A Supreme Schadenfreude Moment

In what was called a "bombshell" denunciation, Senator Feinstein accused the CIA of conducting an illegal search and seizure of her Senate committees offices and work-product in, what she said, was an attempt to intimidate a legitimate congressional investigation. 

Senator Feinstein is an incurable safety freak and security hack.  She is that kind of psychotic who sees "potential risks" in just anything and is willing to batten down everything in the illusory and interminable pursuit of total safety, "as in a dream where our pursuer cannot catch us nor can we escape…" (Iliad,  Bk XXII.) 

During Senate hearings after the Oklahoma City bombing, Feinstein asked rhetorically and plaintively, "the First Amendment doesn't include the right to teach someone how to make a bomb, does it?"

Actually Dianne, the First Amendment does encompass chemistry. 

It was a small, passing remark but one that provided a glimpse into Feinstein's interior cosmos.  The remark did not come from some yahoo on a bar-stool but from a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee.  One would think that a person serving on one of the Government's highest law-related bodies would have some fundamental understanding of the First Article of the Constitution's Bill of Rights. 

The First Amendment does not protect a conspiracy to make a bomb but that is not what Feinstein asked; and, as a member of the Judiciary Committee, one is entitled to expect that she understands the difference between teaching and conspiring. 

What she evidently does not understand is what the First Amendment entails and requires.  James Madison, the principal author of the Bill of Rights put it this way in Federalist Paper No. 13 

"It could not be less folly to abolish liberty, which is essential to political life, because it nourishes [divisive] faction, than it would be to wish the annihilation of air, which is essential to animal life, because it imparts to fire its destructive agency."

Although Madison was talking about political liberty and partisan animosities, he might as well have been talking about the Amendment which most primarily guarantees that liberty.

FREEDOM CARRIES RISKS. This is something Feinstein simply does not understand.  Her unwavering dedication to eliminate risks is in fact an equally unflinching crusade to exterminate freedom.

Given this security craving disorder, it is hardly surprising that Feinstein should have been the Senate's foremost champion of CIA/NSA snooping. 

She was among the first to accuse Snowden of being an enemy of peace, safety and virginity.   As the depth and scope of NSA snooping was revealed, Feinstein fought tooth and claw to allow the safety-spying to continue under the most cosmetic window dressing conceivable.  All, of course, in the name of protecting our precocious children from drugs, terrorism, and endangerments of every sort. 

It is thus supremely satisfying to watch Feinstein squeal in indignation and pain as the shoe gets shoved onto her foot.  How dare the CIA spy on her staff!!!  Do they think that they are mere ordinary, common Amurkans? The gall!

It is better still. To the schadenfreude one may add a kind of political slapstick as the CIA sues Feinstein for leaking information damaging to national security while she counter-sues the CIA for violating her (no longer-existent) Fourth Amendment rights.

We wish them both the best of luck. May they rip one another to shreds.

©

Direct from the Jawbone of an Ass

The United States seems to be having a bargain basement sale on astroturf -- otherwise known as stirring up phony grass-roots protests in order to destabilize a "target" government. 

The denouement in the Ukraine has hardly abated before Uncle Sam is busy rolling out the turf in Venezuela. 

This requires the usual sound-track from on high.  Arriving in Chile, Vice President Biden, declaimed:

 Confronting peaceful protesters with force and in some cases armed militias, limiting freedom of the press and assembly … is not in line with the solid standards of democracy that we have in most of our hemisphere ...

Really Joe? 

You real mean that?

Not content with one asinine comment Biden went on to say that President Maduro  "should listen to the Venezuelan people."  Evidently despite access to the CIA's best intelligence, Biden hasn't bothered to look at the polls from Venezuela.

In fact he has.  He's just a shame-faced two-faced sum-bitch liar who pimps for an out-of-control, crazed government that infiltrates and suppresses protest at home while infiltrating and provoking protests abroad. 

Someone was On Board.

BREAKING NEWS:  A passenger jet has disappeared into thin air...  uh...  deep water, without a trace.   N'ary a frantic last transmission; n'ary a beeb ... just a soft and almost silent blurp.

When this sort of thing happens, the first thing to do is: check the passenger list.

We have no idea who was on board; but someone was.

©

UPDATE 15 MARCH:  According to BBC News, investigators of the missing plane said today "in light of the new evidence, the investigation had "entered a new phase" and would focus on the crew and passengers on board."    You read it first in BARFO.   >lolsmirk<
 

An Ensnaring Irony

As a pure graphic, we thought the WOLFANGEL was kinda neat.  In our opinion, the most grabbing graphic symbols are always composed of a simple, sharp angularity.

Jung would probably have something to say about it; but it seems rather obvious that the cross and the swastika have an attractive power independent of the ideologies they represent

We knew the that the wolfangel was a runic letter but we were curious what it stood for and how it came to be.  Enter Wiki.

We learned that the rune was derived from a double metal hook, attached to a chain and a post which was used to ensnare and kill wolves.  Bait would be stuck on either end of the hook.  When the wolf ate the bate and then tried to withdraw the hook would pierce into the animal's throat.  The more the wolf pulled, the more he killed himself.  If, as was unlikely, he simply stood still, he would starve to death.

In German the word is not a wolf-angel but a wolf-angle and it stands for an incredibly cruel and malicious form of killing.  (As in fact, does the cross.)  The graphic suddenly appeared not so neat.

There is an irony in the Ukrainian nationalists' use of the wolfangel as their symbol; for, if they get their wish, they will only find themselves ensnared and choked by I.M.F. loans which will bleed their country to death.

