2013/10/09
Arcitects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth: This paragraph was followed by a list of interviewees,
including four people representing three scholarly research organizations: Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, the 9/11 Concensus Panel, and The Journal of 9/11 Studies. The "Truth-seeker" video immediately started to gain popularity on YouTube, reaching 131,000 views in the first three days. The history of the viewing statistics may be seen by clicking on the little graphic symbol under the video frame, and to the right. Truth-seeker posted its program to YouTube on Sept. 8. Russia Today tweeted the YouTube link to its 546,000 followers and to the interviewer, Daniel Bushnell, that day: The Truthseeker: 9/11 and operation Gladio: A MOXNEWS copy of the same newscast was also posted September 8 under the title "Russia Today News Declares 9/11 An Inside Job False Flag Attack!" which in turn started to escalate, with over 80,000 views in the first few days. Other uploads of the program also appeared, with less traffic, bringing the early viewing total to over a quarter of a million people. What Happened Next? In both the RT and MOXNEWS Cases, the viewer statistics on YouTube suddenly flat-lined on the morning of September 11, like a heart monitor when the patient dies. The YouTube search engine had suddenly failed to locate these videos. Oddly, although the RT video may still be viewed on YouTube through its direct link, if known from the Google URL box, it cannot be accessed on YouTube by its title, or by searching "Truthseeker." The MOXNET version was also decoupled from the YouTube search engine for a period of time after September 11, but has since been restored to normal indexing. How Were the Search Engine Failures Detected and Verified? Investigations carried out independently by a US engineering colleague and myself revealed the following: 1. YouTube Search Results and Rankings: Searching the exact title of the original "Truthseeker" posting ("911 and Operation Gladio" does not yield the original RT post. It does yield other posts with far fewer viewings, but the original, which as we have seen still exists as a URL, is evidently no longer in the YouTube index. Its viewings have slowly risen over several weeks from 131,000 to 136,000 through the early news reports, but with by far the most views of all uploads, it should appear at the top of the list. Searching YouTube for the URL of the original escalating RT version produces no result either, although as we have seen, the URL is still a functioning direct link. Take any URL from YouTube or Google, plug it into the search box and watch it come up on top of the list, because there is only one. Searching YouTube for the program's name, "Truthseeker," displays titles from Episodes 1-22, and also Episode 24, but it fails to show Episode 23, "9/11 and Operation Gladio" in 15 pages of search results. Searching for the MOXNET post on the third day of its existence produced a similar result. It should have appeared second from the top with its 80,000 views, but it was difficult to get it to appear at all, except through its direct link, if one had saved this earlier. Oddly enough, the MOXNET post is once again normally accessible on YouTube, as it was September 8-11, through a search engine.
By Elizabeth Woodworth: Search Engine Manipulation. Google and You Tube Suppress Controversial 9/11 Truth?
Let's Make 9/11 Truth Go Viral! Introduction. With polls consistently showing that approximately 50% of Canadians and Americans doubt the official story of 9/11, the feat of keeping the lid on a public debate for over 12 years has been nothing short of miraculous. This article presents a simple case study showing that this miracle is being performed with the assistance of Google and YouTube search engine interference. On September 8, 2013, the popular Russia Today "Truthseeker" program, with over a million subscribers on YouTube, published a 13-minute newscast entitled "The Truthseeker: 9/11 and Operation Gladio (E23). Below the video ran the caption: Bigger than Watergate: US 'regular' meetings with Al-Qaeda's leader, documented White House 'false flag terrorism' moving people 'like sheep', the father of Twin Towers victim tell us why he backs this month's 9/11 campaign on Times Square and around the world, and the protests calendar for September.
AlterNet: By Mark Weisbrot: Take a Hint, America: Latin America Is Outraged for good Reason
Over the NSA and U.S. Hubris. Tuesday's cancellation of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's state visit to the White House, scheduled for next month, came as little surprise. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and reported by Glenn Greenwald and TV Globo, had caused an uproar in Brazil. According to the documents and reports, the US government had spied on Dilma's personal communications, and had targeted the computer systems of Brazil's Petrobas, the big oil company that is majority-owned by the state. TV Globo's report indicated that there was information in the targeted Petrobas computer network that could be very valuable to foreign oil companies. Former President Lula da Silva said that Obama should "personally apologize to the world", and Dilma also demanded a full apology, which was not forthcoming. The rift with Brazil comes at a time worsening US relations with Latin America, and especially South America. It is indicative of a much deeper problem. The Obama administration's refusal to recognize the results of the Venezuelan elections in April of this year, despite the lack of doubt about the results and in stark opposition to the rest of the region, displayed an aggressiveness that Washington hadn't shown since it aided the 2002 coup. It brought a sharp rebuke from South America, including Lula and Dilma. Less than two months later, US Secretary of State John Kerry launched a new "detente", meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart
Elias Jaua in the first such high-level meeting in memory, and implicitly recognizing the election results. But new hopes were quickly dashed when several European governments, clearly acting on behalf of the United States, forced down President Evo Morales' plane in July. "They've definitely gone crazy," President Cristina Kirchner tweeted, and UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations issued a strong denunciation. The gross violation of international law and diplomatic norms was another flamboyant display of Washington's lack of respect for the region. It seems that every month there is another indication of how little the Obama administration cares about improving relations. On 24 July, the IMF, at the direction of the US Treasury Department, abandoned its plan to support the Argentine government in its legal battle with "vulture funds". The IMF had previously committed to filing a brief with the US supreme court supporting the Argentine government. This was not out of love for Argentina, but because the lower court's decision, which would try to prevent Argentina from paying 92% of its creditors in order to satisfy the vulture funds, was seen as a threat to future debt restructuring and therefore to the world financial system. But anti-Argentina lobbyists were allowed to prevail, even against the Treasury Department's legitimate concern for international financial stability. There are structural reasons for the Obama administration's repeated failures to accept the new reality of independent governments in the region. Although President Obama may want better relations, he is willing to spend about $2 in political capital to accomplish this. And that is not enough. When he tried to appoint an Ambassador to Venezuela in 2010, for example, Republicans, including the office of then Senator Richard Lugar successfully scuttled it. For President Obama, there are generally no electoral consequences from having bad relations with Latin America.
