The Corporate State of Surveillance

Opting Out
by RALPH NADER

America was founded on the ideals of personal liberty, freedom and democracy. Unfortunately, mass spying, surveillance and the unending collection of personal data threaten to undermine civil liberties and our privacy rights. What started as a necessary means of reconnaissance and intelligence gathering during World War II has escalated into an out-of-control snoop state where entities both governmental and commercial are desperate for as much data as they can grab. We find ourselves in the midst of an all-out invasion on what’s-none-of-their-business and its coming from both government and corporate sources. Snooping and data collection have become big business. Nothing is out of their bounds anymore.

The Patriot Act-enabled National Security Agency (NSA) certainly blazed one trail. The disclosures provided by Edward Snowden has brought into light the worst fears that critics of the overwrought Patriot Act expressed back in 2001. The national security state has given a blank check to the paranoid intelligence community to gather data on nearly everyone. Internet and telephone communications of millions of American citizens and millions more citizens and leaders of other countries. Even friendly ones such as Germany, France and Brazil have been surveillance targets –over 30 foreign leaders such as German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff have reportedly been targeted by this dragnet style data-collecting. More blatantly, covert devices were reportedly placed in European Union offices and earlier by Hillary Clinton’s State Department on the United Nations to eavesdrop on diplomats. World leaders are not pleased, to put it mildly.

Many Americans are not pleased either. And while most of the recent public outrage in the U.S. has been directed at instances of government snooping, giant private corporations are equally as guilty of the troubling invasion of peoples’ selves. Companies such as Google, Apple, Microsoft and Facebook blatantly collect and commercialize personal data — often covering their tracks with complicated fine-print user agreement contracts that most people, whose property it is, “agree” to without any consideration. Clicking “I agree” on an expansive, non-negotiable user agreement for a website or a software program is, to most people, just another mindless click of the mouse in the signup process.

These “take-it-or-leave-it” contracts leave the consumer with little power to protect their own interest. (See here for our extensive work on this issue. Also, visit “Terms of Service; Didn’t Read” for a valuable resource that summarizes and reviews online contracts so that users can have a better understanding of what they are agreeing to.)

Just last week, news broke that Google plans to roll out a new advertising feature called “Shared Endorsements.” This policy allows Google the right to create user endorsements in online advertisements. So, if a Googler happens to share their preference for a particular product online, his or her endorsement might end up featured in an ad without any notice or compensation. Of course, users are welcome to “opt-out” of this program — but how many millions will remain ignorant of the fact that they unwillingly opted-in by clicking their consent to contract terms they did not bother to read out of habit. (Google’s official statement claims the move is to “ensure that your recommendations reach the people you care about.”)

Opting-out should be the default option for all these types of agreements.

School children are also being targeted by mass data collectors. InBloom, a nonprofit organization based in Atlanta, offers a database solution for student records between grades K-12. In theory, this service is supposed to make it easier for teachers to utilize emerging educational products and tools. But in practice, many parents are concerned about how this data will be used — in one instance, for example, student social security numbers were uploaded to the service. One parent told the New York Times:

It’s a new experiment in centralizing massive metadata on children to share with vendors… and then the vendors will profit by marketing their learning products, their apps, their curriculum materials, their video games, back to our kids.

Facebook poses another data mining risk for young children. Although Facebook does not currently allow children younger than 13 to join — the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act prevents the online collection of data of children without parental permission — reportedly more than five million underage children use the social media website anyway. This exposes them (and their personal information) to thousands of advertisers that use Facebook to collect marketing data and promote their products. See the Center for Digital Democracy’s recent report “Five Reasons Why Facebook is Not Suitable For Children Under 13.” Notably, Facebook recently changed their privacy policy to allow teenagers between the ages of 13 and 17 to opt-in to sharing their postings with the entire world, as opposed to just their “friend network.”

The insatiable appetite for data is reaching beyond the digital realm, as well.

The Washington Post recently reported that Mondelez International, the company behind snack brands like Chips Ahoy and Ritz, has plans to deploy electronic camera sensors in snack food shelves to collect shopper data. These “smart shelves” can scan and save a customer’s facial structure, age, weight and even detect if they picked something up off the shelf. The device can then use that gathered data to target the consumers with “personalized ads.” For example, at the checkout line, a video screen might offer you 10 percent off the box of cookies you picked up but ultimately chose not to purchase. The Post reports: “The company expects the shelf to help funnel more of the right products to the right consumers, and even convince undecideds to commit to an impulse buy.”

The smart shelf builds on the Microsoft “Kinect” camera technology, which has the ability to scan and remember faces, detect movement and even read heart beats. Microsoft developed the Kinect camera as a video game control device for the home. In light of Microsoft’s reported connection to the NSA PRISM data gathering program, why would anyone willingly bring such a sophisticated spy cam into their living room?

Along the same lines, certain retailers are using smart phones to track the movement of customers in their store to gather information on what products they look at and for how long — similar to how Amazon tracks online shopper habits so it can direct them to other products that algorithms determine they might be interested in. Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) has called on the Federal Trade Commission to regulate this disturbing practice. He recently announced a deal with eight analytic companies to institute a “code of conduct” for utilizing this seemingly Orwellian technology. Sen. Schumer told the Associated Press: “When you go into your store for your Christmas shopping, there’ll be a sign out there that says that you’re being tracked and if you don’t want to be, you can very simply opt out.” The details on how exactly one opts-out of this invasive technology, short of leaving their cell phone at home, is not yet clear.

With all these instances of Big Brother encroachment, one might want to opt out of the digital world entirely, and avoid supermarkets and retail chains that spy on customers. Unfortunately, that is becoming more and more difficult in an increasingly technology-obsessed world.

It’s time for citizens to stand up and demand their right to privacy, which is a personal property. Mass surveillance and rampant data collection are not acceptable and should not be the status quo. Recall that there was once a time when the federal government could defend our nation without limitless access to computer records, emails, online search histories and wiretapping phone calls without open judicial authorization. Businesses could be successful without tracking and saving your shopping habits and student records were not commodities to be traded away. Why do they now do what they do? Because they can.

Remember, what you allow to be taken from you by the private companies can also end up in the files of government agencies.

This Saturday, a coalition of groups including the ACLU, Public Citizen, the Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC), the Libertarian Party and many more are gathering on the National Mall to protest mass surveillance by the National Security Agency. This is a positive first step in letting our elected officials know that ceasing the collection of private personal information about you is important and mass surveillance should be prohibited. Visit here for more information about this weekend’s rally. Join the movement to end these burgeoning, tyranny-building abuses by runaway federal agencies.

Lobbyists Will Win and We Will Lose If TPP Trade Deal Goes Through

Civil Liberties  

AlterNet / By Noushin Khushrushahi

October 18, 2013 |

Something very important happened last week.

For the first time, Presidents and Prime Ministers of several countries met with industry lobbyists to discuss the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Bali, Indonesia. Although U.S. President Obama suddenly announced he would not [3] be joining these discussions, industry lobbyists are hoping to push through [4]  TPP talks to finalize the agreement.

What exactly is the TPP? It’s been called one of the most significant international trade agreements since the creation of the World Trade Organization [5]- but you’d be forgiven for not knowing about it. Discussions about this monumental agreement have been so secret that the little we know about the text is from leaked documents [6]- documents that show we have grave reason to be concerned.