©

Thinking Inside the Box

In viral news, Estonian foreign minister, Urmas Paet, was caught on tape telling Lady Ashton, the EU foreign affairs minister, “There is now [a] stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovich, but it was somebody from the new coalition."  Ashton replies, "Gosh."

The remark was seized by opponents of the usurper regime in Kiev as further proof of a conspiracy to bring the Ukraine into the fold of Western hegemony.  But that is not the real story behind the taped conversation.  Or, put another way, proof of a hegemonic conspiracy came from Lady Ashton herself.

During the conversation, Ashton talked at length about her discussions with various protest leaders and members of various civic associations.  She told Paet that, in these discussions, she discussed the financial and technical help that the West could offer Ukraine in "changing" its "political economy."  According to Ashton, the West has had experience and success in bringing about these changes in other former Eastern Bloc countries.  The same assistance and investment  could be forthcoming to the Ukraine but none of it would materialize unless the West had someone to "partner" with.  It was therefore, said Ashton, essential that there be a responsible government in Kiev for the West to deal with.


What was astonishing about Ashton's remarks was her conviction and sweetness of tone in the way she said these things as if it were the most obvious and natural thing in the world.  It was quite clear that an alternative political economy -- one which did not involve debt servitude to the I.M.F. or penetration by foreign investors -- was simply not in Ashton's conceptual cosmos.  But of course, we assume you want to be our vassals!  What else?

Ashton's sweetness and light was simply the Fetish of the Commodity on a global scale.  The West is absolutely and zealously certain of its Mission in Plunder and that history is on its side. Unfortunately too many Ukrainians are eager to crawl into the box


©Barbo 2014

Worse than Pogey Bait

New depths of shamelessness and hypocrisy are reached every day with the U.S. response to the Ukrainian crisis.   Secretary John Kerry fluttered into Kiev yesterday "with $1 billion in loan guarantees meant to support the country’s efforts to integrate with the West and offers of technical assistance."   (NYT)

Are we supposed to choke up with tears at heart warming magnanimity of Amurka?  Last we read, the Ukraine was something like 40 billion dollars in the hole.   The Russian Federation offered in the vicinity of $15 billion.   And now flieth in Washington's John Kerry doing a very weak parody of St. Francis with an offer of what amounts to little more than a pignata of dried fruit and nuts.

Actually, the U.S. gesture is far worse.  It is a sordid ploy to hook the Ukraine on western credit.  When Foreign Minister Hague took to the foyer the other day to announce the West's willingness to work with the IMF in providing loans to the Ukraine what he was promising was to turn the Ukraine into a debt slave.

Has anyone notice how IMF loans are never repaid but always rolled over?  IMF loans are a pure and outright credit card scam.  The borrower is enticed into the promised land of cornucopia only to find himself on a fees-and-interest treadmill.  With each "rollover" more "austerity" and "privatisation" is demanded until the whole country is reduced to economic vassalage.  And vassalage is a polite way of saying a slum surrounding glittering towers of corporate ownership and control.

This is what the word "integrate" means.

©barfo, 2014

Going Back to Which Century - The Return of the Boyars

The inimitable Kerry-Obambi team have wagged their boney fingers at Russia, accusing the erstwhile Soviet Union of "going back to the 19th century."  If diplomacy were vaudeville the Blustering Duo would walk away with the prize.

The original problem, of course, is that the US elite are about as ignorant of history as their own peasants. It is evident, that neither Kerry nor Obambi have heard of the Boyars.

The Boyars were that class of the slavic aristocracy ranked just beneath royal nobility.  The term does not have an exact equivalent in western hierarchies but it is fair to say that the Boyars were a class of chiefs who ruled vast estates like little kings.  They were the prop and the bane of those kings who ruled (at least nominally) the entire realm … although where "the realm" began and ended was often a matter of dispute.

In the 17th century, Peter the Great sought to curb the power and influence of the Boyars.  In truth, he simply westernized them into a superficially European aristocracy.  It was not until the Great October Revolution that an end was put to Boyardism.

In 1991, the Soviet Union was politically dissolved.  Equally dissolved was the centrally planned communist economy.  It is not too simple to say that the economic turkey was simply carved up into juicy pieces given to well connected individuals who became billionaires overnight.

What malicious idiots like Samantha Powers and Dinesh d'Souza call "liberalization" consists in this: the ordinary slob is allowed to run amok politically while the economic foundations of society are turned into "privatized" fiefs belonging to and run by Oligarchs.

The reason for this is also, basically, simple.  A modern mass society of 100, 200, 300 million stomachs cannot be run on the basis of little shops and carts, making shoes and delivering apples.  Sustaining those magnitudes of people requires commensurately large and coordinated infrastructures.  In fact, virtually everything becomes an infrastructure.  Walmart is no less an infrastructure than Gazprom.  

Anarchist pipe dreams aside, economic engines cannot be operated with the freedom and chaos of nominal politics. The paradigm of any large company is hierarchical and military.  This is a meta-political truth and it applies to any system.  Even within the planned soviet economy, large economic units were, in terms of their functional operation, autonomous divisions were run by economic colonels and generals.  "Privatisation" meant simply that these "division chiefs" were allowed to keep the profits for themselves rather than depositing them in the National Kitty.

In short, what happened in 1991 was the Return of the Boyars.   This was a return not to the 19th century but to the 16th.  With this in mind, the Kerry-Obambi exercise in chastisement can be seen for the utter imbecility it is.  What leaders of the neo-liberal global economy are in fact advocating, under the banner of "free trade" is simply a universal reverse march into the pre 19th century past.

©

The Awfulness of Them Y'ar Oligarchs

The New York Times rattles on in its campaign to discredit Ukraine's elected government and to remove the spotlight from the West's very unclean hands in the matter.   A front page video showed stunned Ukrainians walking through  the sumptuous halls and glittering bad taste of the ousted president's luxurious private villa. 

