Yeah, I’m not quite ready to let go of this yet, especially since Michael Hayden thinks anonymity is for terrorists. Also, I particularly love this piece from Mr. Charles P. Pierce:
… In the world revealed by Edward Snowden, International Man Of Luggage, I have absolutely no problem with Hayden’s stepping on his own dick this way. (I mean, geez, it wasn’t even the Quiet Car.) Put your business in the street this way and you deserve what you get. And the fact that Hayden was overheard going into his “senior administration official” cone of silence is not merely hilarious, but a ringing vindication of my running mate’s opinion of anonymous sources that he expressed in these pages yesterday. This episode also has the salubrious effect of rendering a mockery all those chin-stroking, thumb-sucking pieces by serious Washington journalists about how horrible it is that scurvy knaves who can’t get good tables at the Palm, or invites to Ben ‘n Sally’s, keep publishing Our National Secrets without regard to the opinions of the brave, but sadly all-too-human and error-prone, heroes of our intelligence community. Michael Hayden spent a lot of time slagging Edward Snowden — and once made a funny-ha-ha about putting Snowden on a “kill list” — and now he gets caught, gossiping like a high-school cheerleader on an open phone line on a public train. They serve very tasty ironies in the Club Car, I’m thinking…
Any publication that quotes Hayden anonymously now is embarrassing itself. He surrendered his right to anonymity when he decided to be a mouthy cluck on the train. The story is now his staggering indiscretion — another towering blunder by the all-too-human, but sadly error-prone, heroes of the “intelligence community.” The story is now that this guy was “bragging about black sites,” where we sent people to be tortured because we’re far too delicate to do anything except subcontract our crimes against humanity. (And, as we saw yesterday, this brilliant moral dodge has complicated our ability to get justice for our own people. Nicely played, gang.) But doing so anonymously, because he is a brave fighter for freedom. He also ripped his former employers, and did so anonymously, because he is such a courageous fking hero. I have to say, by the standards of sheer Beltway stupidity, this ranks right up there with anything I’ve ever seen, and it makes me think that Edward Snowden maybe needn’t have gone to all the trouble to buy thumb drives. He could have just waited patiently until somebody forgot a bagful of national secrets on the counter at Starbucks, or left the nuclear codes on the table at Popeye’s.
***********
Apart from schadenfreude, what’s on the agenda today?
Chyron HR
A complete lack of principles among the allegedly principled “True Progressives”, apparently. But I think we all figured that one out when Salon.com decreed that it’s kosher to respond to disagreements with DOJ policy by denouncing Eric Holder as a “nigger”.
Botsplainer
During the upcoming Paul-Palin Administration, just because the Federal Government won’t be used (or strong enough) to:
-keep locals from forcing useless splits to bring in their monthly product for testing or to keep local pols from forcing wands up cooters;
-keep locals from clearing uppity spades and wetbacks from lunch counters and other businesses;
-make sure that the PO-lice don’t keep to their main task, like jacking those people;
-make it hard for locals to keep spades, splits and wetbacks from voting, because that can only be trusted to white men,
then so long as we make sure that no white dudebro, computer dork, righteous businessman, conservative activist or racial supremacist conspirator militiaman has his emails and cell records collected, tagged or available for hypothetical review when they commit crimes or engage in terrorism against hated minorities, then it’s all good.
Linda Featheringill
I have too much to do today, and all of these tasks are time and energy consuming.
I do want to gather up the leaves in my back yard and pile them up on the garden as a winter mulch. I wonder if I should try to protect the cabbage plants or just let them soldier on?
In spite of all the watches and warnings, we haven’t had a frost in this corner of Philly.
Linda Featheringill
@Botsplainer:
What is a “split”? An ethnic group but which?
Aimai
@Chyron HR: what? Really? Ffs.
Botsplainer
Also, I find myself wondering about how much the Reasonoids would complain about government policy, overreach or wholesale denial of voting rights during a Paul-Palin administration. Or would they be pleased about so much liberty?
One friend told me in seriousness (as he was justifying setting in rules that would turn the country into a de facto theocracy) that the ultimate expression of a man’s liberty is in gaining a societal order that he agrees with.
THAT is Ron/Rand Paul libertarianism in a nutshell.
Botsplainer
@Linda Featheringill:
It is, sadly, a derogatory and pejorative term for women that I’ve heard from conservative men in the past.
Do not kid yourself – these people are quite serious, and these are VERY serious goals for them. Texas and North Carolina are the current labs due to purple trajectories despite complete GOP control – they’re frightened and lashing out.
ericblair
Hayden is a godbothering dickhead who won’t have many defenders here. He got hoist by his own petard. I don’t know what you expect the reaction to be.
Cassidy
@Botsplainer: Split tail. Without the tail you don’t realize it’s a reference to beaver.
Botsplainer
Query – would Eric Rudolph and his accessories (and unfounded, uncharged co-conspirators both before and after the crimes) have gotten as easy a treatment in this administration? McVeigh’s other accomplices? That is the set of circumstances that Griftwald would return us to.
Discuss…
NotMax
NSA obviously needs to come up with its own little game app with which to pass the time.
Angry Kurds?
Betty Cracker
@Chyron HR: I missed that. Link?
SFAW
All you libtards leave Super-General Hayden alooooonne! He said Matzzie got it “terribly wrong,” so that’s good enough for me, because I can’t remember a time when a government official (or former one) lied to save his/her own ass.
Of course, that lack of memory may be due to excessive ingestion of various substances on my part, but still ,,,
SFAW
@NotMax:
FSM will smite you with its noodley appendage for that one, bucko.
Baud
@NotMax:
Grand Theft Data.
Bill E Pilgrim
@ericblair: One of the commenters here just filled up half the thread already defending him. Anyone who criticizes Hayden and the NSA is a “bro” who only cares about white people, and denouncement of Hayden is met by an attack on Glenn Greenwald or Snowden.
I would expect the same reaction you do, to be clear, but AL has a good reason to expect otherwise in this particular blog, which seems to contain a number of people driven to embrace authoritarianism and any abuses in the interest of somehow defending Obama.
Violet
@NotMax: Ha ha! That made me laugh.
Cassidy
@Bill E Pilgrim: To be fair, our chicken little fpers have been crying “worse than bush” over every little thing that gets leaked about our security/intelligence apparatus. It’s not like we’re getting a measured and mature response.
Anya
@Chyron HR: but that guy was black so it’s okay.
WereBear
I’m guessing that not many of his words mean what he thinks they mean.
SiubhanDuinne
Some NPR reporter* (in a story about Kathleen Sebelius’ troubles in re the ACA rollout) just told me that Jon Stewart is “usually friendly to Democrats.”
*ETA Brian Naylor
MattF
And, btw, my prediction that Cooch’s (prospective) loss will be blamed on a bad campaign, rather than dislike for his politics is coming true:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/how-ken-cuccinelli-blew-his-advantage-in-the-virginia-governors-race/2013/10/25/16d1a9ce-3a80-11e3-b6a9-da62c264f40e_story.html?hpid=z5
It’s just impossible that a center-right country, state, etc. wouldn’t looove Der Cooch. Inconceivable!
Anya
@SiubhanDuinne: it’s funny how Steward became every Obama critics’ friend. They all invoke him to underscore how messed up ACA is. I don’t mind his critism but I really hate how he disrespected Kathleen Sebelius, specially since he’s always respectful to republicans. He could’ve been tough but instead he was a total dick.
Botsplainer
@WereBear:
He’s an SSPX-curious Catholic.
Culture of Truth
This doesn’t seem like a big story to me. Sure, Hayden looks foolish, but otherwise it has no larger meaning, and we didn’t learn much, except perhaps what Hayden’s anon moniker is.
