terça-feira, 30 de julho de 2013

Por que Snowden, Manning e Assange assumiram correr tantos riscos pela liberdade de expressão?

Nós já temíamos (1). Tanto a literatura (1984, de George Orwell), como o cinema (Minority Report, de Steven Spielberg) haviam avisado: com o progresso da tecnologia da comunicação, todos acabaríamos por ser vigiados. Presumimos que essa violação de nossa privacidade seria exercida por um Estado neototalitário. Aí nos equivocamos. Porque as revelações inéditas do ex-agente Edward Snowden sobre a vigilância orwelliana acusam diretamente os Estados Unidos, país considerado como “pátria da liberdade”. Aparentemente, desde a promulgação, em 2001, da lei Patriot Act (2), isso ficou no passado. O próprio presidente Barack Obama acaba de admitir: “Não se pode ter 100% de segurança e 100% de privacidade”. Bem-vindos, portanto à era do “Grande Irmão”.

Leia mais:
As mentiras da França sobre o caso Evo Morales/Edward Snowden
Escândalo sobre voo de Morales corresponde a ato de pirataria aérea

O que revelou Snowden? Este antigo assistente técnico da CIA, de 29 anos, que trabalhava para uma empresa privada – a Booz Allen Hamilton (3) – subcontratada pela NSA (Agência de Segurança Nacional dos EUA), revelou aos jornais The Guardian e Washington Post a existência de programas secretos que tornam o governo dos Estados Unidos capaz de vigiar a comunicação de milhões de cidadãos.

Wikimedia Commons

O ex-agente norte-americano Edward Snowden

Um primeiro programa entrou em operação em 2006. Consiste em espiar todas as chamadas telefônicas feitas pela companhia Verizon, dentro dos Estados Unidos, e as que se fazem de lá para o exterior. Outro programa, chamado PRISM, foi posto em marcha em 2008. Coleta todos os dados enviados pela internet (e-mails, fotos, vídeos, chats, redes sociais, cartões de crédito), por (em princípio...) estrangeiros que moram fora do território norte-americano. Ambos os programas foram aprovados em segredo pelo Congresso norte-americano, que teria sido, segundo Barack Obama, “constantemente informado” sobre o seu desenvolvimento.

Sobre a dimensão da incrível violação dos nossos direitos civis e das nossas comunicações, a imprensa deu detalhes escabrosos. Em 5 de junho, por exemplo, o Guardian publicou a ordem emitida pelo Tribunal de Supervisão de Inteligência Externa que exigia à companhia telefônica Verizon entregar à NSA os registros de milhões de chamada dos seus clientes. O mandato não autoriza, aparentemente, saber o conteúdo das comunicações, nem os titulares dos números de telefone, mas permite o controle da duração e o destino dessas chamadas. No dia seguinte, o Guardian e o Washington Post revelaram a realidade do programa secreto de vigilância PRISM, que autoriza a NSA e o FBI acesso aos servidores das nove principais empresas da internet (com a notável exceção do Twitter): Microsoft, Yahoo, Gogle, Facebook (4), PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube e Apple.

Por meio dessa violação, o governo dos EUA pode aceder a arquivos, áudios, vídeos, e-mails e fotografias de usuários dessas plataformas. O PRISM converteu-se, desse modo, na ferramenta mais útil da NSA para fornecer relatórios diários ao presidente Obama. Em 7 de junho, os mesmo jornais publicaram uma diretiva da Casa Branca que ordenava às suas agências (NSA, CIA, FBI) estabelecer uma lista de possíveis países suscetíveis de serem “ciberatacados” por Washington. E em 8 de junho, o Guardian revelou a existência de outro programa, que permite à NSA classificar os dados recolhidos na rede. Esta prática, orientada à ciberespionagem no exterior, permitiu compilar – só em março – cerca de 3 bilhões de dados de computador nos Estados Unidos.

Nas últimas semanas, ambos os jornais conseguiram revelar, sempre graças a Edward Snowden, novos programas de ciberespionagem e vigilância da comunicação em países no resto do mundo. Edward Snowden explica que “a NSA construiu uma infraestrutura que lhe permite interceptar praticamente qualquer tipo de comunicação. Com esta técnica, a maioria das comunicações humanas são armazenadas para servir em algum momento a um objetivo determinado”.