Imagine that!  While ordinary Ukrainians suffered unemployment, inflation and dwindling opportunities, the oligarchs were living in ostentatious splendor.  

Imagine that ...

Oooops!   Hold on! Wrong palace!  Some clown in the projection booth got the Bill Gates mansion mixed up with Yanukovich's woody palace.

Sorry folks... this is the Yanukovich hillside Titanic

As we were saying....

Those Awful Oligarchs certainly deserve to be run out of country on a rail!   Yes indeed.  What shameless pigs.   And we are overjoyed the Ukrainians will now share in the benefits of  Oligarchical Capitalism

Translating Hague's English

Her Majesty's Secretary of State for Foreign & Commonwealth Affairs, delivered some remarks in Received English,  after meeting  with John Kerry at the U.S. State Department.    We thought we should provide a translation into Plain Talk.   Speaking in the building's main lobby, Hague said

I’ve had very good talks with Secretary Kerry on a wide range of subjects, but of course the situation in Ukraine has been absolutely top of the agenda. I think The United States and the United Kingdom see this in exactly the same way, our fundamental interest is in a free, democratic Ukraine, with free institutions, so the people of Ukraine can make their own decisions about their own future.

John and I chuckled over our better than hoped for success in the Ukraine and we agree that  our fundamental interest is in seeing the Ukraine coopted into the western political-economic orbit

And We discussed the urgent need for financial support for Ukraine that is likely to arise.   I’ll also have meetings with the International Monetary Fund here in Washington tomorrow about that.  But the importance of course of Ukraine  being able to meet the conditions for that.

For this to happen we will need to hook the Ukraine into the orbit as a debtor nation by making clear that it must meet our conditions if it wants financial assistance (loans).

And it is important for economic reform to take place; for the pervasive culture of corruption over many years to be tackled effectively; for the international community to be able to see that there will be continuity in the determination to tackle these issues; and that therefore long term international support can be given on a reasonable basis.

These conditions include  "economic reform" by which i mean a reliable and consistent opening up of the Ukraine to foreign investment and to legal and institutional protections to foreign investment (i.e. buying up the country by foreign capitalists).

And of course we encourage the new leaders in the Ukraine to form an inclusive government, one that can command a new political consensus in that country.

It goes without saying that the new government must be able to appear to have a popular mandate and must effectively suppress or co-opt any opposition to the new scheme of things...

And we don’t see this, in the US and the UK, we don't see this in a zero-sum strategic sense. It is very important for Ukraine to be able to work closely with European nations, and the European Union, in good economic cooperation, but also of course to be able to cooperate with Russia on many issues.

... in which the Ukraine is inextricably and permanently tied into the western neo-liberal orbit but also of course to be able to cooperate with Russia on many issues, with some flexibility in allowing Russia to rummage through left over remainders.

So Secretary Kerry and I have both been talking to Foreign Minister Lavrov over recent days, and we will continue that contact with Russia as well as working with the Ukrainians on this ‘extraordinary transition’, as Secretary Kerry called it earlier, that is now taking place.

To this end, we will continue diplomatic follow up on what has been an amazingly successful subversion and coup of the legitimately elected government.

The independence and territorial integrity of the Ukraine is of course  extremely important

We wish to make clear, however, that allowing Russia to pick through the left overs does not mean that we are going to split this plump turkey between them and us;  we basically want the whole bird.

And this is why all of us who are giving our best advice to the new authorities in the Ukraine are saying:  form an inclusive government, involve people from different parts of the Ukraine including form the east and south of Ukraine.  It is important for Ukrainians to be able to make these decisions together after the terrible divisions of the recent months.   So we, I, also extend our strong support for the territorial integrity and unity of the Ukraine

And so we are telling the wedge faction that took over the government, to start putting the show together and, most importantly, to induce the pro-Russian eastern part of the country to go along with the geo-political re-orientation of the country and -- for God's sake -- not to break away and join Russia

This is a country that needs financial assistance from many sources, including  from Russia.  it's not about pulling it away from Russia it's about enabling it to make its own choices and it is obviously not in the interest of Russia for the Ukraine to face economic collapse.  And there's a very difficult economic circumstances there, a very big deficit as you know big financing requirements the debt falling due.  It isn't in the interests of Russia to pull away from that.  And this is the case that we will make to Russia.

And what we're going to tell Russia is this:  you are just as invested in the Ukraine as we want to be (i.e. to the tune of 130 billion dollars).  The Ukraine is broke, and if it goes belly up, you stand to loose as much as anyone.  So we're willing to shore up the dikes, but the price of that -- the price of your not loosing your investment -- is that you've got to hand over the lions share of the country's riches to us.

~o0o~

Napoleon did not call the English "perfidious" without reason.   A more consummately hypocritical country can hardly be imagined.  The English have this inimitable way of making it sound like they are doing you a favor by fucking you up the butt…. and, of course, that  it is the most natural thing in the world.

What secretary Hague has blithely omitted to mention is that the government that was just over thrown was democratically elected in elections which the international community ranked as free and fair.   To be sure the Ukraine is politically divided between East and West, just as that Lighthouse of Democracy is divided and deadlocked between North and South.  The existence of political division  -- of two broad parties -- does not mean that the country does not have democratic institutions.  So Hague stands in the lobby and intones for the building of democracy  in the Ukraine after western-supported cadres subverted democracy in the Ukraine.

And to this piety, Hague adds, disparaging sniffling about "corruption" by which he can only mean that certain oligarchs have gotten the economic pie sewn up between them.  The problem with this corruption, in Hague's mind,  is that it is not our corruption and so the way to get rid of corruption is to allow our oligarchs to cut up the pie. 

