Focus Groups and Concentration Camps: Paradigm-Shifting, Part II

Other than my constant gratefulness for having no spawn of my own, few things give me more satisfaction than thinking about the upcoming Democratic National Convention. Not for the screaming crowds of zombies or the Hopey Changey feel-good pablum dribbling from the mouths of politicians, nor for the vapid news coverage or the sickening blogger evaluations of message consistency or brand marketing or whatever the hell mainline liberals talk about in order to avoid having to face up to the rotten, yawning void of a party that they somehow have to believe represents an actual Left.

No, the joy for me will be (I hope) the uncomfortable tension caused by the presence of protesters, and how this undermines (again, I hope) the two-party paradigm that serves as the bedrock for the religion of The Process. The media will certainly go out of its way not to discuss the identities and ideologies comprising the protester contingent at the DNC, because once you start questioning who is protesting the Democrats, impolite cans of worms start popping open.

The few stories I’ve seen so far discussing the massive police measures (assisted by a $50 million federal grant) being planned are vague about why such measures are required, referencing only the supposed need to “protect” the politicians and delegates. If the MSM does venture to discuss the purposes of the protesting hordes, they’ll probably represent the bulk of activity as being in the name of environmentalism.

We can start broadly. Will Republicans be protesting the DNC? No. They’re quite happy with the progress they’ve made with a Dem-controlled congress, thank you very much. Liberals (real liberals) will be protesting the DNC, and oddly, real liberals will also be protesting the RNC. Yes, one faction will be protesting the conventions of both parties. There’s obviously some imbalance here. Why on earth would the Left be protesting a party that claims to be pro-Constitution, anti-war, anti-torture, anti-surveillance, anti-corruption, etc.? Very simply, because the Democrats don’t actually embody any of those ideals. When they claim they do, they are lying. And some people know this.

If this skewed situation alone doesn’t make a sleepwalker realize that something is not quite right with the “two” party system, nothing will. There are clearly significant constituencies that are not represented in American politics, and one of the bigger of these is the Left. The Left is even worse off now than they were before the 2006 Dem takeover. Explain that, liberals. Actually, please don’t; I’ve heard it all.

The liberal Huffington Post posted an effective article by John W. Whitehead a few days ago entitled “A Free Speech Graveyard at the Democratic National Convention.” The article points out:

Democrats face the embarrassing possibility that they will be the only party actually caging dissenters. Protesters at the upcoming Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Denver in late August will be corralled into caged "free speech zones" made of chicken wire and chain link fences which are located more than two football fields from the delegates' entrance. Those who attempt to exercise their First Amendment rights outside this makeshift cage, which is partially obscured by trees and sculptures, will be arrested. (Ironically, protesters at this year's Republican National Convention will not face a cage or even policemen in riot gear.)

It doesn’t take a constitutional lawyer to discern that the establishment of “free speech zones” equals nothing less than the elimination of the right to free speech afforded us under the First Amendment. Further reinforcing the point, these zones fittingly capture that concentration camp feel. Whitehead discusses the protester pens from the 2004 convention:

The 2004 DNC in Boston utilized such a camp, with surveillance cameras to record the individuals inside the cage. Conditions were so appalling that U.S. District Court Judge Douglas P. Woodlock referred to the designated protest zone as a "grim, mean, and oppressive space," which had the overall feel of an "internment camp.

He goes on to quote the reaction from someone who spent time in the 2004 camp:

…do NOT go inside. It's not only a blatant offense to free speech, but also highly dangerous and unsafe. I would suggest protesting anywhere in Boston but inside of it. No amount of hyperbole can accurately describe how disastrous the interior actually is. It's like a scene from some post-apocalyptic movie - a futuristic, industrial detention area from a Mad Max film. You are surrounded on all sides by concrete blocks and steel fencing, with razor wire lining the perimeter. Then, there is a giant black net over the entire space.

As Saint Obama is coronated, protesters will be stared down by gangs of riot cops dressed in black and armed with pepper bullets. As Obama is cheered by a stadium of 75,000 somnambulists under fireworks, protesters will be running from miasmic clouds of tear gas (Freedom gas?).

