[Peace-discuss] Fwd: As Europe Erupts Over US Spying, NSA Chief Says Government Must Stop Media
"E. Wayne Johnson 朱稳森"
ewj at pigsqq.org
Mon Oct 28 22:14:35 UTC 2013
Several years ago some domestick terrorists targeted the wrong building
and blew up one in Oklahoma City in their misjudgment of where WDC is.
Senator Fred Thompson said at that time that the first duty of
government is to defend
itself. No doubt that is true and those who believe in the goodness of the
state should realize what a monster the goodness of government becomes any
time it perceives a threat of any sort, whether it be at the hand of
Occupy!,
or the Tea Baggers, or some potentially successful political counterforce,
an anti-war movement, or some angry and misguided men who know how to
make bombs.
Certainly journalists and poets are a serious threat to the state, and it
will react in what ever way necessary to neutralise any attack.
Generally race-baiting and partisanism are used to neutralise any
serious political threats.
Next the military and the police are used if it's an assembling group.
In the case of pesky journalists, crony capitalism can be counted on to
get the guy fired. That failing, they will go for jail time, even
assassination if they are reasonably assured of getting away with it.
On 10/29/13 4:27, Brussel Morton K. wrote:
> Last article by Greenwald from The Guardian.
>
> Begin forwarded message:
>>
>>
>>
>> As Europe Erupts Over US Spying, NSA Chief Says Government Must
>> Stop Media
>> <http://portside.org/2013-10-27/europe-erupts-over-us-spying-nsa-chief-says-government-must-stop-media>
>>
>>
>> Glenn Greenwald
>> October 25, 2013
>> The Guardian
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/25/europe-erupts-nsa-spying-chief-government>
>> /With General Alexander calling for NSA reporting to be halted, US
>> and UK credibility as guardians of press freedom is crushed./
>>
>>
>>
>> NSA Director General Keith Alexander, earlier this month, Evan
>> Vucci/AP
>> <http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2013/10/16/1381957734300/f740f8cc-5b6f-46b0-aacc-77c72c1d78ec-460x276.jpeg>,
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> The most under-discussed aspect of the NSA
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/nsa> story has long been its
>> international scope. That all changed this week as both Germany
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/germany> and France exploded with
>> anger
>> <http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/angry-european-and-german-reactions-to-merkel-us-phone-spying-scandal-a-929725.html>
>> over new revelations about pervasive NSA surveillance
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/surveillance> on their population
>> and democratically elected leaders.
>>
>> As was true for Brazil <http://www.theguardian.com/world/brazil>
>> previously, reports about surveillance aimed at leaders are receiving
>> most of the media attention, but what really originally drove the
>> story there were revelations that the NSA is bulk-spying on millions
>> and millions
>> <http://www.lemonde.fr/technologies/article/2013/10/21/france-in-the-nsa-s-crosshair-phone-networks-under-surveillance_3499741_651865.html>
>> of innocent citizens
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/07/nsa-brazilians-globo-spying>
>> in all of those nations
>> <http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/nsa-spies-on-500-million-german-data-connections-a-908648.html>.
>> The favorite cry of US government apologists -–/everyone spies!/ –
>> falls impotent in the face of this sort of ubiquitous, suspicionless
>> spying that is the sole province of the US and its four
>> English-speaking surveillance allies (the UK, Canada, Australia and
>> New Zealand).
>>
>> There are three points worth making about these latest developments.
>>
>> • *First*, note how leaders such as Chancellor Angela Merkel
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/angela-merkel> reacted with basic
>> indifference when it was revealed months ago that the NSA was
>> bulk-spying on all German citizens, but suddenly found her
>> indignation only when it turned out that she personally was also
>> targeted. That reaction gives potent insight into the true mindset of
>> many western leaders.
>>
>> • *Second*, all of these governments keep saying how newsworthy these
>> revelations are, how profound are the violations they expose, how
>> happy they are to learn of all this, how devoted they are to reform.
>> If that's true, why are they allowing the person who enabled all
>> these disclosures – Edward Snowden
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/edward-snowden> – to be targeted
>> for persecution by the US government for the "crime" of blowing the
>> whistle on all of this?
>>
>> If the German and French governments – and the German and French
>> people – are so pleased to learn of how their privacy
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/privacy> is being systematically
>> assaulted by a foreign power over which they exert no influence,
>> shouldn't they be offering asylum to the person who exposed it all,
>> rather than ignoring or rejecting his pleas to have his basic
>> political rights protected, and thus leaving him vulnerable to being
>> imprisoned for decades by the US government?
