a dominant minority for a long time, as long as it takes to dismantle white privilege. If only it were as simple as "fewer white people; fewer white people being problems" or whatever.
Competing for worst embedded premise in reporting this stuff is the whole White vs. All the Brown People in One Big Monolithic Indistinguishable Group thing. White people will be "outnumbered" by all people collectively deemed non-white. Which elides, for the casual reader, that there are still more white people than any other individual racial minority in the US. But that doesn't fit as neatly into white supremacist frames that pit whites against non-whites.
[Previously: OH NOES; O NOES!; This is so the worst thing you're going to read all day; If they have babies, we will be communists; Tomato, Tomahto.]
America 2.0: The Latest
• Gallup has found in a new poll that a majority of US respondents disapprove of government surveillance programs: "More Americans disapprove (53%) than approve (37%) of the federal government agency program that as part of its efforts to investigate terrorism obtained records from U.S. telephone and Internet companies to 'compile telephone call logs and Internet communications.'"
• A new Reuters/Ipsos poll similarly finds that, while about half of US respondents haven't yet made up their minds about Edward Snowden, of the ones who have, only 23% think he is "a traitor" while 31% consider him "a patriot."
• The US people might still be making up their minds, but their representatives are sure he's no hero: "Lawmakers in both parties Wednesday said they do not view Edward Snowden as a hero, as the NSA leaker reemerged with new charges against the government and defiant vows to fight extradition." Well, it's great to see that the two parties can finally agree on something—that transparency and accountability to the people who elect them is bullshit, man!
• The fact that lawmakers are so quick to condemn Snowden is quite interesting, considering that many of them, in both parties, say it was the first time they'd even heard about scope of the programs, despite the administration's claims they'd been fully briefed.
Some members of the Congress say that getting straight answers from intelligence agencies about top-secret surveillance is like playing the game "20 Questions," where answers come only if a questioner knows exactly what to ask.Let me note here that it is eminently possible the administration believes in good faith that Congress has been fully briefed, and that members of Congress legitimately feel out of the loop nonetheless. Those information gaps happen in D.C., especially around national security issues where there is tension between secrecy and disclosure.
They say quality of closed briefings depends largely on who conducts the sessions and whether members go in with a working knowledge of programs and pointed questions.
Intelligence officials have scheduled several such briefings this week amid the furor over data collection by the National Security Agency after secrets were leaked to news outlets by Edward Snowden, an employee at an NSA contractor.
Although President Barack Obama insisted the Congress was "fully briefed," many lawmakers said they were unaware of two programs exposed by Snowden that involved collecting billions of telephone records and monitoring Internet data through companies such as Google Inc and Facebook Inc.
"We, here, Congress needs to be informed of what's going on, and we're not, and that's very disturbing to me," said Democratic Senator Jon Tester, a sponsor of new legislation to force more disclosure to Congress.
Let me also note that members of both parties have reason to throw President Obama under the bus. Republicans, because they're Republicans. Democrats, because he is in his second term and isn't facing reelection, but they've got a midterm coming up—and if this thing blows up, they want it to be in his face, not theirs.
So, as this thing moves forward, it's wise to be aware that lots of lawmakers have lots of ulterior motives for redirecting this back to the White House and denying complicity. They will play politics, and it will be that much more difficult to establish meaningful accountability.
• Meanwhile, we're back to justifications of the surveillance program because it totes stopped so much terrorism: "The director of the National Security Agency told Congress on Wednesday that 'dozens' of terrorism threats had been halted by the agency's huge database of the logs of nearly every domestic phone call made by Americans, while a senator briefed on the program disclosed that the telephone records are destroyed after five years."
Maybe that's true and maybe it isn't, but we're just gonna have to take his word for it.
Here's the thing that's itching me at the back of my brain: If this program is so effective, why didn't it catch the Boston Marathon Bombing? The Tsarnaev brothers were not super sophisticated. Everything we've learned about them suggests that they operated more openly than most terrorists. So if this program didn't catch their plot, what are the "dozens of terrorism threats" that this program has allegedly halted? And why didn't it snag the Tsarnaevs?