And this is the price that the Ukraine will have to pay if it wants a pathetic financial life saver tossed to it.   Hague promises, in all glowy earnestness, to subject the Ukraine to the Greek Cure:  western loans to pay this month's bills in exchange for permanent debt slavery and parcelling out  ("privatizing") the country assets to European and American fat cats and banks. 

Note: the official text of Hagues remarks omitted many of his more obliquely candid remarks.  What he actually said on tape can be seen HERE

©

Hollowed Out "Times" -- The Selling of a Putsch

2014 will go down as the year the New York Times descended to dishing out plain propaganda without so much as a passing effort at journalistic reporting.

In what can only be described as sugary piece of caramelized popcorn, the on-line Times' front page broadcast a glossy propaganda fantasy entitled,

The video opens with the melodic and rich sing song of something resembling Orthodox chant.  Expectant faces are aglow in the amber light of candles.

The masses are cheering

Girls are weeping for joy.

Democracy has arrived.

Hearts are beating ecstatically

"I see people in a new way," she  says, pentacostally.

               
Earnest twenty somethings, explain that all they want is freedom and to join the EU.

Captives are released!

The same two girls "interviewed" earlier end the video laughing and singing "Love Love Love."

The skill with which this cotton candy was spun is admirable.  The message is simple: the will of the People peaceably assembled has magically brought down a tyrant; democracy has dawned; hope and change are at hand!

The medium is simple: the message is brought to you by young, fresh-faced, good-looking, happy, twenty-something Twitterites -- who could be the boy or girl next door, your own child to embrace, your own boyfriend to kiss, your own girl-friend to fuck.  You really identify.

Good News Brought to you by Good Folks.  Cain't get more Amurkan than that.  Whatever is going on in the Ukraine; it's all good. Be happy. America is winning.  Fulfillment is nigh.

But the psuedo-reportage was such a filthy piece of falsehood that the Times' editorial staff and the video's producers fully deserved to be lined up against a wall and shot… or at least sent to a shoe factory in western China.

As bad as the falsehoods was the sheer infantilism fobbed off as information.  Peaceful chanting and twitting did not bring down the government. 

For days on end in from December to February, masses of people did assemble to protest in Kiev's main square.  The protests were peaceful and were allowed by the government.  As might be expected, as the protests continued unabated, the government sought to disperse the crowd in the usual manner as occurs everywhere in the world including the Cradle of Freedom. 

But as events dragged on into January, armed, trained "elements" among the protestors began to initiate violent actions of intimidation, beating, shooting and bombing which they themselves frankly described as a "coup" or "revolution" aimed at bringing the downfall of the Government. 

The coup was accomplished when members of the government's parliamentary majority were intimidated and terrorized into absenting themselves and an anti-government "quorum" voted to depose president Yanukovitch.  This is what Obambi and the New York Times call Ukraine's legitimate government.

This was definitely not twitting and chanting. Governments are not brought down by student protests; and this government was brought down by carefully calibrated and escalated violence.

Without ever explaining how or why, the Times' narrative assumes and insinuates that the Yanukovic government was some sort of bad tyranny.  Bad Out. Good In.  is the party line which the Times' faithfully trumpets.  This is not only nonsense it is an outright fabrication. 

The Yanukovitch government was freely elected in elections which no one has claimed were not fair.  The White House itself stated:  “This peaceful expression of the political will of Ukrainian voters is another positive step in strengthening democracy in Ukraine."

How then does the overthrow of a democratically elected government herald the new dawn of democracy?  Neither the White House nor the Times nor the western mudia bother to explain. 

The reason for this change of heart-cum-memory lapse is simple.  Neo-libs in the West want to co-opt the Ukraine into their so-called co-prosperity sphere.  Neo-cons in the West want to add Ukraine to the NATO military alliance against Russia.

No one disputes that the Ukraine is effectively bankrupt. This was not the sole work of Yanukovich, but just as much the handiwork of his defeated opponent, Julia Tymoshenko, who was the country's previous president.  The bankrupting of a country takes time.

As a bankrupt, Ukraine needs two things: loans to tide it over and trade agreements to sustain and stimulate its economy.  Russia offered 15 billion dollars in loans.  The West, 900 million.  Russia offered subsidized natural gas and membership in its Eur-Asian "common market".  The EU offered membership in itself the "benefits" of which consisted in "opening up the Ukraine to investment."  In other words, the EU offered Ukraine the "Greek Cure."

It was perhaps a Hobbsian choice and the Ukraine has been roughly divided equally over the matter.  Yanukovich did not run on a pro-Russia platform.  He in fact negotiated with both Russia and the EU.  In the end, he decided that Russia offered the better bad choice.  Europe and the United States went into major sulk mode. Europe was content to sulk.  The Citadel of Democracy and the Beacon of Freedom, was not and decided to stage a putsch.   That's what U.S. Assistant Secretary of State, Victoria Nuland's "Fuck the EU" was all about.

Putsch is quite the apt term.

Even more disturbing than the video's suppression of the violent nature of the coup was the Times' hypocritical and equally astonishing suppression of who was behind the violence.

Neo-Nazis

 No "Luv, Luv, Luv" here.

Nor are these nazis a "fringe" of an otherwise mainstream and multi-cultural, smile-on-your-brother majority.  Unlike neo-nazi morons in the United States, the Far Right in Europe is political and organized -- a fact everyone in Europe has known since 1945. 

SVOBODA Ukraine's Neo Nazi party, is one of the stronger political factions in the Western Ukraine.  It holds four ministries in the "new government" including the Ministry of Defense.

Flashing 14 88

The word Nazi is not used lightly or slovenly the way it is in the West and in the United States as a term of universal disparagement.    When they say,

They mean it.

