Out of the Sleepy Shadows

Thanks to Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald, our Shadow Government is finally wincing from the glare of some long-overdue sunlight. The rays keep creeping in and creeping in, until finally, the vampire of the national security state has nowhere else to go but inside its own corrupt coffin. And as it lies exposed, perhaps what is left of our free press can finally hammer the stake of truth right through the data-engorged heart.

The New York Times has finally entered the NSA muckraking fray with a blockbuster front page piece on the existence of a secret Fisa court with powers so vast and overreaching that, according to reporter Eric Lichtblau, it might as well be declared our Parallel Supreme Court. Every time I thought it couldn't get any worse, it  turns out to be worse. And getting worser all the time, judging from the article: (the italicized parentheses are my own thoughts.) 

In more than a dozen classified rulings, the nation’s surveillance court has created a secret body of law giving the National Security Agency the power to amass vast collections of data on Americans while pursuing not only terrorism suspects, but also people possibly involved in nuclear proliferation, espionage and cyberattacks, officials say. (and that list of people will no doubt grow as "officials" become more and more afraid of their own shadows citizens.) 

 The rulings, some nearly 100 pages long, reveal that the court has taken on a much more expansive role by regularly assessing broad constitutional questions and establishing important judicial precedents, with almost no public scrutiny, according to current and former officials familiar with the court’s classified decisions. (Will these current and former officials be prosecuted for leaking? Not if the purpose of the article was to reassure people that everything is legal and hunky-dory.)

 The 11-member Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, known as the FISA court, was once mostly focused on approving case-by-case wiretapping orders. But since major changes in legislation and greater judicial oversight of intelligence operations were instituted six years ago, it has quietly become almost a parallel Supreme Court, serving as the ultimate arbiter on surveillance issues and delivering opinions that will most likely shape intelligence practices for years to come, the officials said. (the FISA Arm of the Supreme Court are the de facto Board of Regents of America.)

And then there is the law we never heard of, called the "Special Needs Doctrine" which effectively declares the Fourth Amendment null and void. But it's all good, all legal. The article continues,

Unlike the Supreme Court, the FISA court hears from only one side in the case — the government — and its findings are almost never made public. A Court of Review is empaneled to hear appeals, but that is known to have happened only a handful of times in the court’s history, and no case has ever been taken to the Supreme Court. In fact, it is not clear in all circumstances whether Internet and phone companies that are turning over the reams of data even have the right to appear before the FISA court. (This country no longer has the right to call itself a democracy.) 

Apparently, a few internet and cell phone providers have balked at having to turn over information on their customers without even being given the right of legal counsel to represent them. In those cases, the Shadow Court has had to "intervene." Here is where it starts getting murky. We don't know if the Secret Judges threaten to issue contempt citations for failure to honor their Special Needs and thus lock up would-be dissenters to secret prisons.

Although these revelations should be scaring the living daylights out of everyone enjoying their freedoms on this Weekend of Freedom-Wallowing, there are still quite a few commenters to the Times article asking what the big deal is. All governments spy, Obama just wants to keep us safe, there are Bad Guys out there. Here's the comment I sent in:

I can't wait to get the reactions of Congress critters to this news. How do they feel about having their power to make the laws usurped by an unelected body of people in black robes? Kind of gives a whole new meaning to the term "activist court", doesn't it?

And here I was, hoping that the Supreme Court would overturn the various NSA predations! They're in it up to their own eyeballs. John Roberts might as well be declared the Shadow President.

I think that we the people now have to demand that a vote to repeal the Patriot Act be the litmus test for our representatives' continued stay in Washington. Their failure to do so will be proof positive that they are fully in thrall to the corporations which are effectively in charge of things.

And if they still teach civics in the public schools, this article had better be the impetus for an immediate emergency revision of all the nation's textbooks. Checks and Balances? They belong in the dust bin of history.

Meanwhile, I continue to be amazed and grateful that every morning when I click on the Times home page, there are still little comment boxes open for us to "share our thoughts" even though our thoughts are being sucked up into the maw of the security state to molder and congeal until that inevitable day comes when our secret government will suddenly discover a secret algorithm that enables them declare independent thought a national security threat.

This is beyond Orwellian. It's Kafkaesque.

