Who Cares About Edward Snowden

The events of the past few weeks revealed far more about Americans and our society than any actual insight to the actions of our government. The media is now obsessed with the Snowden Identity movie franchise in which a man on the run hopscotches international capitals. How one responds to the disclosures is sort of a Rorschach test as to your tolerance of government intrusion into your life. Predictably, the right which sees a government boogeyman around every corner has gone batshit. Glenn Beck, always the voice of measured reason, said, “I’m telling you, America, if we don’t stop this right now, we will be remembered as the most evil nation in history of the world. We will dwarf what Germany did. This is the way totalitarian states are created.” There is no mountain of hyperbolic bullsh** that man cannot climb.

Meanwhile, on the left or what passes for it these days, there has been a chorus of media and governmental officials condemning Snowden in the loudest terms. Mika Brzezinski has gone beyond criticism of Snowden, who she’s determined was “not a whistlebower”, but who she says is a “weasel”,  and attacked the reporter, the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, who she feels was “too close” to the story to address it honestly or fairly. David Gregory also went after Snowden on what Mark Levin calls, Meet the Depressed. The Wall Street Journal goes further suggesting that Snowden and Greenwald were working in collaboration to “steal government secrets”. Odd that the Washington Post which printed the exact story, some say with even greater detail, has escaped the scrutiny that has found Greenwald. Is it easier in this context to attack a British based paper than one populated by people the talking heads one meets at dinner parties? As so often happens media attention as drifted from the core of the story, massive government surveillance of communications between law abiding citizens in whatever form, to the far more dramatic and immeasurably less important pissing contest between journalists.

As with the Wikileaks case we are told, breathlessly, that American lives will be lost as a result of this breach.  Small problem there, the BBC quoted a Pentagon official in December 2010 as saying that months after the Wikileaks dump that resulted in Bradley Manning being held, naked, in solitary confinement “The US military still had no evidence that people had died or been harmed because of information gleaned from Wikileaks documents.” Just months earlier, in July 2010, Adm. Mike Mullen, former chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff was quoted as saying “[Assange] can say whatever he likes about the greater good he thinks he and his source are doing, but the truth is they might already have on their hands the blood of some young soldier…"

I’m not sure but with summer coming on and the hammock or fishing pole calling my sense is the American public has already checked out. They damn sure have lost interest in the IRS case, where poor Darryl Issa soldiers on in moronic isolation. But we may do well to pay attention to the NSA stories for a few more weeks. Just last week while the Supreme Court was emancipating gays into the freedom of who does what chores around the house, the court also decided that Americans could not challenge the rulings of FISA courts. As the Washington Post editorializes today, “The act permits surveillance without having to show that the target is suspected of anything.” Continuing the Post piece went on to say that, ”The Supreme Court ruled that the plaintiffs’ claims could not be heard because they could not show that they had actually been subjected to the surveillance. The catch: The surveillance is conducted in secret, so no one can be certain that he or she is subject to it.”

The administration has made two claims about these NSA programs. The first, that either dozens or hundreds of plots have been broken up as a result of the programs, can’t be proven. The second, that American Citizens have not been targeted or accidentally swept up in unconstitutional dragnets, cannot be determined even in a court of law.  

This is some of what we do know. A massive data base of virtually all email and telephone communication has been created by US government agencies. While the government claims that actual communications have not been monitored, we are told the machinery is only in place to highlight areas where specific communications would be targeted. Law abiding citizens can relax, I suppose. You didn’t need that right against unlawful search and seizure anyhow. You were just planning a barbecue.

When communications take place between a US citizen and a foreign national, or anyone suspected by the US government, the American citizen has no specific or automatic right against unreasonable search and seizure. Whoops… Go further we have learned that Americans believed to be planning terrorist plots may not enjoy the same constitutional protections as the rest of us, so that unravels the thread a bit more. Suspicion has travelled rapidly from those suspected of terrorism to these reporting the news, so that in two cases that we know of, the AP and a reporter Fox News, actual communications were hacked, monitored, and recorded.

There is rather large security apparatus in place now. It may have been created under Bush, or it may have been initiated earlier, but it exists and it can be taken down from the shelf as needed or desired in any case. The circumstances of which might be unpredictable and since the programs are opaque, potentially illegitimate. According to the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) the movements of Non-Violent Occupy protestors were monitored by the FBI, The Department of Homeland Security, and private security interests representing the NY Stock Exchange and several Wall Street financial firms.  It is fair to ask what part of that apparatus was turned against the Occupy Protesters.

As serious as the NSA disclosures here, the suggestion that government agencies are performing similar surveillance, in consultation with large business interests, is several degrees more chilling. While the Supreme Court was insulating the NSA from scrutiny this week it also ruled in another case that further restricted the reach and development of class action lawsuits. Taken on balance the Supreme Court has equated speech with money in the Citizen’s United Case, and then further protected those moneyed interests with a series of rulings restricting class action status. Now the government comes along as a partner to business interests. There was a time Tea Party activists would have raised concerns about big business coalitions with government, especially in the context of a growing security state. But no more….

