The Fog of Spying In The Fog of War

neoCrusader Church-War Mobile

In a past Dredd Blog post we noted how various U.S. officials realized that they were war criminals.

But they also realized that they would only be prosecuted for war crimes if they lost the war (On The Origin of The Bully Religion - 2).

These depraved ways of looking at reality evolve during a state of war, and the subsequent evolution that takes place is from left to right (Evolution From Left to Right - 5).

Recently, whistleblower information has been published by a newspaper in England, The Guardian, which shows that the U.S. military is gathering vast amounts of private data from hundreds of millions of citizens (On The Origin of Security - 2) and is storing that information for later use (Obama Administration Rides Into The W Sunset).

Revelations that have by now led to federal lawsuits in at least two federal courts (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller) and a propaganda campaign not unlike one carried on by Iranian Mullahs declaring their innocence ("We Would Not Cheat" - Iranian Mullah - 2).

"It is The Fog of Spying", they say, adding that they would "not wittingly" seize private data from hundreds of millions of innocent American citizens.

Which is an attempt to spin this into a "you're doin' a heckuva job Brownie" moment.

But that faux claim of incompetence does not rise to the occasion, nor is it anywhere near the truth:

However, alongside those provisions, the Fisa court-approved policies allow the NSA to:

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;

• Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;

• Preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within attorney-client communications;

• Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans' call or email information without warrants.

The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA's foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis.

(Guardian, emphasis added). So, we were lied into various wars which were thick with the fog of war, wars which have now led to the fog of spying.

The military is treating U.S. citizens as if they were foreign enemies who have to be spied on in order to protect their privacy.

This fog of government is simply another name for propaganda (The Matriarch of the Matrix - 3).

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Bleeker Street (a nickname for Highway 61):

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The DOJ has charged the whistleblower with espionage (US charges Edward Snowden with spying). The fog thickens.

"We Would Not Cheat" - Iranian Mullah - 2

On this date in 2009 Dredd Blog looked at one of the problems of nations that attempt to utilize election systems as one form of allowing the people of a nation to express themselves.

Regular readers know that the Dredd Blog System posts project the notion that "power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely" in the offices of governmental power.

The Mullahs of Iran, the pols of England and America, and those of the other nations, all want us to believe that fantasy.

The recent Iranian elections were seen as pure by both the Mullahs of Iran and the diplomats of Western Cultures.

For historical and review purposes, here is the text of the Dredd Blog Post expressing a contrasting view on this date in 2009:

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The Iranian mullahs are demanding that everyone keep the faith baby and realize they would not cheat, being holy men and all.

These leaders demand this trust in them as they use guns, clubs, water cannon, and disrespectful rhetoric on those who are protesting the results of the Iranian election. In other words they cheat as they say they do not cheat. A sure pattern, meme, and characteristic of a neoCon.

Immature democracies and mature despotic regimes call for faith and trust in the government often when their regime is being questioned.

Mature democracies, like the U.S., use the same spirit when they go into decline and want to hide the truth from the people; "state secrets", executive privilege, congressional privilege, and similar notions are advanced as reasons the government should be trusted while the evidence is being hidden from the people.

In our system the people consider that to be a failure when a government has to ask for or demand faith from the people in place of the evidence.

Faith is something for the gods, not government in the hands of mere mortals.

The congress yesterday unanimously impeached a federal judge in Texas for such behaviour, since he had demanded trust while he lied to federal investigators and sexually abused staff members.

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Doesn't "we would not cheat" sound like Obama's explanation of the NSA state secrets debacle of recent days?

The Germ Theory - of Government - 6

Recently Dredd Blog has focused several posts on the uproar caused by the whistleblower Ed Snowden revealing the wrongs of the federal government via the NSA spying (see e.g. On The Origin of Security - 2, On The Origin of Security, ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller, The Queens of Stalingrad - 2, The Queens of Stalingrad, FISA Court Rules Domestic Spying Violates Constitution, A Tale of Coup Cities - 4, Obama Administration Rides Into The W Sunset).

The NSA spying on Americans is actually a direct attack on the American public by the federal government, according to Noam Chomsky (Guardian).

The recent lawsuits filed against the government back up that viewpoint (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller).

In this series, containing five previous posts, we have been analyzing this type of government behavior in the context of a social disease:

The fundamental concept of government, which the founders of the American structure of government believed, was summed up in the well known, and oft quoted, statement "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely" (About Toxins of Power).

The founders of The United States knew, perhaps intuitively, that "something was wrong" when people were exposed to too much power, because "bad things happened" to the people, the citizenry, in those circumstances (ibid).

Their hypothesis and analysis eventually led to the formulation of a treatment scenario, which was essentially to dilute the exposure to that "something" which was called "power", by spreading the power amongst many people, rather than to overly expose any one person (The Constitution Is Quite A Medicine).

(The Germ Theory - of Government). This sounds, at first blush, like a stretch into the implausible imagination, however, when one looks at current scientific theory, it is not so "imaginative" after all:

Schizophrenia has long been blamed on bad genes or even bad parents. Wrong, says a growing group of psychiatrists. The real culprit, they claim, is a virus that lives entwined in every person's DNA.

(The Insanity Virus). In prior posts of this series similar themes and theories have been discussed.