Elias Jaua in the first such high-level meeting in memory, and implicitly recognizing the election results. But new hopes were quickly dashed when several European governments, clearly acting on behalf of the United States, forced down President Evo Morales' plane in July. "They've definitely gone crazy," President Cristina Kirchner tweeted, and UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations issued a strong denunciation. The gross violation of international law and diplomatic norms was another flamboyant display of Washington's lack of respect for the region. It seems that every month there is another indication of how little the Obama administration cares about improving relations. On 24 July, the IMF, at the direction of the US Treasury Department, abandoned its plan to support the Argentine government in its legal battle with "vulture funds". The IMF had previously committed to filing a brief with the US supreme court supporting the Argentine government. This was not out of love for Argentina, but because the lower court's decision, which would try to prevent Argentina from paying 92% of its creditors in order to satisfy the vulture funds, was seen as a threat to future debt restructuring and therefore to the world financial system. But anti-Argentina lobbyists were allowed to prevail, even against the Treasury Department's legitimate concern for international financial stability. There are structural reasons for the Obama administration's repeated failures to accept the new reality of independent governments in the region. Although President Obama may want better relations, he is willing to spend about $2 in political capital to accomplish this. And that is not enough. When he tried to appoint an Ambassador to Venezuela in 2010, for example, Republicans, including the office of then Senator Richard Lugar successfully scuttled it. For President Obama, there are generally no electoral consequences from having bad relations with Latin America.
2013/10/08
Alternet: By Mark Weisbrot: Take a Hint, America: Latin America Is Outraged For Good Reason Over the NSA and U.S. Hubris!
Tuesday's cancellation of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff's state visit to the White House, scheduled for next month, came as a surprise. Documents leaked by Edward Snowden, and reported by Glenn Greenwald and TV Globo, has caused an uproar in Brazil. According to the documents and reports, the US government had spied on Dilma's personal communications, and had targeted the computer systems of Brazil's Petrobras, the big oil company that is majority-owned by the state. TV Globo's report indicated that there was information in the targeted Petrobas computer network that could be very valuable to foreign oil companies. Former President Lula da Silva said that Obama should "personally apologize to the world", and Dilmo also demanded a full public apology, which was not forthcoming. The rift with Brazil comes at a time of worsening US relations with America, and especially South America. It is indicative of a much deeper problem. The Obama administration's refusal to recognize the results of the Venezuelan elections in April of this year, despite the lack of doubt about the results and in stark opposition to the rest of the region, displayed an aggressiveness that Washington hadn't shown since it aided the 2002 coup. It brought a sharp rebuke from South America, including Lula and Dilma. Less than two months later, US Secretary of State John Kerry launched a new "detente", meeting with his Venezuelan counterpart Elias Jaua in the first such high-level meeting in memory, and implicitly recognizing the election results. But new hopes were quickly dashed when several European governments, clearly on behalf of the United States, forced down President Evo Morales' plane in July. "They've definitely gone crazy," President Evo Morales' plane in July. "They've definitely gone crazy," President Cristina Kirchner tweeted, and UNASUR, the Union of South American Nations issued a strong denunciation. The gross violation of international law and diplomatic norms was another flamboyant display of Washington's lack of respect for the region. It seems that every month there is another flamboyant display of Washington's lack of respect for the region. It seems that every month there is another indication of how little the Obama administration cares about improving relations. On 24 July, the IMF, at the direction of the US Treasury Department, abandoned its plan to support the Argentine government in its legal battle with "vulture funds". The IMF had previously committed to filing a brief with the US supreme court supporting the Argentine government. This was not out of love for Argentina, but because the lower court's decision, which would try to prevent Argentina from paying 92% of its creditors in order to satisfy the vulture funds, was seen as a threat to futures debt restructuring and therefore to the world financial system. But anti-Argentina lobbyists were allowed to prevail, even against the Treasury Department's legitimate concern for international financial stability. There are structural reasons for the Obama administration's repeated failures to accept the new reality of independent governments in the region. Although President Obama may want better relations, he is willing to spend about $2 in political capital to accomplish this.
Paul Joseph Watson: CIA Linked Vet Who Fought With Al-Qaeda Released From Jail!