One of its most troubling chapters includes an extreme Internet censorship plan that could break your digital future. Here are the top five ways the TPP censors the Internet and why it should concern you:

5.The TPP could criminalize small-scale copyright infringement

The next time you want to share a song or a recipe online, you’d have to ask yourself: Am I a criminal? Interested in writing some fan fiction based on your favourite detective series and sharing it online? Ask yourself that very same question. That’s how TPP provisions could characterize you based on what we know about its Intellectual Property chapter.

According to the leaked drafts, unauthorized small-scale downloading or sharing of copyrighted material could result [7] in severe fines and criminal penalties. Law enforcement could even seize your computer and send you to jail for minor copyright infringement.

4. The TPP could prohibit blind and deaf users from breaking digital locks to access their content

Under the TPP, attempts to circumvent digital locks in order to use your paid-for and legally-acquired media may become illegal. If you are blind, this means you could be criminalized [8] for circumventing digital locks on your purchased e-books and other digital materials in order to convert text to braille, audio, or other accessible formats. If you are a librarian, it may become very difficult to share [9] excerpts of content with students for education purposes, lend out material to the public, or even gain full access to purchased content; and as a consumer of digital media, attempts to [10] make backup copies of that DVD you purchased or transfer your legally-purchased e-book on a different device would become unlawful.

3. The TPP could lead to excessive copyright terms

Copyright, which was originally intended to promote the creation of new works by giving authors certain exclusive rights for a limited time, may be threatened [11] by excessive terms and a rigid system that could stifle creativity and innovation under the TPP.

Under the TPP, excessive copyright terms [10] could be created beyond internationally-agreed upon periods; it could also lengthen terms for corporate-owned works. Despite the strong and growing body of evidence demonstrating the importance of a rich commons [12] in creating new works, such a rigid copyright regime would stifle creativity and innovation. It would also restrict [13] the limitations and exceptions that member countries could enact, ensuring that countries enact compliant laws in order to avoid trade sanctions.

2.The TPP may regulate temporary copies at the cost of innovation and freedom

Temporary copies, or the small copies that your computer needs to make in order to move data around, are being targeted by TPP lobbyists who are attempting to redefine the very meaning of the word “copy”. The very notion of regulating temporary copies is ludicrous given how basic [14] the creation of temporary copies of files and programs is to computer functioning and the Internet. As the Electronic Frontier Foundation notes [14]:

This proposal may seem absurd to you. It should. Given how crucial the storage of “temporary copies” of digital files is to the functioning of our devices, the inclusion of unfettered provisions to regulate it is purely backward, especially given the supporters’ failure to justify a legitimate purpose for imposing a burden without a balance.

If lobbyists have their way, anyone viewing content on any device could potentially be committing copyright infringement. Companies like Wikipedia and Connexions would face serious difficulty [14] in hosting and storing user-generated content. Ultimately, this provision could make it more expensive for you to access licensed content, make you more vulnerable to liability, require you to purchase licenses from copyright-holders for transactions, and hinder your ability to use and create online content.

1. The TPP could kick you off the Internet

The TPP will place the burden [15] of monitoring copyright infringement on your Internet Service Provider (ISP), potentially resulting in the blocking of entire websites. Your ISP would have to institute what’s called a “three-strike rule [15]” – a rule that would kick you and your whole family off the internet after three infringement accusations by copyright holders.

It would also force websites to police user-contributed material.. Not only would this mean added financial burden [16], which could lead to the stifling of technology startups, it would also result in websites having to actively monitor for banned links – forcing the creation of a stringent Internet censorship regime. If ISPs are incentivized to remove content because of the resource-heavy nature of investigating copyright infringement complaints, such immediate takedown could censor time-sensitive news, including information to facilitate social organization, protest, and community-building.

It would also break your right to privacy [17] by forcing your ISP to share your private sensitive information with law enforcement in order to investigate your alleged copyright crimes.

Here’s the bottom line: The TPP is a secretive and extreme agreement that could break our digital future. It could change how we behave online, threaten our freedom of expression by promoting an extreme Internet censorship plan, and invade our privacy. The TPP will stifle creativity and innovation, hinder our ability to access information and organize, and criminalize our Internet use. The TPP is an affront to global Internet freedom.

Over 100,000 people have said no [18] to the TPP’s extreme Internet censorship plan and several thousand have put forward their vision of a fair digital future [19]. Join them and make your voice heard – the time is now [20].

---

Links:

[1] http://alternet.org
[2] http://admin.alternet.org/authors/noushin-khushrushahi
[3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24424552
[4] http://www.freeenterprise.com/international/us-chamber-s-donohue-trade-deal-good-pacific-economies-video
[5] http://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/03/opinion/obamas-covert-trade-deal.html?_r=1&
[6] http://keionline.org/sites/default/files/tpp-10feb2011-us-text-ipr-chapter.pdf
[7] http://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1179&context=njtip
[8] http://publicknowledge.org/blog/failing-understand-needs-21st-century-tpp%E2%80%99s-f
[9] http://www.academia.edu/4255123/Digital_locks_and_Canadian_research_library_collections_Implications_for_scholarship_accessibility_and_preservation
[10] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/all-nations-lose-tpps-expansion-copyright-terms
[11] https://openmedia.org/blog/copyright-creativity-not-criminalization
[12] http://whiterabbitisme.wordpress.com/tag/why-is-creative-commons-important/
[13] http://www.dailydot.com/opinion/international-trade-agreements-threaten-internet/
[14] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/07/temporary-copies-another-way-tpp-profoundly-disconnected
[15] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2012/08/tpp-creates-liabilities-isps-and-put-your-rights-risk
[16] https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2013/05/copyright-provisions-tpp-would-stifle-innovation-and-impede-economy
[17] http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2011/03/secret-copyright-treaty-wants-to-make-isps-liable-for-piracy/
[18] https://openmedia.org/Censorship
[19] https://openmedia.org/DigitalFuture
[20] https://openmedia.org/censorship
[21] http://admin.alternet.org/tags/internet-0
[22] http://admin.alternet.org/tags/tpp
[23] http://admin.alternet.org/tags/censorship
[24] http://admin.alternet.org/%2Bnew_src%2B

Rainbows for the Ruling Class

Barackodile Tears
by RANDY SHIELDS


One of the great things about America is that it’s easy to be psychic here. This is the land of psychic opportunity. Anyone can hang out a shingle and predict the future. Anyone can read a palm that’s greased. If you want to know what’s going to happen next in America, all you have to do is ask yourself: what’s the most outrageous, ironic, perverted and soul-crushing thing that can happen in any given situation? Whatever that thing is, that’s what will happen. And you won’t have to wait long to see your prediction come true.

So it was that last week San Francisco Pride announced that jailed war crimes whistle blower Bradley Manning would be an honorary grand marshal for this year’s LGBT Pride Celebration. Before practically anyone had a chance to note how principled and inspiring Manning’s selection was, the decision was rescinded. Kevin Gosztola at firedoglake has an excellent overview and Glenn Greenwald has a list of all the corporate criminals that SF Pride takes money from and doesn’t find objectionable.

Most interesting to me was the slavish worship of authority in SF Pride president Lisa L. Williams statement announcing that Manning would not be an honorary grand marshal: “Bradley Manning is facing the military justice system of this country. We all await the decision of that system. However, until that time, even the hint of support for actions which placed in harms way the lives of our men and women in uniform — and countless others, military and civilian alike — will not be tolerated by the leadership of San Francisco Pride. It is, and would be, an insult to every one, gay and straight, who has ever served in the military of this country.”