LAC
@ericblair: well since the name Snowden was said, whirling dervishes and speaking in tongues. I guess. Maybe AL saw his likeness in a garden radish.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
@MattF:
The article characterizes Cuccinelli’s embrace of Ted Cruz as “bad luck” rather than stupidity. Yes friends, it was just bad luck that thousands of Virginians who were hurt by the shutdown don’t want to support someone who is BFFs with its architect.
No one could have anticipated that Virginians might not want to vote for someone who has promised to fuck them over if he’s elected.
mk3872
“Our Brave NSA Defenders” … So, you, like Greenwald, Assange and Snowden, believe that the NSA is not at all in the business of protecting America and actually just there to randomly snoop on people?
I’m fairly certain the NSA employees are pretty darn busy trying to find the bad people looking to harm us in the data they collect …
White Trash Liberal
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Oh get over yourself.
The dudebros have been disingenuous about this story from the beginning. Greenwald continues to lie about the story and about US treatment of whistleblowers.
People like me who want real journalism of a serious and important story have every reason to be horrified and pissed off at the mismanagement. This isn’t “defending Obama and Hayden at all costs,” it is the fucking basic recognition that we have lost the truth in favor of creating discussion.
Sure, we’ve now created a discussion. Congratulations. It’s a discussion buried up to the eyeballs with hyperbole. And the main culprit in this has parlayed this travesty into a quarter billion dollar venture. So now we’ll have hyperbole disguised as hard hitting journalism saturating bandwidth alongside both sides do it nonsense.
Forgive me for not seeing this as something praiseworthy. We are in a crisis of discourse. So long as bros like you make accepting antigovernment agitprop as the communion necessary to attain purity, you are responsible for the new leftwing orthodoxy.
Choke on your dogma.
Cassidy
@mk3872: You’re looking for nuance. That isn’t something that’s copy and pasted easily.
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
@mk3872:
And because every last person involved in the process is free of human weaknesses none of what they collect will be misused in any way what so ever.
Cassidy
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set): Yup. Kill the whole thing. And some cops are dicks so let’s disband every LEO. Same with fire/rescue. Se of those guys are real assholes so disband them all. And some of those mail carriers aren’t very nice, kill it. There are plenty of private entities just waiting to step in I’m sure.
different-church-lady
Yes, because complicate issues like this one can always be boiled down to who’s ‘side’ you’re on.
And supposedly Cole is the front-pager who trolls the blog?
[And for the record, I too am having a hearty laugh about Hayden.]
Felonius Monk
@mk3872:
Being in the protection business and actually protecting are two entirely different animals.
different-church-lady
@Cassidy: Most certainly we need to free all prisoners because some of them have been convicted unfairly.
WereBear
@Botsplainer: Oh, yeah. I’ve seen it in some military fans; nothing an authoritarian likes better than discipline imposed from the outside; ie, controlling regimes, Spartan cultures, etc.
different-church-lady
@White Trash Liberal:
Higgs Boson's Mate (Crystal Set)
@Cassidy:
Yet there you were, just up the line, commenting about nuance. There’s a world of difference between setting limits on surveillance along with with putting in place more effective oversight and shutting the thing down. On the other hand, we could just go on using a siege gun to try and kill a gnat.
White Trash Liberal
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):
Of course there will be abuses. This is why the discussion needs to be had. There was already an internal audit performed by the NSA revealing a very small number of abuses and a pretty rigorous set of checks. Snowden’s ability to steal and play hooky does put the lie to that report, though, given that he was able to obtain lots of material with oversight occurring much later than the fact.
The core of the problem, in my opinion, is contracting/privatizing the intelligence complex. In other words, the problem is in the kind of conservative and libertarian thinking that is also trying to use it as a cudgel to beat Obama.
If you want tighter oversight and controls over data collection, legislation would be required to return us to the pre-contractor era. No outsourced background checks, no outsourced security firms. Turn off the welfare spigot that entices the kinds of problems we have been having. This addresses both the concerns of national security and oversight.
But this isn’t the conversation we are having. Nope. Not at all.
Cassidy
@different-church-lady: I’m enjoying this Hayden thing too. Couldn’t happen to a nicer asshole. How in the hell does the top spy not know to keep your mouth shut in public. Knucklehead.
WereBear
Exactly. I was never a fan of privatization, and it turns out to be just a way to funnel tax money into the pockets of incompetents.
I don’t mind when my tax dollars goes to hungry kids and rehabbing the injured and getting people educations. But not only stealing the money but doing a terrible job?
Only a Republican would love that.
Cassidy
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set): I was being sarcastic. I am fully capable of believing that a security apparatus or an LEO can do good and be good for society and at the same time we need things in place to limit abuses by the minority of shitheads that are attracted to positions of power. We also need transparent oversight. That still doesn’t mean that what they do is a bad thing overall. I’m perfectly capable of nuance. It appears that many here are not.
And you and I both know that the NSA are not the boogeyman.
White Trash Liberal
@different-church-lady:
It’s true.
Get ahold of documents that potentially shed light on the cult of secrecy. Present them in most inflammatory manner. Accuse critics of being authoritarian sycophants. Get quarter of a billion dollars play money as a reward.
Maybe now is the time for a return of Jacobin stylings. Lord knows the right wing has transformed their base into a tribe with their own rules about truth and consequences. Perhaps I am just a tired man without the proper fervor.
different-church-lady
@White Trash Liberal:
That’s not what they want: they want the NSA dismantled and to live in a fantasy world where US government spies are the only bad guys in the world.
(And yes, now I’m trolling the blog…)
aimai
@SiubhanDuinne: Mr. Aimai came back from a morning drive just seething after hearing NPR’s account of the aCA rollout debacle. He has been working so hard that he missed the huge deal they are making about this and as a Computer guy he simply can’t believe the amount of nonsense that is being talked about how bad this is for the ACA and for Obama.
Botsplainer
Sadly, Obama isn’t the kind of tyrant that Griftwald makes him out to be. If he was, Snowden would have been “disappeared” and Griftwald would be dying of radiation poisoning in a hospital bed, his partner arrested for crimes of morality.
ruemara
@different-church-lady: You’re not trolling, you’re correct. I’m blown away by the mindset that only the US is a bad actor in natsec. And I wonder if I asked some of these freetopian believers if Obama was spying on Angela Merkel, they’d say yes, because reading past a headline or investigating what is said by whichever pundit (not, reporter-PUNDIT) you like, is far too much for them. Clowns to the left of me, jokers to the right.
different-church-lady
@aimai: You know what NPR’s problem is (at least a far as national politics)? They’ve become a bunch of hapless spectators who nonetheless still need to talk about shit 17 hours a day. They don’t even know how to be stenographers — they’re more live verbal aggregators. They don’t do their own reporting, and they don’t serve as a puke funnel, they just report on what puke is going through what funnels at any given moment, and from a detached distance. And they no longer seem to have an idea there’s another way of doing things.
Emma
@different-church-lady: they want the liberal equivalent of conservative dogma. Black and white certainty and an easily identifiable enemy.
Elizabelle
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set):
I don’t know why they run stories like that.
Oh yeah. Conservative Republicanism cannot fail. It can only be failed.
I am canvassing. Our folks are eager to get out there and vote.
Have not met anyone who would have chosen Terry McAuliffe first, but there’s visceral distaste for Cuccinelli and his whole ticket.
People get what’s at stake.
And not just on birth control/abortion issues.
The GOP ticket supports home schooling, and is itching for a run at privatizing public schools.
different-church-lady
@Botsplainer: Dude, all that is totally gonna happen, just wait.
different-church-lady
@Emma: Black and white also makes for quicker commenting.
Felonius Monk
I guess we never learn:
and
Fellatio Alger
@White Trash Liberal: sweet mother of god – this.