A NSA, cujo quartel-general fica em Fort Meade (Maryland), é a mais importante e mais desconhecida agência de informações norte-americana. É tão secreta que a maioria dos norte-americanos ignora a sua existência. Controla a maior parte do orçamento destinado aos serviços de informações e produz mais de cinquenta toneladas de material por dia. É ela – e não a CIA – a proprietária e operadora da maior parte do sistema de coleta de dados dos serviços secretos dos EUA. Desde uma rede mundial de satélites até as dezenas de postos de escuta, milhares de computadores e as florestas de antenas localizadas nas colinas da Virginia do Oeste. Uma das suas especialidades é espiar os espiões — ou seja, os serviços secretos de todas as potências, amigas e inimigas. Durante a guerra das Malvinas (1982), por exemplo, a NSA decifrou o código secreto dos serviços de espionagem argentinos, o que lhe permitiu transmitir aos britânicos informações cruciais sobre as forças argentinas.

O vasto sistema da NSA pode captar discretamente qualquer e-mail, qualquer consulta de internet ou telefonema internacional. O conjunto total da comunicação interceptada e decifrada pela NSA constitui a principal fonte de informação clandestina do governo dos EUA.

A NSA colabora estreitamente com o misterioso sistema Echelon. Criado em segredo, depois da II Guerra Mundial, por cinco potências anglo-saxônicas — Estados Unidos, Reino Unido, Canadá, Austrália e Nova Zelândia (os “cinco olhos”), o Echelon é um sistema orwelliano de vigilância global que se estende por todo o mundo, monitoriza os satélites usados para transmitir a maioria dos telefonemas, comunicação na internet, e-mails, redes sociais etc. O Echelon é capaz de capturar até dois milhões de conversas por minuto. A sua missão clandestina é a espionagem de governos, partidos políticos, organizações e empresas. Seis bases espalhadas pelo mundo recolhem informações e desviam de forma indiscriminada enormes quantidades de comunicação. Em seguida, os super-computadores da NSA classificam este material, por meio da introdução de palavras-chaves em vários idiomas.

Britain: a gentrified minority dominates parliament, senior management and the media.

The Age of Regression

by JOHN PILGER

London.

I have known my postman for more than 20 years. Conscientious and good-humoured, he is the embodiment of public service at its best. The other day, I asked him, “Why are you standing in front of each door like a soldier on parade?”

“New system,” he replied, “I am no longer required simply to post the letters through the door. I have to approach every door in a certain way and put the letters through in a certain way.”

“Why?”

“Ask him.”

Across the street was a solemn young man, clipboard in hand, whose job was to stalk postmen and see they abided by the new rules, no doubt in preparation for privatisation. I told the stalker my postman was admirable. His face remained flat, except for a momentary flicker of confusion.

In Brave New World Revisited, Aldous Huxley describes a new class conditioned to a normality that is not normal “because they are so well adjusted to our mode of existence, because their human voice has been silenced so early in their lives, that they do not even struggle or suffer or develop symptoms as the neurotic does”.

Surveillance is normal in the Age of Regression — as Edward Snowden revealed. Ubiquitous cameras are normal. Subverted freedoms are normal. Effective public dissent is now controlled by police, whose intimidation is normal.

The traducing of noble words like “democracy”, “reform”, “welfare” and “public service” is normal. Prime ministers who lie openly about lobbyists and war aims are normal. The export of £4bn worth of British arms, including crowd control ammunition, to the medieval state of Saudi Arabia, where apostasy is a capital crime, is normal.

The willful destruction of efficient, popular public institutions like the Royal Mail is normal. A postman is no longer a postman, going about his decent work; he is an automaton to be watched, a box to be ticked. Huxley described this regression as insane and our “perfect adjustment to that abnormal society” a sign of the madness.

Are we “perfectly adjusted” to this? No, not yet. People defend hospitals from closure, UK Uncut forces bank branches to close and six brave women climb the highest building in Europe to show the havoc caused by the oil companies in the Arctic. There, the list begins to peter out.

