the convoy is over

oh the misogyny

mom recently read this oped by some guy arnovitz, about how popular animus toward hillary clinton is rooted in sexism, and asked pop, bro-in-law and myself what we each think, via email. bro-in-law got there first. i do not post his words or paraphrase, except one choice bit, in which he pretty much suggested he cannot be sexist because his mother went to bryn mawr, his wife to brown and his sisters to other sort of "seven sisters" type schools, which i could not resist lampooning. his response is worth quoting (i have not sought his consent) or paraphrasing (which i don't think i can do with what could be seen objectively as fairness). he did open with a brief contemptuous dismissal of liberal strawmen and invite his readers to not read further; i also echo that invitation, but i don't mean it.

my response took some time: two metro rides plus about four hours. it is maybe the longest thing i have ever written on the stupid virtual keyboard of the handheld device. with all that time for reflection, somehow i failed to note the author's name, and called him "aronson" in the response. i think i've fixed all instances with the author's actual name, but am by no means certain. maybe the fact that i didn't bother learning his name when i read the oped may function in place of the executive abstract of the quite lengthy email that follows.

If you don't just absolutely love John Philip Sousa it must be because you hate music.

Feel free to not read this at all. It does go on for some time. (much later: sorry for the dissertation; you asked for it)

Well I am certainly the last person one should trust to evaluate whether or how much I am a sexist (you know I have a sister who is a doctor and went to brown, and selected a woman to be the mother of my child; I have also ogled many lovely and some not as lovely women, so stick that in your pc-meter! also I have endorsed my own production by a woman, albeit after the fact ;). If you did trust me to make the evaluation, you'd have to decide whether I have been sincere the many times I have called myself a misogynist. I am not certain.

I don't think my problem with her is that she's a woman, but it could be. There are other reasons than her gender to mistrust her: she's a politician and she's a Clinton. Must one really have more reasons?

I strongly agree with Arnovitz when he says "I am no political historian." He could have stopped there. That he didn't, but took his conclusory view as an acceptable starting point for discussion, tends to undermine his credibility, in my view.

Submit that honesty, as a character trait, means something more than not telling lies.

I think my first problem here is Arnovitz seems to recognize two types of people, those he calls conservatives and those he calls liberals, and that persons so described must share the views of others so called, respectively. The political spectrum is broader than that, and increasingly, the two parties do not reflect the views of their presumed adherents -- or, the values of voters do not align with those espoused by their respective parties, whose job is to perpetuate themselves, rather than govern or represent their constituents.

I also am skeptical of polls and fact-checkers, and their claims. Polls principally because they routinely depict a world lacking people like me; fact checkers because they do not seem to get the whole project right.

There is a perfect example in this story: Arnovitz characterizes the lack of charges brought against Hillary as an "exoneration" which proves her "innocent," when no such conclusion is required, or even permissible.

Indeed, in (improperly) stating "no reasonable prosecutor" would bring charges, head of FBI, investigating one narrow aspect, was pretty clear that she did mishandle classified information and did lie about that (and other aspects of her private email setup), while describing her and her staff as willfully careless. He said that is less than the "gross negligence" the statute in question requires, but that is by no means clearly established. Anyway, all that to say that declining to charge her is quite different than demonstrating her innocence. I have done things that I did not go to court or jail over, too, but that does not mean I'm innocent of those things.

The comparison with Petraeus is interesting, as are the author's assertions about the respect he still seems to command among Hillary's "conservative" detractors. Most of us don't know the scope of Petraeus' disclosures or standards required of him; the  full scope of Hillary's email shenanigans likewise will likely never be known. I am not inclined to credit assertions about either of them beyond basic outlines, because I don't trust reporters to get it right or pundits to be truthful; mere partisan voters, like myself, have nothing to go on but the, for want of a better word, propaganda of those involved in propagandizing the consumers (e.g., press, spokespeople, advertisers, pundits).

Judicial opinions and peer-reviewed scientific reports tend to be most credible insofar as they represent, and operate within, two epistemological traditions that share "data" and build on predecessors in a systematic fashion developed to preserve continuity with precedent. Of course jurists and scientists both can and do err; both systems can be manipulated by bad actors. But both systems tend to show their work -- data/facts and reasoning.

I do think truthfulness is a strange criterion on which to judge apex politicians at this late date... but there is little else by which to evaluate them. I do not believe that Hillary is the least untruthful politician; I don't even believe that can be a meaningful question. (sort of relevant oped in the Post today from Fareed Zechariah distinguishing persons on the true-false spectrum from outright bullshitters, based on some academic's book on same; not typically a fan of that writer, but the angle is interesting).

Arnovitz's discussion of speaking fees is as faulty as his evidence of innocence. Her fees only show her to be venal; it is her refusal to disclose Wall Street speech transcripts (on top of her "I went to Wall Street and said 'cut it out'" canard, in addition to her long record of financially benefiting from exploitative industries - notably private prisons, and sitting on the board of wal-mart while it dodged its obligations to its employees). Arnovitz doesn't even address these. That she is an apex politician seems sufficient to sustain suspicion of her venality, likely corruption or, at least, susceptibility to impermissible influence: fish don't feel they're influenced by water.

Attributing to sexism opposition to, or merely declining to support, Hillary is a worn trope: Hillary's proponents asserted this directly and indirectly throughout her race against Sanders, with some notable successes: wide acceptance of the word "BernieBro" to characterize supporters of Sanders, for one. Since the primary race this trope has been pushed even harder.

(an alternate view may be that this equation of sexism with criticism of Hillary is not intended to shame the 'bros so much as it is to help Democrats' "us" close ranks and feel energized. or, if you'll recall that time Gloria Steinem said all the girls were voting for Bernie because his campaign's "where the boys are," consider that Arnovitz is merely doing his best to give this charge a plausible intellectual foundation in order to ingratiate himself with the doctrinaire Democrat ladies. zing!)