I wonder if this program doesn't end up yielding results not unlike the war on drugs, in which lots of small-timers end up clogging the prisons and massive arrest numbers of personal users and local weed dealers are used to declare anti-drug policies a success, while sophisticated drug cartels continue for years and years, untouched.
Is this massive invasion of USians' privacy resulting in real terror prevention? Or are we just arresting a bunch of stupid kids and pretending they're more dangerous than they are, in order to justify the expansion of the surveillance state?
Question of the Day
Suggested by Shaker misteriousveiwerwoman: What is "something you knew you'd love before you actually gave it a go and then did?"
FYI
For Iain, who will never not think the lyrics are "I went to the danger zone."
Which I naturally find completely endearing. And totally annoying.
[Previous FYI: Rick Astley; Eddie Murphy; The Eurythmics; Eddie Rabbit; Sinéad O'Connor; Was (Not Was); Bon Jovi; Kenny Rogers; Bobby McFerrin; Starship; Dead or Alive; Right Said Fred; Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians; Salt n Pepa; Nelson; The Cure; The Soup Dragons; Europe/BushCo; Elton John; Eddie Money; Human League; Glenn Frey; Van Halen; Alanis Morissette; Depeche Mode; The Beatles; The Proclaimers; Bruce Springsteen; Meat Loaf; Cyndi Lauper; Cole Porter; Tina Turner; The Jets; Starland Vocal Band. Hint: They're better if you click 'em!]
Eleven
Today is Iain's and my eleventh anniversary.
In retrospect, it seems impossible that a brief online encounter between two people, 4,000 miles apart, would turn into eleven years of marriage. But so it has. Emails, IMs, phone calls. Exchanged pictures. Books sent through the mail. Unaccountable convictions that it would all translate seamlessly into real life when we finally met. An absurd leap into a life-upending decisions after being in other's presence for an absurdly short amount of time.
I can't imagine a person better suited for me, or to whom I'm better suited. In all the good ways, and all the awkward ways, and in all the ways that essentially boil down to: Your shit is shit I can deal with.
I love Iain for a lot of reasons, but perhaps most of all for giving me a safe space in which I can let myself be known. And for letting me know him right back.
-----------------------------------
When Iain and I got married ten years ago, we promised never to take one another for granted, and never to take for granted that we were afforded the privilege of marriage only because we are of different sexes. Usually, on our anniversary, I encourage readers in the US to contact their Senators and Representatives and ask them to support the Respect for Marriage Act, but it has not been reintroduced in Congress this session because the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the United States v. Windsor sometime this month. US v Windsor will decide the constitutionality of defining the term marriage as "a legal union between one man and one woman as husband and wife" and spouse as "a person of the opposite sex who is a husband or a wife." Our love is not worth more because Iain and I are of different sexes. Our marriage is not undermined by inclusivity. Everyone in the US should have the same legal rights to marriage and partner-sponsored immigration that we have.
[Previously: Ten, Nine, Eight, Seven, Six, Five, Four, Three.]
Funny, That
When I was wrote passionate criticisms of a Republican administration who expanded the executive's extrajudicial powers, exploited the Patriot Act, abused civil liberties via FISA, abetted spy agency overreach, defended as "accidents" breaches of the federal government into citizens' privacy, waged war on whistleblowers, targeted media who report leaks, and defended this overt construction of a surveillance state with manifest bullshit about national security, I was a principled progressive.
But when I write passionate criticisms of a Democratic administration who expand the executive's extrajudicial powers, exploit the Patriot Act, abuse civil liberties via FISA, abet spy agency overreach, defend as "accidents" breaches of the federal government into citizens' privacy, wage war on whistleblowers, target media who report leaks, and defend this overt construction of a surveillance state with manifest bullshit about national security, I am a hysterical alarmist with a personal vendetta against the President.
Huh.
[Previously: Two Facts.]
Photo of the Day
[Click to embiggen.]
From the Telegraph's Pictures of the Day for 12 June 2013: Base jumpers JT Holmes, Tim Dutton, and Jesse Hall Base jump off The Beak, a 2,000 ft overhanging face on Baffin island, Canada.When I first glanced at the photo, I thought they were birds. !!!