This is the same military “justice” system that gives out free passes and wrist slaps to the torturers of Abu Ghraib and the rapists and murderers of the children of Haditha, Iraq. The same system of “justice” that discourages female soldiers from reporting rape — and not a handful but the 20,000 servicewomen that even the Pentagon estimates are sexually assaulted every year, as noted in the 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary Invisible War. So, yes, Ms. Williams, we eagerly await what the mass murdering rape-friendly torture enterprise has to say about a brave young person who blew the whistle on its crimes.

By exposing war crimes, Manning was actually doing his duty and nothing he did put the lives of American troops in danger. He caused embarrassment to the American empire because he showed that war crimes are routine. Everyone who raised hell with SF Pride’s original decision doesn’t, and can’t, name one instance of Manning putting a soldier’s life in danger because there weren’t any. If anything, Manning helped hasten the departure of America from Iraq and saved US soldiers’ lives. When the working class finally vanquishes the capitalist class, there will be monuments built to Manning — and molded clear plastic Bush and Obama heads used as urinals in hospitals. When you’re admitted to the hospital, a nurse will ask, similar to paper or plastic: “Democrat or Republican?” (After the revolution, hospitals are gonna be fun places that keep peoples’ spirits up.)

When reading Williams’ statement, keep in mind what Manning did: he made available to WikiLeaks an on-board video of American helicopter gunners mowing down two Reuters news staffers and several Iraqi civilians, including children and first responders and then joking about it. WikiLeaks released the film almost three years after the crime occurred. SF Pride is more incensed at Manning for exposing this atrocity than the commission of it. What wonderful Barackodile tears Williams cries for the “civilians” that she falsely implies that Manning ever put in danger. How repulsive can you get? (Barackodile tears are tears shed by America’s historic first black president about dead, generally white, children gunned down in massacres while he simultaneously murders brown-skinned children in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, etc.)

Last week I wrote about unclassconscious people wandering around nowhere and in emptiness and mistakenly believing that they’re on the “left.” I called them desolationists. The dead end identity politics of SF Pride, which sells out a peace hero like Bradley Manning to curry favor with the American ruling class, is what I had in mind. The empire loves your tameness, irrelevance and cowardice, SF Pride. You don’t bother the American ruling class — a five foot two, 105 pound soldier does because he has a conscience and because he didn’t make comfort the guiding principle of his life. He went against the most powerful force on earth, the American military, and knew that he would pay an annihilating price for it. That’s why so many soldiers are so venomous toward Manning — he’s got much more courage and honor than they do and they know it. Pro-Manning comments are trouncing anti-Manning comments in online LGBT publications like Washington, DC’s Metro Weekly and the San Diego LGBT Weekly. So who, exactly, is Ms. Williams representing? Perhaps the Whitey House because, according to her bio, Williams “organized satellite offices for the Obama campaign.”

The American empire, its resource wars and racist occupations, the blowback it provokes and the inevitable reduction in civil liberties — these aren’t “issues” that have “two sides.” Congratulations, SF Pride, you’re totally assimilated with the America that is fearful and timid, the America that glorifies authority and welcomes fascism, as we just saw in Boston. Maybe you’ll feel better when a gay soldier’s boot is on your throat and you’re hearing them assert their equality: “I’m just doing my job. I’m just following orders.” Perhaps SF Pride will go all the way and appoint a gay soldier critical of Manning as the Grand Martial Law Marshal.

It would be awesome if thousands of participants at this year’s June 29-30 Pride Celebration wore Bradley Manning masks and kicked in a dollar each to his defense fund. SF Pride needs repudiated in a big way. And now I feel a psychic vision coming on: if SF Pride knew that thousands of participants were going to wear Bradley Manning masks, they would ban all masks for “everyone’s security.” They would say that they must be able to identify everyone and that they have a responsibility to keep everyone “safe” — they, like most Americans, just don’t feel any responsibility about stopping their representative government from slaughtering innocent Muslims. Up against the wall, turn your head and cough — and have a great time. And don’t ever forget: constantly bombing people keeps you free and safe. Can’t you feel the freedom closing in around you?

CISPA Vote: House Passes Cybersecurity Bill To Let Companies Break Privacy Contracts

Guilty until proven guilty...

Zach Carter
Sabrina Siddiqui
Huffington Post
04/18/2013

WASHINGTON -- The House of Representatives passed a broad cybersecurity bill Thursday that allows corporations to share customers' personal data with other firms and the U.S. government, even in cases in which a company has a signed contract explicitly vowing not to do so.

The Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, known as CISPA, passed by a margin of 288 to 127, despite receiving a late veto threat from the Obama administration, which warned that the bill does not sufficiently protect civil liberties. The veto threat was particularly noteworthy, given President Barack Obama's Department of Justice has been urging Congress to expand its data-gathering and cybercrime powers for years. Congress shelved a similar bill last year after the White House expressed its formal opposition.

Supporters of the bill argue that it's needed to help the government protect key infrastructure and institutions from online attacks. They also have said the bill doesn't require companies or the government to monitor customer content, although it does authorize them to share personal account data, including emails and other information. Firms that voluntarily turn over such data would be immune from civil lawsuits.

The broad language of the bill, which imposes its standards above "any other provision of law," would effectively void privacy contracts between companies and their customers. Specifically it states that "Notwithstanding any other provision of law, a self-protected entity may, for cybersecurity purposes ... share such cyber threat information with any other entity, including the Federal Government." Companies could not be held accountable for violating terms of service agreements or other arrangements in which they promise not to share customer information with other parties.

Privacy and civil liberties advocates, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have blasted CISPA for overriding private contracts and authorizing both corporate and government access to personal information. Several Internet freedom groups also objected to the bill, warning that people will be less willing to use online services for fear that their privacy will be compromised.

Privacy proponents like the Electronic Frontier Foundation had urged the House to adopt an amendment that would have allowed companies to make legally enforceable privacy contracts with their customers. The amendment was never brought up for a vote.

The bill's opponents shared their concerns with the White House in the form a petition, which received the 100,000 signatures necessary to elicit a formal response last month. They also submitted more than 300,000 online signatures to the House Intelligence Committee.

But the corporate coalition that teamed up with web activists to take down the Stop Online Piracy Act in January 2012 was notably fractured during the congressional debate over CISPA. Many telecom companies, including AT&T and Comcast, support the legislation, which exempts them from legal liabilities. Chip manufacturer Intel and security software firm McAfee are also in favor. Others, such as Google, took no public position, while Microsoft and Facebook rescinded their support for the legislation, the latter after facing pressure from Demand Progress, the Internet freedom advocacy group founded by Aaron Swartz.

The intensity of the opposition, however, has been far more muted than that against SOPA, which pitted the bill's Silicon Valley opponents against support from corporate interests in Hollywood.

The weak corporate opposition to CISPA underscores the uphill battle that many nonprofit advocacy groups face in Washington when they lack such support: With corporate backing for the opposition, SOPA was abandoned without a vote, while CISPA, which is opposed largely by nonprofits, sailed through the House.