It will continue, and will be thrown at supporters of that narcissist bullshitter too, but for now it is still mostly being used to try to shame the very many voters further to the left than she on the political spectrum to close ranks behind her: They're the ones believed to be susceptible to such pressure; those on the right have hated her for more than a generation, which is not sufficiently explained by sexism, and are not moved by the left's charges of taboo bias, or anything else, anyway. Moreover, over that period, party partisans -- and the fringe propagandists who exercise their dogwhistles -- have promoted greater intolerance and kneejerk hatred of the other side:

That she is a Democrat is sufficient reason for Republicans to hate her;
That she is an ascendant star in the party is sufficient reason for Republicans to hate her;
That she seems to be impervious to any scandal, that her trajectory remains despite any obstacle, is sufficient for Republicans to hate her;
That she is that party's apex politician at a time when social and demographic forces connive to make a woman president conceivable -- or popularly desirable -- is sufficient reason for Republicans to hate her;
That she is named Clinton is sufficient reason for Republicans to hate her;
That she was Secretary of State in the administration of Barack Obama is sufficient reason for Republicans to hate her.

Now, I like to imagine there are Republicans and Democrats out there, and beyond them "conservatives" and "liberals," and beyond them leftists and rightists out there, whose regard for persons elsewhere on the political spectrum is informed by something other or more than mere tribal hate of the other (& i'll admit i have a hard time conceiving extreme "rightists" as driven by any principle other than hate...not sure what principles might exist that are more conservative than those I might impute to right-of-Republican conservatives, but symmetry requires that I do imagine the possibility of non-hate principles on the extreme right to balance the non-hate principles I know may animate the extreme left), but, to some degree, hating the enemy increasingly seems to be required of those electing one of those identities as we all become more isolated, shrill, brittle and angry, as our communities erode to mediated, remote experiences enjoyed in solitude while embedded in crowds of strangers.

As to some Democrats, and some non-Democrat leftists, well, I can't speak for them either. We've all been subject to an unremitting barrage of hate for Hillary since Bill was first elected. It has continued unabated (like her political trajectory), scandals real and unreal, and endless howling in support of and opposition to her by parties exhibiting little regard for clear truth and thus meriting little authority. Authority, truth, facts don't matter though: trees in forest, drops in torrent, if there is truth (with respect to any particular scandal, issue, question of improper influence or malfeasance) it is infinitesimal and we have no access to it nor ability to confirm it. There is just a steady inchoate shriek which, after 20 years exposure, is hardly noticeable anymore. We've lived immersed in that. I have struggled over the years to remain aware of the exposure in order to minimize its subconscious influence (as w/ advertising), but it is exhausting.

Against that background anyone (trying conscientiously to come to his or her own sound conclusions) would evaluate her performance against her professed principles and stated goals, keeping in mind as the normative background such performance of other politicians.

Here I think we see a workhorse. There is not a single radical thing about her, except, possibly, her gender, and in the LGBTQetc-age, being a cisgender woman (married...etc) is not remotely radical, not even as a head of state. It has been not even remotely radical for my entire adulthood. For a woman to be elected President of the United States would merely tick a demographic box promising safe-harbor from charges of sexism like the election of Barack Obama ushered in a postracial era of harmony. It probably was radical when she first aspired to politics, but that was a long time ago.

She has an immense amount of experience politicking.

She reportedly politicked very effectively during her husband's administration, count as evidence a) the enduring hate of half of the political spectrum (& certain insurance executives, lobbyists etc) and b) the Obama administration's attempt to implement universal healthcare. As a Senator she did nothing to distinguish herself to my knowledge, except a few times she voted with the pack instead of making a principled stand; she was not my senator. As Secretary of State she seemed able, but she also seemed a little cavalier with respect to some of the rules: it is unclear to what extent. Perhaps her behavior in that role did not reflect the values she espouses (a coup or two; some clumsy ill-starred warlike gestures; widespread promotion of "fracking") but that role may require one to pursue one's principal's goals over one's own principles; perhaps those are the values she espouses (aspirational political language is vague; Hillary is apparently deliberately vaguer).

She does seem to share Obama's embrace of a vision of the "unitary executive" branch he inherited from Bush in a way that chafes against constitutional separation of powers principles -- which each party abhors in its opponent's president.

She's a bit hawkish -- with normal metrics; on the whacky scale of what that narcissist says she doesn't even register. Except you can't believe any particular proposition articulated by that narcissist who has no record of statespersonship, whereas she has voted in favor of apparently unlimited power to make warlike gestures worldwide forever as a duly elected representative of the people of a state at a time when that vote might really have mattered, and other times.

(I think that one vote is enough to damn her, for me, though I will have to go read up on her voting record for more -- a lot of terrible laws were passed under her watch, over and above the normative background of terrible laws.)

Anyway, that sums up to a pretty solid resume.

I think she got disbarred, or, if she did not, then went inactive as a bar member under threat of disciplinary proceedings. One datapoint ain't much, but I am acquainted with a man who got a five year suspension because his immense drug habit somehow led to egregious, wanton violations of ethics for no reason and at great cost to his client, firm and his sacred honor. He was not disbarred. but disciplinary proceedings may be their own Kafkaesque punishment: it took most of the five years to get the sentence, and the rest of them to argue, successfully, that they should count from the date of the commencement of proceedings. Different state; different authorities.

Did I mention her vote for war?

She dissembles reasonably well, though she lacks the gifts of charm and eloquence that Bill and Barack both exhibit. What we'd forgive as a misstatement from any Bush, we hold her to, or suspect her of conniving at.

She has exhibited secretiveness and a disregard for or willful tendency to bend the rules. She has made inconsistent statements, held inconsistent positions; it is fair to consider whether these evince hypocrisy or growth--but when she says "I have always supported x" (whatever supported may mean) and she has demonstrably opposed x on the record, well politifact or whomever ought to count that as a lie, even as it may appear a mere rhetorical flourish rather than assertion of fact.

Some of what she did wrong with the email is against the law; some may violate national security. Some she has in common with her predecessors in office; some is unique to her office. The question the justice department asked the FBI to investigate was quite narrow; there is a much broader review of compliance with other laws done by the inspector general of the state department. It is pretty damning of her office, not least because whereas her four predecessors in that office cooperated fully with the IG, Hillary did not. All of them did not fulfill their legal requirements with respect to record keeping, communication and FOIA; Hillary a bit more so.