And here is my favorite, from "jb" of Oklahoma:

 A "parallel Supreme Court", but secret. A secret security apparatus, with secret spying for secret reasons, being overseen by secret briefings of gagged Congressmen. No limit on the secret contributions of moguls and corporations for the only visible bits of the secret government, the candidates we are to choose from, each and all of whom continue to increase the secret governance of our nation while we look around and wonder who's watching. And worry a bit that now we can be arrested, "interrogated", imprisoned, and killed without trials or seeing the evidence against us. As drones start to fill our skies as they now fill those of nations abroad. With secret fingers on the buttons, just waiting for the secret command to kill whoever they're told, and whoever happens to be nearby.

It's outlandish, it's unbelievable. And I would be afraid to write this comment if I weren't more afraid of what will happen when we are all afraid to write comments like this.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald is helping to gin up more outrage in the one section of the world that is still not beholden to the American imperium. (or as the Brazilians call it, Espionaram) He collaborated on an article for the Rio de Janeiro paper O Globo , explaining how the Obama government is collecting information on citizens the whole world over -- including in South America. Just because it can. There's also a Google translation of the original Portuguese language piece available, along with previous coverage of the NSA spying scandal.

A sentence from one article, Anglicized as "Glenn Greenwald: A Journalist in the Way of Obama"  was particularly pithy, and actually gained something in the translation:

Um conto que foi capaz de tirar o sono do presidente Barack Obama: A tale that was able to get the sleep of President Barack Obama

Is David Brooks a Racist?

That's the question being asked throughout the blogosphere (you can start here, here, here) today in the wake of the latest blather from David Brooks of the New York Times. (Google David Brooks + Racist and you get 1,660,000 hits.) What has people so riled up this time is that in his latest column, he shockingly calls into question the "mental capacity" of Egyptians to govern themselves.

I have sometimes wondered why more people haven't constantly and relentlessly called him out for all kinds of bigotry long before this latest effort. The simple answer is until fairly recently, Brooks had been a master of the conservative dog whistle, cleverly disguising the racist and classist message of his political clique within one turgid puddle of scholarly-sounding pablum after another. He is a master of the fine art of concern-trolling for the lesser people. But now, for whatever reason, Brooks seems to be losing his nuanced grip, along with his ability to fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time. 

It's finally even gotten to the point that the Times public editor was forced last week to publicly address the Brooks Problem in a blog-post. There were so many reader complaints about his column on immigration, titled "A Nation of Mutts", that Margaret Sullivan confronted him about it. She forwarded him one particularly scathing email from a mother of two bi-racial, bi-ethnic children, mightily offended that he had likened her offspring to mixed-breed dogs.

This confrontation is actually kind of a big deal. It is apparently a rule at the Times that a colleague never, ever publicly criticizes the work of another colleague -- particularly if the colleague in question is ensconced in the rarefied realm of the Times opinion pages.  Sullivan acknowledged as much herself.  But, since she has rapidly established herself as a public editor who thinks independently and is not afraid to take on the poobahs hiding beneath the Gray Lady's skirts, she challenged Brooks. And he responded, not only with utterly predictable disingenuity, but with such alacrity that he no doubt knew exactly what he'd been doing as he wrote his drivel, and had his self-serving defense all ready to copy and paste:

In that column, I was trying to embrace and celebrate a more ethnically intermingled America. I conclude with this sentence: “On the whole, this future is exciting.” To read this column as racist requires either a misreading or a strong desire to be offended, no matter what is on the page.

As for the use of the word “mutts,” history is filled with examples of groups who have taken derogatory terms and embraced them as sources of pride. To take the word “mutt” as a derogatory term, you have to believe that purebred things are superior to mixed-breed things, whether it is dogs or people. But if you don’t believe that, there is nothing to be ashamed of in the word mutt.

I seized on the headline after I was in a group of people talking about the future demography of the country and one participant said proudly, “We’re mutts.” That seemed to capture the message I was trying to convey, so I used it in the headline and the piece.

Translation: "I said mixed-breed folks are exciting, didn't I? So if you are offended, it's your own damned fault. Besides, if the marginalized can self-deprecate, where do they get off saying I can't deprecate them? And for your information, I got the whole idea for my terminology in an elite group of my own kind of people. Probably at one of the incestuous cocktail parties Washington is so famous for. So shut up."

