It's the Beginning of the End for the American Empire
By Chalmers Johnson
Tomdispatch.com
August 17, 2010
[Editors Note: Chalmers Johnson passed away Nov. 20, 2010]
In 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I and called it The Guns of August. It went on to win a Pulitzer Prize. She was, of course, looking back at events that had occurred almost 50 years earlier and had at her disposal documents and information not available to participants. They were acting, as Vietnam-era Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara put it, in the fog of war.
So where are we this August of 2010, with guns blazing in one war in Afghanistan even as we try to extricate ourselves from another in Iraq? Where are we, as we impose sanctions on Iran and North Korea (and threaten worse), while sending our latest wonder weapons, pilotless drones armed with bombs and missiles, into Pakistan's tribal borderlands, Yemen, and who knows where else, tasked with endless "targeted killings" which, in blunter times, used to be called assassinations? Where exactly are we, as we continue to garrison much of the globe even as our country finds itself incapable of paying for basic services?
I wish I had a crystal ball to peer into and see what historians will make of our own guns of August in 2060.
The fog of war, after all, is just a stand-in for what might be called "the fog of the future," the inability of humans to peer with any accuracy far into the world to come. Let me nonetheless try to offer a few glimpses of what that foggy landscape some years ahead might reveal, and even hazard a few predictions about what possibilities await still-imperial America.
Let me begin by asking: What harm would befall the United States if we actually decided, against all odds, to close those hundreds and hundreds of bases, large and small, that we garrison around the world? What if we actually dismantled our empire, and came home? Would Genghis Khan-like hordes descend on us? Not likely. Neither a land nor a sea invasion of the U.S. is even conceivable.
Would 9/11-type attacks accelerate? It seems far likelier to me that, as our overseas profile shrank, the possibility of such attacks would shrink with it.
Would various countries we've invaded, sometimes occupied, and tried to set on the path of righteousness and democracy decline into "failed states?" Probably some would, and preventing or controlling this should be the function of the United Nations or of neighboring states. (It is well to remember that the murderous Cambodian regime of Pol Pot was finally brought to an end not by us, but by neighboring Vietnam.)
Sagging Empire
In other words, the main fears you might hear in Washington -- if anyone even bothered to wonder what would happen, should we begin to dismantle our empire -- would prove but chimeras. They would, in fact, be remarkably similar to Washington's dire predictions in the 1970s about states all over Asia, then Africa, and beyond falling, like so many dominoes, to communist domination if we did not win the war in Vietnam.
What, then, would the world be like if the U.S. lost control globally -- Washington's greatest fear and deepest reflection of its own overblown sense of self-worth -- as is in fact happening now despite our best efforts?
What would that world be like if the U.S. just gave it all up? What would happen to us if we were no longer the "sole superpower" or the world's self-appointed policeman?
In fact, we would still be a large and powerful nation-state with a host of internal and external problems. An immigration and drug crisis on our southern border, soaring health-care costs, a weakening education system, an aging population, an aging infrastructure, an unending recession -- none of these are likely to go away soon, nor are any of them likely to be tackled in a serious or successful way as long as we continue to spend our wealth on armies, weapons, wars, global garrisons, and bribes for petty dictators.
Even without our interference, the Middle East would continue to export oil, and if China has been buying up an ever larger share of what remains underground in those lands, perhaps that should spur us into conserving more and moving more rapidly into the field of alternative energies.
Rising Power
Meanwhile, whether we dismantle our empire or not, China will become (if it isn't already) the world's next superpower. It, too, faces a host of internal problems, including many of the same ones we have. However, it has a booming economy, a favorable balance of payments vis-à-vis much of the rest of the world (particularly the U.S., which is currently running an annual trade deficit with China of $227 billion), and a government and population determined to develop the country into a powerful, economically dominant nation-state.
Fifty years ago, when I began my academic career as a scholar of China and Japan, I was fascinated by the modern history of both countries. My first book dealt with the way the Japanese invasion of China in the 1930s spurred Mao Zedong and the Chinese Communist Party he headed on a trajectory to power, thanks to its nationalist resistance to that foreign invader. Incidentally, it is not difficult to find many examples of this process in which a domestic political group gains power because it champions resistance to foreign troops. In the immediate post-WWII period, it occurred in Vietnam, Indonesia, and Malaysia; with the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, all over Eastern Europe; and today, it is surely occurring in Afghanistan and probably in Iraq as well.
Once the Cultural Revolution began in China in 1966, I temporarily lost interest in studying the country. I thought I knew where that disastrous internal upheaval was taking China and so turned back to Japan, which by then was well launched on its amazing recovery from World War II, thanks to state-guided, but not state-owned, economic growth.
This pattern of economic development, sometimes called the "developmental state," differed fundamentally from both Soviet-type control of the economy and the laissez-faire approach of the U.S. Despite Japan's success, by the 1990s its increasingly sclerotic bureaucracy had led the country into a prolonged period of deflation and stagnation. Meanwhile, post-U.S.S.R. Russia, briefly in thrall to U.S. economic advice, fell captive to rapacious oligarchs who dismantled the command economy only to enrich themselves.
In China, Communist Party leader Deng Xiaoping and his successors were able to watch developments in Japan and Russia, learning from them both. They have clearly adopted effective aspects of both systems for their economy and society. With a modicum of luck, economic and otherwise, and a continuation of its present well-informed, rational leadership, China should continue to prosper without either threatening its neighbors or the United States.