Paul Joseph Watson: Infowars.com An Army veteran whose father said he was working for the CIA has been released from jail despite fighting alongside an Al-Qaeda terrorist group in Syria was responsible for killing US troops in Iraq. 33-year-old Eric Harroun has received what has been described as a "sweet plea deal" after he faced life in prison for providing material support to a terrorist organization by fighting with Jabhat Al-Nusra, the group that the New York Times reported, "killed numerous American troops in Iraq," and is now the leading front line fighting force in Syria. Al-Nusra is led by Ayman al-Zawahri, the head of Al-Qaeda who recently called for terror attacks inside the United States. "Under a deal entered in federal court in Alexandria, Hanoun pleaded guilty to an obscure law regulating munition exports. He was sentenced to time served. The plea agreement itself remains sealed, though court records show it was entered Thursday," reports the Associated Press. Harroun, who has been in prison since March, was released on 3 years probation with a paltry $100 fine. Despite claiming to have shot at least 10 people and "fighting along jihadists and America-hating terrorists while celebrating his bloody exploits on YouTube videos," Harroun is now a free man. A video uploaded to YouTube earlier this year shows Harroun celebrating the downing of a Syrian Army helicopter while his fellow militants shout "Allah Akbar". Absent from media reports about Harroun's release is the fact that his father told CBS 5 earlier this year that Harroun was working for the CIA in Syria. "I know he was doing some work for the CIA over there, I know for a fact that he was passing information onto the CIA," Darryl Harroun told reporters. While individuals merely accused of being terrorists are thrown into prison camps like Guantanamo Bay for years and prevented from having a trial, Harroun has got off with a slap on the wrist despite evidence clearly indicating that he fought alongside terrorists in Syria. American citizen Anwar Al-Awlaki was killed by a drone strike simply for producing propaganda videos and communicating with accused terrorists. His 16-year-old son was similarly slaughtered for merely sharing his father's surname. Other American citizens like John Walker Lindh were imprisoned and tortured in Guantanamo Bay for fighting with the Taliban. The difference is that Harroun was apparently working alongside Al-Nusra at the behest of the CIA, supporting terrorists whom the Obama administration is now backing in its bid to topple Bashar Al-Assad. Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars. com and Prison Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
2013/10/07
7 Signs America Has Regressed Back To the Harsh, Cruel 19th Century By Richard Eskow
Of course they shut the Federal government down. Tea Party
Republicans long for the days when there were no government authorities
to enforce laws and restrain the power of unchecked wealth, the days
when there was no Justice Department, no SEC, no other agencies
protecting Americans from the misdeeds of bankers and corporate titans.
But it already seems as if our entire country has secretly been transported back in time. We may think we’re living in the 21st century, but all the signs suggest we’re living in an earlier and harsher era.
Here are seven signs the United States of America has returned to the 19th century.
1. Wall Street can “send your man around to see my man” again.
Shocked by newly elected President Teddy Roosevelt’s moves against Wall Street, J. P. Morgan went to the White House. "If we have done anything wrong,” said Morgan, “send your man to my man and they can fix it up."
"That can't be done," said Roosevelt. "We don't want to fix it up," his Attorney General added, "we want to stop it." The year was 1902, and 19th-century privilege was over for Wall Street. Now it’s back, and so are the “men”—and as the recent foot-dragging over female Fed chair candidate Janet Yellen highlights, they almost always are men.
The chief architects of deregulation in the 1990s included Sen. Phil Gramm, President Bill Clinton and Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. That deregulation cost millions of Americans their jobs and millions more their life savings. But the parties behind it did just fine.
Gramm went to work for UBS bank immediately upon leaving the Senate in 2002, and is now vice-chairman of its investment banking division. Robert Rubin eventually headed up Citigroup, the megabank whose creation was made possible when his Treasury Department pushed for a then-illegal merger between Travelers and Citibank. Rubin was to become deeply implicated in the fraud and scandal which led to the 2008 crisis, although he claimed ignorance of his own bank’s doings and never faced prosecution.
Larry Summers has made millions from Wall Street banks. Bill Clinton made tens of millions “advising” two investment funds belonging to billionaire Ron Burkle. Exactly how much isn’t known, but a very public falling out [2] involved Burkle’s alleged “stiffing” of Clinton on a final $20-$25 million payment. Clinton went on to serve as an advisor of Teneo Capital until February 2012.
Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs was George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary. Barack Obama’s first Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, is now collecting huge fees [3] on Wall Street. Obama’s second Secretary, Jack Lew, was an executive at Citigroup. His former economic advisor, Peter Orszag, has traded places with Lew and is now at Citigroup. Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, broke the Democratic mold by working at JPMorgan Chase.
White House visitor logs, which are woefully incomplete [4], show that Wall Street’s top dogs [5] were frequent guests, especially at the height of the bank bailout. Despite massive fraud and tens of billions in fines and settlements, not one senior banker has been indicted for the crimes which brought down the economy.
Teddy Roosevelt’s legacy has been undone. Bankers can “send their man" to see the president’s man—and he's frequently the same man.
2. Workers aren’t unionized.
The horrors of working life during the Industrial Revolution led to the rise of the American union, beginning in the year 1860. The US State Department estimates that 3 percent of the workforce belonged to a union by the close of the 19th century. That number rose to roughly 7 percent by 1930, and to more than one worker in four by 1954.
The percentage of working people in unions has now dropped to roughly 7 percent again for private-sector workers. That’s roughly the early-20th-century level. When you add in government employees, who are more heavily unionized, the number rises slightly, to 11.5 percent. Our national and state capitals remain in the grip of an ill-advised round of cost-cutting that’s bringing the total number of government employees down quickly, which adds to the decline of these numbers.
Thanks to a four-decade-long campaign against them, unions—and workers—are more likely to be vilified than praised. It’s almost impossible to imagine today’s United States Congress passing the 1895 law that created Labor Day.
3. Our rights end at the workplace door.
Our individual rights are being steadily eroded in the workplace. As employment lawyer Mark Trapp told Business Week, “the freedom to speak your mind doesn’t really exist in the workplace.” A series of court cases has shown that Americans can be fired for expressing political opinions outside their place of employment, too, on social media like Twitter or Facebook.
One of the unions’ first demands was for a shorter workday, which in the 1800s meant a 10-hour maximum. Now we’re moving back toward 19th-century standards. As the Washington Times reports, “Americans are working approximately 11 more hours per week now than they did in the 1970s, yet the average income for middle-income families has declined by 13% (when adjusting for inflation).”