To Margaret Sullivan's credit, she was having none of it. But she diplomatically wrote: "I believe Mr. Brooks when he says he didn’t mean to offend. But comparing people to animals is always tricky, and 'mutts' is a loaded term. There must have been a better way to say this, especially in the headline. I wish he had found it himself or that an editor had insisted on it."

That's the whole trouble. Brooks is his own editor and fact-checker. Look over any random sampling of his columns, and chances are good you will find factual corrections appended to some of them. His excuse? He was on deadline. His intern got confused. He is a Very Important Person.

Brooks should be fired. But he won't be. Like the equally odious Thomas Friedman, he is a brand, the public face of an establishment newspaper, widely read by the well-connected, a personality who appears on the corporate Sunday talk shows and hangs out at "ideas festivals" and rakes in the big, big bucks for his employer.

David Brooks has been denying racism in both himself and others for years. In David Brooks's world, racism simply doesn't exist. In his usual fake-amazed fashion, he once magically "came across" some black people getting along with some Tea Partiers:

I noticed that the mostly white tea party protesters were mingling in with the mostly black family reunion celebrants. The tea party people were buying lunch from the family reunion food stands. They had joined the audience of a rap concert.

Because sociology is more important than fitness, I stopped to watch the interaction. These two groups were from opposite ends of the political and cultural spectrum. They’d both been energized by eloquent speakers. Yet I couldn’t discern any tension between them. It was just different groups of people milling about like at any park or sports arena.

And yet we live in a nation in which some people see every conflict through the prism of race. So over the past few days, many people, from Jimmy Carter on down, have argued that the hostility to President Obama is driven by racism. Some have argued that tea party slogans like “I Want My Country Back” are code words for white supremacy. Others say incivility on Capitol Hill is magnified by Obama’s dark skin.

Then he blah-blah-blahs about the real problems in his insular little world: Jacksonianism vs. Jeffersonianism, Urban Vs. Rural, stagnation vs dynamism, data vs. ideology, blah-blah retch blah.

Is David Brooks a racist? The Magic 8 Ball says Concentrate and ask again.

Is David Brooks a giant dickweed? You may rely on it.

Snowden Agonistes

By Jay - Ottawa

We nod wisely when the mighty are admonished not to slay a messenger bearing bad news.  A corollary to the old maxim, often repeated lately, urges bystanders to focus on the message, not the messenger.  Yes, the powerful commit an injustice in directing their fury against the messenger, but I’m beginning to have doubts about looking away from the messenger to pay full attention to the message.  At least in the Snowden affair.

Is whistleblower Edward Snowden merely a messenger who should now melt into the background noise?  So that the world can concentrate its attention on the NSA’s crimes?

Snowden is more than a messenger; Snowden IS the message.  As Snowden goes, so does his message.  His fate is inextricably bound to the fate of his revelations about the Security State.  He with his nerdy expertise has emerged as a David against Goliath.  There are so few people around the world with his sure hold on justice and the courage to defy the unjust.  He, for all his youth and lack of credentials, is a rare leader trying to rouse Americans about the sea change that has occurred in American government.

The Obama administration has no doubt about the equivalence of Snowden and his message.  It’s so much harder now to argue the USA is not an empire abroad and a country sliding into totalitarianism, the manager of many forms of prison at home.

We read this morning that Putin is pushing Snowden to get his act together and depart, soon.  All of Western Europe, we now realize, is under the thumb of the US.  Forget about Europeans giving him, or even helping him reach, asylum.  Collaboration saves their governments lots of headaches.  Furthermore, can their democracies suffer a man so principled in their midst?  

As for the lefty states of South America, they are no longer helpful.  They had even more reason to stick a thumb in Uncle Sam’s eye after the Morales plane ride.  But their focus is no longer on Snowden.  They are noisily indignant about Europe’s disregard for diplomatic niceties. 

 

Will Snowden be forced to turn himself over to a SEAL team, one of which is probably sharing the same public toilets as Snowden at Sheremetyevo?  Or will he, sadly, knowing what happened to Manning, take more drastic action to resolve this saga?

 

Only a very rich man like George Soros with a stealth jet and an out-of-the-box plan can save Snowden now.