To imagine that China might want to start a war with the U.S. -- even over an issue as deeply emotional as the ultimate political status of Taiwan -- would mean projecting a very different path for that country than the one it is currently embarked on.
Lowering the Flag on the American Century
Thirty-five years from now, America's official century of being top dog (1945-2045) will have come to an end; its time may, in fact, be running out right now. We are likely to begin to look ever more like a giant version of England at the end of its imperial run, as we come face-to-face with, if not necessarily to terms with, our aging infrastructure, declining international clout, and sagging economy. It may, for all we know, still be Hollywood's century decades from now, and so we may still make waves on the cultural scene, just as Britain did in the 1960s with the Beatles and Twiggy. Tourists will undoubtedly still visit some of our natural wonders and perhaps a few of our less scruffy cities, partly because the dollar-exchange rate is likely to be in their favor.
If, however, we were to dismantle our empire of military bases and redirect our economy toward productive, instead of destructive, industries; if we maintained our volunteer armed forces primarily to defend our own shores (and perhaps to be used at the behest of the United Nations); if we began to invest in our infrastructure, education, health care, and savings, then we might have a chance to reinvent ourselves as a productive, normal nation.
Unfortunately, I don't see that happening. Peering into that foggy future, I simply can't imagine the U.S. dismantling its empire voluntarily, which doesn't mean that, like all sets of imperial garrisons, our bases won't go someday.
Instead, I foresee the U.S. drifting along, much as the Obama administration seems to be drifting along in the war in Afghanistan. The common talk among economists today is that high unemployment may linger for another decade. Add in low investment and depressed spending (except perhaps by the government) and I fear T.S. Eliot had it right when he wrote: "This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but a whimper."
I have always been a political analyst rather than an activist. That is one reason why I briefly became a consultant to the CIA's top analytical branch, and why I now favor disbanding the Agency. Not only has the CIA lost its raison d'être by allowing its intelligence gathering to become politically tainted, but its clandestine operations have created a climate of impunity in which the U.S. can assassinate, torture, and imprison people at will worldwide.
Just as I lost interest in China when that country's leadership headed so blindly down the wrong path during the Cultural Revolution, so I'm afraid I'm losing interest in continuing to analyze and dissect the prospects for the U.S. over the next few years. I applaud the efforts of young journalists to tell it like it is, and of scholars to assemble the data that will one day enable historians to describe where and when we went astray. I especially admire insights from the inside, such as those of ex-military men like Andrew Bacevich and Chuck Spinney.
And I am filled with awe by men and women who are willing to risk their careers, incomes, freedom, and even lives to protest -- such as the priests and nuns of SOA Watch, who regularly picket the School of the Americas and call attention to the presence of American military bases and misbehavior in South America.
I'm impressed as well with Pfc. Bradley Manning, if he is indeed the person responsible for potentially making public 92,000 secret documents about the war in Afghanistan. Daniel Ellsberg has long been calling for someone to do what he himself did when he released the Pentagon Papers during the Vietnam War. He must be surprised that his call has now been answered -- and in such an unlikely way.
My own role these past 20 years has been that of Cassandra, whom the gods gave the gift of foreseeing the future, but also cursed because no one believed her. I wish I could be more optimistic about what's in store for the U.S. Instead, there isn't a day that our own guns of August don't continue to haunt me.
Chalmers Johnson is the author of Blowback (2000), The Sorrows of Empire (2004), and Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic (2006), among other works. His newest book, Dismantling the Empire: America’s Last Best Hope (Metropolitan Books), has just been published. To listen to Timothy MacBain's latest TomCast audio interview in which Johnson discusses America's empire of bases and his new book, click here or, to download it to your iPod, here.
© 2010 Tomdispatch.com All rights reserved.
Read other stories by Chalmers Johnson
http://www.alternet.org/authors/5787/
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Tuesday, November 30, 2010
Monday, November 29, 2010
Cancun Climate Change Summit
Scientists call for rationing in developed world
Global warming is now such a serious threat to mankind that climate change experts are calling for Second World War-style rationing in rich countries to bring down carbon emissions.
by Louise Gray
The Telegraph
November 29,02010
In a series of papers published by the Royal Society, physicists and chemists from some of world’s most respected scientific institutions, including Oxford University and the Met Office, agreed that current plans to tackle global warming are not enough.
Unless emissions are reduced dramatically in the next ten years the world is set to see temperatures rise by more than 4C (7.2F) by as early as the 2060s, causing floods, droughts and mass migration.
As the world meets in Cancun, Mexico for the latest round of United Nations talks on climate change, the influential academics called for much tougher measures to cut carbon emissions.
In one paper Professor Kevin Anderson, Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, said the only way to reduce global emissions enough, while allowing the poor nations to continue to grow, is to halt economic growth in the rich world over the next twenty years.
This would mean a drastic change in lifestyles for many people in countries like Britain as everyone will have to buy less ‘carbon intensive’ goods and services such as long haul flights and fuel hungry cars. Prof Anderson admitted it “would not be easy” to persuade people to reduce their consumption of goods.
He said politicians should consider a rationing system similar to the one introduced during the last “time of crisis” in the 1930s and 40s.