Here’s a 19th-century image, from the New York Times: “ …employees at lower rungs of the economic ladder can be timed with stopwatches in the bathroom; stonewalled when they ask to go; given disciplinary points for frequent urination; even hunted down by supervisors with walkie-talkies if they tarry in the stalls.”
4. They’re advocating child labor again.
What’s the matter with kids today? According to a number of conservatives, they’re not being put to work in factories and farms. Child labor, one of the moral blights of 19th-century America, is increasingly popular on the right again.
Child labor laws do not permit children under the age of 14 to work in non-agricultural settings. That is “truly stupid,” Newt Gingrich [6] said last year while running for the Republican presidential nomination. Children aren’t learning the proper “work habits,” said Gingrich, who proposed firing most school janitors and giving the jobs to underage minority children instead.
Republican Senator Mike Lee [7]has called for abolishing federal child labor laws (although he says he isn’t opposed to state laws). Lee said that labor and manufacturing are “local activities,” not “interstate commercial transactions.”
“This may sound harsh,” said Lee, “but it was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh.”
Arkansas congressional candidate Tom Cotton also believes in child labor. "We need more young people who've worked all day in the fields, not less,” said Cotton during his 2012 campaign. Cotton won his race and now serves in the House of Representatives.
5. It’s practically legal to shoot people down in the streets again.
At least 22 states have some version of the “Stand Your Ground” law, which permits people to shoot and kill another person if they feel in danger, even when it’s possible to escape safely.
A nonpartisan political group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns [8] is part of a coalition whose recent study showed that states which passed Stand Your Ground laws between 2005 and 2007 saw a 53 percent increase [9] in “justifiable homicides.” As the coalition notes, “this increase is not simply the result of more homicides being classified as ‘justifiable,’ but also of an overall increase in firearm-related and overall homicides in Stand Your Ground states.”
The report notes that prosecutors in these states had greater difficulty convicting violent offenders.
“The findings in this report aren't surprising, given that these laws give anyone with a gun more permissive rules of engagement in America's communities than our troops have on the battlefield," said Jon Soltz, a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war and chairman of VoteVets [10].
The laws are also more permissive than 19th-century law, despite the fact that dueling remained legal until 1859, when most states outlawed it. Unlike Stand Your Ground, both parties in a duel were armed and had an equal chance of success. Duels were also voluntary, whereas a person who is shot under Stand Your Ground has no choice in the matter.
6. The rich have more of our national wealth than they did in colonial times.
As Jordan Weissman [11] demonstrated in the Atlantic last year, the top 1 percent and the top 10 percent capture more of our national income now than they did in the 1700s, before we won our nation’s independence. Inequality was worse by 1860, but is even worse today than in either century.
This country enacted a series of laws which enabled Americans to achieve social mobility. But in the wake of cuts to everything from education to childhood nutrition, and with the decline of the American middle-class, those opportunities are fading too.
Here’s one of the main reasons the middle-class is declining: With no strong counterforce representing employees, corporations are also amassing more wealth than ever. The charts Henry Blodget [12] made last year remain essentially unchanged: as corporations amass more and more wealth, they’re sharing less and less of it with workers in the form of wages.
As G. William Domhoff [13] shows, by the end of the Reagan era the percentage of national wealth going to the top 1 percent had returned to pre-1929 levels. It has continued to climb since then. A recent review of 2012 economic data shows, among other things, that the top 1 percent saw their incomes rise by a staggering 32 percent in one year—and that the top 10 percent captured more than half of our nation’s income for the first time since they started tracking this data a century ago.
7. Political debates are getting rough again.
It starts with the rhetoric, and politicians were rough on each other in the 1800s. Sen. Charles Sumner spent hours calling an opponent a “pimp” and mocking his limp and speech impediment, both of which were caused by a stroke. The Lincoln-Douglas debates [14] of 1858, when they ran against each other for the Senate, included racial slurs and other insults (although Douglas graciously held Lincoln’s hat while he was sworn in as president, after losing to him in the 1860 election).
In the days of duels and fights of honor, political rhetoric quickly escalated into violence. Perhaps the most famous incident of pol-on-pol violence was the caning of abolitionist Sen. Sumner on the floor of the Senate by pro-slavery Rep. Preston Brooks, as another Southern congressman held a pistol on observers to prevent them from intervening.
Representatives were seen carrying guns on the floor of Congress [15] in 1836. One representative drew a gun on a witness during a hearing that year. In 1842 a Whig Party congressman from Tennessee was threatened with a knife by fellow party members.
Today a new era of incivility has dawned in the capitol building. Its watershed moment may have been the day Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at President Obama as the President addressed a joint session of Congress. While Wilson was eventually admonished by the House, the vote was almost entirely along party lines. (Only seven Republicans joined with Democrats on the vote.)
Wilson was able to beat his nearest primary challenger by nine points the following year, and to run unopposed in the general election. He received 96 percent of the vote.
The gloves are off, and the new harsh rhetoric is coming almost exclusively from a party that refuses to sanction its members for it. Rep. Michele Bachmann has been a one-person factory for inflammatory quotes. And in a very 19th century—and very crude—letter, Republican Rep. Allen West wrote to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: "You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!” West has also said that Nazi leader Josef Goebbels would be “very proud” of Democrats, and that liberals should “get the hell out of the United States.”
Fortunately, government leaders have yet to turn on one another physically. But that day may be coming. Michael Schwartz, Chief of Staff for Sen. Tom Coburn, said this [16]: ““I’m a radical! I’m a real extremist. I don’t want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!”