 

Snowden is not another messenger.  He is the point of a needle than could deflate the Security State.  If Obama’s agents bury Snowden, they’ll bury the message.  

 



Reclaiming the Fourth (Reuters)



Happy Independence Day!

I hope you're all enjoying your freedoms on this glorious Fourth. I know that I am absolutely wallowing in mine, especially given the news that the government is now photographing all my mail to keep me safe. The fact that my Time Warner Cable bill arrived in a ripped-open condition this week had, in fact, made me suspect that something was afoot. But it's fine with me if TWC is on some kind of postal No-Seal, No-Fly list. I am terrorized every time I get one of their bills, which always seem to come only a week after I paid the last one, and is always full of new hidden charges, like a monthly rental fee for the same modem I've had for the past five years.

And when a company's motto is Freedom To Enjoy, I know deep down in my soul that my freedom is simply their obscene profit, and that keeping them in my life makes me nothing more than an abject slave to their intrusive technology. I think we should all be getting a discount for having unknowingly contributed to the PRISM program all these years. Instead, we're the ones actually paying for the privilege of being spied upon. Very undemocratic, if you ask me.

Did you read about the new Restore the Fourth movement getting underway on this day? Hundreds or even thousands of people will be protesting All Over This Land against the surveillance state, no doubt getting surveilled as they do so. I hope it catches on.

And speaking of patriotism, Ralph Nader conducted a Fourth of July survey of multinational corporations, asking if they love America more than they love their off-shored wealth. Two companies (Walmart and Chevron) actually responded to him with non-responses. Results here.

Oh, and Egypt had another revolution. Like me, did you feel just a tad jealous as millions of Egyptians were able to oust a democratically-elected president just because he betrayed their trust? Of course, the military did all the heavy lifting. There will never be a military coup here in the Homeland, because that train left the station eons ago. The generals and the pseudo-generals of the military-industrial-surveillance-media complex have been the de facto government for more years than we will never be allowed to fully know -- although, thanks to Edward Snowden and those pesky "activist journalists", we are finally getting an inkling.

I was reading the other day that the Fourth of July is prime time for news dumps by officials of stuff they don't want attracting too much attention. I was thinking maybe Obama would sneak in approval of the Keystone XL Pipeline. But so far, the only biggie is the White House announcement that "some" businesses won't have to pay for employee health insurance until 2015. (translation: probably never, and they are finally tacitly admitting that the whole law is a major blunder.) The New York Times made the major blunder of using ACA architect Ezekiel Emmanuel to defend the decision. Readers, predictably, are wrathful. My response (which in retrospect I wish I had made meaner) --

Health insurance should not be related to employment, period. Just think about how many more "great workers" that businesses could afford to hire if they didn't have the millstone of health insurance premiums hanging around their necks. The USA is the only advanced nation in the world that doesn't supply universal health care. And thanks to the predacious insurance companies in the equation, we have the most expensive health care system in the world, with some of the worst outcomes in terms of morbidity and mortality.

In addition, granting a reprieve to what is defensively being called by the White House "only" a small proportion of businesses is just a terrible PR move. The Obama administration is seen to be announcing that it cares more for the employer than it does for the worker. And all that people are paying attention to is the delay, not the fact that those affected can still purchase coverage on their own. Dumb idea, only giving more ammo to the "I told ya so" Republicans in the mid-terms.

My dream is that the whole ACA will turn out to be so cumbersome and cost-ineffective, and people will get so sick and tired of being sick and tired, that all the Gopers and the Wall Street Dems will be voted out of office and we'll finally get a progressive government answerable only to the people.

Medicare for All. We are dying out here.

And while we're all dying out here, if you are lucky enough to have the "Freedom to Enjoy", SyFy is running one of its Twilight Zone marathons this long weekend. Rod Serling based many of his stories on the Surveillance State, then hunting for communists under every bed. Today, they're hunting for everybody in and out of bed, and they don't even need human eyes to see us.
 

Propaganda, Inc.

 "My God, what a world we live in."