>>
>> Aside from the treaty obligations these nations have to protect the
>> basic political rights of human beings from persecution, how can they
>> simultaneously express outrage over these exposed invasions while
>> turning their back on the person who risked his liberty and even life
>> to bring them to light?
>>
>> • *Third*, is there any doubt at all that the US government
>> repeatedly tried to mislead the world when insisting that this system
>> of suspicionless surveillance was motivated by an attempt to protect
>> Americans from The Terrorists™? Our reporting has revealed spying on
>> conferences designed to negotiate economic agreements
>> <http://epoca.globo.com/tempo/noticia/2013/08/carta-em-que-o-atual-bembaixadorb-americano-no-brasil-bagradece-o-apoio-da-nsab.html>,
>> the Organization of American States, oil companies
>> <http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/sep/09/nsa-spying-brazil-oil-petrobras>,
>> ministries that oversee mines and energy resources
>> <http://m.g1.globo.com/fantastico/noticia/2013/10/american-and-canadian-spies-target-brazilian-energy-and-mining-ministry.html>,
>> the democratically elected leaders of allied states, and entire
>> populations in those states.
>>
>> Can even President Obama and his most devoted loyalists continue to
>> maintain, with a straight face, that this is all about Terrorism?
>> That is what this superb new Foreign Affairs essay by Henry Farrell
>> and Martha Finnemore
>> <http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/140155/henry-farrell-and-martha-finnemore/the-end-of-hypocrisy#>
>> means when it argues that the Manning and Snowden leaks are putting
>> an end to the ability of the US to use hypocrisy as a key weapon in
>> its soft power.
>>
>> Speaking of an inability to maintain claims with a straight face, how
>> are American and British officials, in light of their conduct in all
>> of this, going to maintain the pretense that they are defenders of
>> press freedoms and are in a position to lecture and condemn others
>> for violations? In what might be the most explicit hostility to such
>> freedoms yet – as well as the most unmistakable evidence of rampant
>> panic – the NSA's director, General Keith Alexander, actually
>> demanded
>> <http://www.politico.com/blogs/under-the-radar/2013/10/nsa-chief-stop-reporters-selling-spy-documents-175896.html>
>> Thursday that the reporting being done by newspapers around the world
>> on this secret surveillance system be halted (Techdirt has the full
>> video here
>> <https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20131024/18093325010/keith-alexander-says-us-govt-needs-to-figure-out-way-to-stop-journalists-reporting-snowden-leaks.shtml>):
>>
>> The head of the embattled National Security Agency, Gen Keith
>> Alexander, is accusing journalists of "selling" his agency's
>> documents and is calling for an end to the steady stream of
>> public disclosures of secrets snatched by former contractor
>> Edward Snowden.
>>
>> "I think it's wrong that that newspaper reporters have all these
>> documents, the 50,000 – whatever they have and are selling them
>> and giving them out as if these – you know it just doesn't make
>> sense," Alexander said in an interview with the Defense
>> Department's "Armed With Science" blog.
>>
>> /"We ought to come up with a way of stopping it./ I don't know
>> how to do that. That's more of the courts and the policy-makers
>> but, from my perspective, it's wrong to allow this to go on," the
>> NSA director declared. [My italics]
>>
>> There are 25,000 employees of the NSA (and many tens of thousands
>> more who work for private contracts assigned to the agency). Maybe
>> one of them can tell The General about this thing called "the first
>> amendment"
>> <http://www.law.cornell.edu/supct/html/historics/USSC_CR_0403_0713_ZS.html>.
>>
>> I'd love to know what ways, specifically, General Alexander has in
>> mind for empowering the US government to "come up with a way of
>> stopping" the journalism on this story. Whatever ways those might be,
>> they are deeply hostile to the US constitution – obviously. What kind
>> of person wants the government to forcibly shut down reporting by the
>> press?
>>
>> Whatever kind of person that is, he is not someone to be trusted in
>> instituting and developing a massive bulk-spying system that operates
>> in the dark. For that matter, nobody is.
>>
>>
>> Leaving
>>
>> As many of you likely know, it was announced last week that I am
>> leaving the Guardian. My last day here will be 31 October, and I will
>> write my last column on that date.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
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>
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