Rep. Peter King has been a one-man hate campaign against Americans of the Muslim faith, and he has not been censured or reprimanded by his party in any way for his hate-filled rhetoric.
In 1884, the spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Hal Blaine accused the Democrats of being the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” This anti-Catholic slur caused Blaine to lose the state of New York, giving the presidency to Grover Cleveland. Democrats may be hoping that comments like King’s will help to reproduce such election results in coming years.
_______
But it already seems as if our entire country has secretly been transported back in time. We may think we’re living in the 21st century, but all the signs suggest we’re living in an earlier and harsher era.
Here are seven signs the United States of America has returned to the 19th century.
1. Wall Street can “send your man around to see my man” again.
Shocked by newly elected President Teddy Roosevelt’s moves against Wall Street, J. P. Morgan went to the White House. "If we have done anything wrong,” said Morgan, “send your man to my man and they can fix it up."
"That can't be done," said Roosevelt. "We don't want to fix it up," his Attorney General added, "we want to stop it." The year was 1902, and 19th-century privilege was over for Wall Street. Now it’s back, and so are the “men”—and as the recent foot-dragging over female Fed chair candidate Janet Yellen highlights, they almost always are men.
The chief architects of deregulation in the 1990s included Sen. Phil Gramm, President Bill Clinton and Treasury Secretaries Robert Rubin and Larry Summers. That deregulation cost millions of Americans their jobs and millions more their life savings. But the parties behind it did just fine.
Gramm went to work for UBS bank immediately upon leaving the Senate in 2002, and is now vice-chairman of its investment banking division. Robert Rubin eventually headed up Citigroup, the megabank whose creation was made possible when his Treasury Department pushed for a then-illegal merger between Travelers and Citibank. Rubin was to become deeply implicated in the fraud and scandal which led to the 2008 crisis, although he claimed ignorance of his own bank’s doings and never faced prosecution.
Larry Summers has made millions from Wall Street banks. Bill Clinton made tens of millions “advising” two investment funds belonging to billionaire Ron Burkle. Exactly how much isn’t known, but a very public falling out [2] involved Burkle’s alleged “stiffing” of Clinton on a final $20-$25 million payment. Clinton went on to serve as an advisor of Teneo Capital until February 2012.
Hank Paulson of Goldman Sachs was George W. Bush’s Treasury Secretary. Barack Obama’s first Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, is now collecting huge fees [3] on Wall Street. Obama’s second Secretary, Jack Lew, was an executive at Citigroup. His former economic advisor, Peter Orszag, has traded places with Lew and is now at Citigroup. Obama’s former Chief of Staff, Bill Daley, broke the Democratic mold by working at JPMorgan Chase.
White House visitor logs, which are woefully incomplete [4], show that Wall Street’s top dogs [5] were frequent guests, especially at the height of the bank bailout. Despite massive fraud and tens of billions in fines and settlements, not one senior banker has been indicted for the crimes which brought down the economy.
Teddy Roosevelt’s legacy has been undone. Bankers can “send their man" to see the president’s man—and he's frequently the same man.
2. Workers aren’t unionized.
The horrors of working life during the Industrial Revolution led to the rise of the American union, beginning in the year 1860. The US State Department estimates that 3 percent of the workforce belonged to a union by the close of the 19th century. That number rose to roughly 7 percent by 1930, and to more than one worker in four by 1954.
The percentage of working people in unions has now dropped to roughly 7 percent again for private-sector workers. That’s roughly the early-20th-century level. When you add in government employees, who are more heavily unionized, the number rises slightly, to 11.5 percent. Our national and state capitals remain in the grip of an ill-advised round of cost-cutting that’s bringing the total number of government employees down quickly, which adds to the decline of these numbers.
Thanks to a four-decade-long campaign against them, unions—and workers—are more likely to be vilified than praised. It’s almost impossible to imagine today’s United States Congress passing the 1895 law that created Labor Day.
3. Our rights end at the workplace door.
Our individual rights are being steadily eroded in the workplace. As employment lawyer Mark Trapp told Business Week, “the freedom to speak your mind doesn’t really exist in the workplace.” A series of court cases has shown that Americans can be fired for expressing political opinions outside their place of employment, too, on social media like Twitter or Facebook.
One of the unions’ first demands was for a shorter workday, which in the 1800s meant a 10-hour maximum. Now we’re moving back toward 19th-century standards. As the Washington Times reports, “Americans are working approximately 11 more hours per week now than they did in the 1970s, yet the average income for middle-income families has declined by 13% (when adjusting for inflation).”
Here’s a 19th-century image, from the New York Times: “ …employees at lower rungs of the economic ladder can be timed with stopwatches in the bathroom; stonewalled when they ask to go; given disciplinary points for frequent urination; even hunted down by supervisors with walkie-talkies if they tarry in the stalls.”
4. They’re advocating child labor again.
What’s the matter with kids today? According to a number of conservatives, they’re not being put to work in factories and farms. Child labor, one of the moral blights of 19th-century America, is increasingly popular on the right again.
Child labor laws do not permit children under the age of 14 to work in non-agricultural settings. That is “truly stupid,” Newt Gingrich [6] said last year while running for the Republican presidential nomination. Children aren’t learning the proper “work habits,” said Gingrich, who proposed firing most school janitors and giving the jobs to underage minority children instead.
Republican Senator Mike Lee [7]has called for abolishing federal child labor laws (although he says he isn’t opposed to state laws). Lee said that labor and manufacturing are “local activities,” not “interstate commercial transactions.”
“This may sound harsh,” said Lee, “but it was designed to be that way. It was designed to be a little bit harsh.”