It is not clear to what extent she participated in her party chairperson's favoritism of her campaign as against those of other primary contenders if any, but she doesn't help her credibility by saying immediately afterward that that shamed corrupt politician (who violated party rules about fairness) would "continue to" work as her "surrogate."

That's the person who isn't Donald Trump. She's a real solid politician, eminently qualified for the office; she also gives every appearance of being dishonest to the bone. I'm confident our government and constitution will be here, more or less intact, when she's done with them (and am more than a little curious what she would try to do once there's no higher office to carefully position herself for); I have no such confidence in that other guy. Moreover, if we must have parties with platforms, which we understand to be goals those parties' candidates will seek to attain once in office, then I am more comfortable with her party's platform than that of her opponent.

So, overall, I think there are plenty of good reasons to remain critical of her -- and to strive to see her clearly -- that needn't be based in any particular individual's sexism. Plenty of rational reasons for a person who identifies with a party or otherwise.

It is distressing that a "with us or against us" argument should be made by her advocates, and disappointing that it should be so crude in conception and poor in execution. And telling: Arnovitz doesn't know that he has no authority to tell me what is true (or to passively indicate an unauthenticated source of truth), or to instruct me in the use of my capacity to reason. That he doesn't know that damns him and his project, but is pretty much run of the mill for . . . I think the same insular bubble of news and commentariat that "conservatives" deride as "the liberal media" but i, identifying as further to the left than who-are-called-liberals(-in-USA) cannot so designate.

Anyway, it is worth asking, from time to time, whether one's critical view of a class or member of a class is due to the influence of a taboo bias. Arnovitz has his answer, and many people who already agree with him will agree with him without engaging their rational capacity at all. Those whose views of Hillary are driven by a sexism of which they would be ashamed if they were not unaware are probably quite few.

What do I know. Maybe all the sexist kids these days look to a middle aged male columnist for morally sound political direction. I don't think so (tho do have reason to believe reasoning such as Arnovitz's to be common among the politically active social-media generation).

So, you tell me: misogyny or nah?

Love,
oomph

crowdcensure for victory

i took one copy of that book upsetting the senator off the internet.

dear reader, every little bit helps.

if every conscientious american did that every day we'd eradicate the menace in no time.

before causing my copy to be destroyed, i thought i'd see if it was the same as the serially xeroxed and cheaply bound copy i'd seen all those years ago. that copy did not have any ASCII illustrations, which do appear in the copy i took off the internet.

much of the bad writing, the malapropisms, and casual tone sound a lot more contemporary than a) i recall or b) the dated material itself (for example, and perhaps conceding the senator's concern to a degree, the vexing question of the provenance of the recyclable plastic bottle molotov cocktail comes clear while reading a recipe written in 1971 - that lost golden age when "a coke bottle" was sure to be made of glass). oh, and it is a pdf'd web page, not the anticipated scan of aforementioned "'zine"-style, serially-copied publication, though it is quite widely available on the open internet, likely in various formats; haven't checked, but expect a copy more like what i remember resides at the internet archive.

anyway, scary representations of household chemistry and edifying explanations of long-gone telephone switching --

illustrative paraphrase: the best computer to make [color]box device is an atari because you can do it in basic with only 5 statements--ha: old-timey! 

 -- systems and scams abound among some gleeful contemplation of seriously horrifying pranks and mayhem. a fellow around the water cooler recalled the book as the source of his recipe for gunpowder; another colleague attributes a friend's son's dementia onset to a recipe from the book. i would be very reticent about attempting almost anything i read there.

"anarchist" in the title seems to signify one inclined to mayhem or taboo chemical knowledge rather than one inclined to implementing a political philosophy of absolute freedom.

amusing paraphrase: cutting enough match heads can be tedious, but will make a fun evening for the whole family if you can pry them away from the tv.

i guess, if i were allegedly a part of a conspiracy, downloading and reading that book and discussing said downloading and reading with alleged co-conspirators could be construed as an act or acts in furtherance of whatever alleged goal of said alleged conspiracy; it is not clear where the threshold of criminality is for the individual not conspiring (i don't say "lone-wolf" because that term presupposes a planned class of activities the contemplated reader may, for any of an infinitude of reasons, never be inclined to undertake).

an alleged conspirator might avoid legal sanction by acting specifically to frustrate the object of the conspiracy, viz. confessing to the man in time for the man to harmlessly foil the plot(s) . . . maybe; it is not clear what an individual not conspiring might do.

a nice, quiet, fellow who mostly keeps to himself, i caused the copy i had taken off the internet (which seemed to continue, beyond the cookbook, proper, to include one or more additional volumes with "terrorist" and "handbook" in their titles -- not that i waive my fundamental right to read anything i find on the internet or elsewhere containing those words) to be destroyed, although a novice forensicist could surely reconstitute enough of it to demonstrate its arrival, review and "destruction". i didn't really want it floating around in the recent memory at the same time i'm reading abu bakr naji's "the management of savagery," which is, frankly, fascinating, far more erudite than "jolly roger", and far less disturbing to read than the latest news of any of any number of parties' depredations; so far, it is broad strategy and exegesis not so different from clausewitz, nkrumah, guevara et al.

doing nothing wrong, nay: doing right via dissent and resistance

Eben Moglen is a magnificent speaker well worth watching. Last autumn he offered Columbia Law School a series of lectures, Snowden and the Future, in four parts, what seems to be the full text of which was published Tuesday in the Tech section of The Guardian.com. Mr. Moglen and the Software Freedom Law Center have also made full video, audio and text available.

A bit from the Guardian that struck me:

When Snowden disclosed the existence of the NSA's Bullrun programme we learned that NSA had lied for years to the financiers who believe themselves entitled to the truth from the government they own. The NSA had . . . subverted technical standards, attempting to break the encryption that holds the global financial industry together. . . .

Part I: Westward the Course of Empire begins with more familiarity with the details of the decline of the Roman empire than I am afraid I have retained, or, indeed, was ever exposed to.