This could mean a limit on electricity so people are forced to turn the heating down, turn off the lights and replace old electrical goods like huge fridges with more efficient models. Food that has travelled from abroad may be limited and goods that require a lot of energy to manufacture.
“The Second World War and the concept of rationing is something we need to seriously consider if we are to address the scale of the problem we face,” he said.
Prof Anderson insisted that halting growth in the rich world does not necessarily mean a recession or a worse lifestyle, it just means making adjustments in everyday life such as using public transport and wearing a sweater rather than turning on the heating.
“I am not saying we have to go back to living in caves,” he said. “Our emissions were a lot less ten years ago and we got by ok then.”
The last round of talks in Copenhagen last year ended in a weak political accord to keep temperature rise below the dangerous tipping point of 2C(3.6F). This time 194 countries are meeting again to try and make the deal legally binding and agree targets on cutting emissions. At the moment efforts are focused on trying to get countries to cut emissions by 50 per cent by 2050 relative to 1990 levels.
But Dr Myles Allen, of Oxford University’s Department of Physics, said this might not be enough. He said that if emissions do not come down quick enough even a slight change in temperature will be too rapid for ecosystems to keep up. Also by measuring emissions relative to a particular baseline, rather than putting a limit on the total amount that can ever be pumped into the atmosphere, there is a danger that the limit is exceeded.
“Peak warming is determined by the total amount of carbon dioxide we release into the atmosphere, not the rate we release it in any given year,’ he said. “Dangerous climate change, however, also depends on how fast the planet is warming up, not just how hot it gets, and the maximum rate of warming does depend on the maximum emission rate. It’s not just how much we emit, but how fast we do so.”
Other papers published on ‘4C and beyond’ in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A warned of rising sea levels, droughts in river basins and mass migrations.
Source:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/climatechange/8165769/Cancun-climate-change-summit-scientists-call-for-rationing-in-developed-world.html
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Friday, November 26, 2010
This is a public airing of Washington's dirty linen
by Jerome Taylor
Analysis
Independent UK
Saturday, 27 November 2010
Secret cables are the cornerstone of diplomacy.
Embassies are filled with employees who spend a large portion of their day sending information back to their home countries – information that would often make deeply uncomfortable reading were it ever to be made public.
The revelation that Wikileaks is on the verge of publishing thousands of cables from US embassies around the world has sent the State Department into a flurry of frantic activity as officials try to second guess what is being released and how to limit the damage once the information is out there.
What makes the release of diplomatic cables so potentially explosive is that they could cover a vast spectrum of information that America and her allies would like to keep secret. Cables are the diplomatic equivalent of dirty linen that no country wants to see aired in public. "Diplomatic cables might talk about political instability inside the country – there could be information about secret deals, weapons agreements, talks with dissidents, all sorts of things," explains Yossi Mekelberg, an expert on Israel-US relations at Chatham House. "But cables are not policy papers. When I read cables I'm often surprised at how gossipy they can be."
The informal nature of such missives has the potential to cause some serious red faces in capitals around the world. Embassy workers can usually depend on the contents of what they send to remain hidden from public view. Secrecy is the tool that allows them to say and report exactly what they really think of the country they work in to their superiors back home.
Foreign ministries, meanwhile, are reliant on candid reports from their embassies. No government wants to be caught off guard because embassy employees are scared to tell it like it is.
"When someone writes a diplomatic cable they do so in the knowledge that what they write is unlikely to be published for a minimum of 25 years and sometimes never," explains Mekelberg. "The potential for embarrassment is great but you can get over embarrassment in five minutes. The real damage will come from cables that tell us about operations, secret talks that aren't meant to be happening and other form of concrete diplomacy."
Professor Michael Cox, an expert on international relations at the London School of Economics, says the Americans are clearly rattled by the possibility of having so many secret cables released. "The response from the US government this week shows they are definitely feeling the heat," he says. "But my suspicion is the cables will be embarrassing, rather than diplomatically threatening. Everyone knows there is a great game being played by states against each other. But in terms of diplomatic consequences, I would imagine states would prefer to spend their energy working out how they can try and close Wikileaks down, rather than fall out with each other over the content of the cables."
Source:
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/jerome-taylor-this-is-a-public-airing-of-washingtons-dirty-linen-2144994.html
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Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Why Consumer Marketing Will Eventually End
by Joe Brewer
CommonDreams.org
November 23, 2010
A few weeks ago I suggested that neuromarketing may be the ultimate threat to democracy because people's unconscious brain processes can be manipulated to shape political outcomes. In the context of today's pressing challenges, this is terrible news. Now, more than ever, we need a functioning electorate that can collaborate effectively to address the foundational design flaws of the global economy and save human civilization from utter ruin in the face of imminent ecological collapse.
Following this line of thinking, I'd like to explain why a long view can help us understand how to deal with consumer marketing and its harmful impacts on society. Let's start with the economic forces that caused marketing to come into existence in the first place...
The Birth of Mass Marketing
Throughout most of human history, people who engaged in trade did so face to face at a local marketplace. People learned who they could trust to provide safe food to eat and quality trade skills to provide for their needs. There was no pressure to develop significant brand relationships between buyers and products because trust was mitigated directly through interpersonal relationships.
More fundamentally, there wasn't enough supply to provide for everyone's needs. People went hungry when crops failed and they lived in squalor when building materials were scarce. It wasn't until the steam engine was built that industrialization scaled enough to provide sufficient supply to meet market demands. But then something happened that has shaped global economic development ever since - it became possible to generate more stuff than people needed (at least among those who had the money to pay for it). This lead to the problem of excess supply.