Argentine President Cristina Kirchner was echoing the near-universal reaction to the forced grounding last night of the jet carrying the president of Bolivia and, as the paranoiac States of America feared, Edward Snowden. (He wasn't on board.) Denials are busting out all over, of course. The White House is being characteristically mum till they get their talking points lined up. Since this story is still very much in a state of flux, I'll just point you to the live blog running on The Guardian.  (unviewable by the United States Armed Forces lest they learn about their targets before ordered, in the words of Barack Obama, to "Scramble.")

Meanwhile, state-sponsored propaganda is ratcheting up to Mach speed. The Washington Post, among the first media outlets to publish Edward Snowden's leaks, is now condemning them because they're hurting Obama.  Senator Dick Durbin, Democrat of Illinois, penned an op-ed actually calling for a federal law to "define journalism" (and presumably to silence Glenn Greenwald and the horde of "activist reporters" thinking outside the Homeland-approved veal pen) Today's New York Times is running an editorial accusing Europeans of getting all bent out of shape over being targeted by American spooks, and Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande and the gang are just feigning outrage anyway. My response:

Today's lesson from Propaganda, Inc.: Calm down, little ones. The Grown-ups spy on each other all the time and nobody cares, so why should you? Listening in on conversations is just a little game that Superpower and Lesser Powers play with each other. No harm, no foul. They're just honing their negotiating skills. Nothing to see here, now go out and play with your favorite electronic gizmos and thus continue patriotically contributing to the Great Information Warehouse -- so that we can keep the World safe from the World.

Speaking as a mere citizen now -- and I know this is none of my business -- but what exactly is in this Transatlantic Free Trade Agreement (TAFTA rhymes with NAFTA)? I totally get that the Lesser Powers might be "feigning outrage" just to placate their own subjects and hold on to their tenuous grasp on power -- but who exactly will TAFTA benefit? Because these "free trade" negotiations are being carried on behind closed doors, with no Congressional oversight.

According to Public Citizen, TAFTA, like NAFTA, will include something called "Investor-State" tribunals that allow multinational corporations to bypass the courts and have disputes heard in secretive extra-judicial tribunals. Great for the corporations -- really bad for the ordinary people who might have a claim against them. You can read more details here.

Read the other comments. They are absolutely scathing. The Times is falling into line with the White House, and readers from all over the world are calling them out on it.

Edward Snowden is shaking the global power structure to its very core. The real terrorists and traitors, the economic ones, are still getting away with murder. They're flying the friendly skies in their un-Sequestered Lear Jets, while Edward Snowden is stuck in the airport.

He's Got the Whole World In His Ears

Rrrrring, rrrrrring.

Barack Obama: Yeah.

Angela Merkel: World War II ended 70 years ago, Herr President. J. Edgar Hoover is dead. And we find out from Der Spiegel you're still bugging us! At this very moment in time, you are bugging me telling you that you're bugging me. Was zeum Teufel?

Barack Obama: Angela, Angela, Angela. Did I ever tell you you're the best looking German chancellor in the room? Remember when we chatted at the G-8 and I assured you we are not spying on you and that we only collect your emails and phone calls to keep the World safe from the World? Meanwhile if you let Edward Snowden anywhere near your air space, I'll yank my wasteful billion dollar bases right out of Germany. Meanwhile, I do welcome a transparent conversation behind closed doors.

Angela Merkel: Du Hurensohn! Nixon had to resign for a lot less than you are doing with your NSA plumbers. I'll pull out of the EU free trade agreements, Du Bastard!

Barack Obama: Did I ever tell you you're the best looking German chancellor in the room? We need a balanced approach when it comes to free trade just like we need a balanced approach when it comes to your privacy and our power. We need to balance the important interests of the multinationals against the petty interests of the poor slobs. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good. My attorney General Eric Holder will be in touch with your prosecutors to offer them a deal they can't refuse. Money will win in the end. It always does.

Click, buzzzzzz.

I wonder. Yves Smith has an excellent post up asking the question you're not hearing being asked in the mainstream media. Will the blockbuster revelations that America is spying on foreign governments scuttle next week's European Union Trade Deal talks? Even better, will they ruin the super-secret corporation-friendly Trans-Pacific Partnership deal?