You exercise your First Amendment rights to free speech and free assembly, you get arrested (if you survive the takedown). Societies wherein police can arrest citizens regardless of law are called police states. It is public policy that when martial law (a central aspect of Continuity of Government operations; an interesting discussion of whether COG is currently in effect here) is declared, it will entail the suspension of the constitution. Well, we already have that part, obviously. Additionally, intelligence agencies have a long track record of provocateuring events (that is, staging violence in order to justify a harsh crackdown), and there is evidence to believe that such methods will be employed in Denver. Those ol’ boys like a fight.

But they better not get into too big a brawl; the collapsing paradigm that could result would threaten to knock the stars out of some credulous eyes.

Paradigm-Shifting, Part I – Oil

Introduction to Series

When the stated goals of a persisting organization, institution or event regularly and consistently fail to be met enough times, it becomes necessary to ask whether and how such a failing cause or entity can remain in existence, what or who is keeping it alive, and why. The answer is often simple incompetence or idealism, but at a certain point, ulterior motives should be investigated (especially in instances where the failure of a stated goal regularly entails other unstated, predictable and consistent outcomes that benefit certain interested parties). In many situations, we can find good evidence that some institutions “fail” by choice with regard to their stated goals but can be conceived as achieving remarkable success when their deeds are evaluated by a different (hidden) metric. Shifting heuristics in this way, however, is difficult and resisted by most, perhaps because it requires a healthy dose of cynicism and abandonment of long-held beliefs and intellectual/emotional investment.

Part I – Oil

First of all, my B.A. in Philosophy doesn’t exactly make me an expert economist or energy analyst, but I pay enough attention that I think I can competently discuss these issues and provide some worthwhile insights.

Oil prices are regularly setting records, as anyone who drives knows. Politicians and pundits wring their hands and scratch their heads over why this is happening and what can be done. Environmentalists clash with conservatives over drilling, and so on. As always, the media carefully avoids allowing too much substance into the conversation.

Although rising global demand for oil (without proportionate supply increases) would be the first place to look for blame for this phenomenon if it were more incremental, the more immediate causes of the drastic gas price increases of the last few years, and the last few months especially, should be sought elsewhere. The three main culprits seem to be: 1) the devaluing of the dollar, 2) market speculation on oil, 3) fears of further unrest in the Middle East.

Of these three, only #2 has been officially looked at by Congress (spurred on by distressed airlines, no doubt), and measures to curb speculation on oil are supposedly being considered. We’ll see if anything comes of it.

The other two reasons are not allowed into mainstream discourse, because the aims of our ruling oligarchy include both a worthless dollar and constant war. Globalism [Word 2002 doesn’t recognize that word; how rapidly times change] and militarism are two of the most important components of our empire. Imagine our rulers returning to fiscal sanity and abandoning their murder-based foreign policy.

Don’t chalk this up to “incompetence” though. Bush’s much-maligned Mission Accomplished banner was in part obvious bullshit propaganda, but in part entirely accurate. Our bipartisan foreign policy establishment had finally managed to crush Iraq, their publicly stated goal since the 1990s, if not before. Most Americans stood by complacently or complicitly and watched their tax dollars being converted into dead civilians on the other side of the world.

War, wealth redistribution, and the slow strangling of America are among the real goals. Mission (almost) accomplished. Of course Iraq (and Afghanistan, for that matter) posed no threat to us, and our government knew that. The “faulty intelligence” canard has been roundly disproved. Nor was some amorphous “freedom” the motivation. Saddam Hussein was about to start selling oil in currencies other than dollars, and we don’t allow that. (This is not the only reason for the invasion, but it’s probably pretty relevant with regard to timing.) This would have weakened the dollar and possibly threatened our access to oil somewhat – but this is only allowed by our own government. That’s likely part of the reason why the CIA attempted to assassinate Hugo Chavez a few years back as well. And part of why some of our more psychopathic oligarchs are slavering for Iranian blood.

This gun-barrel diplomacy results in more precarious oil supply, though, not less. The great supply disruptions caused by our occupation of Iraq, plus the astonishing billions upon billions we’ve thrown into that black hole have cost us far more than it would have to simply buy Iraq’s oil on the market. Oops? Nope. Mission accomplished. You and I are paying the difference.

Scarcity increases prices. Increased prices mean increased Exxon profits. With Iraq’s oil pumping ability crippled, and all of that crude sitting safely underneath the political and social chaos we’ve created, and underneath our megabases, our warmakers and profiteers have two wishes granted: scarcity they can’t be blamed for, and a giant oasis of oil that no one else can get to. In effect, this means prices go up at the same time as (their) supply goes up. It’s the best of both worlds for Big Oil and its squires in government.