The Svoboda party describes itself as "nationalist" but on account of Ukraine's complex and tragic history the word "nationalist" has thematic implications which ring loud and clear in the Ukraine but which apparently do not resonate at all on 42nd Street.

Ukraine is more of a Crossroads than a Country. Although 1/3 of territorial Ukraine is ethnically Russian, the Ukranian nationalists consider Russians to be foreigners. In the past 1000 years the Ukraine has been occupied and ruled by Lithuanian-Poles, Russians and Soviet Communists. Under one banner or another, Ukranian aspirations were suppressed.  What is not disputed is that Jews (which gets encapsulated as "the" Jews) served as administrators and tax collectors for Polish nobles and as Commissars for the Soviets.  The appalling story of Stalin's genocide of the Ukrainian peasantry was carried out by Jewish commissars.  The horrible massacre at Babi Yar during the World War was, from the nationalist point of view, payback.

Nationalist "themes" translates into

and

In the Ukraine, nationalism and anti-semitism are, at least, kissing cousins.

This is not to say that all  Ukrainian nationalists are Nazis. There most certainly are other concepts of nationalism among the Ukrainians. But SVOBODA's concept cannot be dismissed as marginal when it's members end up controlling four ministries including defense and when its "street patrols" have taken over public security.

The Ukraine is a beautiful and culturally complex country.  The point of this article is not to take sides in a complex and tragic history. But it is to point out that there are forces in the country which stand for propositions very different from the democracy mantras of the West.

It is contemptible when a well positioned imbecile like Senawhore John McCain holds up hands with the leader of the Svoboda Party.  It is beyond astonishing when a mostly Jewish and pro Zionist paper, which would be among the first and loudest to decry anti-semitism and holocaust denial, ends up white-washing US covert support for and the critical presence of ethnic nationalists in violently overthrowing a government which no one -- not even anyone in the mainstream western press -- denies was fairly and democratically elected last year.  

That the New York Times has been an "information outlet" for the national-capitalist (and zionist) establishment is hardly news.  It represented the "center-of-gravity" of the political-corporate establishment.  Nor could it be said that this status was journalistically unprofessional.  It is one of those insipid and imbecilic canards, accepted as gospel truth in the U.S.A., that newspapers are and ought to be neutral and objective.  Since before the printing press and most certainly thereafter, papers have always been partisan.  What matters is not their bias but their honesty with the facts.  By "honesty" I mean neither falsifying facts nor censoring inconvenient information.  The crux of the matter is treating the reader with respect, as a free man to be convinced rather than as a child to be fooled.

U.S. journalism does not have a good pedigree. It has generally been vulgar, sensationalist, superficial and contemptuous of its readership.  In the wasteland of U.S. journalism, the New York Times almost alone commanded the respect of serious people.  A great part of its honesty was that it was a "paper of record;" i.e., it reported  verbatim almost every boring official pronouncement that occurred in the previous 24 hours.  If you wanted to know what the Archfiend Fidel Castro said to the General Assembly, you could find it in the Times.  This was important because it meant that the "opposing" point of view got published as a matter of course.  To be sure, the Times could not and did not report on everything but it reported on enough, well enough, to be considered "honest."  

All of this changed when A.M. Rosenthal became Executive Editor of the Times in the mid-1970's.  Faced with drooping sales and a hippified country, Rosenthal responded by gentrifying the Times.  Out went the boring speeches, in came Gourmet and Travel and Arts & Leisure.   [History of the Times]

Rosenthal prided himself on factual strictness and a code of journalistic ethics.  But as a result of his trendy policies, the Times gradually became less honest and by progressive degrees nothing more than establishment propaganda.  As of the first Iraq War and throughout the Bosnian disgrace and the Camp David farce-as-ambush, the Times could have no pretense of objectivity or journalistic honesty.  It allowed itself to be reduced to hack for Wall Street, the Pentagon, Free Trade and AIPAC. It's "liberal" veneer was reduced to emotive editorials in favor of fetus flushing, handicap access and saving the Westchester squirrel.  As of the second Iraq War, the  the Times had become simply a tonier version of Fox News and the Boston Globe (which it owns).

But with the sudden fall of the Government in the Ukraine, the Times has sunk to a level Goebbels would have recognized and despised.   Olsen's slick and varnished videos launches into pure political advertising without the slightest pretense of being a report and without any effort whatsoever to  acknowledge that the situation in the Ukraine is rife with factionalism of every sort.  It peddles nothing but infantalized, political fantasia.  It does not inform, it deludes and it does so intentionally

The Golden Glow the Times did not Show

The Times ought to be ashamed of itself, considering its provenance and affiliations.  The mess in the Ukraine is not likely to end well for anyone.  There is a good chance that the neo-liberals and neo-cons in the West will get what they want: hooking the Ukraine into economic vassalage and utilizing its fair land as military base for NATO.   Who will pay for the property of Western bankers?  The Ukrainians will not get what they want, but only a harsh diet of austerity.  And the Jews?  What will they get in a country run by pro-Western ethnic nationalists?

The Aftermath the Times did not Show

©Barfo, 2014

The One Percent Holocaust

Silicon billionaire Thomas J. Perkins has criticized the "persecution" of the rich by the radical poor as a "Progressive Kristallnacht." 

Perceiving "a rising tide of hatred" against  "the successful one percent," he likened the Occupy movement to brownshirts and noted "the parallels of fascist Nazi Germany to [sic] its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.'"

Oh,  it's simply intolerable the way those progressive poor shatter the complacent well-being of their betters.

Of course, Perkins' "parallel" between the suffering of the rich and the victims of Nazi ethnic cleansing is outrageous in and of itself.  Even Marie Antoinette, never claimed she was persecuted for eating a brioche.