The CISPA vote also tested the Internet freedom credentials of SOPA opponents Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah), who have made significant inroads among web activists and tech firms on behalf of the Republican Party. Nevertheless, both voted in favor of CISPA.

Issa and Chaffetz defended their votes and argued that resurrecting their opposition to SOPA in the debate over CISPA was comparing apples to oranges.

"[SOPA] was a totally different thing ... just completely about something else," Chaffetz told The Huffington Post. "This is a question of cyber threats and our national security, and I believe we have to do everything we can to protect our national security."

Issa, who serves as the House Oversight Committee Chairman, said he was aware of the backlash the bill will provoke from the privacy and civil liberties communities but that he was comfortable with the final product.

"We've done our best to address their concerns in this bill," he told HuffPost, adding that measures would be taken to ensure oversight of what information was being shared, should the bill become law. "I'm confident we have all of the appropriate privacy protections in place."

The bill's chief backers stepped up pressure on members to garner their support ahead of the vote. CISPA sponsor Rep. Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) implied opponents were basically teenagers in their basements, while Rep. Michael McCaul (R-Texas) on the House floor invoked this week's Boston Marathon bombing to underscore the need to enhance national security.

Americans’ Economic Prospects And Civil Liberties Have Been Stolen

March 24, 2013 |  — Paul Craig Roberts


My latest book, The Failure Of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution of the West, is available as an ebook in English as of March 2013. My book is endorsed by Michael Hudson and Nomi Prims and has a 5 star rating from Amazon reviewers (as of March 23, 2013). Pam Martens’ review at Wall Street On Parade is available here.

Libertarians who have not read the book have had an ideological knee-jerk reaction to the title. They demand to know how can I call the present system of crony capitalism laissez faire. I don’t. The current system of government supported crony capitalism is the end result of a 25-year process of deregulation. Deregulation did not produce libertarian nirvana. It produced economic concentration and crony capitalism.

Below is my Introduction to my book.

Not only has your economy been stolen from you but also your civil liberties. My coauthor Lawrence Stratton and I provide the scary details of the entire story in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. In the US law is no longer a shield of the people against arbitrary government. Instead, law has been transformed into a weapon in the hands of the government.

Josie Appleton documents that in England also law has been turned into a weapon against the people. Anglo-American law, the foundation of liberty and one of the greatest human achievements, lies in ruins.

Libertarians think that liberty is a natural right, and some Christians think that it is a God-given right. In fact, liberty is a human achievement, fought for by Englishmen over the centuries. In the late 17th century, the achievement of the Glorious Revolution was to hold the British government accountable to law. William Blackstone heralded the achievement in his famous Commentaries On The Laws Of England, a bestseller in pre-revolutionary America and the foundation of the US Constitution.
In the late 20th century and early 21st century, governments in the US and Great Britain chafed under the requirement that government, like the people, is ruled by law and took steps to free government from accountability to law.

Appleton says that the result is a “tectonic shift in the relationship between the state and the citizen.” Citizens of the US and UK are once again without the protection of law and subject to arbitrary arrests and indictments or to indefinite detention in the absence of indictments.

In the US, citizens can be detained indefinitely and even executed without due process of law. There is no basis in the US Constitution for these asserted powers. The unconstitutional powers exist only because Congress, the judiciary and the American people have accepted the lie that the loss of civil liberty is the price paid for protection against terrorists.

In a very short time the raw power of the state has been resurrected. Most Americans are oblivious to this outcome. As long as government is imprisoning and killing without trials demonized individuals whom Americans have been propagandized to fear, Americans approve. Americans do not understand that a point is reached when demonization becomes unnecessary and that precedents have been established that revoke the Bill of Rights.

Introduction to The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic
Dissolution of the West: Towards a New Economics for a Full World
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the rise of the high speed Internet have proved to be the economic and political undoing of the West. “The End Of History” caused socialist India and communist China to join the winning side and to open their economies and underutilized labor forces to Western capital and technology. Pushed by Wall Street and large retailers, such as Wal-Mart, American corporations began offshoring the production of goods and services for their domestic markets. Americans ceased to be employed in the manufacture of goods that they consume as corporate executives maximized shareholder earnings and their performance bonuses by substituting cheaper foreign labor for American labor. Many American professional occupations, such as software engineering and Information Technology, also declined as corporations moved this work abroad and brought in foreigners at lower renumeration for many of the jobs that remained domestically. Design and research jobs followed manufacturing abroad, and employment in middle class professional occupations ceased to grow. By taking the lead in offshoring production for domestic markets, US corporations force the same practice on Europe. The demise of First World employment and of Third World agricultural communities, which are supplanted by large scale monoculture, is known as Globalism.

For most Americans income has stagnated and declined for the past two decades. Much of what Americans lost in wages and salaries as their jobs were moved offshore came back to shareholders and executives in the form of capital gains and performance bonuses from the higher profits that flowed from lower foreign labor costs. The distribution of income worsened dramatically with the mega-rich capturing the gains, while the middle class ladders of upward mobility were dismantled. University graduates unable to find employment returned to live with their parents.

The absence of growth in real consumer incomes resulted in the Federal Reserve expanding credit in order to keep consumer demand growing. The growth of consumer debt was substituted for the missing growth in consumer income. The Federal Reserve’s policy of extremely low interest rates fueled a real estate boom. Housing prices rose dramatically, permitting homeowners to monetize the rising equity in their homes by refinancing their mortgages.

Consumers kept the economy alive by assuming larger mortgages and spending the equity in their homes and by accumulating large credit card balances. The explosion of debt was securitized, given fraudulent investment grade ratings, and sold to unsuspecting investors at home and abroad.

Financial deregulation, which began in the Clinton years and leaped forward in the George W. Bush regime, unleashed greed and debt leverage. Brooksley Born, head of the federal Commodity Futures Trading Commission, was prevented from regulating over-the-counter derivatives by the chairman of the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury, and the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. The financial stability of the world was sacrificed to the ideology of these three stooges that “markets are self-regulating.” Insurance companies sold credit default swaps against junk financial instruments without establishing reserves, and financial institutions leveraged every dollar of equity with $30 dollars of debt.

When the bubble burst, the former bankers running the US Treasury provided massive bailouts at taxpayer expense for the irresponsible gambles made by banks that they formerly headed. The Federal Reserve joined the rescue operation. An audit of the Federal Reserve released in July, 2011, revealed that the Federal Reserve had provided $16 trillion–a sum larger than US GDP or the US public debt–in secret loans to bail out American and foreign banks, while doing nothing to aid the millions of American families being foreclosed out of their homes. Political accountability disappeared as all public assistance was directed to the mega-rich, whose greed had produced the financial crisis.

The financial crisis and plight of the banksters took center stage and prevented recognition that the crisis sprang not only from the financial deregulation but also from the expansion of debt that was used to substitute for the lack of growth in consumer income. As more and more jobs were offshored, Americans were deprived of incomes from employment. To maintain their consumption, Americans went deeper into debt.

The fact that millions of jobs have been moved offshore is the reason why the most expansionary monetary and fiscal policies in US history have had no success in reducing the unemployment rate. In post-World War II 20th century recessions, laid-off workers were called back to work as expansionary monetary and fiscal policies stimulated consumer demand. However, 21st century unemployment is different. The jobs have been moved abroad and no longer exist. Therefore, workers cannot be called back to factories and to professional service jobs that have been moved abroad.