Yes, this line of argument implies that the mess we’re making of Iraq is intentional and not the result of mere incompetence. As Chris Floyd and others have noted, Iraqi opinion polls demonstrate clearly that they want us gone. Luckily, it’s a shitstorm there and they don’t have even the semblance of a real government (nor even a functional puppet government) to resolve on our exile, let alone enforce it. Iraqi civil war is good for US business. And not only the oil business, of course, but also business for “defense” contractors and other profiteers.

There is much more than circumstantial evidence for this conclusion. When our military disbanded Iraq’s army shortly after the invasion, we sent them packing with their guns. There are also innumerable well-documented acts of terrorism aided by or even committed by US military forces in Iraq against civilians and sectarian religious sites to ignite the religious and sectarian civil war currently being waged. This is classic carbomb terrorism, above and beyond the regular aerial bombing carried out from the air. There are the billions of dollars the Pentagon can’t account for, and more blatantly, the instances of palettes of cash and gun shipments from the US to Iraq disappearing. Of course, the Pentagon also overtly funds and arms regional warlords to fight against each other or else to lie low, whichever happens to be more politically expedient at the time. (Notice how the “surge” started “working” in the thick of election season.) Much more can be written on this, but not now.

Ethanol is an obscene inside joke. It may or may not be more environmentally friendly than gasoline, and might be more sustainable, but only if we can wean ourselves off of food first. Farmland that would have been growing food for humans is now growing food for cars instead. So of course food prices have skyrocketed in the last year, as we saw food riots globally and supermarket rationing domestically. The Guardian reports that:

Biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75% - far more than previously estimated - according to a confidential World Bank report obtained by the Guardian.

Ethanol is one of the worst alternative energy options available; we don’t fund the better options. Why? Because alleviation of the economic pressure on the population, part of which manifests as energy prices, is not the real goal. Cryptogon has a graph comparing US alternative energy funding versus US Iraq war spending, along with this commentary:

The U.S. spends more on the war in Iraq in one day (about $300 million) than it does on the ANNUAL BUDGET for the primary government laboratory that is tasked with renewable energy and energy efficiency research and development.

Why should it be surprising that the possible end of the oil era in the US is taking the form of a manufactured shakedown, when the rise of oil in the US was similarly manipulated? Eisenhower built the national highway system, supposedly for national defense purposes, and history shows that interested corporations flexed their muscle to undermine the expansion of public transportation systems in order to make car-buying more attractive. Absurdly low mortgage requirements and teaser interest rates made suburban McMansions available to almost everyone. The US military as global oil guardian, and capturer, made sure the black gold was always flowing thickly to our strip mall-centric communities.

To conclude, energy costs aren’t decreasing because those in power don’t want energy prices to decrease. (At least, not yet?) If they did want it, it would be a simple enough matter.

In five years, after we get saddled with a carbon tax, will people start to wonder why this massive income confiscation has only slightly reduced carbon emissions and only slightly increased oil availability? Will most people chalk it up to incompetence? Or should we be evaluating the success of the carbon tax by wholly different criteria?

No 4th Amendment. Still.

So we learned this week that Saint Obama lied with his bare face hanging out when less than a year ago he vowed to, in the words of his spokesman:

...support a filibuster of any [FISA] bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.

Yet yesterday, as Glenn Greenwald reports:

The Senators... voted for "cloture" on the underlying FISA bill -- the procedure that allows the Senate to overcome any filibusters -- and it passed by a vote of 72-26. Obama voted along with all Republicans for cloture. [his emphasis]

The very limits of doublethink are being tested at Dailykos and other BO cult meetingplaces in the wake of our top Changent's servile complicity with Bush here. Even the AP has to admit that the actions of the Dems can only be described as "bowing to President Bush's demands." That's Change I can be leavin'.

Obama also wants to increase the size of the military, he grovels before Israel as is required of all prospective presidential puppets, he favors birth-control measures consisting of abstinence education for students, he wants to contract out government social initiatives to churches, he's quietly retreating from his troops-out-of-Iraq-in-16-months pledge, and so on. Too much to link. He's a typical wolf in sheep's clothing. Wait, not typical. Unusally slick. This is unsurprising to the attentive.