Edward Snowden committed espionage on behalf of the human race. Knowing the price, knowing the reason, knowing that it wouldn't be up to him whether sacrificing his life was worth it. So I would think that our most important effort, first, is to understand the message: to understand its context, to understand its purpose, to know its meaning, and to experience the consequences of having received the communication. Others will of course regard the first imperative as being to eliminate the message, and the messenger, and the meaning: to render everything as invisible as possible. Because invisibility is where listeners have to live in order to work. But I think we must let them go about that business. We must let them try to obliterate the message as best they can, and do our work, which is the work of understanding first.

This struck me because I have wished to interject something like this each time the water cooler is roiled with the artificial debate of partisans ranting past one another, or to challenge some mouthpiece of surveillance --who again and again deflect, asserting certain journalists' (and former agency insiders') characterizations of programs described by leaked documents are errant, and that we should address the real ongoing programs and view such documents with due regard for context -- to produce that context, forthrightly, together with sufficient evidence to support the veracity of such information proffered by parties who have squandered their credibility through the consistent disclosures of their consistent earlier lies. Mr. Hayden and his ilk cannot in honest debate defer open examination of the parameters of surveillance programs on grounds that we should all be able to talk with particularity about the same real programs and activities, while failing to disclose (and continuing to otherwise prevaricate and mischaracterize) such relevant facts concerning such programs as are within his cognizance. Until such a time, the documents sure appear to speak for themselves, and are, nevertheless, the best available information.

Watch here. Listen here.

Part II: Oh, Freedom considers  two constitutional traditions of resistance, arising out of the founding narrative of liberty and subsequent history of slavery leading eventually to the abolition of chattel slavery and the political and social enfranchisement of its former objects.

For analytical purposes let us take this word "privacy," that we are growing accustomed to using quite freely, and see what it really is. Privacy—as we use the word in our conversations now all around the world, and particularly when we talk about the net— really means three things. The first is secrecy, which our ability to keep messages "private," so that their content is known only to those who we intend to receive them. The second is anonymity, which is our ability to keep our messages—even when their content is open—obscure as to who has published them and who is receiving them. It is very important that anonymity is an interest we can have in both our publishing and our reading. The third is autonomy, which is our ability to make our life decisions free any force which has violated our secrecy or our anonymity. These three are the principle components of the mixture that we call "privacy". With respect to each, further consideration shows that it is a precondition to the order that we call "democracy", "ordered liberty", "self-government", to the particular scheme that we call in the United States "constitutional freedom."

Mr. Moglen also addresses two common responses to the scope of the revealed programs: the "it's hopeless" and the "if you're doing nothing wrong -" tropes, the latter of which he answers with

If we are not doing anything wrong. then we have a right to resist. If we are not doing anything wrong, then we have a right to do everything we can to maintain the traditional balance between us and power that is listening. We have a right to be obscure. We have a right to mumble. We have a right to speak languages they do not get. We have a right to meet when and where and how we please so as to evade the paddy rollers.

watch or here/listen

Part III: The Union, May it Be Preserved presents the present privacy crisis, "government abuse of the systems of surveillance and listening" deployed by "those who wish to earn off you" -- Google, Facebook, Yahoo! and the like -- and adopted by we the statistical datasets,

this form of pervasive spying on societies which has come into existence, results from a larger environmental and ecological crisis brought on by industrial overreaching. It is not the first, the last, or the most serious of the various forms of environmental crisis brought on in the last two centuries by industrial overreaching. Industrial overreaching has begun to modify the climate of the whole earth in unexpected and damaging ways. Against that enormity this is merely an ecological disaster threatening the survival of democracy. So we need to understand the ecological harm done underneath, before we can begin to restrict the listening of government to its appropriate sphere, and abate those violations of the constitution. . . .

With an ecological framework, he proposes an environmental law approach to questions of privacy in the, ahem, private sector. Also:

The anonymity of reading is the central, fundamental guarantor of freedom of the mind. Without anonymity in reading there is no freedom of the mind. Indeed, there is literally slavery.

watch/listen

Part IV: Freedom's Future

I haven't made it to the fourth part yet to poach passages. Not sure what will happen, but hopefully that sense of hope described in Part II will be transmitted. Also, it is certain to be as deep, informative and thoughtful.

watch/listen

how a few bad apples broke the camel's back

. . . a few bad apples, whose exceptional performance has been recognized and rewarded as they advanced in the organization, and now comprise our executive leadership.

--[Redacted], Inc., Annual Report, 2011

Gotta love a Senator's oratory at an inflection point of grave public significance (when there's a podium but no forum for Q and A).

Senator Feinstein, Chairman of the Intelligence Committee, who has appeared over most of the past year consistently carrying water for the NSA, insisting time and again, against all evidence, the views of her peers and constituents, and the explicit statements, in interviews and declassified opinions, of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court's judges, that oversight -- specifically, her committee's oversight of intelligence activities reported to her committee by executives of those agencies whose activities her committee nominally oversees (just as in the case of the FISC) -- of intelligence activities is vibrant and effective, seems to have had enough. It looks like she's entertaining notions parallel to those FISC judges' assertions that oversight is laughably ineffective.

Now it is a constitutional crisis.

(As chair of the Intelligence Committee she has greater standing to articulate and assert the ongoing rampant and widespread constitutional crisis that until now she has called adequate oversight, than do most of we, the people, and most of our advocacy organizations, so often subject to surveillance and more).

In all seriousness, it is good to read the Senator's account, if not for the chilling tale and high dudgeon, then for the sake of comparison with the many pundits' soundbites and journalists' gists.

In fairness, she addresses certain specific efforts of specific CIA personnel to mislead, undermine and intimidate committee staff investigating the CIA's Detention and Interrogation Program, rather than those many known and bemoaned surveillances of normal folk by another agency, but in doing so she reveals the pattern of behavior of a thoroughly corrupt organization, breaking laws today in a continuing effort to never be accountable for some of its torture and disappearance programs undertaken a decade or more ago.

She has not spoken of other agencies.