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by cashews.
Recommended Reading:
Evren: Why Every City Needs a Center Square: On the Turkish Uprisings, Coalition Building, and Coexistence [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of state-sponsored violence; police brutality; religious supremacy; anti-choiceism; and minority marginalization.]
Jos: On Trans Issues Within Feminism and Strengthening the Movement's Gender Analysis [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of ciscentrism and transphobia.]
Mo: Beyond the Masculinization of Race Issues [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of racialized violence; racism; misogyny.]
FMF News: Afghan Police Accused of Violence Against Women [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of gendered violence, including sexual assault.]
Seth: Immigration Debate Begins While Advocates Demand Obama Halt Deportations [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of anti-immigrant sentiments; xenophobia; racism.]
Atrios: Most Unpaid Internships Are Clearly Illegal
Transgender Law Center: Delaware's Attorney General Beau Biden Supports Transgender Protections
Robin: Scott Roeder Put in Solitary Confinement Over Threats Targeting Abortion Clinic Staff [Content Note: The post at this link includes discussion of anti-choice terrorism.]
Trudy has a great round-up of some of her key essays on class.
Leave your links and recommendations in comments...
Daily Dose of Cute
Zelly is really into Channing Tatum.
(A random photo I snapped with my mobile last night, just because Zelly was looking super adorbz, and then noticed I happened to catch CHANNING TATUM in huge letters on the telly behind her, lol.)
As always, please feel welcome and encouraged to share pix of the fuzzy, feathered, or scaled members of your family in comments.
In The News
[Content note: Racism, gun violence, homophobia]
All The News In Fits and Spurts:
It has been 50 years since the murder of civil rights activist Medgar Evers.
Choose Your Own Adventure is coming to the big screen as a crossplatform four-quadrant action-adventure franchise! Neat!
Mike Huckabee is shocked (shocked!) he has to see gay couples on TV. Poor Mike!
A night of violence in St. Louis ends with 18 people shot.
A giant, hairy-legged mosquito capable of growing up to 20 times the size of regular mosquitoes has been spotted in Florida. Swell.
Preschoolers with guns have taken more lives so far this year than the single U.S. terrorist attack.
Yikes
Long line of fierce thunderstorms could spawn derecho:
A gigantic line of powerful thunderstorms could affect one in five Americans on Wednesday as it rumbles from Iowa to Maryland packing hail, lightning and tree-toppling winds.Consider me fucking aware!
Meteorologists are warning that the continuous line of storms may even spawn an unusual weather event called a derecho, which is a massive storm of strong straight-line winds spanning at least 240 miles.
Wednesday's storms are also likely to generate tornadoes and cause power outages that will be followed by oppressive heat, said Bill Bunting, operations chief at the National Weather Service's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.
The risk of severe weather in Chicago, Indianapolis, Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, is roughly 45 times higher than on a normal June day, Bunting said. Detroit, Baltimore, Washington, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh and Louisville, Ky., have a risk level 15 times more than normal. All told, the area the weather service considers to be under heightened risk of dangerous weather includes 64 million people in 10 states.
"It's a pretty high threat," Bunting said, who also warned that the storms will produce large hail and dangerous lightning. "We don't want to scare people, but we want them to be aware."
It is starting to get real stormy outside my windows, y'all. Keep safe, everyone, as much as you can.
[H/T to Jordan.]
Quote of the Day
[Content Note: Hostility to agency.]
"I don't have any problem with ultrasound. I think most people think ultrasounds are just fine."—Republican Governor of Wisconsin Scott Walker, who is set to "sign a measure that's quickly working its way through the Republican-controlled Legislature that would require women seeking an abortion to undergo an ultrasound."
Oh. Well. He's chill with ultrasound, and he's under the impression that most people think ultrasounds are totes cool, so there's nothing to see here. Move along, haters!
Aside from the fact that state law should not be made based on whether it passes with approval through Governor Scott Walker's validity prism, objections to mandatory ultrasounds are not based on whether people "think ultrasounds are just fine" in a void. "Yes, I approve of ultrasound technology!" But Governor Scott Walker knows this. He's just an asshole.