The Art of Compromise
@Botsplainer: righteous
The Art of Compromise
@Botsplainer: righteous
Corner Stone
@White Trash Liberal:
The awesome fact that these two sentences were right next to each other just makes my nethers tingle.
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone: Good spot.
Frankensteinbeck
I just read the links in the OP that went to things Hayden said. I don’t know the guy from beans and he could be a saint or a devil, but none of the stuff quoted is horrible or scary. He might be a bit of a jackass slagging Snowden, but Snowden is awfully slaggable, so I dunno. The reference to ‘black sites’ and torture is scary, except the link doesn’t include any evidence for it, just someone claiming legalese is proof. Are there links that show Hayden actually saying something awful about national security? Not ‘I’m A Dickhead’, but scary security revelations or something?
EDIT – @Felonius Monk:
I think you just demonstrated that legal instruments of spying are not a factor when the government feels like abusing its power. The question is evidence of abuse.
The Art of Compromise
@Higgs Boson’s Mate (Crystal Set): how many people do you know who have been arrested, detained, interrogated due the information obtained by NSA?
Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Mumphrey, et al.)
I don’t know whether anybdy else has heard about this; I hadn’t. Another example of the casual racism and sexism that still infects this country…
different-church-lady
@Frankensteinbeck:
You might as well be asking someone who’s only kitchen tool is a meat tenderizer to give you paper-thin slices of prosciutto.
In other words, to a lot of people there’s no effective distinction between the two things that they have any interest in.
Corner Stone
@Chyron HR:
Were you going to just leave this one on the floor and walk off?
Corner Stone
@The Art of Compromise:
Interesting question. How would one know? Do you think they slap a thick manila folder with NSA stenciled on it on the table?
The Art of Compromise
@Anya: let’s try this again. john stewart is a d..ck. People are disappointed in how he treated Ms. Sebelius. He outwardly disrespected President Obama (hey dude). His treatment imo was on the same level as b. oreilly. Total disrespect but because I voted for him i’m entitled to disrespect him. How “white” of you. “progressives” treat stewart as is he has knowledge or the ability to change or enact policy. He’s a fckg comedian who really is not that funny.
The Art of Compromise
@Corner Stone: interesting response. your question to me is not an answer.
Baud
@The Art of Compromise:
Did you just get mad at someone who agreed with you that Stewart was a dick?
Emma
@Corner Stone: you would know. I will give you a personal example. If a school friend you saw every day said something negative about the government and three days later he was gone you’d know. If someone your family knew very wellness suddenly missing you’d know.
It’s the reason why conspiracy theories are rife in REAL dictatorships. You know it has happened before.
Cassidy
@The Art of Compromise: It’s an interesting question though. The NSA has fairly limited law enforcement and investigational capabilities. Most of it’s police are site security, etc. If the NSA discovered something in your activity beyond your porn proclivities I would assume it would be passed in to the FBI or State Dept.
Botsplainer
@Corner Stone:
That’s some spank bank you got, man. Better lay in some extra Jergens – I hear that chafing can be a real bitch.
Frankensteinbeck
@Emma:
Hell, if public embarrassments to the government disappeared, you would know. Instead we have Greenwald’s partner being searched in England because he(?) actually is carrying stolen state secrets, and that’s somehow a shocking police state abuse by the American government.
EDIT – @Cassidy:
That one’s already come up. If any security or law enforcement agency finds evidence of wrongdoing another agency should know about, they tell that other agency that the person is of interest. Then that agency has to conduct their own investigation. It’s been official policy for decades. Many, MANY decades.
Cacti
Yeah, we couldn’t tell if you hadn’t mentioned this.
Corner Stone
@Botsplainer:
I appreciate you looking out for me man. I’ve been running low after wanking it to videos of police brutality against the poors. Time to stock back up now that you’ve got me thinking about splits and segregation.
The Art of Compromise
@Baud: no, not at all, just wanted to enhance the fact that stewart is a d,ck. sorry if I caused confusion, im still new to blogging.
I'mNotSureWhoIWantToBeYet
@Elizabelle: Thank you very much for doing the leg-work. This election is very, very important. It’s people like you that are working in the trenches that make the difference.
Cheers,
Scott.
(Who is off to throw some more money at Terry, Ralph and Mark)
Corner Stone
@The Art of Compromise:
Who’s on first, much?
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
Anne Laurie’s got two settings: gardening and hating Obama.
One day her switch is going to get stuck and we’ll get a thread on “Obama droned my tomatoes”.
Betty Cracker
@Felonius Monk: Mr. Church, from your quote above:
Emphasis mine. He didn’t advocate trying to cram the toothpaste back in the tube; he said technical capabilities had to be supervised and controlled. I suspect most of us would agree with that. So the question becomes, what are the proper limits? What constitutes adequate control? Here are some proposals entertained in Congress:
What do you think? Are these sensible? Too restrictive of government surveillance powers? Do they not go far enough?
Steeplejack (tablet)
@Smedley Darlington Prunebanks (Mumphrey, et al.):
Yeah, you—and TPM—are about a week late. I won’t do my usual “Let me Balloon Juice that for you” link-mo because I’m on the tablet, but it has been discussed.
schrodinger's cat
It may be Saturday, but Caturday Kitteh is hard at work.
Cassidy
@Frankensteinbeck: Forest for trees. The NSA doesn’t send Special Agents to people’s houses for crimes against the internet.
The Art of Compromise
@Cassidy: thank you for your response. I believe people may have “righteous indignation” to being “spyed” on, but what consequences are they suffering? Stop and Frisk. That was right in the open yet the uproar was quite miniscule, yet we witnessed the consequences to the people you were being imo violated.
Hill Dweller
@The Art of Compromise: Stewart treated Pelosi even worse than he treated PO and Sebelius.
Baud
@The Art of Compromise:
Welcome, newbie. Have you picked a tribe yet, or are you still in your grace period?
The Art of Compromise
@Botsplainer: righteous 11th billion
Baud
@Betty Cracker:
Good list.
Corner Stone
@Emma: The question was not, “how many people do you know who got disappeared by the state”, it was:
“how many people do you know who have been arrested, detained, interrogated due the information obtained by NSA?”
Which I took to mean as an LEO action. There may be one or two people here who think our govt is disappearing citizen dissidents inside our borders, but I do not happen to be one of those people.
I would say there are more people commenting here who wish our govt would disappear people, than there are people who actually believe that to be the truth.
The Art of Compromise
@Baud: thank you. tribe? what are my choices?
handsmile
@The Art of Compromise:
I myself do not know a single person who has been “arrested, detained, interrogated” due to the NYC Police Department’s “stop-and-frisk” policy. (As several hundred thousand people in the city in which I live as well have been subjected to it, perhaps that’s a personal failing on my part.) Nevertheless, I am very glad that a federal judge has recently ruled that policy, as practiced, to be unconstitutional.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_City_stop-and-frisk_program
Could you explain why personal knowledge of that kind is necessary to evaluate the efficacy or potential abuses of a particular program or policy?
JPL
@Cacti: Why use the drones when he can just let loose the squirrels?
schrodinger's cat
@SiubhanDuinne: I didn’t know that Rumsfeld and John Yoo were Democrats.
Cacti
@Hill Dweller:
Never saw what other’s found so great about John Stewart.
He’s always been David Broder with a comedy show, and he seems to be much harder on his non-white and female guests than he ever is on a member of the GOP old boys club.