At this year’s Manchester festival, Percy Bysshe Shelley’s epic Masque of Anarchy – all 91 verses written in rage at the massacre of Lancashire people protesting poverty in 1819 – is an acclaimed theatrical piece, and utterly divorced from the world outside. Last January, the Greater Manchester Poverty Commission disclosed that 600,000 Mancunians were living in “extreme poverty” and that 1.6 million, or nearly half the city’s population, were “sliding into deeper poverty”.

Poverty has been gentrified. The Parkhill Estate in Sheffield was once an edifice of public housing – unloved by many for its Le Corbusier brutalism, poor maintenance and lack of facilities. With its Heritage Grade II listing, it has been renovated and privatised. Two thirds of the old flats have been reborn as modern apartments selling to “professionals”, including designers, architects and a social historian. In the sales office you can buy designer mugs and cushions. This façade offers not a hint that, devastated by the government’s “austerity” cuts, Sheffield has a social housing waiting list of 60,000 people.

Parkhill is a symbol of the two thirds society that is Britain today. The gentrified third do well, some of them extremely well, a third struggle to get by on credit and the rest slide into poverty.

Although the majority of the British are working class – whether or not they see themselves that way — a gentrified minority dominates parliament, senior management and the media. David Cameron, Nick and Ed Milliband are their authentic representatives, with only minor technical difference between their parties. They fix the limits of political life and debate, aided by gentrified journalism and the “identity” industry. The greatest ever transfer of wealth upwards is a given. Social justice has been replaced by meaningless “fairness”.

While promoting this normality, the BBC rewards a senior functionary almost £1m. Although regarding itself as the media equivalent of the Church of England, the Corporation now has ethics comparable with those of the “security” companies G4S and Serco which, says the government, have “overcharged” on public services by tens of millions of pounds. In other countries, this is called corruption.

Like the fire sale of the power utilities, water and the railways, the sale of Royal Mail is to be achieved with bribery and the collaboration of the union leadership, regardless of its vocal outrage. Opening his 1983 documentary series Questions of Leadership, Ken Loach shows trade union leaders exhorting the masses. The same men are then shown, older and florid, adorned in the ermine of the House of Lords. In the recent Queen’s Birthday honours, the general secretary of the TUC, Brendan Barber, received his knighthood.

How long can the British watch the uprisings across the world and do little apart from mourn the long-dead Labour Party? The Edward Snowden revelations show the infrastructure of a police state emerging in Europe, especially Britain. Yet, people are more aware than ever before; and governments fear popular resistance – which is why truth-tellers are isolated, smeared and pursued.

Momentous change almost always begins with the courage of people taking back their own lives against the odds. There is no other way now. Direct action. Civil disobedience. Unerring. Read Percy Shelley – “Ye are many; they are few”. And do it.

John Pilger’s new film, Utopia, will be previewed at the National Film Theatre, London, in the autumn.

Obama’s Plan for Economic Immiseration

The Great Conversion

Obama’s Plan for Economic Immiseration

by ROB URIE

President Barack Obama spoke at length on the economy on Wednesday in the first of what is reported to be a series of speeches he will give around the country to push his economic ‘agenda.’ A question for his supporters is why Mr. Obama is now purporting to promote the interests of the middle class and working poor when he has remained silent for the last five years during the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression? If he cared one whit about these people the time to promote economic policies to help them was five years ago. And conversely, the economic policies he has pursued have decimated the very people he now claims to want to help.

Mr. Obama’s analysis of economic travails—globalization and its effects on an under-educated workforce, are the same neo-liberal pabulum the ‘Washington consensus’ has been serving up since Jimmy Carter was in office. And his economic prescriptions—public-private ‘partnerships’ to boost investment in technology, bringing corporate executives in to assess what is wrong with the educational system, building out lower cost ‘online’ education and community colleges to ‘boost American competitiveness,’ increased infrastructure spending and the creation of tax advantaged savings accounts for middle class families, are straight from the neo-liberal playbook as well. To ask the obvious question: if neo-liberal policies worked, why then the laundry list of economic travails?