Again I will note—as I do each time one of these mandated ultrasound bills is being debated with the inevitable justification that its supporters are just trying to Very Helpfully "provide women with more information"—that if an altruistic helpfulness were the authentic motivation, then women would be offered a choice as to whether they want to get the ultrasound.
["Helping women" being their framing, but please note that all fertile people with uteri need access to all reproductive options.]
But, of course, these paternalistic scolds are not offering anything kind or decent; they are merely demanding the legal right to try to shame women into not getting abortions, because they believe, wrongly, that women seeking abortions are in denial about being pregnant, or detached from their natural desire to mother, or some other nonsense, and if only they see a picture of the BABY! they will change their fickle and delicate minds.
Being forced to view an ultrasound does not, however, change the reality for a pregnant woman—and there are few minds less persuadable than the mind of a woman who does not want to be pregnant. Which is why even straight-up criminalizing abortion doesn't stop women from getting them.
Forcing a pregnant person to look at an ultrasound will not change the circumstances that made hir seek an abortion: If you don't want a child, if you can't afford a child, if you had a contraceptive failure, if you were raped, if you just lost your job, if you found out the fetus will die as soon as it's born, if you're pregnant by someone who became abusive, if you've been diagnosed with a life threatening illness, or a non-life threatening but life-changing illness or disability, if your existing child has become ill, if your spouse has become ill, if your parent has become ill, if your psychiatric medication is incompatible with pregnancy, if you lost your health insurance, if…if…if a million other variables, if any of a million reasons why women seek abortions, looking at an ultrasound will not matter.
The Ultrasound Gang just can't conceive that there are women who make the measured, rational, self-interested decision to terminate a pregnancy. "But there's a BABY in there!" they insist, and they don't understand that there are millions of women who will reply, with or without regret, "Yes, I know. That's the problem."
With Allies *cough* Like These...
[Content Note: Sexual violence.]
Despite the onslaught of news about the US military's endemic sexual assault problem, and continuing revelations that the military itself is [CN: rape culture; misogyny; homophobia; disablism] not taking this shit seriously, a proposal "to place military sex assault cases in the hands of an independent prosecutor" has been stripped from the Defense Authorization Act and replaced "with a measure that instead requires senior military officers to review decisions when commanders refuse to prosecute a case."
By Democratic Senator Carl Levin.
An effort to place military sex assault cases in the hands of an independent prosecutor was thwarted late Tuesday when Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin sided with the top brass – and against a fellow Democrat.Which is a good and necessary step, but not enough. The issue is getting sexual assault cases in front of a jury in the first place.
Levin (D-Mich.) will strip a proposal by Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) from the policy-setting Defense Authorization Act and replace it with a measure that instead requires senior military officers to review decisions when commanders refuse to prosecute a case.
Gillibrand's proposal - which had 27 co-sponsors, including 4 Republicans – came in response to complaints that the U.S. military has repeatedly failed to deal with the issue of sex assaults. The military has resisted efforts to involve outsiders in its handling of such cases.
Aides for Gillibrand told NBC's Capital Hill correspondent Kelly O'Donnell that the move was "a real setback."
She is expected to make another attempt to introduce her proposal when the defense bill comes up for a final vote later this summer.
Levin, who is not seeking re-election, is expected to accept an amendment from Senator Claire McCaskill to prevent commanders from overturning jury verdicts.
Nothing is difficult to understand about: The chain of command doesn't work because sometimes the perpetrator is part of the chain of command. It doesn't work, it hasn't been working, and it will never work.
This isn't about elected representatives being obtuse. It's about elected representatives consciously choosing to side with abetting rapists, because it's unpopular to say that the military has failed the survivors among its ranks.
America 2.0: The Latest
• Democratic Senator Al Franken says he "was very well aware of" the NSA's surveillance program, but don't worry: "I can assure you, this is not about spying on the American people. I have a high level of confidence that this is used to protect us and I know that it has been successful in preventing terrorism."