Economists have failed to recognize the threat that jobs offshoring poses to economies and to economic theory itself, because economists confuse offshoring with free trade, which they believe is mutually beneficial. I will show that offshoring is the antithesis of free trade and that the doctrine of free trade itself is found to be incorrect by the latest work in trade theory. Indeed, as we reach toward a new economics, cherished assumptions and comforting theoretical conclusions will be shown to be erroneous.

This book is organized into three sections. The first section explains successes and failures of economic theory and the erosion of the efficacy of economic policy by globalism. Globalism and financial concentration have destroyed the justifications of market capitalism. Corporations that have become “too big to fail” are sustained by public subsidies, thus destroying capitalism’s claim to be an efficient allocator of resources. Profits no longer are a measure of social welfare when they are obtained by creating unemployment and declining living standards in the home country.

The second section documents how jobs offshoring or globalism and financial deregulation wrecked the US economy, producing high rates of unemployment, poverty and a distribution of income and wealth extremely skewed toward a tiny minority at the top. These severe problems cannot be corrected within a system of globalism.

The third section addresses the European debt crisis and how it is being used both to subvert national sovereignty and to protect bankers from losses by imposing austerity and bailout costs on citizens of the member countries of the European Union.

I will suggest that it is in Germany’s interest to leave the EU, revive the mark, and enter into an economic partnership with Russia. German industry, technology, and economic and financial rectitude, combined with Russian energy and raw materials, would pull all of Eastern Europe into a new economic union, with each country retaining its own currency and budgetary and tax authority. This would break up NATO, which has become an instrument for world oppression and is forcing Europeans to assume burdens of the American Empire.

Sixty-seven years after the end of World War II, twenty-two years after the reunification of Germany, and twenty-one years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Germany is still occupied by US troops. Do Europeans desire a future as puppet states of a collapsing empire, or do they desire a more promising future of their own?

While Left And Right Fight, Power Wins

February 14, 2013 | John V. Walsh

My experience with the American left and right leads to the conclusion that the left sees private power as the source of oppression and government as the countervailing and rectifying power, while the right sees government as the source of oppression and a free and unregulated private sector as the countervailing and rectifying power. Both are concerned with restraining the power to oppress, but they take opposite positions on the source of the oppressive power and remedy.

The right is correct that government power is the problem, and the left is correct that private power is the problem. Therefore, wherever power is located--the government or private sectors cannot reduce, constrain, or minimize power.

How does the progressive Obama Regime differ from the tax-cut, deregulation Bush/Cheney Regime? Both are complicit in the maximization of executive branch power and in the minimization of citizens’ civil liberties and, thus, of the people’s power. Did the progressive Obama reverse the right-wing Bush’s destruction of habeas corpus and due process? No. Obama further minimized the people’s power. Bush could throw us in prison for life without proof of cause. Obama can execute us without proof of cause. They do this in the name of protecting us from terrorism, but not from their terrorism.

Americans who have no experience with, or knowledge of, tyranny believe that only terrorists will experience the unchecked power of the state. They will believe this until it happens to them, or their children, or their friends.

The view of human nature held by the right and the left depends on whether the human nature is located in the private sector or the government sector (“public sector”). For the right (and for libertarians) human nature in the private sector is good and serves the public; in the government sector human nature is evil and oppressive. For the left, it is the opposite. As the same people go back and forth from one sector to the other, one marvels at the transformations of their character and morality. A good man becomes evil, and an evil man becomes good, depending on the location of his activities.

One of my professors, James M. Buchanan who won a Nobel Prize, pointed out that people are just as self-serving whether they are in the private sector or in government. The problem is how to constrain government and private power to the best extent possible.

Our Founding Fathers’ solution was to minimize the power of government and to rely on contending factions among private interests to prevent the rise of an oligarchy. In the event that contending private interests failed, the oligarchy that seized the government would not have much public power to exercise.

The Founding Fathers’ design more or less worked except for interludes of civil war and economic crisis until the cold war built up the power of government and the deregulation of the Clinton and Bush presidencies built up the power of private interests. It all came together with the accumulation of new, dictatorial powers in the executive branch in the name of protecting us from terrorists and with deregulation’s creation of powerful corporations “too big to fail.”

Now we have a government, whose elected members are beholden to a private oligarchy, consisting of the military/security complex, Wall Street and the financial sector, the Israel Lobby, agribusiness, pharmaceuticals, and the energy, mining, and timber businesses, with the power to shut down people’s protests at their exploitation by robber barons and government alike.

Vast amounts of government debt have been added to taxpayers’ burdens in order to fight wars that only benefit the military/security complex and the Israel Lobby. More vast amounts have been added in order to force taxpayers to cover the reckless gambling bets of the financial sector. Taxpayers are denied interest on their savings in order to protect the balance sheets of a corrupt financial sector. Legitimate protestors are brutalized by police and equated by Homeland Security with “domestic extremists,” defined by Homeland Security as a close relation to terrorists.

Today Americans are not safe from government or private power and suffer at the hands of both.

What can be done? From within probably very little. The right blames the left, and the left blames the right. The two sides are locked in ideological combat while power grows in the private and public sectors, but not the benevolent power that the two ideologies suppose. Instead, a two-headed power monster has risen.

If the power that has been established over the American people is to be shattered, it will come from outside. The Federal Reserve’s continuing monetization of the enormous debt that Washington is generating can destroy the dollar’s exchange value, sending up interest rates, collapsing the bond, stock, and real estate markets, and sinking the economy into deep depression at a time in history when Americans have exhausted their savings and are deeply in debt with high levels of joblessness and homelessness. The rise in import prices from a drop in the dollar’s exchange value would make survival an issue for a large percentage of the population.

Overnight the US could transition from superpower to third world penitent begging for a rescue program.

Who would grant it? The Russians encircled by US military bases and whose internal serenity is disrupted by inflows of American money to dissident groups in an effort to destabilize the Russian State? The Chinese, the government of which is routinely denounced by a hypocritical Washington for human rights abuses while Washington surrounds China with newly constructed military bases and new deployments of troops and naval vessels? South America, a long-suffering victim of Washington’s oppression? Europe, exhausted by conflicts and by Washington’s organization of them as puppet states and use of them as mercenaries in Washington’s wars for hegemony?

No country, except perhaps the bought-and-paid-for puppets of Britain, Canada, Australia, and Japan, would come to Washington’s aid.

In the ensuing collapse, the power of Washington and the power of the private robber barons would evaporate. Americans would suffer, but they would be rid of the power that has been established over them and that has changed them from a free people to exploited serfs.

This is, perhaps, an optimistic conclusion, but those relatively few Americans who are aware need some hope. This is the best that I can do. The majority of Americans remain trapped in their unawareness, which implies a bleak future. The insouciance of the American population is its downfall.

EU Defeats ACTA

Wednesday, July 4, 2012 by Common Dreams

European Parliament votes against controversial Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement

ACTA, the controversial online piracy treaty, was dealt a blow on Wednesday when the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly to reject it.

The European Parliament voted 478 to 39 against the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which was drawn up in secret and had been protested by hundreds of thousands across the EU who saw the treaty as an infringement on internet freedom.

President of the European Parliament Martin Schulz welcomed the decision and stated that "ACTA is the wrong solution to fight online piracy." He said that the treaty negotiations had lacked transparency and acknowledged the massive public mobilizations against the treaty.