I'm doing that, looking at the institutional disregard for rules set into motion by the executive leadership thirteen years ago (it is not clear to this author that current leadership are significantly nobler, they just didn't arrive with the surplus, the agenda and the playbook), and the principle of management whereby the ethos of an organization flows from the top: The current executives of all agencies thrived and excelled as the Executive department's abuses and unaccountability gained momentum, and were propelled to the top of their uniquely sensitive, secretive and powerful organizations under those conditions, as those organizations enacted programs skirting laws or, later requiring laws to be rewritten. In many cases the very infrastructure of the agencies was specifically reorganized to better fit the views and designs of unaccountable leadership. Now, they are relied upon to brief the qualified senators and judges concerning intelligence activities, even when they make assertions concerning how, previously, they had misled. (It is not clear to this author that the trajectory for success in national politics, say, Congress, is any less fraught with fostering festering corruption. . . hence the epigraph.)

And if the fruit of the tree is rotten . . .

Anyway, if one Senator could change the tide, it is the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee turning on a dime. I briefly looked for opportunistic haiku, but the pithy bits were far too long and I quickly gave up to be a better audience. A bit of pith and vinegar:

This is important: Some of these important parts [of the Senate Intelligence Committee study of CIA Detention and Interrogation Program] that that CIA now disputes in our committee study are clearly acknowledged in the CIA's own Internal Panetta Review. . . . 

If the Senate can declassify this report, we will be able to ensure that an un-American, brutal program of detention and interrogation will never again be considered or permitted.

How Congress responds and how this is resolved will show whether the Intelligence Committee can be effective in monitoring and investigating our nation's intelligence activities, or whether our work can be thwarted by those we oversee.

toward a more panopticonscientious course

Jacob Applebaum, of reported Wikileaks and TOR fame or notoriety and advocacy of open development, gave a hell of an address about the surveillance state and "preference-based utilitarianism" at a CCC conference last winter, that cannot be recommended too strongly:



At the same conference, noted and notorious whistleblowers Jesselyn Radack, Thomas Drake, and William Binney serially narrate their ordeals and ideals after exposing secret government power, Enemies of the State:



Hmm. This one seems to be the official YouTube posting for the event from CCCen, promising an entire additional hour, which begins circa 1:23:00 with panel responses to audience questions and comments, which could easily fill that span.

the last wheeze of an unreasonable expectation of privacy dying

Some time ago I mused at length concerning how, to me, it was not obvious, as Jonathan Landay had said to Amy Goodman, what one can do to try to protect oneself from communications interception. (I have spent much of the intervening time wondering how "obvious" a secure encryption setup and TOR deployment are, and suspect the technical proficiency required to implement either weighs against obviousness.)

The New York Times this week ran the harrowing and exhilarating story of how documentarian Laura Poitras, journalist Glenn Greenwald and whistleblower Edward Snowden all got together. Among its notable points is the description of Ms. Poitras' acumen with communications security -- developed over her many years of harassment and scrutiny at border crossings -- which, while sufficiently advanced to receive and authenticate encrypted communications, wasn't entirely to the would-be leaker's satisfaction when he approached her.

She . . . sent her public key. . . . The stranger responded with instructions for creating an even more secure system to protect their exchanges [instructing her] to select long pass phrases that could withstand a brute-force attack by networked computers [by an] "adversary . . . capable of a trillion guesses a second." . . . Seconds after she decrypted and read the e-mail, Poitras disconnected from the Internet and removed the message from her computer.

It is worth reading, because, prior to contact with Snowden, by necessity, Poitras already operated at a pretty extreme level of communications and information security: minimizing cell phone use, masking her browsing activity, learning to use encryption, leaving copies of film in safety deposit boxes in her many terminus cities -- a level of precautionary effort that almost any reasonable American would view as extraordinary, and as requiring an extraordinary level of proficiency with computers and networks. This heightened level of operational security, and the proficiency it implies, are what first enabled Snowden to reach out. And when he did, his first communications were instructions to implement even greater security.

It is also worth reading for other aspects of the, as I said, exhilarating narrative. In an additional wrinkle, you may have seen the coverage of Greenwald's partner's detention, while changing planes at Heathrow, for the maximum time permitted under the UK antiterror laws nominally permitting such detentions for our safety.

The Freedom of the Press Foundation, apparently agreeing that encryption and TOR might not be obvious to the socially networked masses of credulous WYSIWYG clickers, has published "Encryption Works: How to Protect Your Privacy in the Age of NSA Surveillance," a primer on available tools to that end.

I read it it. It was good. It was informative. It had useful links to the described tools and their support communities. Although I'm skeptical about the absolute security of this machine, I have nevertheless downloaded and begun trying to understand how to use the GPG software. It, and its documentation, do, however, assume that I understand things that I do not understand. I do not have anyone in particular with whom to correspond encryptedly anyway: When our freedom of expression was chilled we stopped writing email; or was it when we opened social networking sites, or grew old?

Anyway, it basically says use encryption and TOR on Linux. Each has its technical hurdles, and TOR has some inherent latency issues so long as it is not widely adopted, some developing liability issues for certain configurations in certain jurisdictions, and has recently had some security issues as well.

Gawker also published a guide, "How to Leak to Gawker Without (Hopefully) Getting Caught," which has some good tips for information security conscientiousness while on the Internet, contemplating or cultivating anonymity.

In other news, the Guardian reported that Google filings, in a pending suit over Google's practice of scanning the content of email sent to Gmail users from other domains, assert that Gmail users have no "reasonable expectation" of privacy in their Gmail traffic. This is true. It pretty much always has been for networked activities. Although, to be fair, the case, reportedly brought by parties who corresponded with Gmail users, not by Gmail users themselves, is interesting, and the Google spokespersons' glib, fallacious similitudes maybe don't help the corporation look too good here.

That outraged shriek is a bunch of privacy advocates' unreasonable expectation of privacy dying.

As one's "reasonable expectation of privacy" is the basis for the standard judicial inquiry into privacy issues, it is important to understand this. You can have a reasonable expectation of privacy in Gmail (I learn from the above-linked FPF encryption primer) only if you use an email client to draft and encrypt your message, and only then transmit it through the Gmail service (and your implementation and your correspondents' implementations are secure).