No wonder the PTB hate Edward Snowden so much. He's
 not only embarrassed them personally, he's cutting into their obscene profits, big-time. Literally trillions of dollars in plutocratic pockets may be in danger because he exposed their criminal snooping enterprise. That is why they're desperately (and increasingly futilely) trying to make him and Glenn Greenwald into the bad guys. The mass murderers are complaining that the star witness for the prosecution is a rudenick and a Peeping Tom.

And nearly 48 hours after the latest NSA scoops, the Spooks are remaining eerily silent.* It's like the scandal that surpasses a thousand Watergates didn't even exist. The silence of stenographic mass media is deafening. I imagine the mad scramble for talking points is in full throttle.

Yves has been scanning the comment boards on NSA/Snowden stories and has unscientifically discovered that the proles are definitely not on the side of the government in this matter. The usual Obamabot sock puppets are hidden away in the drawers, for the most part. And that is a hopeful sign of things to come as regards the trade agreements:

By way of background, the Administration is taking the unusual step of trying to negotiate two major trade deals in the same timeframe. Apparently Obama wants to make sure his corporate masters get as many goodies as possible before he leaves office. The Trans-Pacific Partnership and the US-European Union “Free Trade” Agreement are both inaccurately depicted as being helpful to ordinary Americans by virtue of liberalizing trade. Instead, the have perilous little to do with trade. They are both intended to make the world more lucrative for major corporations by weakening regulations and by strengthening intellectual property laws…

Public Citizen has been doing a yeoman's job exposing just a little bit of what the TPP deal means for us. No more accountability for corporate fraud in the courts of sovereign governments. Disease and death because life-saving drugs will be kept from developing countries. Total deregulation of financial predators and the neutering of already toothless Dodd-Frank financial reform. The details are so horrendous that the Obama Administration is even keeping them from Congress while strong-arming them to give him full authority to fast-track the deals. It's nothing less than a global coup d'état.

So Edward Snowden may be a greater hero than I thought. As Glenn Greenwald (h/t Jay - Ottawa) pointed out in a recent speech to a convention of Socialists (yay!), the inspiration he created by willing to literally put his own body on the line can only grow exponentially from here on out.  

* Update: Before meeting up with George Bush in Tanzania to lay a ceremonial wreath for American imperialism terror victims, Barack confirmed that he talks to Angela on the phone all the time. So, she and other allies crying rape should just lie down and enjoy him. Since the whole world snoops on his breakfast menu, then it just naturally follows that we should all just relax and enjoy the reality of our lives and our thoughts being sucked up by the voracious maw of the NSA Blob. Uncle Vlad, meanwhile, hilariously admonished Snowden to stop pissing all over America already, lest it get all wet. Oops. Too late. That chamber pot of horrors is already overflowing. That bladder done emptied itself weeks ago. That Putin sure is one funny autocrat.

Now that Obama weighed in, the New York Times finally joined the fray as well, with this weasel-worded headline: "France and Germany Piqued Over Spying Scandal."

Piqued? That connotes a lot less than the rage that is actually being felt and reported, and even subtly shifts the blame onto those on the receiving end of the abuse. (To be fair, the article does mention outrage in the first paragraph.) But the use of the word piqued in the headline hugely downplays the real import and content of the story, could even be interpreted to mean that those Europeans find the story really, really interesting. Somebody simply scanning the headlines might assume that the scandal was more along the lines of eavesdropping on an extra-marital affair instead a criminal state spying campaign against millions of innocent people.

From the Online Free Dictionary --

Piqued:

1. Stimulate (interest or curiosity)

2. Feel irritated or resentful.

Outraged:

1.Arouse fierce anger, shock, or indignation in (someone): "he was outraged at this attempt to take his victory away from him".

2. Violate or infringe flagrantly.

Words matter. A lot.

Racism Is Busting Out All Over

Paula Deen may finally be getting her just desserts over revelations of racism, but that doesn't mean other uber-wealthy bigots are getting theirs. To the contrary: the eighth wonder of the world richest billionaire in the Homeland, Michael Bloomberg, still reigns supreme one day after uttering these reptilian words on why he wants to continue New York City's infamous Stop and Frisk program aimed against minorities:

 One newspaper and one news service, they just keep saying, ‘Oh, it’s a disproportionate percentage of a particular ethnic group.’ That may be. But it’s not a disproportionate percentage of those who witnesses and victims describe as committing the murders....