What often gets lost in all the hullabaloo is that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, in place since the 1970s, is itself already unconstitutional. Obviously, a system whereby a secret court grants warrants for surveillance based on secret evidence just isn't unconstitutional enough for the powers that be. So how valiantly did the FISA court, when it was still somewhat relevant, safeguard our privacy? Well:

In the period 1979-2006 a total of 22,990 applications for warrants were made to the Court of which 22,985 were approved (sometimes with modifications; or with the splitting up, or combining together, of warrants for legal purposes), and only 5 were definitively rejected.

New revelations about the vast power and expanse of NSA spying technology emerge regularly. The breadth (and now, bipartisan support) of this government/corporate illegal surveillance infrastructure precludes the possibility that it will be dismantled by any act of government. This sort of situation translates directly to the massive superbases being constructed in Iraq, the very country we're supposedly getting ready to leave. These bases go politely unmentioned by the media.

An angle explored more rarely still is the international aspect of this dragnet-style data-mining. Meet Echelon. The BBC published a brief story on this top-secret, highly sensitive inter-governmental program in 1999 (yes, that was before 9/11 -- shocker?):

Imagine a global spying network that can eavesdrop on every single phone call, fax or e-mail, anywhere on the planet...

The network is so secret that the British and American Governments refuse to admit that Echelon even exists. But another ally, Australia, has decided not to be so coy.

The man who oversees Australia's security services, Inspector General of Intelligence and Security Bill Blick, has confirmed to the BBC that their Defence Signals Directorate (DSD) does form part of the network.

"As you would expect there are a large amount of radio communications floating around in the atmosphere, and agencies such as DSD collect those communications in the interests of their national security", he said.

Asked if they are then passed on to countries like Britain and America, he said: "They might be in certain circumstances." [my emphasis]

But the system is so widespread all sorts of private communications, often of a sensitive commercial nature, are hoovered up and analysed.

Part of the cause for concern here is that other countries (Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States, at least) appear to have access to supposedly private communications by U.S. citizens, and I guess everyone else. But so what -- the U.S. government is still prevented by the constitution from collecting information on its own citizens without warrants, right? Well, L.A. cop turned CIA turned dissident Mike Ruppert writes in Crossing the Rubicon:

Building on an original post-World War II alliance between the US, Britain, Australia, New Zealand, and Canada, Echelon had by the late 1980s been expanded to include joint operations with Germany, Japan, and China. It was initiated on the legal premise that while it is not permissible for the US government to monitor the conversations of its citizens without a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to monitor American citizens, etc. Once the "take" has been pooled, the respective agencies can have safe access to their own domestic intelligence, because the Britons, Australians, or Germans did it, and not the home government. (p. 227) [my emphasis]

FISA who? Of course this all started before 9/11 "changed everything," so this calculated conniving to circumvent U.S. law is probably seen as quaint now in the intelligence world.

The most malignant consequence of the new anti-FISA law is probably its granting of immunity to the complicit, criminal telecoms that profited substantially from spying on us. Of course it's also unfortunate that one of the few partial obstacles to entirely unlimited government spying on citizens was destroyed, but these obstacles are mostly formalities, to be brushed aside when convenient. Is it any wonder that America was recently ranked among the worst surveillance states, along with China, Britain and Russia?

What else is going on that we don't know about? Behold the words of Russell Tice, NSA whistleblower who came forward after discovering something even more nefarious than anything surveillance-related currently known (excerpted by Cryptogon from a Reason interview):

REASON: You’re referring to what James Risen calls “The Program,” the NSA wiretaps that have been reported on?

Tice: No, I’m referring to what I need to tell Congress that no one knows yet, which is only tertiarily connected to what you know about now... In my case, there’s no way the programs I want to talk to Congress about should be public ever, unless maybe in 200 years they want to declassify them. You should never learn about it; no one at the Times should ever learn about these things. [my emphasis]

As is often the case, IOZ condenses the significance of this issue in a few sentences:

It's just this evident conviction, widely shared and endlessly amplified, that a "defeat" of the "FISA bill" will represent a roadblock, a pothole, a piece of gravel on the road to the Last Exit to Panopticon . . . I mean, it would be fun and potentially profitable to sue a lot of big telecoms, but the notion that this new legislation "expands" surveillance by, what?--admitting to it; it's crazy talk, man, crazy talk.