Could anyone ever see him giving a GOPer the face to evisceration that Colbert gave Bush and Cheney at the 2006 correspondents’ dinner?
piratedan
@Betty Cracker: and those guidelines and reasons are the reasons why I bemoan the destruction of the Republican Party in general…. you lose sight of common ground sensibilities in doing what is right for the country in not having oversight like this going on and instead have thousands of man hours discussing Benghazi or whatever other fucking GOP grandstanding opportunity that comes along. The country’s bidness isn’t getting done while these asshats are busy being butthurt over elections 24/7. From what i’ve read over at a couple of law blogs that cover the national security beat, they cite that the reasons for the FISA warrant approval rates are so high is because they screen them before processing the application, as such, when a warrant is found to be lacking data, cause, need its kicked before being counted. Something like the actual filter rate for rejections is 24-25% as opposed to 1% but they don’t track their numbers that way, hence the FISA is simply a rubber stamp. So fucking maddening that we have so few adults around whereas this is the shit that passes as governance and journalism these days. I’m a lazy bastard, I shouldn’t have to work so hard at staying informed.
The Art of Compromise
@Corner Stone: thank you for highlighting the direct question and the “if you think asking a question is an answer to a question” response.
Corner Stone
@Baud: Isn’t it obvious?
Corner Stone
@The Art of Compromise: Since you say you’re new, let me be the first to welcome you.
Go fuck yourself.
SiubhanDuinne
Today’s agenda? I am treating myself to breakfast at J. Christopher’s (mmm maple french toast!) and then heading to see today’s Met Live in HD presentation — The Nose, by Shostakovich. I know I’ve never seen this opera, and as far as I know, I’ve never even heard any of the music. So it will be (rarely, for me) an entirely fresh musical experience, and one I’m very much looking forward to.
I know there are other classical music lovers who frequent this blog, but I don’t recall seeing that anyone else regularly attends the Met Live in HD performances during the season. I can’t possibly be the only one, though, right?
Corner Stone
@The Art of Compromise: And it’s still a stupid fucking question, no matter what the subsequent question/response to it was.
How do you think you would ever know if you were arrested due to some info the NSA collected and then passed on to LEO?
SiubhanDuinne
@Anya: Yeah, I didn’t see that episode but I’ve heard enough about to to think that he was being gratuitously tough on her. Stewart for the most part stopped being funny to me a year or more ago.
Liberty60
I notice how any discussion about the NSA and surveillance instantly becomes a referendum on a Brazilian journalist, or Obama’s liberal street cred, or libertarians, or anything other than ideas about what is the proper amount of power that we want to give our government to both protect us from attack, while respecting our freedom and dignity.
To me this indicates how weightless and abstract the question really is, at the moment.
No one here has personally experienced any consequences of the NSA information gathering; I don’t know anyone who is terrified of the secret polilce.
So it becomes an argument about hypotheticals, about “what IF they used the information for nefarious purposes…”.
Setting up a hypothetical future allows any of our gut instincts and biases to rise to the top, where our worst suspicians about our enemies and allies are confirmed- (See? I TOLD you Obama/ the totebaggers/ Fellow Travelers/ Fifth Column Revanchist Trotskyites couldn’t be trusted! ).
I don’t think its unreasonable to be worried about how much unregulated power the national security apparatus has gained for itself- to be alarmed at both the size and sweep of its scope, and the lack of any meaningful safeguards.
Its a bit premature to start flinging accusations of gulag, but it is also too easy to dismiss this all with a shrug of the shoulders. We’ve seen, from COINTELPRO to the Castro fixation, from the way crime and politics become inevitably tangled together, that there isn’t really an easy way to reel this all back in at the very moment it crosses a line, because the line between “Appropriate” and “Inappropriate” use of power is pretty blurry- even more so when that line is allowed to be drawn by the very people who have conflicted motives.
To make matters even more murky, its difficult to sort out who our allies even are, or who has the same agenda- as mentioned before, the Paulites idea of liberty is to privilege the power of capital above labor and every action they take is fixated on that one goal.
Overall, I think a bit of caution is warranted in how we argue about this, an understanding that the heros and villains are not as easily identified as we wish they were- but then again, you know who else advised circumspection in blog comments.
Frankensteinbeck
@handsmile:
This is a semantic misunderstanding. ‘Knowing of’ counts as well as ‘knowing personally’. There is clear evidence that stop and frisk is persecuting thousands of innocents. There is no evidence like that about the NSA. There isn’t even evidence the NSA is spying on Americans. Snowden’s leaks came down to ‘They could if they wanted, so of course they must be, right?’
Emma
@Corner Stone: I was going to actually engage in discussion until I read your last paragraph. It’s such a ridiculously over the top accusation that it triggers my doubts about your seriousness. So tell me: your attitude. Performance art, right?
The Art of Compromise
@handsmile: Personal knowledge. This is an example. I’m walking with a person of color, myself am not of that persuasion, that person is stopped and frisked. Why was I not stopped? So now I definitely know this happened, but it did not happen to me, so I’m good with that. Now I find out that I may be “spyed” on and I am in a total uproar because this should not be happening to me I have done nothing wrong. Were you arrested, detained or interrogated? Was that person of color? Who’s rights have knowingly been violated?
Spankyslappybottom
Stewart was also a tremendous dick to Rachel Maddow when she had that special 1-hour interview with him.
Condescending, patronizing, belittling, smug, glib.
Also sort of Jewish. Jewishish, if you will.
nellcote
Even The Guardian admits Snowden’s latest release is from a 2006 memo
It would be nice if the Bush admin. got a mention now and then in this latest drama. Well, aside from Hayden being an asshat..
Baud
@The Art of Compromise:
Well, you’ve of course got you’re Obots and firebaggers, although that’s lost some luster in the second term, IMHO. Libertarian tribes are trending, with you Glennbots and your anti-Glennbots, as well as full on Paulbots. There’s also dude Bristol, but you have to be a white male (although it’s the Internet so who’s checking). And of course, there are so many varieties of trolls to choose from it’s not even funny.
My suggestion is to be yourself and a tribe will be assigned to you.
My recommendation, however, is to get out while you still can.
GxB
@Cacti: As much as J.S. has fallen from my eyes these days, some good has come out of the show this week. Recall Aasif Mandvi’s unbelievable interview with local N.C.GoP douchecanoe Don Yelton? Well, Donny-boy is no longer in public service and has been chastised by the the big-nuts.
As an aside just guess, go on, guess at the % of folks that think Donny should NOT have resigned over the comments…
I’m probably late to the party on this one as the story was posted yesterday, but the poll results made me do a spit take even though I should know the drill by now.
Corner Stone
@Liberty60:
Everyone on Balloon-Juice in the six months leading up to November 2012?
Or were you looking for “Hitler”?
SiubhanDuinne
@aimai:
Yes, they are taking an inordinate amount of glee in their “reporting.”
different-church-lady
@Baud:
Otherwise, good advice.
Betty Cracker
@Spankyslappybottom: You seem like an asshole bigot. Assholeish bigotish, if you will.
nastybrutishntall
@White Trash Liberal: It’s also what wrecked healthcare.gov – greedy contractors serving profit, not country. Why, oh why, don’t our Patriotic Teamericans understand this? But, then again, it’s a long list of things they don’t understand. Kind of their Raison D’Etre.
piratedan
@Spankyslappybottom: Stewart apparently thinks he’s above the fray, being the impartial arbiter of Broderism as he sees fit. In a way, it’s good because when he wants to, he can ask good questions of Dems and force them to simply be better than “at least we aren’t these guys!”. The R’s he has to coddle (imho) because if he doesn’t, they’ll never return and there goes his “Broderism/both sides” pedestal. At times, he can be spot on (or at least his writers can) but Colbert has far surpassed him by gleefully mining the mother lode of all political stupidity that is the Republican Party.
The Art of Compromise
@The Art of Compromise: Since you say you’re new, let me be the first to welcome you.
Go fuck yourself.
So what tribe is this? Since you were not the first, I will totally ignore your sentiments. Peace and Love.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: That list is a good start. The Church quote also hits the nail on the head. The capacity for tyranny or abuse always exists in government; it is the nature of the beast but that capacity does not automatically mean that tyranny and abuse must happen. Hell, I have the physically capacity of going on a seven state killing spree, but somehow I just don’t ever get around to it..