"The majority of the parliament is of the opinion that ACTA is too vague - leaving room for abuses and raising concerns about its impact on privacy and civil liberties, on innovation, creativity and the free flow of information," wrote Schulz.

"We have to take all possible measures to fight piracy, but this should never be done at the cost of what has made the internet one of the most revolutionary technologies in history: the EP wants the web to remain free and open," he added.

Civil liberties advocates including Pirate Party leader Loz Kaye also welcomed the decision. "The European Parliament vote is a triumph of democracy over special interests and shady back-room deals. This is a significant victory for digital rights, and it's thanks to the tireless work of activists and grass roots organizations, including the Pirate Party world wide. Without this opposition, our representatives would have waved this agreement through. It is now clear that it is becoming increasingly politically poisonous to be 'anti-internet'," Kaye said.

With this vote, there is no possibility of EU ratification, leaving the future of the treaty uncertain.

Unplugging Americans From The Matrix

Where Life is Regarded as Cheap
by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS
Americans, the British, and Western Europeans are accustomed to thinking of themselves as the representatives of freedom, democracy, and morality in the world. The West passes judgment on the rest of the world as if the West is God and the rest of the world are barbarians in need of chastisement, invasion, and occupation. As readers know, from time to time I raise questions about the validity of the West’s extreme hubris.

China is often a country about which Washington’s moralists get on their high horse.

However, China’s “authoritarian” government is actually more responsive to its people than America’s “elected democratic” government. Moreover, however incomplete on paper the civil liberties of China’s people, the Chinese government has not declared that it can violate with impunity whatever rights Chinese citizens have. And it is not China that is running torture prisons all over the globe.

For some time I have had in mind a realistic comparison of the two countries instead of the standard propagandistic comparison, but Ron Unz has beat me to the task twice). Unz provides a chance for an education. Don’t miss it.

Unz has done an excellent job. Moreover, he cleverly understates the case for China and overstates the case for America so as not to unduly arouse the flag-wavers. Nevertheless, the conclusion is clear: The Chinese are less threatened by their “extractive elites” than Americans are by their counterparts.

Moreover, it is America’s, not China’s, extractive elites who are bombing, occupying, and droning other countries. As the bumper sticker says, “Be nice to America or we will bring democracy to your country.”

As for economic management, there is no comparison. Unz reports that during the past three decades China has achieved the most rapid rate of economic development in human history. Moreover, most of the new income has flowed into the pockets of Chinese workers, not to the one percent. While American real median incomes have been stagnant for decades, incomes for Chinese workers have doubled every decade for three decades. A recent World Bank report attributes more than 100 percent of the drop in global poverty rates to China’s rise.

In the last decade China’s industrial output quadrupled. China now produces more automobiles than America and Japan combined and accounted for 85 percent of the increase in the world’s production of cars in the past decade.

In 1978 the American economy was 15 times larger than China’s. In the next few years China’s GDP is expected to exceed that of the US.

This is heady stuff providing astonishing details of how poorly Americans are served by their elites.

America has failed, because political elites represent only the powerful special interests that write the country’s laws in exchange for funding the political campaigns of “lawmakers.” To divert attention from their failures, American elites point fingers at external scapegoats. China, for example, is accused of manipulating its currency. As Unz says, the scapegoating is political theater designed for the ignorant and gullible.

America’s economists, or most of them, have so prostituted themselves that propaganda has become wisdom. Most Americans believe that if China would simply let the value of its currency rise more rapidly relative to the dollar, America’s economic woes would be at an end. It is beyond belief that any economist could think that Americans with stagnant and declining incomes would be made better off by a sharp rise in the prices of goods manufactured in China on which Americans are dependent, or that the US dollar’s role as reserve currency, the main source of American power, could survive such a manifestation of Chinese economic superiority.

Americans associate lawlessness with unaccountable governments and view China’s government as unaccountable. However, Unz points out that it is the Bush/Obama Regime that has declared itself to be unaccountable to both US and international law.

The demise of the War Powers Act and the Geneva Conventions, and the asserted power of the executive to imprison without trial or charges or to assassinate any American whom the executive thinks might be a “national-security threat” are indicative of a total police state masquerading as an accountable democracy. In America six-year old little girls who misbehave in school are handcuffed, jailed, and charged with felonies. Not even Hitler and Stalin went this far.

Americans have lost control of the government, and governments that are not controlled by the people are not democracies. In America today, Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, and the entire social safety net are threatened by the vociferous desire for war profits by armament plutocrats and by financial institutions determined that ordinary citizens bear the cost of the banksters incompetence and fraud.

Unz’s comparison of how the Chinese media and government handled the melamine or infant formula scandal and how the American media and government handled Merck’s Vioxx scandal is especially damning. It was China’s controlled media and unaccountable government that punished the infant formula wrongdoers, while America’s free press and accountable government allowed Merck to walk.

Unz’s conclusion is that it is in America, not China, where life is regarded as cheap.

Ron Unz is an American hero, and a very courageous one.

It is an even more courageous act when no one wants to hear the truth. As Frantz Fanon said, “Sometimes people hold a core belief that is very strong. When they are presented with evidence that works against that belief, the new evidence cannot be accepted. It would create a feeling that is extremely uncomfortable, called cognitive dissonance. And because it is so important to protect the core belief, they will rationalize, ignore and even deny anything that doesn’t fit in with the core belief.”

Or as it is explained to Neo in the film, “The Matrix is a system, Neo. That system is our enemy. But when you’re inside, you look around, what do you see? Businessmen, teachers, lawyers, carpenters. The very minds of the people we are trying to save. But until we do, these people are still a part of that system, and that makes them our enemy. You have to understand, most of these people are not ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inured, so hopelessly dependent on the system, that they will fight to protect it.”

Most of the people I know personally are not willing to be unplugged. I assume my readers are, so seize the opportunity to be further unplugged and read Ron Unz’s comparison of America and China.

Then do what you can to unplug others.

How Obama Became a Civil Libertarian's Nightmare

Obama has expanded and fortified many of the Bush administration's worst policies.

By Steven Rosenfeld, AlterNet
Posted on April 18, 2012

When Barack Obama took office, he was the civil liberties communities’ great hope. Obama, a former constitutional law professor, pledged to shutter the military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and run a transparent and open government. But he has become a civil libertarian’s nightmare: a supposedly liberal president who instead has expanded and fortified many of the Bush administration’s worst policies, lending bipartisan support for a more intrusive and authoritarian federal government.

It started with the 9/11 attacks. Within a week, Congress, including many liberals, gave the White House blanket authority to wage a war on the terrorists. A month after that, Congress passed the USA Patriot Act, authorizing many anti-terrorism measure including expanded surveillance. By mid-November, the White House ordered creation of military tribunals to try terrorists who were not U.S. citizens.

Bush quickly expanded covert operations, creating a shadow arrest, interrogation and detention system based at Guantanamo that violated international law and evaded domestic oversight. While the Supreme Court eventually ruled that detainees have some rights, the precedent that the Constitution does not restrict how a president conducts an endless war against a stateless enemy was firmly planted. In response, groups like the American Civil Liberties Union proposed reforms the newly elected president could make. What few anticipated was how he would embrace, expand and institutionalize many of Bush’s war on terror excesses.