In that case, incidentally, I think, we disproportionately stop whites too much and minorities too little,” the mayor said. “It’s exactly the reverse of what they’re saying. I don’t know where they went to school, but they certainly didn’t take a math course, or a logic course.

How tres stupide of us not to have noticed all those Wall Street suits getting rousted by the cops as they strolled over to Club Cipriani for their flutes of post-predatory champagne.

Bloomberg was just erupting in yet another one of his fits of plutocratic pique last week when the City Council voted to rein in Stop & Frisk.  Hizzoner is vowing to veto the measures despite the fact that they passed by a large enough majority to be veto-proof. He and his enforcer, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly, plan to strong-arm the civil rights advocates on the Council to change their minds and vote against the override of his overreach. One of the measures makes it easier for those stopped and groped for no other reason  than their race to sue the police department. The other calls for an Inspector General to oversee the entire department. As Council Member Letitia James put it, "Today, we are striking a blow against a practice which has become a perverse right of passage for all young men of color in the City of New York."

Michael Bloomberg disguises his own racism by going the centrist cult false equivalence route:

In Washington, some elected officials don't have the courage to stand up against special interest groups on the right and pass common-sense gun laws. And in New York City, some don't have the courage to stand up to special interests on the left and support common-sense policing tactics like stop-and-frisk. We don't need extremists on the left or the right running our police department, whether its the NRA or the NYCLU.

 The attacks most often come from people who play no constructive role in keeping our city safe, but rather view their jobs as pointing fingers from the steps of City Hall. Some of them scream that they know better than you how to run the department. Some have even sued the NYPD and demanded a federal monitor over NYPD operations. They've also drafted politically driven legislation that is a reaction to two NYPD practices: Stop, Question and Frisk; and counter-terrorism intelligence gathering.

The counter-terrorism intelligence gathering to which the Shrillionaire Mayor refers is the police spy operation against Muslims (with the cooperation of the CIA)  also subject to a lawsuit in federal court. The New York Times has quite an extensive archive on S&F here.  

It's all part and parcel of the demonization of those who dare criticize creeping state totalitarianism at all levels. Complain, demand your civil rights, and you're instantly labeled an anti-American anarchist. Bloomberg's words eerily echo what one of my New York Times comment board stalkers treated me to yesterday when I complained, in response to a Timothy Egan column, about President Obama's abysmal human rights record and the wimpy Democrats. Here's what "Jack - Illinois" told me:

Your kind offers nothing to middle class Americans whose survival depend on the demise of the tea party. Your kind's take down of President Obama does nothing for millions of Americans who look to the reforms of ACA as a start to a better future when they contemplate their medical futures.

If any politician would adopt these extremist views it would be a guaranteed loss for the middle class, as the political reality is that any extremist view dies in America.

 I am happy that President Obama stiff arms the extreme left wing. Because if he kowtowed to the extreme left wing it would only mean more suffering for the middle class. I can't remember any instance that the extreme left wing helped the middle class because I believe that there is no instance.

The extreme left wing has done nothing for healthcare reform. The extreme left wing has done nothing for banking and finance reform. The extreme left wing has done nothing for immigration reform. Don't think that someone like Cesar Chavez was some kind of wild eyed radical. He was a worker, farmer, who knew families that were depending on him to bring change into their lives. Chavez had to compromise to achieve his goals, as does Obama.

Normally I ignore Jack - Illinois (OFA Truth Squad?), whose sole assignment seems to be to search out all the anti-Obama remarks and go on the pre-approved talking point attack.  But I and a few others really got into it with him yesterday. In later remarks, he called me "You People," while ironically claiming ownership of such icons as Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. The smell of centrist cult desperation and the stench of racism hidden under the perfumed miasma of liberalism is getting pretty foul out there.

And of course, no post about racism would be complete without noting an epidemic of concern troll commentary about the star witness in the ongoing George Zimmerman case, a young lady named Rachel Jeantel. I watched her testimony, which I found to be a refreshing marvel of passive-aggressive defiance. But here's a sampling of what the same people who decry the racism of George Zimmerman and the Sanford Police Department are saying about Rachel Jeantel:

She seems to have a cognitive disorder (frequent commenter on a "liberal" news aggregation site that shall not be named.)