Baud
@SiubhanDuinne:
Stewart has lost his edge. It has nothing to do with the fact that he criticized Democrats. Colbert and John Oliver have made fun of Democrats, but they were funny and didn’t really on false right wing memes.
nastybrutishntall
@Felonius Monk: And our military is so powerful, they could LITERALLY KILL US ALL. And, and…
schrodinger's cat
@Omnes Omnibus: How is your cold, feeling any better?
Hill Dweller
@Cacti:
Stewart’s and Colbert’s respective handling of the Obamacare website problems was illuminating. Stewart, as usual, made a self-serving rant. Conversely, Colbert used a funny bit to criticize the site problems, but ultimately put them into perspective with his fake injury at the end.
Corner Stone
@Emma: What’s over the top about it? Should I find any of the Snowden threads where people said he should be executed or disappeared? Or maybe any of the Bradley Manning threads where they wish the hole he was in was deeper and darker?
If you want to pick up your delicates and walk off after it was *you* who introduced the notion of govt disappearing people, that’s fine with me.
But don’t sit there and try and bullshit me about shit I know good and goddamned well is the fucking truth as displayed here multiple times.
schrodinger's cat
@Baud: The voices he does are also grating, I haven’t watched TDS in months.
handsmile
@SiubhanDuinne:
I hope you’ll enjoy The Nose, devoted Wagnerian that you are. :)
While one of those “classical music fans who frequent this blog,” I don’t attend “Met Live in HD” performances that often, because I do have the great good fortune of attending the Met “live” itself occasionally (from the cheap or cheapest seats, to be sure).
In fact, I saw/heard the Met’s debut of this production a couple of years ago, in large part because it was designed and directed by William Kentridge, an acclaimed visual artist from South Africa, whose work I find inspiring. (Also too, a great fan of Shostakovich!)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Kentridge
Have a wonderful afternoon and I’ll look forward to reading your review later this weekend. Cheers!
Cacti
@The Art of Compromise:
Hello new guy/gal. Let me give you quick rundown of the most prominent BJ front pagers:
John Cole: The site’s proprietor. A former Bushbot who appears to have a bad case of untreated bipolar disorder. Never quite got comfortable with the whole changing teams thingy from R to D, and will probably support Rand Paul in 2016.
Mistermix: Resident techie dork and libertarian.
DougJ: Longtime liberal dem and consistently the most entertaining poster on the blog. Loves to troll, so if you see a new guy trolling the comments of a DougJ post and picking fights, it’s probably DougJ.
Anne Laurie: Bitter PUMA who has never forgiven the current POTUS for denying Hillary her patrician right to the Presidency in 2008. (Corner Stone is her pet, fyi).
There are several others, but those are the proverbial Mt. Rushmore of the site.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
“A man’s got to know his limitations.”
The Art of Compromise
@Baud: thanks for the info and advice. My mother called me hard-headed.
different-church-lady
@The Art of Compromise:
Rookie catches on quick!
different-church-lady
Jon Stewart = comedian.
Stunning how often people forget this.
nastybrutishntall
@piratedan:
Feature, not bug.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone:
The only way you would know is if it came out in discovery during the trial prep.
FWIW I think that domestic surveillance by the NSA and/or law enforcement should be limited to cases where a specific warrant has been obtained for a specific individual based on good old fashioned probable cause.
different-church-lady
@Omnes Omnibus:
But if a dictator ever took charge of you, what then?
Botsplainer
Honoring Jesse F’ing Helms.
Meanwhile, pasty progressives are making common cause with Paulites and Justin Amash over data that they willingly hand to about a half dozen corporations a day.
The Art of Compromise
@Corner Stone:
different-church-lady
@Corner Stone:
I vote “go for it!” The entertainment value!
Omnes Omnibus
@schrodinger’s cat: Yeah, quite a bit better today. Thanks for asking.
The Art of Compromise
Since you say you’re new, let me be the first to welcome you.
Go fuck yourself. *sent to me from corner stone*
So what tribe is this?
Since you were not the first, I will totally ignore your sentiments. Peace and Love
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus:
Do you mean similar to this?
U.S. directs agents to cover up program used to investigate Americans
“The undated documents show that federal agents are trained to “recreate” the investigative trail to effectively cover up where the information originated, a practice that some experts say violates a defendant’s Constitutional right to a fair trial. If defendants don’t know how an investigation began, they cannot know to ask to review potential sources of exculpatory evidence – information that could reveal entrapment, mistakes or biased witnesses.”
Hill Dweller
@different-church-lady:
Stewart loves to hide behind the comedian label when criticized, but he takes himself and his show far more seriously. All the fart jokes in the world won’t change that fact.
Again, another difference between Colbert and Stewart. Colbert doesn’t pretend he is just a comedian.
Also, too, a “comedian” doesn’t hold absurd, self-serving rallies.
The Art of Compromise
@different-church-lady: thanks
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Yep, and everyone who knowingly was a part of that should be prosecuted.
different-church-lady
@Hill Dweller:
There’s no law saying such an activity is limited to GOP members of congress.
SiubhanDuinne
@Baud: I can, and do, laugh heartily when someone makes fun of Obama and Democrats and it’s actually funny. Stewart’s humor has become strained, ham-fisted, and mean-spirited. Unfunny, in a word. Not always, but enough so that I’m not sorry that I’ve pretty much stopped watching TDS.
Botsplainer
@different-church-lady:
I wouldn’t cry about it, nor would I sob over a Predator lobbing a Hellfire at Griftwald’s poolside Caiperanha.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cacti: Good god. That’s just silly.
JPL
@Betty Cracker: yup
The Art of Compromise
@Botsplainer: the same on both ends, it’s not happening to me; get over it; don’t take it personal, blah, blah, black (oops) blah
different-church-lady
@Botsplainer: I’d be content if Greenwald just gave himself a good night’s sleep for a change and wrote a reasonable column the next day.
The odds of either scenario happening are about the same.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
But a comedian who largely operates in the same political discourse as other pundits, and who everyone from Chris Cilliza to Newsmax uses as a club to beat on Democrats. Myself, I’ve never quite gotten over the smarmy self-congratulation of the Rally About Nothing, awarding “Medals of Reasonableness” to a low-information voter who vapidly criticized Obama, because she was…um… you know… someone you wouldn’t expect to be criticizing Obama. The soft bigotry of smug condescension.
Cacti
@different-church-lady:
I’d be content if he’d stop holding himself out as an authority on constitutional and international law. It sucks in gullible marks like Cole and mistermix.
ruemara
@piratedan: Interesting factoid. Where did you get that from? I’ve always felt the 1% figure was shockingly low for true oversight, but 24-5% prescreened rejection makes a lot more sense.
Omnes Omnibus
@ruemara: This piece from Lawfare is one source.
ruemara
@different-church-lady: Yes, comedian. Yet you have no idea the amazing amount of people who get their “news” and ill-informed opinions from him and Colbert. Unfortunately, Stewart is mostly self-serving when he targets Dems. Case in point, Harry Reid saying no more hostage taking is the same as [Fill In Republican Douche Here] saying Obama is Hitler. Which has been the case. It’s not both sides, yet here is a fairly influential person who reaches very key demographics of young people and women, spouting crapola. Disappointing. And after what I saw him do when PBO was on around 2010, I haven’t been able to look at him quite the same way.
@Omnes Omnibus: Many thanks.
different-church-lady
@ruemara:
I do have that idea, and I find it unfortunate at best and downright dismaying at worse.