Except: Do you have a reasonable expectation of privacy in encrypted transmissions when now-publicly-disclosed documents clearly indicate that procedures, adopted to minimize storage of data concerning US Persons "inadvertently acquired," expressly direct that those enciphered be retained for cryptanalysis?

Isn't committing a communication to encryption then ensuring that the best cryptanalysts available to the U.S. Government will have a go at it, if only for practice, or training purposes?

The reasonableness of an expectation of privacy in such circumstances then would tend to decrease over time by some function of the complexity of the particular cipher, the processing power available for the brute force attack, and a sense of the throughput and the volume in the queue.

So, encrypting securely per the best advice of the Freedom of the Press Foundation, and assuming that all transmissions are, in fact, collected, and that all those encrypted are retained for analysis, and are so analyzed, maybe our best bet is to create such a volume of inane and harmless -- but securely encrypted -- traffic that the queue will be prohibitively long for available resources.

All of this is far beyond obvious, and calls for some serious grounding in a variety of fields. As she worked with Greenwald on Snowden's material, Poitras emerged as an operational security mastermind: "In addition to encrypting any sensitive e-mails, she began using different computers for editing film, for communicating and for reading sensitive documents (the one for sensitive documents is air-gapped, meaning it has never been connected to the Internet)."

Finally, whereas Google may have the power to send you advertising based on the content of your correspondence on the fly, and the NSA may have filled the wastes of the West with banks and banks of processors crunching away at my encrypted love poems to Jonathan Landay and Amy Goodman, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, the chief judge of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, told the Washington Post this week that the court lacks the capacity to verify information it is provided or enforce compliance with its rulings. But Mr. Obama knows better.

the enemy of my enemy is my . . --wait-- . . my . . enemy . . . and . . . me?

dear norm,

once, you told us to report suspicious activities.
to protect america, homeland of the bravefree, from enmity.
america the mythic body politic of individual liberty engaged,
exemplary -- among nations as jesus is to mortal men --
founded in an openly reasoned and ordered constitution.

(we've talked about that before, norm, 'member?)

some years ago, the secret court for national security issued
a secret opinion declaring certain secret intelligence-gathering
activities of a secret intelligence-gathering agency of the government
to be in violation of the law and of the constitution, and some
top secret eyes only brass discussed it in electric memoranda.

an employee of a private contractor, providing secret secure
information technology support to said secret intelligence-
gathering agency's illegal and unconstitutional secret
intelligence-gathering activities, took an innocent trip abroad
and disclosed the fact of the illegal and unconstitutional
secret intelligence-gathering activities of said secret
intelligence-gathering agency, and of the memoranda about
the secret opinion of the secret court to a reporter.

and thereby the world. (one might say they
"reported suspicious activities," norm)

that man, by these disclosures, is now a spying traitor who
has provided aid and succor to the enemies of the state.
spokesmen for the state assert that enemies of the state
have already changed their behavior in response to these
disclosures damaging secret intelligence-gathering efforts.

(a sealed secret indictment
has somehow been disclosed)

norm, i cannot parse that statement any way but to conclude
it asserts the american people are the enemy of the state,
which i can dig, due to its congruence with ideals of axiomatic
moral significance, attributed to founders of the state, et al.,
but i don't know about the american people as a whole.

i suspect many americans

-- who may have batted an eye
and gotten right back to business when spokesmen for
intelligence-gathering agencies of the government
described "total information awareness" as the ideal
sociocomputational panopticon to reveal suspicious
patterns against the background of every
transaction and better "connect the dots," or when
spokesmen for intelligence-gathering agencies
announced the founding of a strategic disinformation
office whose only act was to publicly be shut down, or
again, in 2006 when secret intelligence-gathering, on
americans, by a secret intelligence-gathering agency was
disclosed to the public in print and widely discussed --

might have assumed such disclosures had quietly led to reform,
or that their party's administration must certainly be different,
or that jesus and secret congress would take care of everything.

they might not have known that power, seized
by the executive office, accrues to that office,
accumulates as each subsequent administration holds
what it inherits and grasps for more while publicly abhorring
the extravagant malfeasance of its predecessors,
until checked by congress and courts.

they might not be ready to parse it that way;

that secret congress and secret courts have no qualm
that their secret rulings, that secret intelligence-gathering
activities of secret intelligence-gathering agencies
violate the law and the constitution, should remain secret
as the secret illegal and unconstitutional gathering of
intelligence on americans by a secret intelligence-gathering
agency continues and expands, while spokesmen for the
secret intelligence-gathering agency lie to public congress,
and spokesmen for the state declare the program compromised
because we the surveyed americans now know about it,
can take a little while to sink in and become explicit.

many americans may not yet realize that
their government has called them enemies, but
man shall not long live by bread and circuses alone.

but i guess you know all that already.

 - pogo

stiglitz on the austere rerecession, and percussion

from Democracy Now, June 6, 2012, in two parts:

1.

learn to love low interest rates and collateral-free assassination

Dear Norm,

In order to qualify as smart,
as a precision munition,
an aspiring bomb or cruise missile used to have to
detonate at or within fifty meters of its target,
one try out of two.

A pretty high bar, nevertheless admitting
the negligible chance that one out of two times
a precision-rated munition might blow up somewhere not
within fifty meters of its target.

It was quite a while ago; many new
targeting and munitions delivery and deployment systems
have come on line since: the ordnance market has seen
consistent high demand, the engine of innovation,
which, I don't have to tell you, Norm, guides us
stepwise with certainty toward perfection of the product.

repeat as necessary for desired effect

a constitution against things prohibiting

do i look suspicious?

I have been interested in Suspicious Activities since before the government cynically stoked hysteria by encouraging all freedom-loving Americans to "report suspicious activities" more than a decade ago, while consistently declining to provide any guidance as to identifying indicia of suspectness.

It was at that time, contemplating the values and objectives behind the apparent contradiction that a poet-friend and I noted the chilling effect of such an blank mandate, realizing the government operative behind the campaign must be Norm. Hence the beginning of the People's Peaceable Assembly Line's project of Reporting Suspicious Activities by dint of Letters to Norm.