Dark-skinned and plus-sized: Headline in Salon.com article that was actually quite supportive of the witness.

We never claimed this was about race.... It’s not about racial profiling. He (Trayvon) was profiled (criminally). George Zimmerman profiled him.” -- Martin family attorney Daryl Park. (reflecting Post-
racial denialism disorder.)

Nor would a post about race be complete without noting once again what a great big ugly piece of "sweeping" legislation the Senate Immigration Bill really is. Despite being almost universally lauded as a sunburst of feel-good bipartisanship because it marks yet another notch in President Obama's legacy belt, it is rife with de facto racism. It's all about the continued exploitation of undocumented workers, and a giant leap forward into neo-feudalism. Presente. Org., the country's largest immigration advocacy group, says that far from being welcoming, this legislation will actually cause people to die. (if the bill itself doesn't die first in the recalcitrant House.)

More than a third of the current population of "illegal" immigrants will not be included in reform. (echoes of ObamaCare!) Border security will cost $40 billion -- money that could be better spent for education, infrastructure and other safety net programs. Deportations (which have already reached record numbers under Obama) will continue, and the private prison system will expand to accommodate those swept up by the draconian "Secure Communities" dragnet. Those granted a path to citizenship will lose their status if they lose their jobs and remain unemployed for more than 60 days. U.S. citizens will no longer be able to petition for their siblings. Mandatory E-verify will eventually sweep everybody up in the security state dragnet.

And last but not least, the outrage over the Supreme Court's gutting of the Voting Rights Act lasted all of 24 hours before being quickly cancelled out by a epidemic of cheers over the victories for gay marriage. New York Times columnist Charles Blow wrote an excellent, albeit measured, piece about the disparity, calling for a joining of forces of the gay rights and civil rights activist communities:

One movement for equality had its spirits lifted and another had them crushed.

But the truth is that these movements are not wholly dissimilar. All combatants for justice are cousins. Jim Crow and Jim Queer are of a kind. So, given what happened on the racial civil rights front this week, the LGBT civil rights movement would be wise to take heed. 

I sincerely believe that in my lifetime, gay marriage will be legal in the whole of the country. But it is unlikely that the LGBT community will become more than a minority group. I also know that the changing of laws does not work in tandem with the changing of hearts, which means that minority groups are always vulnerable. When the laws change, some things simply become subterfuge. In striking down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote, “things have changed dramatically.” But I submit that so have certain tactics. 

Just ask black civil rights leaders still fighting a huge prison industrial complex, police policies like stop-and-frisk and predatory lending practices. Ask women’s rights leaders still fighting for equal pay, defending a woman’s right to sovereign authority of her own body — including full access to a wide range of reproductive options. Ask pro-immigration groups fighting a wave of anti-immigrant sentiment.

As I wrote in response to Charles Blow,

The Court simply delivered the coup de grace to voting rights, which have been under ever-increasing attack wherever growing minority populations are threatening GOP rule. Photo ID requirements, moving polling places without notice, closing them altogether.... the disenfranchisement bag of tricks is bottomless. The Ku Klux Kourt, as Greg Palast calls it, made it a bit easier for the festering right wing to spread its poison until the inevitable day when it succumbs to its own vile infection.

Gay rights, on the other hand, did stand half a chance and barely squeaked by the rabid Catholicism of Antonin Scalia. Marriage equality advocates simply have more political clout than do brown and black people, who have suffered disproportionately during the recession. The people hurt by the trashing of voting rights have no lobbyists, or cable TV political strategists, or fund-raising email lists with which to plead their own cases.

Even the Koch Brothers hopped aboard the marriage rights bandwagon. Gay marriage never would have passed in New York without the blessing of Wall Street, home to many a self-interested plutocrat with gay friends or relatives. When wealthy same-sex couples are allowed to marry, they get to take advantage of a whole slew of tax breaks.

The trashing of voting rights is all about the continued oppression of the poor and working people. The trashing of DOMA, on the other hand, is no skin off the raised elite noses of the people actually running the show.

In the end, it's really all about the money. The getting of it, the keeping of it, the making sure that it remains protected from the grasp of common hands. Money begets power begets more money begets more power. It's a Winner Take All world. And it's getting really ugly out there.