My comment wasn’t to merely dismiss criticism of Stewart, it was to say that he gets taken too seriously by both his critics and his fans.
handsmile
@Frankensteinbeck:
I appreciate your reply, but TAoC wrote “know” not “know of” in his original #60 comment above, and that is a semantic distinction with a difference. I requested a fuller explanation because I find the notion of prior “personal knowledge” of NSA activities to be disingenuous.
As for “evidence of the NSA is spying on Americans,” what I understand from the recent decision in ACLU vs. NSA (and god knows, IANAL), any affirmative evidence of such practice will be enormously difficult to obtain or present. Familiar with the investigative work of James Bamford on the history and operations of the NSA, I will continue to remain skeptical of claims that the NSA is acting fully within legal constraints and oversight authority.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Civil_Liberties_Union_v._National_Security_Agency
Emma
@Corner Stone: ok. Fair enough. Not performance art. Just outrage at other people’s intemperate language from the champion of them all. And you have the nerve to throw around accusations. Bless your heart.
ruemara
@different-church-lady: And himself. Trust me, there was some serious arrogance on display. But, agreed.
handsmile
@The Art of Compromise:
Thank you for replying, but with respect, I did not find that it illuminated your original #60 comment/question to Higgs on “personal knowledge” of those subjected to adverse consequence due to NSA activity. If’s that my own failure to comprehend, so be it, as your other comments on this thread have more fully expanded your position on the subject.
Let my add my welcome to this rogue’s gallery, but until you’ve been slagged by commenter eemon, you won’t fully be a member in good standing. (n.b. eemom is one of my favorites here.)
Botsplainer
@Cacti:
Unfair, pointing out how much Griftwald sucked ass in his former career as civil rights lawyer to violent white supremacists.
His motives are as pure as the snow white people he prefers to work for (and often for free).
Corner Stone
@Emma:
What are you talking about? Accusations of what? That others enjoy violence, or the thoughts of violence, against those they disagree with?
That’s not an accusation, that’s a fact. And if you believe in any comment of mine, anywhere or at any time I have wished death on some public figure (or harm to any commenter here) I challenge you to find it and quote it.
I’m fine with intemperate language, obviously. That’s a road you’re trying to distract down. You first switched the argument from LEO action based on NSA collected info to govt disappearing people, and now you’ve switched my fact based statement from people here thrilling in the pain and death of others to me being offended by intemperate language.
What will the third attempt be?
White Trash Liberal
@ruemara:
When I worked in military pay, there were several levels of audit before pay was certified and deposited. My section’s batting average of errors, from over/underpayments to incorrect EFT info, etc. was 0.65%. We obtained such a high standard (highest in the DoD) by constantly having strenuous oversight and internal audits before it ever reached a certifier’s desk. You would never know our rejection rate to the processing clerks or to the administrative sections was over 1/3 unless you reviewed our section’s internal reports.
That’s why a lot of this story and presentation has bugged me. I had the power in my position on numerous occasions to commit gross fraud. But I knew I would be caught. The tools I was given over private financial information was carefully scrutinized. I could write a hair raising sensational story about how much I could find out about and control with what I had at my disposal. But it would only be about potentials, and not actuals. Because the sad boring truth is that I and my peers were damn good at their jobs and ethically clean.
Thomas
Always love it when anti-semitism goes unremarked on a BJ thread. As long as it doesn’t hurt Obama!
Baud
@Thomas:
Huh?
Omnes Omnibus
@Thomas: Quoi?
Cassidy
@Thomas: I thought Betty handled it just fine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: You called me a silly person once and that caused me great harm or something like that.
ruemara
@Thomas: It was smacked down very nicely. Why spend more time on obvious bigot troll trolling?
Betty Cracker
@Thomas: It didn’t go unremarked by me.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Of course Thomas is a drive by troll and we (myself included) have now given him the response he wanted. Bad us.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: I think it was a “deeply silly and unserious person”. And I stand by that comment.
edited for accuracy
Cassidy
The problem is that too many people here think that Chuck was a documentary.
Chris
@ruemara:
Though it’s not like people will get any better-informed opinions from watching the MSM. Unless Al Jazeera became “mainstream” while I wasn’t looking.
Corner Stone
@Thomas: I wanted to remark on it, but I could not for the life of me come up with a joke about a sandwich with Jewishish Rye bread.
For once I can not in good cause blame Obama. This was my failing.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Well, that makes it all better, you bilious shut-in.
Cervantes
@Liberty60:No one here has personally experienced any consequences of the NSA information gathering; I don’t know anyone who is terrified of the secret polilce.
So it becomes an argument about hypotheticals, about “what IF they used the information for nefarious purposes…”.
Not “hypotheticals” — and “nefarious” is a matter of perspective.
We’ve had a number of threads about the US spying on leaders and diplomats of allied countries. Such spying is not a surprise — but is it “nefarious”? What about penetration of the UN’s electronic communications infrastructure? Or the wholesale bugging of the EU’s offices in New York? Are these activities “nefarious”? How do you know? And what if the NSA were involved in attempts to control and misdirect UN resolutions — as happened in 2003 re Bush’s attack on Iraq? Was that “nefarious”? Do you know anyone who “has personally experienced any consequences” of Bush’s Iraq war? I know hundreds — and that’s not even counting innocent Iraqis.
Betty Cracker
@Omnes Omnibus: True. Maybe we need a published standard for what constitutes a sufficient outcry against an offensive comment. An insufficient level of denunciation might be a species of microaggression. Or is it nanoaggression?
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker: Just to be sure I hereby re-denounce Stalin and the broccoli mandate.
LAC
@The Art of Compromise: don’t mind Corner Stone- he/she is the resident doorstop of these threads Personality of a doorstop, wit of a doorstop, always here like a doorstop. The fact that you got her/him in a three glasses of wine rage so early is refreshing.
The Art of Compromise
@handsmile: thanks, yet meant know of. It is “she” and yes a woman of color. looking forward to future discussions.
handsmile
@Chris:
“Unless Al Jazeera became “mainstream….”
That will only happen the day after we all get ponies and unicorns run free, but with this week’s agreement between Al Jazeera America and Time Warner Cable, at least subscribers in TWC’s two major media markets (NYC and Los Angeles) will finally be able to watch the channel.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/24/business/media/time-warner-cable-reaches-agreement-to-distribute-al-jazeera-america.html?_r=0
I’ve opined any number of times on this blog that Al Jazeera English (which had been carried by TWC) was the best, most informative news channel/programming on American television. AJE is no longer available in this country, and I’m grateful that I’ll finally be able to assess whether AJA is a worthy successor.
ETA: A Pitiful Request: how does one now get the blue-framed block quotes? I used to know how, but after this site was “re-designed” it no longer worked for me. What’s the magic formula?
Cassidy
@Omnes Omnibus: Why do you love Hitler?
Omnes Omnibus
@handsmile: Look above the comment box but below the name/E-mail/URL boxes. The quote button is what you want. Highlight the text and then slap that button.
The Art of Compromise
@LAC: Thanks, you made me chuckle. I love to be noticed, for substance of course.
Chris
@Cervantes:
No.
I hope to God America is spying on every country out there that’s even remotely of interest, just as I hope for the sake of every other country on Earth that those countries are spying on us. Nations have different interests. Period. I’m not worried that we’ll ever go to war with Germany, Britain, Japan or France, but that doesn’t mean our interests won’t conflict from time to time (hello, Suez; hello, Iraq) and it would be fucking stupid of us, and all of them too, if there were no intelligence resources for situations like that.
Chris
@handsmile:
I agree that AJE is always worth it (though I liked their old website’s design better).
As for the blockquotes: I am no expert of any kind, but my blockquotes still show up inside a bluish block, automatically without me having to do anything other than blockquoting. Could it just be your computer?
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: I’m glad we could come to some sort of accord here. I feel our mutual non-nanoaggression pact should be the standard bearer to resolve the crisis of discourse we’re currently in.