Arkansas congressional candidate Tom Cotton also believes in child labor. "We need more young people who've worked all day in the fields, not less,” said Cotton during his 2012 campaign. Cotton won his race and now serves in the House of Representatives.
5. It’s practically legal to shoot people down in the streets again.
At least 22 states have some version of the “Stand Your Ground” law, which permits people to shoot and kill another person if they feel in danger, even when it’s possible to escape safely.
A nonpartisan political group called Mayors Against Illegal Guns [8] is part of a coalition whose recent study showed that states which passed Stand Your Ground laws between 2005 and 2007 saw a 53 percent increase [9] in “justifiable homicides.” As the coalition notes, “this increase is not simply the result of more homicides being classified as ‘justifiable,’ but also of an overall increase in firearm-related and overall homicides in Stand Your Ground states.”
The report notes that prosecutors in these states had greater difficulty convicting violent offenders.
“The findings in this report aren't surprising, given that these laws give anyone with a gun more permissive rules of engagement in America's communities than our troops have on the battlefield," said Jon Soltz, a two-tour veteran of the Iraq war and chairman of VoteVets [10].
The laws are also more permissive than 19th-century law, despite the fact that dueling remained legal until 1859, when most states outlawed it. Unlike Stand Your Ground, both parties in a duel were armed and had an equal chance of success. Duels were also voluntary, whereas a person who is shot under Stand Your Ground has no choice in the matter.
6. The rich have more of our national wealth than they did in colonial times.
As Jordan Weissman [11] demonstrated in the Atlantic last year, the top 1 percent and the top 10 percent capture more of our national income now than they did in the 1700s, before we won our nation’s independence. Inequality was worse by 1860, but is even worse today than in either century.
This country enacted a series of laws which enabled Americans to achieve social mobility. But in the wake of cuts to everything from education to childhood nutrition, and with the decline of the American middle-class, those opportunities are fading too.
Here’s one of the main reasons the middle-class is declining: With no strong counterforce representing employees, corporations are also amassing more wealth than ever. The charts Henry Blodget [12] made last year remain essentially unchanged: as corporations amass more and more wealth, they’re sharing less and less of it with workers in the form of wages.
As G. William Domhoff [13] shows, by the end of the Reagan era the percentage of national wealth going to the top 1 percent had returned to pre-1929 levels. It has continued to climb since then. A recent review of 2012 economic data shows, among other things, that the top 1 percent saw their incomes rise by a staggering 32 percent in one year—and that the top 10 percent captured more than half of our nation’s income for the first time since they started tracking this data a century ago.
7. Political debates are getting rough again.
It starts with the rhetoric, and politicians were rough on each other in the 1800s. Sen. Charles Sumner spent hours calling an opponent a “pimp” and mocking his limp and speech impediment, both of which were caused by a stroke. The Lincoln-Douglas debates [14] of 1858, when they ran against each other for the Senate, included racial slurs and other insults (although Douglas graciously held Lincoln’s hat while he was sworn in as president, after losing to him in the 1860 election).
In the days of duels and fights of honor, political rhetoric quickly escalated into violence. Perhaps the most famous incident of pol-on-pol violence was the caning of abolitionist Sen. Sumner on the floor of the Senate by pro-slavery Rep. Preston Brooks, as another Southern congressman held a pistol on observers to prevent them from intervening.
Representatives were seen carrying guns on the floor of Congress [15] in 1836. One representative drew a gun on a witness during a hearing that year. In 1842 a Whig Party congressman from Tennessee was threatened with a knife by fellow party members.
Today a new era of incivility has dawned in the capitol building. Its watershed moment may have been the day Republican Rep. Joe Wilson shouted “You lie!” at President Obama as the President addressed a joint session of Congress. While Wilson was eventually admonished by the House, the vote was almost entirely along party lines. (Only seven Republicans joined with Democrats on the vote.)
Wilson was able to beat his nearest primary challenger by nine points the following year, and to run unopposed in the general election. He received 96 percent of the vote.
The gloves are off, and the new harsh rhetoric is coming almost exclusively from a party that refuses to sanction its members for it. Rep. Michele Bachmann has been a one-person factory for inflammatory quotes. And in a very 19th century—and very crude—letter, Republican Rep. Allen West wrote to Democratic Rep. Debbie Wasserman-Schultz: "You have proven repeatedly that you are not a Lady, therefore, shall not be afforded due respect from me!” West has also said that Nazi leader Josef Goebbels would be “very proud” of Democrats, and that liberals should “get the hell out of the United States.”
Fortunately, government leaders have yet to turn on one another physically. But that day may be coming. Michael Schwartz, Chief of Staff for Sen. Tom Coburn, said this [16]: ““I’m a radical! I’m a real extremist. I don’t want to impeach judges. I want to impale them!”
Rep. Peter King has been a one-man hate campaign against Americans of the Muslim faith, and he has not been censured or reprimanded by his party in any way for his hate-filled rhetoric.
In 1884, the spokesman for Republican presidential candidate Hal Blaine accused the Democrats of being the party of “rum, Romanism, and rebellion.” This anti-Catholic slur caused Blaine to lose the state of New York, giving the presidency to Grover Cleveland. Democrats may be hoping that comments like King’s will help to reproduce such election results in coming years.
_______
The Guardian By Glenn Greenwald: Secret Deal Allows NSA to Share Ameeicans' Data With Israel!
The National Security Agency routinely shares raw intelligence data with Israel [5] without first sifting it to remove information about US citizens, a top-secret document provided to the Guardian [6] by whistleblower Edward Snowden reveals.
Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA [7] and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.
The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration [8] that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy [9]of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.
The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum [6], which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.
The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.
But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."
According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection", it says.
Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.
"This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law," the document says.