Taking the speech at face value, the contention market forces (‘globalization’) are the central cause of the decades old downward mobility of the ‘American workforce’ leaves out the specific role Mr. Obama has played in pushing the monopoly capitalist coup forward with the Trans-Pacific Partnership agreement (TPP), the role he personally has played in reviving the Wall Street banks responsible for the ‘financialization’ of the economy, the bi-partisan effort by official Washington to diminish the lot of organized labor and the ‘privatization’ schemes he continues to push to hand the public economy over to corporate interests. Government policies in the service of capital are no more ‘market’ forces than the much derided ‘central planning’ is.

A recent paper by the International Labour Organization (ILO) presents a broad and reasonably nuanced effort that concludes financialization, and not ‘technology,’ is the central explanation for the increased, and still increasing, share of income going to corporations and away from labor. By changing the corporate motive from continuing economic production to ‘financialized’ production—the creation of corporate architecture designed for maximum extraction of previously existing value, the ‘balance of power’ between labor and capital was shifted to capital by its corporate agents (executives). A prime example can be found in Wall Street itself—individual firms willing to sink the entire financial system for short term trading gains. Additionally, through the permeation of debt-based leverage, rentier income is now drawn from every section of the economy.

Mr. Obama’s unconditional bailout of Wall Street, with upwards of $25trillion of public funds made available to ‘save’ the banks, is the single greatest gift from working people to the forces of their own demise in world history. The ILO paper articulates the role of Wall Street in the immiseration of the West’s toiling classes– not only was the transfer of public resources to ‘private’ banks in the bailouts taken from the working class, the financial economy Mr. Obama ‘saved’ is the absolute enemy of working people. Wall Street provided the tactic of immiseration of the working poor and middle class through financialization of economic production and it facilitated the process through financialization of the broader economy. In fact, Mr. Obama’s economic agenda can be read as the explicit continuation of this process.

Mr. Obama’s plan to ‘work with’ private technology companies to provide every college student in America with high speed internet service has particular irony as apparently the main capability to be boosted is the NSA’s ability to spy on students, long known to be periodically politically active, all the more quickly. As there was no mention of this ‘enhanced’ service being free—Mr. Obama is providing students the ‘right’ to buy products from private companies who then sell the information they gather from their ‘customers’ to the highest bidder while inventing ever more intrusive and corporate-totalitarian methods of controlling them. It is agreed that in theory high speed Internet service has value. That Mr. Obama’s actual corporate-state policies have made it a tool of totalitarian control shines a light on his true constituency. Conversely, it illustrates the destruction of actual economic value (high speed internet service) through strategies of domination by the same capitalists claiming they create economic value.

Asking business leaders to opine on the system of public education is more cynical still given Mr. Obama’s appointment of long-term public school privatizer Arne Duncan as Education Secretary. Business leaders’ interest is to shift the cost of training ‘their’ workforces onto the public dime. Even granting the dubious proposition education is to benefit capitalist enterprise, truly educating ‘the workforce’ provides for a broad set of potentially socially beneficial applications whereas training teaches skills that benefit certain employers. Given the history of American corporations trying to limit the mobility of workers, such as pensions with long vesting periods, providing specific training in lieu of broad education serves corporate interests against those of labor. And ‘education’ only creates ‘American’ jobs to the extent Federal government policies put certain classes of labor into faux ‘competition’ with more effectively exploited workers overseas. ‘Education,’ as Mr. Obama presents it, is a phony solution to an engineered problem.

Even in the dim corporate-state worldview of Mr. Obama’s patrons there must be interest in education outside rote training and inculcating maximum consumption—otherwise, who will create? Additionally, the basic arithmetic of privatized education is revenue – costs = profits. If profits are zero, as is the case with public education, then expenditures equal revenues. Why extracting profits–increasing public expenditures that go to capitalists rather than to education, adds value to education when it so clearly detracts is a mystery Mr. Obama should explain. And paradoxically, his ‘private’ model for education finds precedence in his health care ‘reform’ plan, the ACA, with the central difference being that Mr. Obama’s explanation for retaining a private healthcare system is that it is already ‘private’ whereas the educational system Mr. Obama now wants to privatize is largely public. And there is no grimmer view of human existence than corporations training human ‘consumption units’ in the empty ideology of capitalist consumption.