Corner Stone
@handsmile: Are you running No Script or other script blockers? I have to “allow” some scripts to run to use the quoting tools here.
droog
So who was Hayden talking to on the phone? Or have the tables turned and now the reporter is seeking anonymity to avoid being caught in a scandal?
Cervantes
@Chris: OK, you addressed one example — how about the others?
handsmile
@Omnes Omnibus:
Thanks for indulging this Luddite. That’s what I had done to no avail (but had done before successfully), but I’ll try it out again on some dead thread ends.
Glad to read above somewhere that your personal weather is clearing up.
ETA: Chris/Corner Stone: appreciate your advice as well. i’ll poke around with it. No, Chris, it’s undoubtedly the computer user.
Ripley
Stop Watching Yourself
Morbo
Guy Fawkes mask spotting alert! Guy Fawkes mask spotting alert!
Omnes Omnibus
@handsmile: You could also try doing it by hand. Type (quote) before the quote and (/quote) after. Just use instead of ( and ).
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Okay.
I expect that we and every other power capable of doing it is doing it. Those not capable of doing are probably spying by other means
Same as above.
No.
See Chris’s comment above.
The NSA doesn’t do that. It isn’t their thing. The CIA is a better suspect.
Fuck yeah.
Yes.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: The NSA doesn’t do that. It isn’t their thing.
You’re mistaken.
You must not have heard of “Frank Koza” or Katharine Gun.
Cassidy
@Morbo: Now we know they’re serious.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: We might have a little bit of talking past one another on this point. The NSA collects information. It doesn’t act on it. To the extent that attempts to control and misdirect UN resolutions were happening and I agree that they were, it wasn’t the NSA doing it. It was another agency doing it using information provided by the NSA. Information can be used for good or evil.
ETA: I have few problems with the NSA monitoring other countries. That is why it is there in the first place. I do have major problems with the NSA or anyone else monitoring ordinary civilians ( and I include suspected criminals in this group) without first obtaining a valid warrant.
Liberty60
@Cervantes: This is where a bit of liberal nuance becomes handy-
Shoudl the government have a free hand to spy on Angela Merkel, Chancellor of Germany?
Yes, I think so.
On Angela Merkel, accountant from Des Moines? No, not so much.
One of the most dangerous developments since 9-11 is the breaking down of firewalls between national security and law enforcement, of the blurring of lines between meth dealers and terrorists.
What I meant by this being abstract- government abuse almost always begins with people at the margins- those who are already on the fringes of society, without support or ability to protest.The witch trials, Mcarthyism- these things didn’t stop until they targeted people high enough on the food chain to push back.
I doubt that anyone here is in danger of being arrested or imprisoned; but a low level dealer or petty criminal, a juvenile deliquent? Those are the people who will feel the first impacts of all this and I doubt we would know about the abuse until long after countless lives are ruined.
Omnes Omnibus
@Liberty60:
I am sure this blog is full of petty criminals. Kay seems kind of shifty – all that talk of working to benefit people, it’s got to be a cover for something.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: To the extent that attempts to control and misdirect UN resolutions were happening and I agree that they were, it wasn’t the NSA doing it. It was another agency doing it using information provided by the NSA.
Do you really want to rely on this paper-thin (and purely theoretical) distinction?
Here’s something written by aforementioned “Frank Koza”:
The complete message, written in January, 2003, was published by the Guardian/Observer in March, 2003. There were dozens of other such messages in January, 2003 alone.
Cassidy
@Cervantes: You’re falling for TV and movie tropes.
Cervantes
@Liberty60: This is where a bit of liberal nuance becomes handy.
“Liberal nuance,” whatever that is, has nothing to do with the matter at hand. What you wrote initially, to which I responded, was precisely this: “No one here has personally experienced any consequences of the NSA information gathering.”
Do you stand by this assertion?
Cervantes
@Cassidy: Really? That’s fascinating.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Well I happen to think that it matters. I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to get information about what other countries’ leaders were thinking. I don’t think there is anything wrong with trying to influence other countries’ leaders. In the case of the 2003 Iraq invasion, the real problem was that the US was doing something stupid and immoral. What if we were trying to do something about global warming – wouldn’t it help to know where various countries’ leaders stood the merits of certain proposals? How far they would go? And what might persuade them?
ETA: All your Koza quote says is that the NSA was trying to get information.
Cassidy
@Cervantes: Not really. There is nothing fascinating in your assertions.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: Well, sure, the NSA in some alternative universe may be at this very moment be producing rainbow unicorns.
In our universe, in 2003, it engaged and aided in (to use your words) “attempts to control and misdirect UN resolutions” that led to an illegal and immoral war in which thousands upon thousands died.
Cervantes
@Cassidy: Actually, and as you well know, I didn’t say my assertions were fascinating. What I found fascinating was your assertion, completely groundless, that I am “falling for TV and movie tropes.”
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: ETA: All your Koza quote says is that the NSA was trying to get information.
For a specific purpose.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: I do draw a something of a line between information and the uses to which the information is put. For example, let’s say Ii find out that someone’s wife has died and that the funeral is tomorrow. I could send a sympathy card and go to the funeral. I could also rob the guy’s house while he is at the funeral.
Let’s change this a bit. What, in your view, should the US be able to do as far as information gathering? Should it spy? If so, where? On whom? Etc.
Cassidy
@Cervantes: Because the simple and real answer is sexy enough for you. I get it. It’s hard to fap away to some analyst listening to a receiver of some sort when you can get all squeally over imagining they’re all Tom Cruise in a bodysuit.
Betty Cracker
@Liberty60: From reading this blog, I begin to suspect I’m alone in this opinion, but I think Angela Merkel, the Chancellor of Germany, should be able to use her private cell phone without worrying about her allies eavesdropping on personal conversations. I wasn’t surprised to hear that the US was allegedly tapping her phone, but it still strikes me as unsporting.
Cervantes
@Cassidy: What on earth are you talking about?
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes:
From the Koza quote. That is the whole purpose of intelligence gathering. To get an edge or head off surprises. As I said, the problem was the policy – the war. Now, if you want to argue that every member of the national security establish all the way down to a private just out of basic training was acting with nefarious purposes during that time frame, fine.
Omnes Omnibus
@Betty Cracker:
It is unsporting.
Cassidy
@Cervantes: Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the impression from your comments responding to OO, that the NSA was caught performing some super secret operation where they were doing dead drops and double blind feints and all kinds of cool spy stuff. The reality is boring. If you put a picture of an NSA office next to one of Microsoft’s, you couldn’t tell the difference. They’re analysts and experts in ELINT. They aren’t like the CIA with a special operations division. It’s a fairly bland reality. They aren’t the bogeymen.
Chris
Sorry. Was Skyping.
@Cervantes:
Fair enough;
An inter-governmental organization including virtually every country in the world? No, I have no problem spying on them.
Or with that. For the same reasons.
The only problems I could foresee in spying on the UN and EU involve jurisdiction (wouldn’t their offices on American soil be FBI turf and that of other domestic agencies? Either way, it comes with a different rulebook than spying on people in Paris or Berlin – but that’s not to say that it shouldn’t happen). The fact that again, those are government-based organizations makes it even easier for me to say “sure, go ahead.” It’s not like we’re spying on private NGOs, corporations, churches, social movements, etc.
Sure, but it’s the same as the general “intelligence failure” meme when applied to the Iraq War – it applies the blame to a specific intelligence agency or procedure for what was actually a policy decision made at the very top. (You can’t say that being able to “misdirect or control” foreign governments or organizations isn’t an extremely useful skill for the intelligence community to have; it shouldn’t have been used for this end, but that’s because the Iraq War was a shitty idea from start to finish).