So, naturally, I am interested in others' parsing of suspicion. And this is very interesting:

Produced by NEWMecca Movement's JayDex, the "Am I Suspicious?" public service campaign features those items identified as indicia of suspectness in connection with the shameful murder of Trayvon Martin -- a bottle of ice tea, a bag of skittles, and a hooded sweatshirt worn by a dark-skinned youth in the vicinity of a gated community -- displayed by a variety of Howard University students, understandably uncertain about what it might take for them to be gunned down with impunity.



Another "Am I Suspicious?" PSA, features individuals in hoodies asking "Am I suspicious, or are you a racist?" although I think a better question might be "...or are you afraid of hooded sweatshirts?" Perhaps, to a racist, the hooded sweatshirt might have some racial implications, but I find myself wondering whether I wouldn't have to get a glimpse at the hooded figures's faces before arriving at any conclusions as to their races.

widdershins

injustice, groupthink and spatial proprioception

1. Equal Justice Initiative founder, Bryan Stevenson, addresses the power of identity and injustices related to mass incarceration, in his inspiring presentation. Highlight excerpts:

We have a system of justice in this country that treats you much better if you are rich and guilty than if you are poor and innocent. Wealth, not culpability, shapes outcomes.
. . .
[I]n another ten years the level of disenfranchisement will be as high as it has been since prior to the passage of the voting rights act. And there is this stunning silence.
. . .
When I teach my students about African American history, I tell them about slavery; I tell them about terrorism the era that began at the end of reconstruction and went on until the end of World War II. We don't really know very much about it, but for African Americans in this country that was an era defined by terror. . . . People had to worry about being lynched, they had to worry about being bombed. It was the threat of terrorism that shaped their lives. 

But, by all means, watch "We need to talk about an injustice" yourself:

2. In "The power of introverts" Susan Cain (no relation, but even if they had brushed past each other at some family reunion, Herman Cain would not recall whether he remembered her, should he try) presents the introvert/extravert spectrum, and offers some insight into the tyranny of the extravert cultural hegemony, and some things it may be overlooking or denying itself when it discounts introverts and their potential input. Ms. Cain recently researched and published Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World that Can't Stop Talking. Also see Jonathan Rauch's classic 2003 essay from the Atlantic, "Caring for Your Introvert."




3. Whatever you may think of the premise and its substantive points, Sir Ken Robinson's "Schools kill creativity" is hilarious:




4. Finally, in his fascinating talk, "How your brain tells you where you are," cognitive neuroscience researcher Neil Burgess presents some findings about the activiation of certain sets of spatially significant neurons:

oncology colloquy and doomsday rap

1. David Agus provides an excellent primer on what we talk about when we talk about cancer, criticizing a history of reductionism and offering the prospect of multidisciplinary systemic approach. Zing:

In healthcare we spend most of the dollars . . . treating disease, most of the dollars in the last two years of a person's life. We spend very little if any dollars . . . identifying what we're up against. If you could start to move that, to identify what you're up against, you're going to do a hell of a lot better. If we could even take it one step further and prevent disease, we could take it enormously in the other direction, and, obviously, that's where we need to go. . . .

2. Bill Doyle introduces the promising "fourth modality" of cancer treatment: targeted electric fields, which inhibit mitosis, leading to cancer cell death.




3. Finally, as a sort of counterweight to the foregoing somewhat staid cancer talks, please find Juice Media's The Rap News (with Robert Foster).

I first became aware of The Rap News at episode 7 featuring a parodied Asma Mahfouz offering insight into the Wisconsin public-sector strike, last March (See the real Asma Mahfouz - Tahrir square activist célèbre - interviewed on the occasion of her October visit to Occupy Wall Street at Democracy Now!), and I just found them again. They are often hilarious, occasionally insightful, and have spectacular rhymes with frequently-interesting flow, often all at the same time, as you'll see in the Special Report on the prospects of 2012, below (although, the mc chomsky cameo has little humor or flow to speak of).

a new campaign slogan!

i tried to remember
if i remembered her
and i didn't:

i didn't remember remembering her;
i remembered not remembering her.
i didn't remember her.

i didn't try to remember remembering her;
i didn't try to remember her.
i didn't try.

i tried to remember
if i recognized her
and i didn't:

i didn't recognize her.
i didn't remember if i recognized her.
i didn't try.

i may have recognized her, once,
but i didn't remember recognizing her when i tried,
and i neither remember recognizing her, nor recognize her, now.
but i remember i tried.

i didn't try.
i remembered that i didn't recognize her,
(but, now, i have forgotten
and she looks kind of familiar)

i tried to remember not recognizing her and i didn't:
i didn't recognize her;
i didn't remember not recognizing her;
i recognized her, but didn't remember it;
i recognized her, but didn't try to remember it;
i recognized her, but didn't remember why;

i didn't try to remember her -
i didn't try to recognize her -
i tried not to remember her and
i tried not to recognize her,
but i did. i do.

i recognize her now, from the tv.
and now i remember
i thought i recognized her (but i didn't)
because she reminded me
of some other ladies i tried
and tried not to remember when i didn't.

i didn't try: i remember
we reached confidential settlements.

on control, abstract and personal

A few interesting things:

1. New Scientist article, "Revealed - the capitalist network that runs the world," provides a synopsis of Vitali, Glattfelder and Battiston's forthcoming article, "The network of global corporate control," (to be published in PLoS ONE) presenting their rigorous economics-and-systems'-theory analysis of the structure of the ownership and control network existing among 43,060 incestuously-related trasnsnational corporations.

I'm reading the paper itself, but it is dense and filled with befuddling algorithms, abbreviations, tables and footnotes optimized for bound print publication but difficult to cross-reference in the hand-held .pdf app through which I'm reading, so I am not finished and unready, Dear Reader, and anyway probably wouldn't dare try, to summarize it or pick out pithy passages: Struggle with the algorithms yourself -- goggle at the figures; slog through the prose -- like I am, and make up your own mind. From New Scientist:

From . . . a database listing 37 million companies and investors worldwide, they pulled . . . 43,060 TNCs and the share ownerships linking them[,] [t]hen . . . constructed a model of which companies controlled others through shareholding networks, coupled with each company's operating revenues, to map the structure of economic power.