Peter Barnes, in his insightful book Capitalism 3.0: A Guide To Reclaiming The Commons, called this early period ‘capitalism 1.0′ defined by a perpetual demand for essential services that greatly exceeded what could be supplied. He called the second phase ‘capitalism 2.0′ because supply exceeded demand and people needed to be persuaded to buy trinket A instead of trinket B based on some criteria beyond its manufacturing quality.
And mass marketing was born.
Throughout the last century, marketing tactics have been used to cultivate consumer culture. This was deemed necessary to provide an engine for economic growth as population increased and there was greater demand for wealth creation. This is why Gross Domestic Product is a measure of economic well-being, because it tells us how successful marketing has been at getting people to buy products.
The Hidden Flaw That Threatens Us All
The operating assumption of 20th Century economics, contrary to what is taught about scarcity with regards to opportunity cost, is that there is an endless abundance of raw materials to feed the perpetual growth engine of the global economy. This assumption is blatantly wrong and we're starting to experience the consequences.
We live on a finite planet that contains a limited amount of renewable and non-renewable resources. No amount of ingenuity can increase the amount of land, rare earth metals, fresh water, or other vital inputs for a healthy society than that which the Earth is able to create through its vast web of ecosystems. We are now entering the third phase of economic development where supply is constrained by rapidly depleting resources. During this phase, the business model behind consumer marketing will become untenable. Getting people to buy more doesn't work when there's not enough to go around any more.
So consumer marketing as we know it today has a shelf life. It simply cannot continue indefinitely on a finite planet. So the good news is that consumer culture is going to go away. The bad news is that it may persist too long and drive massive over consumption of vital resources until there just isn't enough left to be replenished for future use. This would result in a huge die-off of people no longer able to get the food, water, and shelter they need to survive.
So perhaps we shouldn't wait for the label to expire on consumer marketing. There is serious need to redesign our economy now around ecological principles that recognize natural limits (and the interdependence of economic and ecological systems). This is what I called for last week in Let's Build The New Economy. I argued that the current economy is set up in a manner that doesn't serve people. It will need to be dismantled (or collapse) and be replaced by a different set of governing institutions that respect our ecological reality.
This is a sobering call to action.
We don't have any good choices before us since our political institutions are profoundly dysfunctional at the national and international level. And a poisonous idea about government is destroying our collective capacity to govern effectively. We are also seeing the harmful effects of marketing within politics itself in political ads and media systems designed to spread corporate propaganda. Yet the problems are only growing in intensity.
The Great Transition
These problems aren't going to go away. If we are to do anything about them, we'll need to act quickly, strategically, and with bold vision. There's no Democrats or Republicans here. Hell, we even need to think beyond national borders. This is the time for galvanizing and coalescing the global movement of people who have been organizing for decades to protect the environment and bring multinational corporations under control.
We need a fresh perspective on politics that doesn't get locked into the categories that defined the previous century. This is going to require radical transparency and accountability, which is why so many groups have initiated ‘open government‘ efforts that range from making public data accessible to software developers to using social media platforms to bring more citizens into the decision-making process. And this is only scratching the surface of what can be done with mobile technologies and our global digital communications infrastructure. Tools like Twitter and WordPress are already seeding protest movements within dictatorial countries that were unthinkable only a few years ago.
We're also going to need robust local and regional economies to weather the transition as national currencies become unstable. Just think about the amount of trade induced debt the U.S. dollar has incurred with China alone and it is clear that a Faustian bargain has been made that cannot easily be undone by either trade partner. When the crunches start to hit, be they in oil supplies or some other vital resource, we are going to find out just how precarious our current perch is.
Wherever you are, please consider the warnings in this article and the thousands of others out there pointing to the same dilemma. I may not have all the answers but I can say for a fact that we're not going to solve this problem if we don't deliberate about it with the utmost seriousness and begin the long work of putting into place the foundations for a different and better global economic system.
So, yes, consumer marketing is eventually going to come to an end. The million dollar question is whether human civilization will end with it.
Joe Brewer is founder and director of Cognitive Policy Works, an educational and research center devoted to the application of cognitive and behavioral sciences to politics. He is a former fellow of the Rockridge Institute, a think tank founded by George Lakoff to analyze political discourse for the progressive movement.
Source:
http://www.commondreams.org/view/2010/11/23-4
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Saturday, November 20, 2010
TSA Backscatter X-ray Backlash
By Bruce Schneier
Schneier on Security
November 19, 2010
(emphasis added)
Things are happening so fast that I don't know if I should bother. But here are some links and observations.
The head of the Allied Pilots Association is telling its members to avoid both the full body scanners and the patdowns.
This first-hand report, from a man who refused to fly rather than subject himself to a full-body scan or an enhanced patdown, has been making the rounds. (The TSA is now investigating him.) It reminds me of Penn Jillette's story from 2002.
A woman has a horrific story of opting-out of the full body scanners. More stories: this one about the TSA patting down a screaming toddler. And here's Dave Barry's encounter (also this NPR interview).