If Perkins' remark were just a matter of "historical insensitivity" it could be chalked up to the unsurprising and typical psychosis of wealth.  But there is an important and notable civic disease that lurks in this One Percent Attitude.

Perkins' indignation was triggered by San Francisco neighborhood protests against the Google Bus.  The Silicon Valley behemoth has decided to privately bus its young, six-figure techie work-force from their dom-pods in San Francisco to their hermetic work-stations in Googleland.  The wifi (and no doubt latté) equipped buses allow google-drones to commute in expense- and hassle- free comfort while concentrating on "productivity." 

The problem with this perk is that it promotes the relentless metamorphosis of San Francisco from an economically and culturally diverse city into a mono-cultural, corporate enclave. 

The Bus encourages the "relocation" of young upwardly mobile, six-figure salaried employees into the city and this (surprise!) results in upwardly mobile rental and real estate prices.  The cost of living in San Francisco has gone through the roof and (surprise) those who can't "keep up" have "fallen through" rather large cracks in the floor. 

So what's wrong with that?  That's what "free enterprise" is all about isn't it?  In fact, yes.  That's what's wrong with free-enterprise as an unregulated catastrophe.

What is the "value" of the old San Francisco?  Economically nothing.  No one profits from a city which was not very efficient, profit-wise. Or, put a little more precisely, whose character reflected a now out-dated profit mechanism.

But what made San Francisco unique in the American landscape was that it was a city where rich and poor lived in astonishingly close proximity.  It was not simply an ethnically diverse city -- although it was that; it was economically diverse as well.  Because it was also a  small city, constrained within geographical boundaries, the diversity mingled. San Francisco was not only a place where old Italian men, young stockbrokers, Chinese women with bags full of chicken feet and Swedish carpenters or longshoremen might find themselves hanging shoulder to shoulder on a cable car, it was a place where these different people concoursed in varied venues of shared interests from boating to opera to bordellos to cafés and eateries.

People said that San Francisco was the "most European" city in the United States.  In a way that was a misnomer. San Francisco was far too ethnically diverse to be European.  What made it seem European was its economic diversity.  It was a civic place comprised of different classes working more or less in rough and tumble but "civilized" harmony.  

The politically correct harping on the virtues of ethnicity has blinded people to the fact that multiculturalism is more a question of economic and occupational diversity than it is of "color". People monotonously doing the same things (as in sitting, sipping and staring) accepting the same cultural premises (the value of ever innovative technology) are not diverse no matter how many shades they come in.

Just as the Romans "created a desert and called it peace" the Google Bus creates a homogeny and calls it harmony.  Yes, San Francisco remains "ethnically" diverse.  Google Drones come in all colors and eye shapes but they are all the same.   That's what the Madwoman of Chaillot understood.

It is incorrect to think, as Perkins does, that opponents of the Google Bus are protesting against economic disparity maliciously envious of his obscene wealth.  They are in fact protesting for economic disparity -- for a place where disparities of wealth share commonality of space.

To say that the neighborhood protestors are being "priced out" by waves of richer immigrants incorrectly likens a city -- the polis -- to a pair of shoes; to something you can afford and get as opposed to an environment you live and participate in.  San Francisco is not San Ferragamo. 

Moreover, to sneer that the less-rich are being priced-out ignores the legal-violence that accompanies out-pricing.  Not being able to afford a commodity reflects the loss of some possibility; not being able to afford the rent is accompanied by evictions, dislocations and a raft of adverse consequences and hardships including loss of job, loss of time due to increased commute times, loss of educational and cultural opportunities for children and so on.  The out-pricing in fact results in what might be called dispersion camps -- outlying zones to which the economically weak are deported and kept at hand as needed for menial tasks.

Café Trieste

The real Nazi in this puddle is Perkins, for what he really wants is poor-free enclave for economic Aryans

©WCG

Obama's Silver Platter

 

Last week, President Barack Obama announced his reforms of national surveillance while simultaneously defending NSA phone snooping as necessary for national security.

"I believe we need a new approach," Obama said. “I am therefore ordering a transition that will end the Section 215 bulk metadata collection program as it currently exists, and establishes a mechanism that preserves the capabilities we need without the government holding this bulk metadata.”

This week, in response to President Obama's address on NSA data mining, the Republican National Committee raised the Don't Tread On Me, patriot banner by passing a resolution which states that “the mass collection and retention of personal data is in itself contrary to the right of privacy protected by the Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution.”

The committee wants to reform the notorious Section 215 of the Patriot Act to provide that "blanket surveillance of the Internet activity, phone records and correspondence — electronic, physical, and otherwise — of any person residing in the U.S. is prohibited by law and that violations can be reviewed in adversarial proceedings before a public court.”

It is almost enough to make one want to vote Libertarian.   But to understand the spurious difference between the two "approaches,"  we have to return to the Golden Era of conservative jurisprudence in the 1920's and 1930's. 

To put the issue in historic perspective, it must first be recalled that in Barron v. Baltimore (1833) 32 U.S. 243  the high court took it for granted that the Bill of Rights did not apply to the States but only to the Federal Government.  That assumption became the prevailing constitutional rule for the next 130 years.

With that assumption in mind, the starting point for any Fourth Amendment question is Weeks v. United States, 232 U.S. 364 U.S. 209, decided in 1914.  It was there that the Court established the rule which excludes in a federal criminal prosecution evidence obtained by federal agents in violation of the defendant's Fourth Amendment rights.   The foundation for that decision was set out in forthright words:

"The effect of the Fourth Amendment is to put the courts of the United States and Federal officials, in the exercise of their power and authority, under limitations and restraints as to the exercise of such power and authority, and to forever secure the people, their persons, houses, papers and effects, against all unreasonable searches and seizures under the guise of law." (Weeks, at p. 383.)