President Obama now has power that Bush never had. Foremost is he can (and has) order the killing of U.S. citizens abroad who are deemed terrorists. Like Bush, he has asked the Justice Department to draft secret memos authorizing his actions without going before a federal court or disclosing them. 

Obama has continued indefinite detentions at Gitmo, but also brought the policy ashore by signing the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012, which authorizes the military to arrest and indefinitely detain anyone suspected of assisting terrorists, even citizens. That policy, codifying how the Bush treated Jose Padilla, a citizen who was arrested in a bomb plot after landing at a Chicago airport in 2002 and was transferred from civil to military custody, upends the 1878’s Posse Comitatus Act’s ban on domestic military deployment.

Meanwhile, more than a decade after the 9/11 attacks, Washington’s wartime posture has trickled down into many areas of domestic activity—even as some foreign policy experts say the world is a much safer place than it was 20 years ago, as measured by the growth in free-market economies and democratic governments. Domestic law enforcement has been militarized—as most visibly seen by the tactics used against the Occupy protests and also against suspected illegal immigrants, who are treated with brute force and have limited access to judicial review before being deported.

One of Bush’s biggest civil liberties breaches, spying on virtually all Americans via their telecommunications starting in 2003, also has been expanded. Congress authorized the effort in 2006. Two years later, it granted legal immunity to the telecom firms helping Bush—a bill Obama voted for. 

The National Security Agency is now building its largest data processing center ever, which Wired.com’s James Bamforth reports will go beyond the public Internet to grab data but also reach password-protected networks. The federal government continues to require that computer makers and big Web sites provide access for domestic surveillance purposes. More crucially, the NSA is increasingly relying on private firms to mine data, because, unlike the government, it does not need a search warrant. The Constitution only limits the government searches and seizures.

The government’s endless wartime footing is also seen in its war on whistleblowers. Obama has continued cases brought by Bush, such as going after the "leaker" in the warrantless wiretapping story broken by the New York Times in 2005, as well as the WikiLeaks case, prosecution of Bradley Manning, and others for allegedly mishandling classified materials related to the war on terrorism. Its suppression of war-related information given to journalists extends overseas, where the State Department this month has blocked a visa for a Pakistani critic from speaking in the U.S. The White House also recently pressured Yemen’s leader to jail the reporter who exposed U.S. drone strikes. 

Meanwhile, the administration has stonewalled Freedom of Information Act requests, particularly the Justice Department, which has issued the secret wartime memos.

How bad is it? Anthony Romero, the ACLU executive director, exclaimed in June 2010 that Obama “disgusted” him. Meanwhile, the most hawkish Bush administration officials have defended and praised Obama.

Last summer, liberal lawyer-journalist Glenn Greenwald tallied a list of Obama's Bush warrior endorsements. Jack Goldsmith, the former DOJ official who approved the torture and domestic spying efforts, wrote in The New Republic in May 2009 that Obama actually was waging a more effective war on terror than Bush.

“The new administration has copied most of the Bush program, has expended some of it, and has narrowed only a bit,” Goldsmith wrote. “Almost all of the Obama changes have been at the level of packaging, argumentation, symbol and rhetoric.” Bush’s final CIA director, General Michael Hayden—whose confirmation Obama opposed as a senator—told CNN there was a “powerful continuity between the 43rd and 44th presidents.” And in early 2011 Vice-President Dick Cheney told NBC News, “He’s learned that what we did was far more appropriate than he ever gave us credit for while he was a candidate.”

All of these civil liberties issues—executive authority to order assassination of citizens, unlimited detention without charges at Guantanamo, authority to deploy the military domestically to arrest and indefinitely detail terrorism suspects, a parallel "due process" that is outside the judicial branch, the expansion of the surveillance state, the increased militarization of local police and federal agencies especially ICE, the increasingly punitive treatment of protesters including strip searches, the war on whistleblowers, and others—are very complicated. The details are filled with shades of gray.

Bradley Manning’s harsh treatment, for example, is thought to be tied to the White House’s fear that the vast WikiLeaks cache contained references to the pursuit of Osama Bin Laden before his assassination—and could have alerted Al Qaeda. Better data mining and analysis could have detected the 9/11 attacks, the Patriot Act’s defenders past and present have repeatedly argued. But from a civil liberties perspective, Obama has more than chipped away at freedom from federal intrusion. The underlying problem is the tactics and values forged in foreign war have seeped into domestic policing.

“We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national security state,” Jack Balkin, a liberal Yale University Law School professor, told the New Yorker in a 2011 feature about a prominent NSA whistleblower. “The question is not whether we will have a surveillance state in the years to come, but what sort of state we will have,” he wrote in a prescient law review article published early in Obama’s presidency.

The larger dangers, Balkin said, was that the government is creating a “parallel track of preventative law enforcement that bypasses traditional protections in the Bill of Rights.” Moreover, he worries “traditional law enforcement and social services will increasingly resemble the parallel track.” And because the Constitution only restricts government actions, not “private parties, government has increasing incentives to rely on private enterprise to collect and generate information for it.”

“The major defining feature of the Obama administration on this issue is the eagerness with which it embraced the stunning evisceration of civil rights and liberties that was a hallmark of the Bush administration, and then deepened those outrageous programs,” said Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, who is an attorney representing many Occupy protesters swept up in last fall’s mass arrests. “He has successfully counted on the acquiescent silence of the liberals.”

Eric Holder, the Defender

The biggest difference between Bush and Obama on civil liberties and the war on terror is the Obama administration is more attuned to the optics of trying to appear reasonable as it conducts much of the same policies. To be fair, Obama has not kidnapped innocent people en masse in Afghanistan and warehoused them in Cuba, as Bush did. But he has launched drone strikes in numerous counties, where the victims include children.

In 2010, the ACLU and New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights, which has represented many Guantanamo detainees, filed a suit asking a federal court to set legal standards when the government could use lethal force against a U.S. citizen who was overseas but not on an active battlefield. That suit was dismissed. But Eric Holder, perhaps giving a victory to critics who have condemned the administration’s secrecy, gave an speech this March at Chicago’s Northwestern University School of Law explaining Obama’s wartime actions and authority. The speech was exactly what Goldsmith had described a year earlier in The New Republic—nearly identical on substance to Bush administration policy, but with more attention to the packaging for the public.

“In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger,” Holder began, quoting President John F. Kennedy’s inaugural at the height of the Cold War. “But just as surely as we are a nation at war, we are also a nation of laws and values,” Holder continued, saying, “Our actions must always be grounded on the bedrock of the Constitution.”

Holder explained the challenge for government was what to do after someone is found who is suspected of participating in a terrorist plot against the United States. He said the federal courts have done an excellent job in dealing with suspected terrorists since 9/11—and those who claim otherwise “are simply wrong.” But then Holder built the case for using a “reformed” military commission system—granting foreign detainees a right to counsel, a right to see evidence against them, and a right to cross-examine witnesses.

Moreover, Holder defended the administration’s right to transfer a terrorism suspect from civilian courts to military custody “based on the considered judgment of the President’s senior national security team.” And he said that in a “war with a stateless enemy” that the federal government has a right an obligation “to target specific senior operational leaders of Al Qaeda and associated forces,” just as the military shot down the plane with the top Japanese Admiral who led the Pearl Harbor attacks in World War II. “It is important to explain these legal principles publicly,” Holder said. “The Constitution does not require the President to delay action until some theoretical end stage of planning—when the precise time, pace and manner of an attack become clear.”