• Democratic Representative Steny Hoyer says this is not equivalent to what the Bush administration was doing: "The difference between this program and the Bush program [is that] the Bush program was not sanctioned by law; this is pursuant to law. I think that's a very important distinction that some people don't draw, but they ought to draw."
That is true. The Obama administration's surveillance programs have warrants that the Bush administration did not have. That said, the legality (or lack thereof) of Bush's warrantless wiretapping program was only one aspect of the constellation of objections to it.
• Relatedly: Democratic Senator Dick Durbin says the FISA declassification bill is dead on arrival. The bill, sponsored by Democratic Senators from Oregon Ron Wyden and Jeff Merkley, would "require the attorney general to declassify significant opinions made by courts operating under the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA)." It's essentially a transparency bill, and it has bipartisan support. But Durbin does not expect it to pass, and, even if it passes through Congress and arrives on the President's desk for signature, "they are going to eventually turn us down," says Durbin. "They are [just] going to say no."
Transparency (or the lack thereof) was one of the other primary objections to Bush's warrantless wiretapping program.
• Republican Senator Lindsay Graham says: "If I thought censoring the mail was necessary [for national security], I would suggest it, but I don't think it is."
• Republican Representative Peter King says that journalists who report on leaks should be punished: "Actually, if they willingly knew that this was classified information, I think action should be taken, especially on something of this magnitude. I know that the whole issue of leaks has been gone into over the last month. I think something on this magnitude, there is an obligation, both moral but also legal, I believe, against a reporter disclosing something which would so severely compromise national security. As a practical matter, I guess it happened in the past several years, a number of reporters who have been prosecuted under it, so the answer is yes to your question."
Welcome to America 2.0, where the government legally submits the entire population to surveillance dragnets and journalists who report on it should go to jail!
• And where the President meets with select journalists in secret, off-the-record meetings.
• NSA Disclosures Put Awkward Light on Previous Denials: "For years, intelligence officials have tried to debunk what they called a popular myth about the National Security Agency: that its electronic net routinely sweeps up information about millions of Americans. In speeches and Congressional testimony, they have suggested that the agency's immense power is focused exclusively on terrorists and other foreign targets, and that it does not invade Americans' privacy. But since the disclosures last week showing that the agency does indeed routinely collect data on the phone calls of millions of Americans, Obama administration officials have struggled to explain what now appear to have been misleading past statements."
Whoops.
Basically, what we're meant to take away from all of this is that, yes, our information is being collected and analyzed, but only so they can look for Bad Guys. So ha ha don't worry your pretty little heads about it, because we're not using the information to come after YOU. At the moment. Unless you're a Bad Guy. Are you a Bad Guy? Well, we'll be the judge of that.
I'm being flip, but the problem is, at its root, that the way the data is reportedly being used (and we've just got to trust them on how it's being used, and that it's not being abused) is supposed to act as retroactive justification for the data being collected in the first place, instead of having a conversation in the first place about whether this is a strategy that is: 1. effective; 2. necessary; 3. constitutional; 4. something we actually want to do, even if it is all of the above.
I don't know about anyone else, but I for one am getting really fucking tired of national security strategies that encroach on privacy rights being defended with bullshit sloganeering about people who hate us for our freedom, even as that freedom is being eroded in pursuit of some alleged safety. This is garbage thinking. The very nature of the country is being changed in pursuit of protecting "our way of life," without a trace of fucking irony.
And Maude knows I'm not a fierce defender of tradition, but when I say this country needs to change, this ain't what I mean.
• The ACLU has filed a lawsuit challenging NSA phone surveillance: "In the wake of the past week's revelations about the NSA's unprecedented mass surveillance of phone calls, today the ACLU filed a lawsuit charging that the program violates Americans' constitutional rights of free speech, association, and privacy."
• In related news: "The FBI has dramatically increased its use of a controversial provision of the Patriot Act to secretly obtain a vast store of business records of U.S. citizens under President Barack Obama, according to recent Justice Department reports to Congress. The bureau filed 212 requests for such data to a national security court last year—a 1,000-percent increase from the number of such requests four years earlier, the reports show."
Neat!