Mr. Obama’s ‘tax advantaged’ savings accounts for middle class families are a particularly cynical ploy. Middle class wages were stagnant for thirty years before declining in the economic calamity associated with the financial ‘crisis’ of 2008. What middle class (and poor) families need is income, not accounts to put income they don’t have into. With more details allegedly forthcoming, the initial read is through his ‘private accounts’ Mr. Obama hopes to effectuate George W. Bush’s plan for his own ‘private accounts’ as a step toward privatizing Social Security. And in his Wednesday speech Mr. Obama made coded comments about cutting Social Security that tie directly to his Hamilton Project (Robert Rubin) speech nearly a decade earlier. To be clear, the working poor would be hurt most were Mr. Obama to push ‘private’ savings accounts only the rich can afford while cutting the Social Security the working poor most depend on.

The infrastructure spending Mr. Obama advocates may or may not be a good idea depending on how it is financed. In the U.S., given its geography and geopolitics, infrastructure has unambiguously provided an economic benefit in the post-WWII period. But corporations formerly paid a substantial proportion of the costs of building infrastructure through taxes. Over the last fifty years taxes on corporations and the wealthy have been massively cut leaving the middle class to pay an increased share of public expenditures. And a significant proportion of this burden, in the form of municipal debt, is coming due.

The struggle currently underway in ‘bankrupt’ Detroit between ‘bondholders’ and pensioners has the Democratic Party of the last forty years supporting the immiseration of pensioners to pay financial speculators for financing infrastructure spending. To be clear, public (and private) pensions are deferred income negotiated in lieu of current income. Democrat Robert Rubin, with whose acolytes Mr. Obama has continued to fill his Cabinet, is an insistent advocate of Detroit’s bondholders being fully paid. And the only way to do so is to take the money, earned income that was deferred, from pensioners. Mr. Obama’s threat to appoint arch Rubinite Larry Summers—the man who bears significant responsibility for deregulating Wall Street and for the ensuing economic calamity, to Chair the Federal Reserve is a clear signal increased infrastructure spending is intended to transfer even more public wealth to ‘private’ hands.

Mr. Obama refers to the student debt ‘crisis’ as if he had no role in it. In fact, about half of the total student loan debt outstanding was accumulated while Mr. Obama has been President. Mr. Obama ‘removed the banks’ from making student loans in 2009 as part of his effort to shift bad bank debts and economic risk from the banks onto the public balance sheet, not in an effort to help middle class students as he now asserts. Under Mr. Obama student loan debt fraudulently incurred through bogus ‘for-profit’ colleges and trade schools has exploded with fully one-third of indebted students failing to receive degrees. With full knowledge that student loan debt is nearly impossible to discharge, Mr. Obama encouraged students to take loans as part of his education ‘initiative’ creating a new generation of debt slaves to a particularly pernicious type of debt.

The ‘middle class’ jobs Mr. Obama now claims to have created through the automaker bailouts is a particularly offensive sleight of hand. Before the bailouts a proposal had been floated to create a ‘tiered’ wage system where new autoworkers would earn approximately one-half what existing workers made. As a condition of the automaker bailouts Mr. Obama forced the issue by putting tiered wages in place while no restrictions were put on executive compensation. In large measure the same executives who had sunk the auto industry were left in their jobs at full pay and were left free to continue relocating autoworker jobs to low wage countries. And in fact, the bailouts Mr. Obama now claims were his were largely engineered by the George W. Bush administration before it left office. As with Mr. Obama’s healthcare plan, right-wing Republicans conceived the automaker bailouts.

On a positive note, it was refreshing to hear Mr. Obama correctly characterize his healthcare ‘reform’ plan, the Affordable Care Act (ACA), as a plan to provide health insurance, rather than health care, to those lacking it. The Democrat partisans who tried to draw such a stark line between Mr. Obama’s policies and the likely policies of his Republican rival in the last election, Mitt Romney, largely avoided the fact that Mr. Obama’s health care ‘reform’ was the same plan Republican Mitt Romney had implemented as Governor of Massachusetts. The right-wing Heritage Foundation originally conceived the plan as the radical right’s ‘solution’ to the ‘threat’ of national

health care. Under the guise of political feasibility Mr. Obama has pushed through the major policies of the radical corporate-right with his long-suffering constituents believing they got a good deal.