Holder then said there is no constitutional requirement that the President “get permission from a federal court before taking action against a United States citizen who is a senior operational leader of Al Qaeda or associated forces. This is simply not accurate. ‘Due process’ and ‘judicial process’ are not one and the same, particularly when it comes to national security. The Constitution guarantees due process, not judicial process.”

Holder’s arguments sound reasonable until you stop and ask where it ends up. The U.S. is still involved in dubious warfare efforts overseas—particularly Afghanistan. But the full wartime powers invoked by Obama to endlessly fight stateless terrorists, which are on par to Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s suspension of civil liberties in World War II, arguably are disproportionate to the scope of military actions. Moreover, people like Obama who are schooled in constitutional law know there are reasons why the foundation of American democracy is based on being a nation of laws—not arbitrary decisions by men—and are expected to respect that distinction govern with due deference and restraint.

Those who understand Obama’s civil liberties failing best include lawyers serving in the military, like David Frakt, a lawyer in the Air Force and Barry University School of Law professor. He recently wrote on Jurist.org that Obama’s targeted assassinations—a word Holder rejected in the speech—was the foreign policy equivalent of the domestic "Stand Your Ground" laws that led to Trayvon Martin's killing.

“During the Bush administration, we developed the rule of ‘we can kill you, but you can’t kill us,’” Frakt wrote. “Now, under the Obama administration, we have added a corollary… namely, ‘you can’t kill us, only we can kill us,’” referring to killing U.S. citizens abroad where “capture is not feasible.” The Stand Your Ground laws “are the logical domestic criminal counterpart to our nation’s aggressive pre-emptive self defense doctrine, under which we have gone to war on the same flimsy suspicions that George Zimmerman acted upon.”

The problem—as seen with more than 600 innocent people taken to Guantanamo—is that the White House can make mistakes. Cheney famously called them “the worst of the worst,” but by 2009 only one in seven were seen as being enemy combatants. Sen. Ron Wyden, D-OR, responding to Holder’s talk, said that, “Based on what I’ve heard so far, I can’t tell whether or not the Justice Department’s legal arguments would allow the president to order intelligence agents to kill an American inside the United States.”

Domestic civil liberties are fragile. They are not the same as a World War II battlefield where a grunt shoots first and asks questions later. Civil liberties take years to create and accrue, whereas a domestic terrorist attack can occur in a flash and then unwind those protections quickly and for many years. What started under Bush and has continued under Obama are battlefield values that have been conflated with domestic policing.

Just as Stand Your Ground laws turn every American going about their lives into a threat that needs to be measured, so too does a growing surveillance state encroach on privacy and specific constitutional rights, such as freedom from warrantless searches, judicial review and other constitutional checks and balances.

The question, as Balkan noted at the start of the Obama presidency, is not whether we will have a growing surveillance and police state, but what that state will be like. Obama has begun to wind down the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he hasn’t begun to roll back the most extreme civil liberties abuses tied to the earliest phases of that war. Liberals expected otherwise from a former constitutional law professor and candidate who campaigned against the excesses of the Bush administration.   

What is ObamaCare?

A wasted opportunity--no public option, no single payer--no good!--jef

High-Cost Privatized Medicine that Guarantees Billions of Dollars in Profits to Private Insurance Companies

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

Growing up in the post-war era (after the Second World War), I never expected to live in the strange Kafkaesque world that exists today. The US government can assassinate any US citizen that the executive branch thinks could possibly be a “threat” to the US government, or throw the hapless citizen into a dungeon for the rest of his or her life without presenting any evidence to a court or obtaining a conviction of any crime, or send the “threat” to a puppet foreign state to be tortured until the “threat” confesses to a crime that never occurred or dies at the hands of “freedom and democracy” while professing innocence.

It has never been revealed how a single citizen, or any number thereof, could possibly comprise a threat to a government that has a trillion plus dollars to spend each year on security and weapons, the world’s largest navy and air force, 700 plus military bases across the world, large numbers of nuclear weapons, 16 intelligence agencies plus the intelligence agencies of its NATO puppet states and the intelligence service of Israel.

Nevertheless, air travelers are subjected to porno-scanning and sexual groping. Cars traveling on Interstate highways can expect to be stopped, with traffic backed up for miles, while Homeland Security and the federalized state or local police conduct searches.

I witnessed one such warrantless search on Easter Sunday. The south bound lanes of I-185 heading into Columbus, Georgia, were at a standstill while black SUV and police car lights flashed. US citizens were treated by “security” forces that they finance as if they were “terrorists” or “domestic extremists,” another undefined class of Americans devoid of constitutional protections.

These events are Kafkaesque in themselves, but they are ever more so when one considers that these extraordinary violations of the US Constitution fail to be overturned in the Supreme Court. Apparently, American citizens lack standing to defend their civil liberties.

Yet, ObamaCare is before the US Supreme Court. The conservative majority might now utilize the “judicial activism” for which conservatives have criticized liberals. Hypocrisy should no longer surprise us. However, the fight over ObamaCare is not worth five cents.

It is extraordinary that “liberals,” “progressives,” “Democrats,” whatever they are, are defending a “health program” that uses public monies to pay private insurance companies and that raises the cost of health care.

Americans have been brainwashed that “a single-payer system is unaffordable” because it is “socialized medicine.” Despite this propaganda, accepted by many Americans, European countries manage to afford single-payer systems. Health care is not a stress, a trauma, an unaffordable expense for European populations. Among the Western Civilized Nations, only the richest, the US, has no universal health care.

The American health care system is the most expensive of all on earth. The reason for the extraordinary expense is the multiple of entities that must make profits. The private doctors must make profits. The private testing centers must make profits.The private specialists who receive the referrals from general practitioners must make profits. The private hospitals must make profits. The private insurance companies must make profits. The profits are a huge cost of health care.

On top of these profits come the costs of preventing and combatting fraud. Because private insurance companies resist paying and Medicare pays a small fraction of the medical charges, private health care providers charge as much as they possibly can, knowing that the payments will be cut to the bone. But a billing mistake of even $300 can bankrupt a health care provider from legal expenses defending him/her self from fraud accusations.

The beauty of a single-payer system is that it takes the profits out of the system. No one has to make profits. Wall Street cannot threaten insurance companies and private health care companies with being taken over because their profits are too low. No health-provider in a single-payer system has to worry about being displaced in a takeover organized by Wall Street because the profits are too low.

Because a single-payer system eliminates the profits that drive up the costs, Wall Street, Insurance companies, and “free market economists” hate a “socialized” medical care system. They prefer a socialized “private” health care system in which public monies flow into private insurance companies.

To make the costs as high as possible, conservatives and the private insurance companies devised ObamaCare. The bill was written by conservative think tanks and the private insurance companies. What the “socialistic” ObamaCare bill does is to take income taxes paid by citizens and use the taxes to subsidize the private medical premiums charges by private health care providers in order to provide “private” health care to US citizens who cannot afford it.

The extremely high costs of ObamaCare is not “socialistic medicine.” ObamaCare is high-cost privatized medicine that guarantees billions of dollars in profits to private insurance companies.

It remains to be seen whether such a ridiculous health care scheme, nowhere extant on earth except in Romney’s Massachusetts, will provide health care or just private profits.