Sounds great; but in in 1927, the high court promulgated a "mechanism" which served as a clanging gong to the sweet constitutional aria.

In Byars v. United States (1927) 273 U.S. 28, state law enforcement officers "invited" federal agents to ride along with them during a search they planned to conduct.  Who knows, something of interest to the Feds might turn up.   The Feds accepted the offer and tagged along while state cops conducted a patently illegal search.  Lo and behold something of interest to the federal agents did turn up after all. Que sera, sera.

The Court raised high its hand and held that since the federal agents had not participated as private persons and since the search "in substance and effect was a joint operation of the local and federal officers," the evidence had to be excluded from use in federal courts because "the effect was the same as though the federal agents had engaged in the undertaking as one exclusively their own." (Id., at p. 33.)  Launching into another aria, the Court intoned,

"[T]the court must be vigilant to scrutinize the attendant facts with an eye to detect and a hand to prevent violations of the Constitution by circuitous and indirect methods.  Constitutional provisions for the security of person and property are to be liberally construed, and 'it is the duty of courts to be watchful for the constitutional rights of the citizen, and against any stealthy encroachments thereon."(Id. at p.  34.)

Ah, but what the Court giveth with one hand, it taketh with the other,

"We do not question the right of the federal government to avail itself of evidence improperly seized by state officers operating entirely upon their own account.  But the rule is otherwise when the federal government itself, through its agents acting as such, participates in the wrongful search and seizure.  To hold the contrary would be to disregard the plain spirit and purpose of the constitutional prohibitions intended to secure the people against unauthorized official action.  The Fourth Amendment was adopted in view of long misuse of power in the matter of searches and seizures both in England and the colonies, and the assurance against any revival of it, so carefully embodied in the fundamental law, is not to be impaired by judicial sanction of equivocal methods,  which, regarded superficially, may seem to escape the challenge of illegality but which, in reality, strike at the substance of the constitutional right." (Byars, at pp. 34-35.)

Nay! Nay! The Imperatives of the Fourth Amendment are not to be impaired by subterfuges {BONG!} so long as the subterfuges aren't federal subterfuges.

This "Bong" became known as the Silver Platter Doctrine.

States acting entirely on their own, and careful to avoid inviting the Feds to the party, would knock down doors, rummage through houses and pummel defendants pillaging and coercing information which would then be trussed up like a pretty turkey and handed to the unknowing, unsuspecting, Feds. 

At long and sorry last, the constitutional charade was put to an end by the liberal Warren Court in Elkins v. United States (1960) 364 U.S. 206 which held that.

"Evidence obtained by state officers during a search which, if conducted by federal officers, would have violated the defendant's immunity from unreasonable searches and seizures under the Fourth Amendment is inadmissible over the defendant's timely objection in a federal criminal trial." (Id., at p. 223.)

All is well in Denmark once again.   

Not so fast Banquo; the slaughter has only begun.  

Following Elkins, the Court in Mapp v. Ohio (1961) finally held that the Fourth Amendment applied to state conduct as well.   Illegal searches and seizures were now illegal throughout the land.  But the court has never held that the Bill of Rights applied to private parties.  On the contrary, 

"The Fourth Amendment gives protection against unlawful searches and seizures, and, as shown in the previous cases, its protection applies to governmental action.  Its origin and history clearly show that it was intended as a restraint upon the activities of sovereign authority, and was not intended to be a limitation upon other than governmental agencies."  (Burdeau v. McDowell (1921) 256 U.S. 465, 475.)

Mapp or no Mapp,   the Court has not wavered for this rule,

"The Fourth Amendment is wholly inapplicable "to a search or seizure, even an unreasonable one, effected by a private individual not acting as an agent of the Government or with the participation or knowledge of any governmental official.'" (United States v. Jacobsen (1984) 466 U.S. 109, 113.)

It needs be said that the Court is not entirely shameless.  It  has extended the Fourth Amendment to searches conducted by private parties if it can be shown that they were acting as de facto agents of the government.  But this protection is more equivocal than might first appear.  The government is allowed to rely on private searches only so long as it, itself, does not go beyond the "boundaries" of the private search.  The Court's precedents illustrate the elasticity of the rule.

In Walter v. United States (1980)  447 U.S. 649, an interstate shipment of sealed packages containing 8-millimeter homosexual porn films was mistakenly delivered by a private carrier to a third party. Employees of the third party opened the packages and therein  found boxed reels of film on which "suggestive" drawings were depicted.  On my gawd!  The FBI was immediately called and forthwithly responded.  Rushing toward the smutty contraband, the FBI ripped open the boxes of film and projected the movies onto the nears available wall.   On appeal, the Court held that the viewing had constituted an unlawful search. (Id, at pp. 656-657.)

Alas, inside Walther's holding was one of those subtleties apt to be overlooked by the ordinary simpleton.  The court only faulted the viewing.  Otherwise, the FBI was entitled to rely on whatever was discovered by the private opening of the outer packages. And so,  the dirty graphics on outside of the individual boxes of film had provided "facts" which the police could have used as probable cause to get a warrant, even if they could not, themselves, have obtained those facts without a warrant.  (Id., at pp. 658-659.) 

The matter got stated more plainly in United States v. Jacobsen (1984) 466 U.S. 109 were employees of a private freight company examined a damaged package and observed "a white powdery substance" seeping from plastic baggies.  When a DEA agent arrived, he removed the plastic bags from their container, saw the white powder, opened the bags, removed a trace of the powder, subjected it to a field chemical test, and determined it was cocaine.  Fine by us ruled the Court: "The agent's viewing of what a private party had freely made available for his inspection did not violate the Fourth Amendment." (Id., at p. 120.) It was an "invitation" the agents could hardly refuse. (Ibid.)  