Sadly, I agree with this:
It is no accident that women have been complaining about being pulled out of line because of their big breasts, having their bodies commented on by TSA officials, and getting inappropriate touching when selected for pat-downs for nearly 10 years now, but just this week it went viral. It is no accident that CAIR identified Islamic head scarves (hijab) as an automatic trigger for extra screenings in January, but just this week it went viral. What was different? Suddenly an able-bodied white man is the one who was complaining.
Seems that once you enter airport security, you need to be subjected to it -- whether you decide to fly or not.
I experienced the enhanced patdown myself, at DCA, on Tuesday. It was invasive, but not as bad as these stories. It seems clear that TSA agents are inconsistent about these procedures. They've probably all had the same training, but individual agents put it into practice very differently.
Of course, airport security is an extra-Constitutional area, so there's no clear redress mechanism for those subjected to too-intimate patdowns.
This video provides tips to parents flying with young children. Around 2:50 in, the reporter indicates that you can find out if your child has been pre-selected for secondary, and then recommends requesting "de-selection." That doesn't make sense.
Neither does this story, which says that the TSA will only touch Muslim women in the head and neck area.
Nor this story. The author convinces people on line to opt-out with him. After the first four opt-outs, the TSA just sent people through the metal detectors.
Yesterday, the TSA administrator John Pistole was grilled by the Senate Commerce, Science, and Transportation Committee on full-body scanners.
Rep. Ron Paul introduced a bill to ban them. (His floor speech is here.) I'm one of the plaintiffs in a lawsuit to ban them.
Book for kids: My First Cavity Search.
Cover seen at at TSA checkpoint.
T-shirts: one, two, and three and four.
"Comply with Me" song parody.
Political cartoons: one, two, three, and four.
New TSA logo.
Best TSA tweets, including "It's not a grope. It's a freedom pat."
Good essay from a libertarian perspective. Two more. Marc Rotenberg's essay. Ralph Nader's essay. And the Los Angeles Times really screws up with this editorial: "Shut Up and Be Scanned." Amitai Etzioni makes a better case for the machines.
Michael Chertoff, former Department of Homeland Security secretary, has been touting the full-body scanners, while at the same time maintaining a financial interest in the company that makes them.
There's talk about the health risks of the machines, but I can't believe you won't get more radiation on the flight. Here's some data:
A typical dental X-ray exposes the patient to about 2 millirems of radiation. According to one widely cited estimate, exposing each of 10,000 people to one rem (that is, 1,000 millirems) of radiation will likely lead to 8 excess cancer deaths. Using our assumption of linearity, that means that exposure to the 2 millirems of a typical dental X-ray would lead an individual to have an increased risk of dying from cancer of 16 hundred-thousandths of one percent. Given that very small risk, it is easy to see why most rational people would choose to undergo dental X-rays every few years to protect their teeth. More importantly for our purposes, assuming that the radiation in a backscatter X-ray is about a hundredth the dose of a dental X-ray, we find that a backscatter X-ray increases the odds of dying from cancer by about 16 ten millionths of one percent. That suggests that for every billion passengers screened with backscatter radiation, about 16 will die from cancer as a result.
Given that there will be 600 million airplane passengers per year, that makes the machines deadlier than the terrorists.
Nate Silver on the hidden cost of these new airport security measures.
According to the Cornell study, roughly 130 inconvenienced travelers died every three months as a result of additional traffic fatalities brought on by substituting ground transit for air transit. That's the equivalent of four fully-loaded Boeing 737s crashing each year.
Jeffrey Goldberg asked me which I would rather see for children: backscatter X-ray or enhanced pat down. After remarking what an icky choice it was, I opted for the X-ray; it's less traumatic.
Here are a bunch of leaked body scans. They're not from airports, but they should make you think twice before accepting the TSA's assurances that the images will never be saved. RateMyBackscatter.com.
November 24 is National Opt Out Day. Doing this just before the Thanksgiving holiday is sure to clog up airports. Jeffrey Goldberg suggests that men wear kilts, commando style if possible.
At least one airport is opting out of the TSA entirely. I hadn't known you could do that.
The New York Times on the protests.
Common sense from the Netherlands:
The security boss of Amsterdam's Schiphol Airport is calling for an end to endless investment in new technology to improve airline security. Marijn Ornstein said: "If you look at all the recent terrorist incidents, the bombs were detected because of human intelligence not because of screening ... If even a fraction of what is spent on screening was invested in the intelligence services we would take a real step toward making air travel safer and more pleasant."
And here's Rafi Sela, former chief security officer of the Israel Airport Authority:
A leading Israeli airport security expert says the Canadian government has wasted millions of dollars to install "useless" imaging machines at airports across the country. "I don't know why everybody is running to buy these expensive and useless machines. I can overcome the body scanners with enough explosives to bring down a Boeing 747," Rafi Sela told parliamentarians probing the state of aviation safety in Canada. "That's why we haven't put them in our airport," Sela said, referring to Tel Aviv's Ben Gurion International Airport, which has some of the toughest security in the world.
They can be fooled by creased clothing. And remember this German video?
I'm quoted in the Los Angeles Times:
Some experts argue the new procedures could make passengers uncomfortable without providing a substantial increase in security. "Security measures that just force the bad guys to change tactics and targets are a waste of money," said Bruce Schneier, a security expert who works for British Telecom. "It would be better to put that money into investigations and intelligence."