In a statement to the Guardian, an NSA spokesperson did not deny that personal data about Americans was included in raw intelligence data shared with the Israelis. But the agency insisted that the shared intelligence complied with all rules governing privacy.
"Any US person information that is acquired as a result of NSA'ssurveillance [10] activities is handled under procedures that are designed to protect privacy rights," the spokesperson said.
The NSA declined to answer specific questions about the agreement, including whether permission had been sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court for handing over such material.
The memorandum of understanding, which the Guardian is publishing in full, allows Israel to retain "any files containing the identities of US persons" for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA's special liaison adviser when such data is found.
Notably, a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to "destroy upon recognition" any communication "that is either to or from an official of the US government". Such communications included those of "officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)".
It is not clear whether any communications involving members of US Congress or the federal courts have been included in the raw data provided by the NSA, nor is it clear how or why the NSA would be in possession of such communications. In 2009, however, the New York Times reported on "the agency's attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip".
The NSA is required by law to target only non-US persons without an individual warrant, but it can collect the content and metadata of Americans' emails and calls without a warrant when such communication is with a foreign target. US persons are defined in surveillance legislation as US citizens, permanent residents and anyone located on US soil at the time of the interception, unless it has been positively established that they are not a citizen or permanent resident.
Moreover, with much of the world's internet traffic passing through US networks, large numbers of purely domestic communications also get scooped up incidentally by the agency's surveillance programs.
The document mentions only one check carried out by the NSA on the raw intelligence, saying the agency will "regularly review a sample of files transferred to ISNU to validate the absence of US persons' identities". It also requests that the Israelis limit access only to personnel with a "strict need to know".
Israeli intelligence is allowed "to disseminate foreign intelligence information concerning US persons derived from raw Sigint by NSA" on condition that it does so "in a manner that does not identify the US person". The agreement also allows Israel to release US person identities to "outside parties, including all INSU customers" with the NSA's written permission.
Although Israel is one of America's closest allies, it is not one of the inner core of countries involved in surveillance sharing with the US - Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This group is collectively known as Five Eyes.
The relationship between the US and Israel has been strained at times, both diplomatically and in terms of intelligence. In the top-secret 2013 intelligence community budget request, details of which were disclosed by the Washington Post [11], Israel is identified alongside Iran and China as a target for US cyberattacks.
While NSA documents tout the mutually beneficial relationship of Sigint sharing, another report, marked top secret and dated September 2007, states that the relationship, while central to US strategy, has become overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of Israel.
"Balancing the Sigint exchange equally between US and Israeli needs has been a constant challenge," states the report, titled 'History of the US – Israel Sigint Relationship, Post-1992'. "In the last decade, it arguably tilted heavily in favor of Israeli security concerns. 9/11 came, and went, with NSA's only true Third Party [counter-terrorism] relationship being driven almost totally by the needs of the partner."
In another top-secret document seen by the Guardian, dated 2008, a senior NSA official points out that Israel aggressively spies on the US. "On the one hand, the Israelis are extraordinarily good Sigint partners for us, but on the other, they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems," the official says. "A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US."
Later in the document, the official is quoted as saying: "One of NSA's biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel. There are parameters on what NSA shares with them, but the exchange is so robust, we sometimes share more than we intended."
The memorandum of understanding also contains hints that there had been tensions in the intelligence-sharing relationship with Israel. At a meeting in March 2009 between the two agencies, according to the document, it was agreed that the sharing of raw data required a new framework and further training for Israeli personnel to protect US personinformation.
It is not clear whether or not this was because there had been problems up to that point in the handling of intelligence that was found to contain Americans' data.
However, an earlier US document obtained by Snowden, which discusses co-operating on a military intelligence program, bluntly lists under the cons: "Trust issues which revolve around previous ISR [Israel] operations."
The Guardian asked the Obama administration how many times US data had been found in the raw intelligence, either by the Israelis or when theNSA reviewed a sample of the files, but officials declined to provide this information. Nor would they disclose how many other countries the NSA shared raw data with, or whether the Fisa court, which is meant to oversee NSA surveillance programs and the procedures to handle US information, had signed off the agreement with Israel.
In its statement, the NSA said: "We are not going to comment on any specific information sharing arrangements, or the authority under which any such information is collected. The fact that intelligence services work together under specific and regulated conditions mutually strengthens the security of both nations.
"NSA cannot, however, use these relationships to circumvent US legal restrictions. Whenever we share intelligence information, we comply with all applicable rules, including the rules to protect US person information."
Details of the intelligence-sharing agreement are laid out in a memorandum of understanding between the NSA [7] and its Israeli counterpart that shows the US government handed over intercepted communications likely to contain phone calls and emails of American citizens. The agreement places no legally binding limits on the use of the data by the Israelis.
The disclosure that the NSA agreed to provide raw intelligence data to a foreign country contrasts with assurances from the Obama administration [8] that there are rigorous safeguards to protect the privacy [9]of US citizens caught in the dragnet. The intelligence community calls this process "minimization", but the memorandum makes clear that the information shared with the Israelis would be in its pre-minimized state.
The deal was reached in principle in March 2009, according to the undated memorandum [6], which lays out the ground rules for the intelligence sharing.
The five-page memorandum, termed an agreement between the US and Israeli intelligence agencies "pertaining to the protection of US persons", repeatedly stresses the constitutional rights of Americans to privacy and the need for Israeli intelligence staff to respect these rights.
But this is undermined by the disclosure that Israel is allowed to receive "raw Sigint" – signal intelligence. The memorandum says: "Raw Sigint includes, but is not limited to, unevaluated and unminimized transcripts, gists, facsimiles, telex, voice and Digital Network Intelligence metadata and content."