And while I’ll grant that “misdirect and control” is moving into more nefarious territory than simply gathering intelligence – when it comes to gathering intelligence (which is what this whole scandal’s been focused on), I have a hard time thinking that that’s ever a bad idea in international relations. How we use the information can be nefarious. But it’s always better to have more information than less.
handsmile
@Betty Cracker:
No, you’re not alone, but I don’t think we”ll need a very large table.
I myself might use a word less charitable than “unsporting” (though I may have detected a whiff of snark in it). “Myopic,” “obtuse,” “self-defeating” come to mind.
@Omnes Omnibus:
This was the funniest thing I’ve read today. Thanks!
fuckwit
Waaaait a minute… didn’t we have a former CIA director who was using Yahoo Mail as a dead-drop to coordinate with his married mistress (and biographer!) their trysts while cheating on his wife of 40 years?
The OPSEC of these morons is ridiculous.
I’ve said this for the decades I’ve been working in IT: security is an illusion.
You’re always playing roulette, reallly.
Cervantes
@Betty Cracker: No, I don’t think you’re alone.
gwangung
@different-church-lady:
Hmmm….to get praise, you DO have to be good at it.
Going for the easy joke isn’t good.
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: I do draw a something of a line between information and the uses to which the information is put. For example, let’s say Ii find out that someone’s wife has died and that the funeral is tomorrow. I could send a sympathy card and go to the funeral. I could also rob the guy’s house while he is at the funeral.
Imprecise analogy. In our case (Frank Koza – Katharine Gun) the NSA was not just randomly “finding out” things. It was actively seeking information to achieve a specific — and illegitimate — purpose.
Cervantes
@Cassidy: Maybe I’m wrong, but I get the impression from your comments responding to OO, that the NSA was caught performing some super secret operation where they were doing dead drops and double blind feints and all kinds of cool spy stuff.
Yes, maybe you’re wrong.
Cervantes
@Chris:
And what if these activities were against the law?* Would they still be OK with you?
*You guessed it — they are.
Cassidy
@Cervantes: Well, that would be your fault for not speaking clearly and trafficking in conspiracy. But keep up with the evil NSA meme. It’s funny.
Cervantes
@Cassidy: So your jumping to ludicrous conclusions is my fault. Got it.
Cassidy
@Cervantes: Again, if you can’t express yourself intelligently, them maybe you shouldn’t. As someone said yesterday, have a think before you hit publish.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes: Both Chris and I have addressed this in other comments here. Going back at it is is probably beating a dead horse since I think we (you and I) simply disagree.
I would be interested in seeing your answers to the questions I posed.
Cervantes
@Cassidy: I have no idea what you’re talking about.
Funny thing is, neither do you, it seems.
Chris
@Cervantes:
Whose laws?
Cervantes
@Omnes Omnibus: Both Chris and I have addressed this in other comments here. Going back at it is is probably beating a dead horse since I think we (you and I) simply disagree.
Well, I agree that “simply gathering intelligence” (Chris’s words) is OK. The problem is, that’s the hypothetical; whereas the reality is never that simple. You can build up a huge apparatus to “simply gather intelligence” — but watch out.
I would be interested in seeing your answers to the questions I posed.
You mean your (very) general questions about what “the US [should] be able to do as far as information gathering? Should it spy? If so, where? On whom? Etc.”? These are complicated questions involving legalities as well as practicalities. I don’t have simple answers. My point in this thread (you can check this) was just to respond to the person who claimed not to know of any down-side to what the NSA has actually (not hypothetically) done.
MomSense
@Betty Cracker:
I was just gearing up to find out WTF he meant by that comment. Thanks for jumping in.
Omnes Omnibus
@Cervantes:
Fair enough. I would still say that even in the case of the pre-Iraq War actions, the opprobrium should fall on the policy makers. Looking for information that policy makers want is the job of an intel agency.
Cervantes
@Chris: Ours.
The Convention on the Privileges and Immunities of the United Nations (1946) and the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations (1961) are both incorporated into our federal laws.
Chris
@Cervantes:
Depends on the context, actually, which is why your legal comment is a good point.
I really can’t say I give a shit if we break foreign laws by spying on foreign countries (e.g. spying on Merkel’s phone lines). That’s what our spooks supposed to do.
On the other hand I’m pretty much never okay with spying on Americans in America, in the conventional sense of “spying” – I have no problem being wiretapped per se, but I want to know there was a judge issuing a warrant for that to happen, same as any suspect of a crime. Checks and balances.
Diplomacy gets into a grayer area. It’s governed by treaties and conventions that we have signed and therefore it is our law. On the other hand, good luck trying to run any kind of intelligence or counterintelligence operations if you choose to ignore the fact that embassies and consulates are exactly where a ton of our opponents’ intelligence operations are being run from, or choose to abide by the “they’re off limits” rule. That’s been a rule-that’s-there-to-be-broken for pretty much every country ever since diplomatic relations were first regulated.
ETA: yeah, there you go (hadn’t seen latest response). See above.
different-church-lady
@Betty Cracker:
If she thinks that, then the German people ought to be mighty worried that their leader is naive as all fuck.
different-church-lady
@gwangung: I never said he was a good comedian.
GHayduke (formerly Lojasmo)
@The Art of Compromise:
He is in the stalker asshole tribe.
Corner Stone
Just wanted to highlight this again from Ash Can in last night’s thread:
“If I have a double standard, it extends only to the fact that I trust a Barack Obama to use America’s intelligence capabilities more effectively to investigate domestic terrorists (as well as foreign ones) “
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Isn’t that what voting for some one says? That you trust them more than the other guy with the levers of power? Ash Can’s statement was not an expression of unlimited trust; it was a relative statement. I figure that an Obama will try to do a good job. I figure that a Republican will try to fuck me over.
SiubhanDuinne
@handsmile:
It was a short opera :-) The whole thing was about the length of one solid Wagnerian act.
As did I, when I lived in NYC many years ago. Cheap seats, and a fair number of SRO tickets. Good times.
As for today’s opera, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I hadn’t been familiar with Kentridge before today, my very bad, but he is a fucking genius. The whole thing was visually almost overwhelming — I kept wanting to hit the “pause” button so I could study a particular image — and I guess my overall sense of the music was that the mature Shostakovich was lurking in every number. I need to hear it again, more than once, as I expect I missed a great deal. Anyhow, it was enormous fun. Now I’m having a glass of wine — okay, two glasses of wine — and wIting for Game 3 of the WS to start.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: No, I disagree. I don’t place trust upon any elected official with the power of a nation state, or its apparatus. I suspect those who do.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Depends on the meaning of trust. Or the degree of trust….
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: It’s kind of a silly argument as far as I am concerned.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: It seemed like you wanted to make trusting an issue by posting Ash Can’s comment. I can trust someone to fix my toilet without trusting him with my bank account info.
The Art of Compromise
a href=”#comment-4685068″>GHayduke (formerly Lojasmo): righteous
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: Like I said, deeply silly and unserious.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Got into the ether supply already, huh?
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: This seems like an, I know you are line of assault.
Whatever. You don’t trust politicians any more than I do. You just like to dance round the Maypole about it.
It’s almost as tiresome as the stupidly tedious bullshit different church lady keeps posting as if it’s clever somehow.
Omnes Omnibus
@Corner Stone: Whatever yourself. You are smart enough to understand what Ash Can said, and if you missed it for some reason, you are certainly smart enough to understand what I said. If you want to twist it, that’s on you.
Corner Stone
@Omnes Omnibus: So sanctimonious. Can’t finish your comment.
AxelFoley
@Bill E Pilgrim:
Et tu, dudebro?
AxelFoley
@White Trash Liberal:
Damn well said.
Betty Cracker
@different-church-lady: Whatever her faults, Merkel seems clever enough to understand the difference between “should be” and “can.” I doubt very much she was surprised either.