I'm quoted in The Wall Street Journal twice -- once as saying:
"All these machines require you to guess the plot correctly. If you don't, then they are completely worthless," said Bruce Schneier, a security expert. Mr. Schneier and some other experts argue that assembling better intelligence on fliers is the key to making travel safer.
and once as saying:
Security guru Bruce Schneier, a plaintiff in the scanner suit, calls this "magical thinking . . . Descend on what the terrorists happened to do last time, and we'll all be safe. As if they won't think of something else."
In 2005, I wrote:
I'm not impressed with this security trade-off. Yes, backscatter X-ray machines might be able to detect things that conventional screening might miss. But I already think we're spending too much effort screening airplane passengers at the expense of screening luggage and airport employees...to say nothing of the money we should be spending on non-airport security. On the other side, these machines are expensive and the technology is incredibly intrusive. I don't think that people should be subjected to strip searches before they board airplanes. And I believe that most people would be appalled by the prospect of security screeners seeing them naked.
I believe that there will be a groundswell of popular opposition to this idea. Aside from the usual list of pro-privacy and pro-liberty groups, I expect fundamentalist Christian groups to be appalled by this technology. I think we can get a bevy of supermodels to speak out against the invasiveness of the search.
On the other hand, CBS News is reporting that 81% of Americans support full-body scans. Maybe they should only ask flying Americans.
I still stand by this, also from 2005:
Exactly two things have made airline travel safer since 9/11: reinforcement of cockpit doors, and passengers who now know that they may have to fight back. Everything else -- Secure Flight and Trusted Traveler included -- is security theater. We would all be a lot safer if, instead, we implemented enhanced baggage security -- both ensuring that a passenger's bags don't fly unless he does, and explosives screening for all baggage -- as well as background checks and increased screening for airport employees. Then we could take all the money we save and apply it to intelligence, investigation and emergency response. These are security measures that pay dividends regardless of what the terrorists are planning next, whether it's the movie plot threat of the moment, or something entirely different.
And this, from earlier this year.
More resources on the EPIC pages.
What else is going on?
EDITED TO ADD: (11/19):
Lots more political cartoons.
Good summary of your legal rights and options from the ACLU. They also have a form you can fill out and send to your Congresscritter.
The TSA doesn't train its screeners very well.
This has to win for DHS Quote of the Year, from Secretary Janet Napolitano on the issue:
I really want to say, look, let's be realistic and use our common sense.A response to a letter-writer from Sen. Coburn.
From Slate: "Does the TSA Ever Catch Terrorists?"
A pilot's story.
The screeners' point of view.
Good essay from the National Post.
Fun with the Playmobil airline security screening playset.
Meg McCain, whose horrific story I linked to above, lied.
See original article to read comments.
Source:
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2010/11/tsa_backscatter.html?nc=96
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Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Cartoons to the rescue
You know that you're living strange times when an animated cartoon makes more sense that the talking heads in the media.
The US news media, including NPR, is doing everything it can to "normalize" the idea of uniformed federal agents being told they have the right to put their hands on the genitals of any man, woman or CHILD who wants to board a commercial passenger aircraft.
(Private jet passengers face no such indignities. They don't even have to pass through security!)
This "right to molest" will soon be extended to trains, buses, boats, and even travel on public roadways. The TSA - in its twisted institutional mind - thinks it controls EVERY mode of transportation. From there, it's a straight line to government buildings, courthouses and while we're at it why not schools, day care and hospitals too?
And what's a traffic stop on a deserted road without a quick feel of the female driver and her kids to make sure "everyone's safe?"
These abusive TSA practices are paving the way for this and don't think the social engineers who cooked them up don't know it.
For the most part the media applauds...
One particularly odious little creep, Alan Chartock of WAMC radio in Albany, NY (an NPR affiliate), spent the bulk of his call-in show today (11/16/10) ridiculing people who expressed concerns and cheerleading the morons who think the new "security measures" are a good idea and necessary.
No security expert who is not in the employ of Homeland Security or its countless vendors (actual or wannabe) thinks these abusive practices contribute to public safety in the least.
STOP FLYING UNTIL THE TSA BULLSHIT STOPS
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Stop the TSA
by Richard
Peking Duck
November 16, 2010
There is one area (and probably many more) in which China is far saner and more reasonable than the US, and that is airport security. In fact, nearly every other country is saner. Airport security in the US is simply insane. We have crossed the brink and dived head first into insanity.
I was delighted to see the sudden flare-up of anti-TSA articles and blog posts this week, as thousands more of the infamous body scanners (and check out that link) are installed in US airports, and thousands of passengers refused to suffer the indignity and possible health repercussions of walking through them. And then there are the new, incredibly intrusive pat-downs. Don’t get me started.
In one especially shocking incident that has taken the intertubes by storm this weekend, the TSA were no better than thugs. It’s reached the point where something has to be done - like abolish the TSA.
Ever the voice of reason, James Fallows puts it all in perspective:
To make the point for the zillionth time — and, yes, I’d rather say this too often than not say it often enough — it is insane, destructive, and Maginot Line-like in thinking for the U.S. to pour out so many resources, intrude so deeply on liberties, and generate so much domestic and international ill-will in dealing with one area of potential threat, out of all proportion to what it does elsewhere. And, yes, I say this in awareness that the original 9/11 attacks were against airliners and that many terrorist groups seem to have a “terrorism theater” obsession with aviation. Even so, “security” measures that do not pass a common-sense logic test ultimately generate contempt for the entities carrying them out, and for their grasp of the challenge they are undertaking and the security/liberty balance that is involved.