The work . . . revealed a core of 1318 companies with interlocking ownerships. Each . . . had ties to two or more other companies, and on average . . . were connected to 20. [A]lthough they represented 20 per cent of global operating revenues, the 1318 appeared to collectively own . . . the majority of the world's large blue chip and manufacturing firms - the "real" economy - representing . . . 60 per cent of global revenues.

When the team further untangled the web of ownership, it found much of it tracked back to a "super-entity" of 147 even more tightly knit companies - all of their ownership was held by other members of the super-entity - that controlled 40 per cent of the total wealth in the network. "In effect, less than 1 per cent of the companies were able to control 40 per cent of the entire network," says Glattfelder. Most were financial institutions.

From the study itself:

This is the first time a ranking of economic actors by global control is presented. Notice that many actors belong to the financial sector . . . and many . . . are well-known global players. [T]his ranking . . . shows that many of the top actors belong to the core. This means that they do not carry out their business in isolation but . . . are tied together in an extremely entangled web of control. This finding is extremely important since there was no prior economic theory or empirical evidence regarding whether and how top players are connected. Finally, it should be noted that governments and natural persons are only featured further down in the list.

2. Susie Madrak's recent blog post over at "Crooks and Liars," Who Really Owns the NYPD? Turns Out It's Not Such A Rhetorical Question, highlights Pam Martens' October 10 piece in Counterpunch about whose interests the New York Metropolitan Police actually "protect and serve": Financial Giants Put New York City Cops On Their Payroll

[T]he Paid Detail Unit . . . allows the New York Stock Exchange and Wall Street corporations, including those repeatedly charged with crimes, to order up a flank of New York’s finest with the ease of dialing the deli for a pastrami on rye . . . pay[ing] an average of $37 an hour (no medical, no pension benefit, no overtime pay) for a member of the NYPD, with gun, handcuffs and the ability to arrest. The officer is indemnified by the taxpayer, not the corporation.

New York City gets a 10 percent administrative fee on top of the $37 per hour paid to the police. The City’s 2011 budget called for $1,184,000 in Paid Detail fees, meaning private corporations were paying wages of $11.8 million to police participating in the Paid Detail Unit. The program has more than doubled in revenue to the city since 2002.

The taxpayer has paid for the training of the rent-a-cop, his uniform and gun, and will pick up the legal tab for lawsuits stemming from the police personnel following illegal instructions from its corporate master.

3. Pamela Meyer's recent TED talk: "How to spot a liar":

another pithy proffer

from Emma Goldman:

This dread of going to prison for one's ideas so prevalent among American radicals is what makes the movement so pale and weak. I have no such dread. My revolutionary tradition is that those who are not willing to go to prison for their ideas have never been considered of much value to their ideas.

-- "The Social Aspects of Birth Control," 1916.

I have been thinking about this statement for several years. "The Movement," as Goldman uses it above is the birth control movement of the early twentieth century, but it might as well be any other social/political movement before or since. Generalized, the statement would serve as a useful springboard for consideration of the development of the practice of "peaceabl[e] . . . assembl[y] . . . to petition . . . for a redress of grievances" in the United States, not to mention (but to strongly imply!) the complementary development of the containment and management of that practice by the government, since Goldman wrote the piece.

But not by me. Not just now. Just now, Dear Reader, I simply post the quote and the source, as I did the Wendell Berry essay last week, with these thoughts, and thoughts of the so-called Arab Spring and the current efforts to occupy wall street, in my mind, while I try to remain attentive to datapoints along the contemplated outline.

america's naturalist conscience

i've been meaning to post some links to some interesting essays. for the most part, they are not new essays, neither particularly timely nor particularly topical, although, each day, it seems, i come across several more by following the footnotes, but rarely find a composed moment to properly - well, to properly compose. this isn't really quite that idealized moment, all my thoughts gathered, obedient and supine at hand while the skies above wheel and churn in numinous imminency of luminous inspiration, either, but it is a moment, and here we are in it, and i, for one, intend to get some of those essays posted, and wonder how i feel about doing that. you see, as a reader of deep interesting ideas, and well-styled prose, i want my friends and community -- you, Dear Reader -- to share the direct experience of the same stimulus that stimulated me: the essay itself; so that i may then (among other things) weigh the value of the writing in question through the aggregated filtering system of you, Dear Reader, and, factoring in what i know of you, get more holistic perspective than is available to my mind alone. and that is also what i really want as the person, me. but as a blogger, i feel a certain pressure to be more of a filter, to sell you the conscientious genius of, say, Wendell Berry, with firecrackers made of my ideas about summarizing what i have understood him to have said, and then trust you to follow the links. and i don't care to "gist." i don't even like "gist" as a verb. summarizing and paraphrasing and synopsizing may have their place, but seem detrimental to the quality thing that is being referred.

so, Wendell Berry is an excellent writer: his ideas are important. his presentation of those important ideas is achingly graceful.

one might consider his 2007 proclamation in the Courier-Journal that

I did not vote in Kentucky's gubernatorial primary on May 27. I did not vote because there was nobody on the ballot whom I wished to help elect. I could not bring myself to submit again to the indignity of trying to pick the least undesirable candidate; nor did I want to contribute to the "mandate" of a new governor, who would be carried into office by corporate contributions, and whose policies I would spend the next four years regretting or opposing,

later recanted ("Voting is a very serious matter, and I don't like the idea that I would write something that would confirm people in a habitual disinterest in elections."), or his 2001 essay "Thoughts in the Presence of Fear.

the one i have been meaning to post is his 1987 "Why I am NOT going to buy a computer" printed here with some responses to some responses, its content thoughtful and its internet-posted-and-read multimetairony not lost.

whatever you think of those, don't fail also to consider "The Joy of Sales Resistance," and hearken to the manifesto of the Mad Farmer Liberation Front:

Love the quick profit, the annual raise,

vacation with pay. Want more

of everything ready-made. Be afraid

to know your neighbors and to die.

And you will have a window in your head.

Not even your future will be a mystery

any more. Your mind will be punched in a card

and shut away in a little drawer.

When they want you to buy something

they will call you. When they want you

to die for profit they will let you know.