According to the agreement, the intelligence being shared would not be filtered in advance by NSA analysts to remove US communications. "NSA routinely sends ISNU [the Israeli Sigint National Unit] minimized and unminimized raw collection", it says.
Although the memorandum is explicit in saying the material had to be handled in accordance with US law, and that the Israelis agreed not to deliberately target Americans identified in the data, these rules are not backed up by legal obligations.
"This agreement is not intended to create any legally enforceable rights and shall not be construed to be either an international agreement or a legally binding instrument according to international law," the document says.
In a statement to the Guardian, an NSA spokesperson did not deny that personal data about Americans was included in raw intelligence data shared with the Israelis. But the agency insisted that the shared intelligence complied with all rules governing privacy.
"Any US person information that is acquired as a result of NSA'ssurveillance [10] activities is handled under procedures that are designed to protect privacy rights," the spokesperson said.
The NSA declined to answer specific questions about the agreement, including whether permission had been sought from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance (Fisa) court for handing over such material.
The memorandum of understanding, which the Guardian is publishing in full, allows Israel to retain "any files containing the identities of US persons" for up to a year. The agreement requests only that the Israelis should consult the NSA's special liaison adviser when such data is found.
Notably, a much stricter rule was set for US government communications found in the raw intelligence. The Israelis were required to "destroy upon recognition" any communication "that is either to or from an official of the US government". Such communications included those of "officials of the executive branch (including the White House, cabinet departments, and independent agencies), the US House of Representatives and Senate (member and staff) and the US federal court system (including, but not limited to, the supreme court)".
It is not clear whether any communications involving members of US Congress or the federal courts have been included in the raw data provided by the NSA, nor is it clear how or why the NSA would be in possession of such communications. In 2009, however, the New York Times reported on "the agency's attempt to wiretap a member of Congress, without court approval, on an overseas trip".
The NSA is required by law to target only non-US persons without an individual warrant, but it can collect the content and metadata of Americans' emails and calls without a warrant when such communication is with a foreign target. US persons are defined in surveillance legislation as US citizens, permanent residents and anyone located on US soil at the time of the interception, unless it has been positively established that they are not a citizen or permanent resident.
Moreover, with much of the world's internet traffic passing through US networks, large numbers of purely domestic communications also get scooped up incidentally by the agency's surveillance programs.
The document mentions only one check carried out by the NSA on the raw intelligence, saying the agency will "regularly review a sample of files transferred to ISNU to validate the absence of US persons' identities". It also requests that the Israelis limit access only to personnel with a "strict need to know".
Israeli intelligence is allowed "to disseminate foreign intelligence information concerning US persons derived from raw Sigint by NSA" on condition that it does so "in a manner that does not identify the US person". The agreement also allows Israel to release US person identities to "outside parties, including all INSU customers" with the NSA's written permission.
Although Israel is one of America's closest allies, it is not one of the inner core of countries involved in surveillance sharing with the US - Britain, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. This group is collectively known as Five Eyes.
The relationship between the US and Israel has been strained at times, both diplomatically and in terms of intelligence. In the top-secret 2013 intelligence community budget request, details of which were disclosed by the Washington Post [11], Israel is identified alongside Iran and China as a target for US cyberattacks.
While NSA documents tout the mutually beneficial relationship of Sigint sharing, another report, marked top secret and dated September 2007, states that the relationship, while central to US strategy, has become overwhelmingly one-sided in favor of Israel.
"Balancing the Sigint exchange equally between US and Israeli needs has been a constant challenge," states the report, titled 'History of the US – Israel Sigint Relationship, Post-1992'. "In the last decade, it arguably tilted heavily in favor of Israeli security concerns. 9/11 came, and went, with NSA's only true Third Party [counter-terrorism] relationship being driven almost totally by the needs of the partner."
In another top-secret document seen by the Guardian, dated 2008, a senior NSA official points out that Israel aggressively spies on the US. "On the one hand, the Israelis are extraordinarily good Sigint partners for us, but on the other, they target us to learn our positions on Middle East problems," the official says. "A NIE [National Intelligence Estimate] ranked them as the third most aggressive intelligence service against the US."
Later in the document, the official is quoted as saying: "One of NSA's biggest threats is actually from friendly intelligence services, like Israel. There are parameters on what NSA shares with them, but the exchange is so robust, we sometimes share more than we intended."
The memorandum of understanding also contains hints that there had been tensions in the intelligence-sharing relationship with Israel. At a meeting in March 2009 between the two agencies, according to the document, it was agreed that the sharing of raw data required a new framework and further training for Israeli personnel to protect US personinformation.
It is not clear whether or not this was because there had been problems up to that point in the handling of intelligence that was found to contain Americans' data.
However, an earlier US document obtained by Snowden, which discusses co-operating on a military intelligence program, bluntly lists under the cons: "Trust issues which revolve around previous ISR [Israel] operations."
The Guardian asked the Obama administration how many times US data had been found in the raw intelligence, either by the Israelis or when theNSA reviewed a sample of the files, but officials declined to provide this information. Nor would they disclose how many other countries the NSA shared raw data with, or whether the Fisa court, which is meant to oversee NSA surveillance programs and the procedures to handle US information, had signed off the agreement with Israel.
In its statement, the NSA said: "We are not going to comment on any specific information sharing arrangements, or the authority under which any such information is collected. The fact that intelligence services work together under specific and regulated conditions mutually strengthens the security of both nations.
"NSA cannot, however, use these relationships to circumvent US legal restrictions. Whenever we share intelligence information, we comply with all applicable rules, including the rules to protect US person information."
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