It’s not airport security. It’s airport security theater, a show, an absurd, hideously expensive, intolerably invasive piece of theater, going through the motions for reasons that no one really understands. The airline pilots and flight attendants are up in arms, the travelers are up in arms, everyone is up in arms, yet the TSA keeps spitting out platitudes about keeping us safe through means everyone knows are unnecessary.
Fallows quotes from a friend of his who lived in Shenzhen for many years. This is delightful:
My favorite experience, though, was this: I tend to glower at the folks doing the bag searches before getting on the plane. I guess the agents sense the glowering because twice now, I’ve had the Chinese security agents apologize to me for having to do this… one apologized and then whispered to me “Sorry. The Americans make us do this. It’s useless, I’m embarrassed.” On the other occasion, the agent verbally apologized and gave a quick head bow as he rezipped my bag.
On the flight where the first Chinese agent apologized to me, when we arrived in the US and deplaned, we were met by two US agents and a German shepherd which sniffed us all as we passed by. One of the agents must have been 250 pounds and towered over the deplaning passengers, most of whom were Asian. The agents had their batons out, guns visible, and tasers.
What a contrast - an apology from Chinese security agents at the start of the trip and intimidation upon arriving in the US. Welcome to the land of the free and home of the brave. That the governing classes who so piously mouth platitudes about American exceptionalism are silent in the face of these atrocities to the liberties of innocents says more about America’s decline than any of the numerous economic comparisons.
What is it about America that forces us into such extreme overkill? Why must we let Osama Bin Laden have the last laugh, showing him his evil act has left us so traumatized and frightened we have surrendered our critical faculties and become obsessed to the point of irrationality?
Possibly the craziest new TSA procedure is the one calling for intrusive pat-downs of the pilots as they walk to their planes. If the pilot is prone to terrorism, don’t these jackasses know that the pilots have in their hands the ultimate weapon - the plane. What’s the point of searching the pilots for weapons? Why do we keep adding more and more layers of nonsensical pseudo-security? For the answer, as usual, just follow the money.
Sorry if this is a bit overwrought, but as someone who travels a lot and who never ceases to be amazed at the hoax of airport security, I just had to let it out. Please do your part: Refuse to go through the body scanner. That’s the least we all can do. Fallows said in an earlier column some months ago that the only way to get the TSA to stop the nonsense is for enough people to object and to make their voices heard. I’m glad to see people are finally wising up and refusing to go along with this charade.
You have a far better chance of being killed crossing the street than you do of being killed in airline terrorism. Why on earth are we spending all these billions of dollars and putting people through such inconvenience for a threat that is so incredibly remote? Yes, we need airport security, but only within reason. We should follow China’s model - going through airport security there is relative bliss.
Source:
http://www.pekingduck.org/2010/11/stop-the-tsa/
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Thursday, November 11, 2010
Bill Moyers: "Welcome to the Plutocracy!"
Bill Moyers. (Photo: Martin Voelker)
It is true
I’ve always loved
the daring ones
like the black young man
who tried to crash
all barriers
at once,
wanted to swim
at a white beach (in Alabama)
Nude.
When she heard the news, Connie Brasel cried like a baby.
“…. Sitting on these unprecedented levels of cash, U.S. companies are buying back their own stock in droves. So far this year, firms have announced they will purchase $273 billion of their own shares, more than five times as much compared with this time last year… But the rise in buybacks signals that many companies are still hesitant to spend their cash on the job-generating activities that could produce economic growth.”
Yes, but consider this: The stratospheric income of private-equity partners is taxed at only 15 percent – less than the rate paid, say, by a middle class family.
When Congress considered raising the rate on their Midas-like compensation, the financial titans flooded Washington with armed mercenaries – armed, that is, with hard, cold cash – and brought the “debate” to an end faster than it had taken Schwartzman to fire 841 workers. The financial class had won another round in the exploitation of working people who, if they are lucky enough to have jobs, are paying a higher tax rate than the super-rich.
Plutocracy is not an American word and wasn’t meant to become an American phenomenon – some of our founders deplored what they called “the veneration of wealth.” But plutocracy is here, and a pumped up Citigroup even boasted of coining a variation on the word— “plutonomy”, which describes an economic system where the privileged few make sure the rich get richer and that government helps them do it. Five years ago Citigroup decided the time had come to “bang the drum on plutonomy.”
And bang they did. Here are some excerpts from the document “Revisiting Plutonomy;”“Asset booms, a rising profit share and favorable treatment by market-friendly governments have allowed the rich to prosper… [and] take an increasing share of income and wealth over the last 20 years.”
“…the top 10%, particularly the top 1% of the United States – the plutonomists in our parlance – have benefitted disproportionately from the recent productivity surged in the US… [and] from globalization and the productivity boom, at the relative expense of labor.”
“… [and they] are likely to get even wealthier in the coming years. Because the dynamics of plutonomy are still intact.”
More than half of all workers today have experienced a spell of unemployment, taken a cut in pay or hours or been forced to go part-time. The typical unemployed worker has been jobless for nearly six months. Collapsing share and house prices have destroyed a fifth of the wealth of the average household. Nearly six in ten Americans have cancelled or cut back on holidays. About a fifth say their mortgages are underwater. One in four of those between 18 and 29 have moved back in with their parents. Fewer than half of all adults expect their children to have a higher standard of living than theirs, and more than a quarter say it will be lower. For many Americans the great recession has been the sharpest trauma since The Second World War, wiping out jobs, wealth and hope itself.