Whatever circumstances created the impetus for the development of NSA programs it is now clear that they have been perpetuated over 12 years, almost certainly longer, and two presidencies. Since 9-11 the Department of Homeland Security has spent close to a trillion dollars. One example of the spread of those dollars beyond these incredible costly and complex programs was the military and security presence which was marshaled in such short order after the Boston bombings on the streets of Watertown. The sad state of things is that men and women in similar gear have confronted Wal-Mart workers protesting for better wages, environmental concerns, and the formation of unions in Illinois, California, and elsewhere. Americans, assured that the security apparatus is there to stop bad guys, seem to tune out when it is massed to meet occupy protesters or union activists in pursuit of democratic goals through the use of free speech or the right to assembly.

In addition to the DHS budget the US has spent nearly a trillion In Iraq, and about the same in the Afghanistan/ Pakistan theatre. The colossus of nearly four trillion dollars in spending is a living testament to the seemingly secure notion that the #1 priority of the US government is defending its citizens.

Yet, while Snowden sits in a terminal in Russia, the subject of international press attention, something like 600 Americans a week are being killed each week by gun violence. While the nation is transfixed by the Zimmerman case, about half the six hundred lost lives will be African Americans killed by other African Americans. An obscene number will be children, not Newtown Kids of course, but 6, 7, 8 and 9 years olds nonetheless. While Senators argue about assault weapons and high capacity magazines, the overwhelming majority of gun deaths are murder or suicide by cheap, easily obtained, pistols.

While China and India make massive investments in infrastructure and education, America remains mired in a dead-end conversation about deficits. In 2012 about 60% of those that took the ACT college entrance test showed insufficient knowledge in at least two of the four basic subjects, English, math  science, and reading. More than a quarter were not prepared in at least two of the four subjects. Yet, that same country has the creativity and financial resources, the intelligence and technology, to monitor for National Security purposes every call, and every email which is initiated or ends in the US.

We can harness the algorithms to show which of those making a call or sending an email is dangerous. Yet we could not save Chastity Turner, shot in the neck while washing her dogs on her front porch in Chicago. While we obsess about deficits, 17 million school age children do not have enough food in their stomach so that they can learn every day. Charities do heroic work in filling the gap, but the SNAP program which provides about $1.50 a meal per person is called wasteful and worse, a vote seeking bribe.

Republicans argue that Democrats rule over a donor state of the needy. Kill the programs that feed the poor and house the homeless they argue. Some of them, they point out rightly, have been in existence for decades and poverty hovers at levels unchanged since the end of the Great Society push in the 60’s. Conservatives say that what America needs is jobs not handouts. While we can agree with that we might ask why abortion gets so much more of their attention, or if they have any employment solutions that extend beyond tax cuts for the super wealthy.

Recently a Republican Congressman released a list of all the great stuff you can get for the week using your SNAP (food stamp) benefits. He listed everything from soda, to Honeycombs cereal, to canned beans. Nowhere included was fresh meat like chicken, fish of any kind, or fresh vegetables. Almost everything was processed which basically equates to too much sugar and salt, too many calories, and obesity. But in fairness neither party has shown sustained commitment to the problems, concerns, or life and death struggles of the poor. Anti-terrorism is far sexier and easier to run on.  It’s certainly easier to raise money from military contractors, then people in Bed-Stuy or the South Side of Chicago.

Personally, I don’t care much about Snowden. I sympathize with those who ask how a 29 year old got access to so much information. But let’s be honest, when you grow the apparatus this quickly to this size and scope, and create so much profit incentive for private firms and individuals to participate, this is what’s going to happen. I see Snowden as neither a hero nor a villain. I am deeply uneasy about his certain knowledge of what was best for all of us. But the paramilitary presence lined up against the Wal-Mart protestors is no cause for patriotic joy either. We can debate the NSA programs, but I would greatly prefer more dialogue about those hungry and poor, sick and deprived, among us.

When I was a young man I was literally schooled about issues in the gay community as a witness to the discreet and awful silence about the AIDs epidemic which was literally killing people I knew. Then President Ronald Reagan only broke his language boycott of the words HIV and AIDs to argue against education.  He hoped, I think, that his silence would make the problem go away, but as the ACTUP community noted again and again: Silence=Death. When the Supreme Court ruled favorably on Gay Marriage this past week, I thought back to the friends I knew then. Marriage would have been a dream for Eddie and a couple guys I knew named Joey. They would have been happy to be alive. So it is in this spirit that I can ignore the international intrigue surrounding Edward Snowden and ask simply, while all that sh*** was happening, and all that friggin’ money was being spent, how many lives could we have saved?

http://faithnmagic.blogspot.com/2013/01/uncivil-liberties.html

Trayvon's Burden of Proof

The State has the burden of proof. George Zimmerman need not prove he acted in self-defense, though that is his defense team’s narrative. It’s ironic how Narrative has replaced “Zimmerman’s story”, but as each day goes on, what passes for a fact in this case becomes more and more distorted. So perhaps it is only natural that the basics of a defendant’s story, is replaced by the more Orwellian word “narrative”. The state must prove that Zimmerman murdered Trayvon. So far prosecution witnesses have done a great deal to support the defense narrative that a fight ensued in which Zimmerman felt threatened. So he shot the kid.