The genesis of the ACA as a corporate-right ‘solution’ to a public health crisis is what it is, but this alone doesn’t doom it to failure. What it leaves is a system that provides about two-thirds of the benefits of a functioning health care system at twice the cost. While implementation of the plan in Massachusetts initially reduced the number of medical bankruptcies —families that were bankrupted by medical costs, the number quickly recovered. The basic flaws of the existing healthcare system remain—monopoly power in pricing medical services and medical provision, a disjoint and ring-fenced system designed to maximize profits rather than to provide healthcare, and hugely asymmetrical political-economic power between insurance companies, medical providers and ‘the insured.’ The ACA’s liberal supporters believe against all history that private insurers will willingly provide the health care they are contractually obligated to provide when they only have when forced to in the past. The question then, with the unconditional bank bailouts as guide, is who is going to force them?

Again, the received wisdom amongst the self-described ‘liberal’ economists supporting the ACA is that it is all that was politically feasible. In fact, with poll results showing 75% of the American people initially supporting a national (single payer) health care system, Mr. Obama could have taken his case to the people. Alternatively, Mr. Obama could have represented popular disillusion as a potential threat to the extractive, dysfunctional private health care providers and won concessions. Instead, he had a health insurance lobbyist write the ACA and proceeded to pass the Republican plan conceived by the right-wing Heritage Foundation off as his signature achievement.

What Mr. Obama apparently hopes to accomplish in the remainder of his term, as evidenced by his economic ‘agenda,’ is the conversion of every remaining socially beneficial public institution into private enterprises designed to provide the highest profits for connected capitalists while converting their (public institutions’) ‘products’ into tools for the domination and control of the populace. Postmodernist insights notwithstanding, there is a difference between education and capitalist-corporatist propaganda. There is a difference between education and technical training in the service of industry. Savings account for people who have no income to save are a hoax. Infrastructure designed to extract ongoing fees for private interests at public expense is a cynical ploy. And as ACA supporters will soon be learning in excruciating detail, there is a difference between health insurance and health care. Finally, privatization isn’t efficient rationalization of public institutions; it is the replacement of the public interest with private interests. Lest the result remain unclear, replacement means elimination of the public interest.

Rob Urie is an artist and political economist in New York. His book, Zen Economics, will be published by CP/AK Press in 2014.

"The American people have suffered a coup d’etat"

Coup d'Etat

In the Grip of Tyranny

by PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS

The American people have suffered a coup d’etat, but they are hesitant to acknowledge it. The regime ruling in Washington today lacks constitutional and legal legitimacy. Americans are ruled by usurpers who claim that the executive branch is above the law and that the US Constitution is a mere “scrap of paper.”

An unconstitutional government is an illegitimate government. The oath of allegiance requires defense of the Constitution “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.” As the Founding Fathers made clear, the main enemy of the Constitution is the government itself. Power does not like to be bound and tied down and constantly works to free itself from constraints.

The basis of the regime in Washington is nothing but usurped power. The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force. Those in government see the US Constitution as a “chain that binds our hands.”

The South African apartheid regime was more legitimate than the regime in Washington. The apartheid Israeli regime in Palestine is more legitimate. The Taliban are more legitimate. Muammar Gaddafi and Saddam Hussein were

more legitimate.

The only constitutional protection that the Bush/Obama regime has left standing is the Second Amendment, a meaningless amendment considering the disparity in arms between Washington and what is permitted to the citizenry. No citizen standing with a rifle can protect himself and his family from one of the Department of Homeland Security’s 2,700 tanks, or from a drone, or from a heavily armed SWAT force in body armor.

Like serfs in the dark ages, American citizens can be picked up on the authority of some unknown person in the executive branch and thrown in a dungeon, subject to torture, without any evidence ever being presented to a court or any information to the person’s relatives of his/her whereabouts. Or they can be placed on a list without explanation that curtails their right to travel by air. Every communication of every American, except face-to-face conversation in non-bugged environments, is intercepted and recorded by the National Stasi Agency from which phrases can be strung together to produce a “domestic extremist.”

If throwing an American citizen in a dungeon is too much trouble, the citizen can simply be blown up with a hellfire missile launched from a drone. No explanation is necessary.