. I urge you to seek out the recent edition of Harper’s Magazine. The former editor Roger D. Hodge brilliantly dissects how democracy has gone on sale in America. Ideally, he writes, our ballots purport to be expressions of political will, which we hope and pray will be translated into legislative and executive action by our pretended representatives. But voting is the beginning of civil virtue, not its end, and the focus of real power is elsewhere. Voters still “matter” of course, but only as raw material to be shaped by the actual form of political influence – money.
(David von Drehle wrote (“Washington Post, July 24, 1999) that “as a tenacious student of political history, Rove had dug so deeply into the McKinley era that he had become “the swami of McKinley mania.” Rove denied it to the writer Ron Susskind, who then went on to talk to old colleagues of Rove “dating back 25 years, one of whom said: “Some kids want to grow up to be president, Karl wanted to grow up to be Mark Hanna. We’d talk about it all the time. We’d say, ‘Jesus,Karl, what kind of kid wants to grow up to be Mark Hanna?”
As one of the plutocrats crowed: “We are rich. We own America. We got it, God knows how, but we intend to keep it.”
Over the past 30 years, with the complicity of Republicans and Democrats alike, the plutocrats, or plutonomists (choose your own poison) have used their vastly increased wealth to assure that government does their bidding. Remember that grateful Citigroup reference to “market-friendly governments” on the side of plutonomy? We had a story down in Texas for that sort of thing; the dealer in a poker game says to the dealer, Now play the cards fairly, Reuben; I know what I dealt you. (To see just how our system was rigged by the financial, political, and university elites, run, don’t walk, to the theatre nearest you showing Charles Ferguson’s new film, “Inside Job.” Take a handkerchief because you’ll weep for the republic.)
Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan also tried to warn us. He said President Reagan’s real strategy was to force the government to cut domestic social programs by fostering federal deficits of historic dimensions. Senator Moynihan was gone before the financial catastrophe on George W. Bush’s watch that could paradoxically yet fulfill Reagan’s dream. The plutocrats who soaked up all the money now say the deficits require putting Social Security and other public services on the chopping block. You might think that Mr. Bush today would regret having invaded Iraq on false pretences at a cost of more than a trillion dollars and counting, but no, just last week he said that his biggest regret was his failure to privatize Social Security. With over l00 Republicans of the House having signed a pledge to do just that when the new Congress convenes, Mr. Bush’s vision may yet be realized.
That’s what is coming to America.
Once again the plutocracy is buying off the system. Nearly $4 billion is being spent on the congressional races that will be decided next week, including multi millions coming from independent tax-exempt organizations that can collect unlimited amounts without revealing the sources. The organization Public Citizen reports that just 10 groups are responsible for the bulk of the spending by independent groups: “A tiny number of organizations, relying on a tiny number of corporate and fat cat contributors, are spending most of the money on the vicious attack ads dominating the airwaves” – those are the words of Public Citizen’s president, Robert Wiessman. The Federal Election Commission says that two years ago 97% of groups paying for election ads disclosed the names of their donors. This year it’s only 32%.
We’re talking about slush funds. Donors are laundering their cash through front groups with high-falutin’ names like American Crossroads. That’s one of the two slush funds controlled by Karl Rove in his ambition to revive the era of the robber barons. Promise me you won’t laugh when I tell you that although Rove and the powerful Washington lobbyist who is his accomplice described the first organization as “grassroots”, 97% of its initial contributions came from four billionaires. Yes: The grass grows mighty high when the roots are fertilized with gold.
Conway is running for the Senate. Forcht has spent more than $l million to defeat him. Would you believe that Forcht is the banker for one of Karl Rove’s two slush funds, Ameican Crossroads, which has spent nearly $30 million to defeat Democrats?
Alito was either disingenuous, naïve, or deluded. He can’t be in this world without knowing he and his four fellow corporatists were giving big donors the one thing they most want in their campaign against working people: an unfair advantage.
But whatever happened to “compassionate conservatism?” The Affordable Care Act – whatever its flaws – extends health care coverage to over 40 million deprived Americans who would otherwise be uncovered. What is it about these people – the Thomases, the secret donors, the privileged plutocrats on their side – that they can’t embrace a little social justice where it counts – among everyday people struggling to get by in a dog-eat-dog world? Health care coverage could mean the difference between life and death for them. Mrs. Thomas is obviously doing okay; she no doubts takes at least a modest salary from that private slush fund working to undermine the health care reforms; her own husband is a government employee covered by a federal plan. Why wouldn’t she want people less fortunate than her to have a little security, too? She headquarters her organization at Jerry Falwell’s Liberty University, a reportedly Christian school aligned with the Moral Majority. How is it she’s only about “Live and Let Live?” Have they never heard there the Old Time Religion of “Live and help live?” Why would this cushioned, comfortable crowd, pious crowd, resort to such despicable tactics as using secret money to try to turn public policy against their less fortunate neighbors, and in the process compromise the already tattered integrity of the United States Supreme Court?
This work by Truthout is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
Source:
http://www.truth-out.org/bill-moyers-money-fights-hard-and-it-fights-dirty64766
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