Obama vs. Apple and US

We have been given another little window onto the psychology of this president, a president many have compared to Nixon for his paranoia about leaks, about the truth. New York Times reporter James Risen has said that he thinks Barack Obama hates journalists. Read what the Times reports of Denis McDonough, look at the photo heading the article, and we must ask how many others in the administration share that contempt.

Evidently, the kinds of threats Pres. Obama and his administration have used to coerce agreement (or obedience) — including imprisonment in James Risen's case — didn't work with the CEO of one of the world's most successful businesses. They didn't with James Risen either. So Tim Cook and James Risen become champions of average Americans who for years has been treated with thinly-veiled contempt by an administration that pays little more than lip service to equality or fairness. For years, stories have floated about of Barack Obama's anger when subordinates disagree with him. Yet this is a president who takes without question the demands of authority figures, the petty idols he draws from institutions like Harvard (institutions that have far less to do with "veritas" than with imperium — the empire of belief).

This is an administration that has lied and coerced when it had nothing to gain by doing so. Not surprisingly, we now doubt its word. We need people like Tim Cook to make our case. Pres. Obama is too hostile to democracy to take the word of mere voters.

Jay Rosen on "The Toobin Principle"

Jay Rosen of NYU has a nice essay on the inability of pundits like Jeffrey Toobin to tolerate support for Edward Snowden. Here are some of my thoughts:

Despite the appearance of contradiction (and while there is a tension), one can be consistent in thinking that the debate resulting from Snowden's leaks is good although Snowden's actions themselves are bad.

Jeffrey Toobin seems conservative to me. He certainly falls within the spectrum of standard American thinking where actions are justified instrumentally — by virtue of the good outcomes those actions produce. (The most dogmatically held example of this in the US is the conviction that enormous inequality is justified by the 'trickle down' effect.) So if the debate resulting from Snowden's actions is a good thing, Toobin must believe there is some overriding negative outcome that makes Snowden's actions bad. This could be a coherent argument, but neither Toobin nor others attacking Snowden make it because there is little real argument nor any wish for such in the mainstream about Snowden.

My suspicion regarding Toobin's (and others') distress over Snowden's leaks is threefold:

1. Toobin and many journalists, scholars, observers like him (e.g., Matt Yglesias, Chris Hayes, David Gregory, etc.) deeply, personally identify with power, especially Washington ("This Town", as Mark Leibovich has described). They have powerful incentives to do so; their wellbeing as pilot fish depends on that of the sharks.
2. They therefore see criticism of Obama or the US government as criticism of themselves.
3. They are profoundly unable to conceive of the possibility that American leaders, in government or business, might be guilty of really awful wrongdoing. This is why years ago, for example, Toobin could casually attack OJ Simpson before the facts were in, but cannot criticize any American leader, like Obama, as a plausible candidate for war crimes charges.

Snowden or Wikileaks generate cognitive dissonance for the Toobins in America. They resolve the dissonance with just-so stories that exonerate American power. If they actually thought about it, they could construct a coherent argument. They are unaccustomed to doing so because the US culture is one that bitterly rejects challenges to power, fashion, wealth, fame.

"[D]emocracy here at home must be balanced against the requirements of security." What would be the response to: "Security here at home must be balanced against the requirements of democracy"? The notion that democracy brings demands seems to have been lost.

How would Obama or Sen. Feinstein or any of those who endlessly defend government abuses react if there were a broad, deep public demand for democracy, defense of rights, and an end to massive surveillance? If we have not already reached the point of no return, we are rapidly approaching one where a surge in public opposition would provoke a constitutional crisis worse than that seen in the Civil War. The crisis will likely never arise because the public is so misinformed, so deceived, and so dogmatic in its faithful attachment to American power that the demand will never be made.

Lest this seem like conspiracy theorizing or just handwaving, recall that in the Nixon years, calls by some within the administration for more troops in Vietnam were opposed because it was thought those troops might be needed in the US to quell domestic unrest. Recall also that both Bush and Obama made legal moves that would, in principle, undermine posse comitatus and allow use of US troops within the US.

Finally, despite racist hostility to Obama or malicious GOP opposition to anything Democratic, Americans are still overwhelmingly of the view that we owe obedience to political leaders. Americans identify the powerful in America with America itself. And they suffer under the delusion that they, any day now, will win the lottery and join the powerful.

Britain's DNA Highway

There is a peculiar kind of highwayman in Britain — the run-of-the-mill cop. In Britain, upon arrest, a person is instantly swabbed for a DNA sample. The British practice has been to keep all such samples. Those eventually released, eventually not charged, eventually found not guilty, nevertheless can count on the DNA remaining in the system.

Currently, the UK has some 4.6 million DNA samples on file. That is, more than one in every fifteen Britons has DNA on file. Moreover, 860,000 of those 4.6 million have no criminal record at all.

This in country which is also distinguished for having the most extensive video surveillance system in the world and whose labor government has sought to mandate an national ID card for every citizen.

So bad as the US is on many counts, Britain may well come nearer to being a police state.

Now the European court of human rights has intervened, The court, affirming a fundamental human right of privacy, criticized “the blanket and indiscriminate nature” of the British practice.

Bush Administration Caught Lying — Again

ABC News is breaking finally running a story on NSA spying on Americans. Bush administration officials, including the President and General Michael Hayden (current CIA Director), repeatedly denied that the US was listening in on phone conversations of Americans. This claim is directly refuted by two former military linguists who took part in the eavesdropping program.

AFTERDOWNINGSTREET.ORG got this one OVER A YEAR AGO, but the pissants in the US media mainstream had their heads up their assholes as usual.

Yet another impeachable offense by the most criminal administration in American history?

George Washington University law professor Jonathan Turley has written extensively on these issues.

CNN has the story.

ABC News:

"Despite pledges by President George W. Bush and American intelligence officials to the contrary, hundreds of US citizens overseas have been eavesdropped on as they called friends and family back home, according to two former military intercept operators who worked at the giant National Security Agency (NSA) center in Fort Gordon, Georgia.

The chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Jay Rockefeller (D-WV), called the allegations "extremely disturbing" and said the committee has begun its own examination.

'We have requested all relevant information from the Bush Administration,' Rockefeller said Thursday. 'The Committee will take whatever action is necessary.'

'These were just really everyday, average, ordinary Americans who happened to be in the Middle East, in our area of intercept and happened to be making these phone calls on satellite phones,' said Adrienne Kinne, a 31-year old US Army Reserves Arab linguist assigned to a special military program at the NSA's Back Hall at Fort Gordon from November 2001 to 2003"