The idea of analyzing psychological problems of groups, nations, and even civilization was thought to be a viable endeavor by well known people of history who knew the subject well:

"I would not say that such an attempt to apply psychoanalysis to civilized society would be fanciful or doomed to fruitlessness." - Sigmund Freud

"Men have brought their powers of subduing the forces of nature
to such a pitch that by using them they could now very easily exterminate one another to the last man. They know this --hence arises a great part of their current unrest, their dejection, their mood of apprehension." - Sigmund Freud
...
“Insanity in individuals is something rare – but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule.” – Friedrich Nietzsche
...
“The end of the human race will be that it will eventually die of civilization.” - Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Dredd Blog Quotes Page). So, the notion that something should be done to assist those who are in power, assist them in maintaining their sanity, is not a far fetched idea, but it is an idea whose time has come (see e.g. V: The Evolution of The Vaccime).

The Global Climate System has been damaged for over a century by now, and continues to be damaged with an ever increasing intensity (Government Climate Change Report - 3).

This current civilization is feeling some of the bad results (All Time Heat Records - Alaska, Antarctic Melt Caused By Warming Ocean, Same).

One of the things that is exacerbating the situation, in the mind of one of our greatest statesmen, is a particular mental germ:

Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.

(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, quoting "The Father of The Constitution", emphasis added). Like with individuals, "germs" (or toxins which germs produce) can impair the mental functioning of governments.

Get out your antidotes: march, complain, voice your objections, Occupy, and tell your congress, president, and neighbors why.

"The government is getting more and more sick."

The next post in this series is here, previous post in this series is here.

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The illusion of progress.

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The Government of MOMCOM: Wartocracy - 4

The Cathedral of the Wartocracy

In this series Dredd Blog has taken up the project to conduct an objective look at the nature of the U.S. government (The Government of MOMCOM: Wartocracy).

In so doing we have cast off the shackles of the names the government gives itself --the names the government thinks it should use to describe itself (see Why Does MOMCOM Hate America? which notes the name change from Department of War to Department of Defense).

In the final analysis, since the time that it became addicted to the oil that was under the lands of foreign nations in the Middle East, Wartocracy has been the form of government that most aptly describes the heart and soul of the entirety of the U.S. government as well as its allies in Western Civilization  (The Universal Smedley - 2).

It is also described well by the acronym "MOMCOM", an entity with a very old religion.

It is a government whose vast military has an internal spy empire (Homeland Security Happy Daze - 2) which incessantly, "24/7", spies on the communications, political discourse, and business activity of its citizens (On The Origin of Security - 2).

So, when we look at the secular belief system of the founders (The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?), it becomes fair to wonder (along with some generals) and it becomes fair to analyze all the dynamics involved, in order to discern the time or era when the coup took place (A Tale of Coup Cities - 4).

It is a long way from a Constitutional Republic (containing a democratic design for electing people who are to officially manage the cares of the electorate) to a military ideology gone so crazy that it morphs those traditional government dynamics into a Wartocracy.

It is also a long way from believing that war is an unfortunate social disease to believing that war is a form of art (Is War An Art or Is War A Disease?).

To cover such a long distance, war must be preached and taught 24/7 in the educational institutions (see The Intellectual War Monger and The Intellectual War Monger - 2).

And finally, the military serving media, via movies, TV series, publishing companies, etc. (GE Serves The Pentagon On TV Near Yoo) must become a daily presence reminding the populace over and over again of "the glories" of war (A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 4).

For example, "The U.S. military now has more people in its marching bands than the State Department has in its foreign service" (The Big Taboo, NY Times).

The previous post in this series is here.

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Subterranean Homesick Blues, Dylan; lyrics here.

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War is the Highway 61 of the 1% - 2

Highway 61: War in Every Direction

This series deals with "a way" of doing things.

"A way" captured in the notion of "Highway 61", a way which requires analysis and decision.

Another name for it is The W Direction, but whatever name you choose, it is the wrong way to go.

It leads to a net loss, and it never reaches the proper place that all government actions should aim for, and should therefore also always end up, which is a place called the public good (The Common Good - 2).

All government actions should end up increasing the public good, but motoring down Highway 61 in the W direction is guaranteed to end up doing the public bad.

As one moves further in the W direction down Highway 61 more and more weapons of mass destruction show up (The Most Dangerous Moment in Recorded History) as the rhetoric behind the weapons becomes more and more one lane and one way (Putin Warns about Syria).

The W Direction

Along the way, courts become more and more the tools of commercial interests (Warren: Courts are Corporate Tools), thereby becoming increasingly at odds with the public good (Sovereign Immunity).

Even presidents of noble stature cannot bring themselves to give up their slaves, even though they know and say they should (Dark Side of Thomas Jefferson).

Science mysteriously gets messed up in a struggle with philosophy (Science v philosophy), then its own moorings begin to drift concerning even the notion of time and natural law (Think about Nature).

The public good slides off into a dumpster along the side of the road, as a strange cloud forms over the government (Epigovernment: The New Model - 3) as if a coup had taken place (A Tale of Coup Cities - 4).

Like Alice, after she fell down the rabbit hole, nothing seems to fit into the traditional reality that existed when the trip began (Obama Administration Rides Into The W Sunset).

When you see these things happen you can conclude that toxins of W are at work (The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?).

The previous post in this series is here.

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Audioslave, "I am the Highway"; lyrics here.

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