So much for "liberal" interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.

These holdings did not mean, that a private party could not become a de facto federal agent in just the same way as state police.  Au contraire,

"Whether a private party should be deemed an agent or instrument of the Government for Fourth Amendment purposes necessarily turns on the degree of the Government's participation in the private party's activities, citations]" ( Skinner v. Railway Lab. Execs. Ass'n (1989) 489 U.S. 602, 614.)

What then?

In Skinner, the railroad company had been deputized by the Federal Railroad Safety Act of 1970 to conduct urine tests on its employees either following an accident or in the interests of general safety.  The Court did not question that the railroad company had been, to this extent, converted into an agent of the Federal Government.  It held instead that the search was a "minimal intrusion" so minimal that it simply leaked through the floor boards of the Fourth Amendment.  (Id., at 624.)

Ah well.  Important enough to do but not important enough to notice.  One might call this the Pee Stall Rule.

In cases where the item in question was not beneath notice,  the Court has held that the items seized weren't  the defendant's property in any case, and surely the Fourth Amendment does not extent to something that is not one's own "private papers and effects". 

Thus, in Smith v. Maryland (1979) 442 U.S. 735 the Court held that dialed telephone numbers were "conveyed" to the telephone company and could no longer be deemed private even if the telephone company was bringing in the  sheaves at government request. 

The telephone company, at police request, installed a pen register at its central offices to record the numbers dialed from the telephone at petitioner's home. (Id., at 73, 75.)  The police did not get a warrant or court order before having the pen register installed.   On the basis of this and other evidence, the police obtained a warrant to search petitioner's residence.  (Id., at p.  737.)   The Court upheld the search,

"Since the pen register was installed on telephone company property at the telephone company's central offices, petitioner obviously cannot claim that his "property" was invaded. (Id., at p.741.)

"We doubt that people in general entertain any actual expectation of privacy in the numbers they dial.  All telephone users realize that they must "convey" phone numbers to the telephone company, since it is through telephone company switching equipment that their calls are completed. (Id., at p.  743.)

"This Court consistently has held that a person has no legitimate expectation of privacy in information he voluntarily turns over to third parties." (Id., at p. 744.)

We shall avert our eyes.

The history of this aspect of the Fourth Amendment could be summarized by saying that as its reach was extended holes were punched into its shield.  A private party is not bound by the Fourth Amendment  but, to the extent it might be, its searches are either beneath notice or are of things that have been "voluntarily" exposed to "public" [sic] view.  

If all else fails, there is always National Security. 

Katz v. United States (1967) 389 U.S. 347 is usually cited for its "landmark" decision the telephone taps constituted a seizure under the Fourth Amendment.   But it contained a poisonous seed. 

In footnote 23 the majority opinion noted that: "Whether safeguards other than prior authorization by a magistrate would satisfy the Fourth Amendment in a situation involving the national security is a question not presented by this case."  This dictum was joined in, either tacitly or explicitly, by five justices and thus constituted a part of the case's precedent. 

Only justices Douglas and Brennan dissented from the dictum, stating that it was "a wholly unwarranted green light for the Executive Branch to resort to electronic eavesdropping without a warrant in cases which the Executive Branch itself labels "national security" matters." (Id., at p. at 361.)  Justice Douglas felt obliged to explain that the Constitution did not exempt "treason" from the operation of the Fourth Amendment.

But the likes of Brennan and Douglas are not to be seen anywhere in the bog or on the horizons of today's Washington.

Thus, when the matter is examined in an historical context, it is becomes clear that Obama is simply dusting off the ol' Silver Platter.

The full report of the Privacy and Civil Liberties Oversight Board, which triggered Obama's response, can be found [HERE] .  In so far as Section 215 is concerned, the report explains that telecom companies are currently ordered to provide to the NSA all their calling records for a 90 day period. The order is routinely renewed every 90 days.   When the records of particular telephone calls reach the NSA, the agency stores and processes those records in repositories within secure networks under its control.  It then slices and dices and mixes and matches the information with all other information it has to come up with meta-information it deems useful.

Parsing the Administration's logic would baffle even Lewis Carroll.  The key words in Obama's fluff are "currently," "mechanism" and "holding."  Whether the Government denies seizing anything itself or disputes the de facto agency of the telecom companies or insists that it does not go beyond the "boundaries" of the telephone company's possession,  Obama's "new approach" seems to be premised on the notion that some significant difference is achieved by the NSA not holding the records itself but simply requiring the telecom companies to hold them on behalf of the government for an indeterminate time, until such time as the government orders them up on a silver platter.

Should there be any problem with the companies collecting the data, it isn't private information anyways.  Or, to be more precise: it is their private information and not yours and so, whereas telecom companies might or might not object to its seizure, you, the ordinary schmuck in the land, have no interest or say in the matter.

And in all events, whatever "mechanism" problem might exist with respect to any "aspect" of the program, we must always bear the horrific image of 911 before us as we timorously and tremulously advance into the Great Dark which surrounds us.

But if Obama is simply promising to skin the same cat in a "changed and hopeful" way, the fluttering RNC manifesto is scantily better.  It sounds great.  It resonates with what patriotic and constitutionally minded Americans think, but the fine print is what the Supreme Court has said the Fourth Amendment means.  As we have seen, the high court can blow a golden clarion as well as anyone; the devil lurks in the basso profundo. Nothing in the RNC manifesto calls for the abrogation of those holdings of the Court which have reduced the Fourth Amendment into a Silver Sive. 

©Barfo, 2014.