When the dispatcher said "We don't need you to do that", many of us felt Zimmerman was being advised to stay away, yet he still followed Trayvon out of some misplaced sense of justice or heroism or self-importance. A fight ensued.  What confuses people, I think, is that most of us feel the fight should have never taken place. If Zimmerman had just stayed in his car and waited for the police none of this would have happened. It looks increasingly clear that is not a legal fact which will impact the eventual acquittal or conviction of Zimmerman.  

The clarity of the dispatcher's “we don’t need you to do that” statement is in dispute now. That Zimmerman ignored that instruction, or took other questions to mean it was OK to follow Trayvon, the entirety of the conversation Zimmerman had with the dispatcher, leaves in my mind reasonable doubt as to what the dispatcher expected him to do.  

But the bottom line is that Zimmerman did follow, and serving as a judge, jury and executioner of one he initiated the death penalty against a boy whom he believed was committing a property crime. While I despise Zimmerman I have little doubt the law allows for that. A confrontation took place. It's pretty clear that Zimmerman took some blows. The laws in Florida are such that even if you initiate a fight for no good reason, if you are getting your ass whipped, you can shoot your opponent. 

Of course Trayvon had the right to defend himself also. But Zimmerman did not die, Trayvon did. When one considers race in this case we can only wonder what would have happened to Trayvon if Zimmerman died at his hand. We are expected to believe that the state is a neutral observer of the fight with its only role being to determine whether the person that died responded with the framework of self-defense. Just to make things more opaque, the silenced Trayvon has the burden of proof as to what happened.

I am reminded of that old George Carlin joke, "I ran the kid over in the driveway, God's will." The State of Florida though its laws would have us believe that the events that led to this fight including  one of the participants was armed while the other was carrying an iced tea and a bag  of candy are all ancillary facts. Bottom line there was a fight and the outcome? God’s will.

It is a f***ed up law, but it is similar to other laws across the country. Race, and to be more specific, racial bias, is a contributing factor in the creation and application of the laws. Race amplifies the debate on food stamps, drug tests for welfare recipients, voter ID Laws, and America’s drug policies.  These policies are designed to create and/ or act on the impression that sinister darkies are getting away with something or out to do harm to civilized white people.

In these past years we have seen both how far we have come and how far we need to go. The election of the first African American President did not disprove the hateful legacy of slavery and Jim Crow, far from it. The Supreme Court seemed to take up one side of that logic of this week when it ruled that the Voting Rights battle was decided. Show’s over, you can all go home now…

The press did a horrible job of reporting the facts of the case.  Media coverage has shown the limits of the liberal critique. A more radical analysis might have drawn into question the foundation of Stand Your Ground and Conceal Carry Laws, but whatever the final verdict, those laws will not be altered. This entire saga took place against the backdrop of Newtown and the ensuing failure to move any federal gun legislation. The results in Washington and increasingly it appears in this trial will clearly indicate the political balance of power is to maintain the status quo.

There was a media storm to show Zimmerman’s guilt within the guidelines of the laws and the power structure in Florida. When the Police refused to move initially, thousands took to the streets to seek justice. Demonstrations were animated by the fact that we were told that Zimmerman called Trayvon a “coon” and that other malicious slurs were invoked.  Not true. The dispatcher’s phone call was edited in a way to suggest that Zimmerman was emphasizing that Trayvon was black, rather than responding to a question about his race.  The facts of the fight and Zimmerman’s injuries were either missed or distorted in the press coverage. I was swept up in it. Almost every new revelation led to my sense of outrage.

I wrote three pieces back then. The first based on the very initial press reports and Charles M. Blow’s first New York Times column was factually accurate and appropriately outraged. The second repeated many of the distorted media reports that led many of us to convict Zimmerman and led to the outraged demonstrations.  The third addressed Geraldo Rivera’s heartbreaking suggestions that young men of color should not wear hoodies. As I look back now I am OK with the first piece and embarrassed by the second. But the third piece is maybe the most important.

Many of the elements of the story were distorted through the funhouse mirror of so called liberal media bias.  Some of what we heard was true, some was not, but none of it, including what I believe will be Zimmerman’s eventual acquittal will challenge the status quo for the essentially liberal power structure. We liberals are too often satisfied with platitudes about progress. We long to be reassured that the better angels of our spirit are alive and active, even if the reality is they are dancing on the head of a pin.

Stand Your Ground, Conceal Carry, are not under any threat, but a young man wearing a hoodie through a mixed race neighborhood on a rainy night, he better watch out. I guess I always knew that finding justice for Trayvon would be tough. Like many I hoped that a conviction would be at least a symbolic victory, which while important is no substitute for real justice. We seek justice for Trayvon, but real justice will come when laws, amplified by racial bias, like Stand Your Ground and Conceal Carry in Florida and elsewhere are overturned. Because of these laws Zimmerman had his power and he used it. If acquitted he may want to live elsewhere, but the sad truth is that his bias will have been actualized and his right to carry a gun into a church, or a movie theatre will probably be reinstated.

We may have elected our first black President but we have so, so far to go.