For the Obama tyrant, the exterminated human being was just a name on a list.

The president of the united states has declared that he possesses these constitutionally forbidden rights, and his regime has used them to oppress and murder US citizens. The president’s claim that his will is higher than law and the Constitution is public knowledge. Yet, there is no demand for the usurper’s impeachment. Congress is supine. The serfs are obedient.

The people who helped transform a democratically accountable president into a Caesar include John Yoo, who was rewarded for his treason by being accepted as a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, Boalt school of law. Yoo’s colleague in treason, Jay Scott Bybee was rewarded by being appointed a federal judge on the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit. We now have a Berkeley law professor teaching, and a federal circuit judge ruling, that the executive branch is above the law.

The executive branch coup against America has succeeded. The question is: will it stand? Today, the executive branch consists of liars, criminals, and traitors. The evil on earth seems concentrated in Washington.

Washington’s response to Edward Snowden’s evidence that Washington, in total contravention of law both domestic and international, is spying on the entire world has demonstrated to every country that Washington places the pleasure of revenge above law and human rights.

On Washington’s orders, its European puppet states refused overflight permission to the Bolivian presidential airliner carrying President Morales and forced the airliner to land in Austria and be searched. Washington thought that Edward Snowden might be aboard the airliner. Capturing Snowden was more important to Washington than respect for international law and diplomatic immunity.

How long before Washington orders its UK puppet to send in a SWAT team to drag Julian Asange from the Ecuadoran embassy in London and hand him over to the CIA for waterboarding?

On July 12 Snowden met in the Moscow airport with human rights organizations from around the world. He stated that the illegal exercise of power by Washington prevents him from traveling to any of the three Latin American countries who have offered him asylum. Therefore, Snowden said that he accepted Russian President Putin’s conditions and requested asylum in Russia.

Insouciant americans and the young unaware of the past don’t know what this means. During my professional life it was Soviet Russia that persecuted truth tellers, while America gave them asylum and tried to protect them. Today it is Washington that persecutes those who speak the truth, and it is Russia that protects them.

The American public has not, this time, fallen for Washington’s lie that Snowden is a traitor. The polls show that a majority of Americans see Snowden as a whistleblower.

It is not the US that is damaged by Snowden’s revelations. It is the criminal elements in the US government that have pulled off a coup against democracy, the Constitution, and the American people who are damaged. It is the criminals who have seized power, not the American people, who are demanding Snowden’s scalp.

The Obama Regime, like the Bush/Cheney Regime, has no legitimacy. Americans are oppressed by an illegitimate government ruling, not by law and the Constitution, but by lies and naked force.

Under the Obama tyranny, it is not merely Snowden who is targeted for extermination, but every truth-telling American in the country. It was Department of Homeland Security boss Janet Napolitano, recently rewarded for her service to tyranny by being appointed Chancellor of the of the University of California system, who said that Homeland Security had shifted its focus from Muslim terrorists to “domestic extremists,” an elastic and undefined term that easily includes truth-tellers like Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden who embarrass the government by revealing its crimes. The criminals who have seized illegitimate power in Washington cannot survive unless truth can be suppressed or redefined as treason.

If Americans acquiesce to the coup d’etat, they will have placed themselves firmly in the grip of tyranny.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Roberts’ How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format.

Corporate Influence at the Center for American Progress?

The prominent liberal think tank still skirts questions about its donors.

Ken Silverstein

May 30, 2013

Center for American Progress event in Washington, DC. (REUTERS/Jim Young

My piece here last Tuesday about secret donors to the Center for American Progress and other think tanks generated a lot of interest and debate. I also heard from many readers who passed along stories and documents, including a 2012 list of members of CAP’s “Business Alliance” corporate donor program [PDF]. Note on the second page of the document that donors are helpfully arranged by industry—“As listed by the Fortune 500,” the document says.

About the Author

Ken Silverstein

Ken Silverstein is a fellow at the Edmond J. Safra Center for Ethics at Harvard University and a contributing editor to...

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The Secret Donors Behind the Center for American Progress and Other Think Tanks [Updated on 5/24] (US Politics, Corporate Lobbying)

Washington institutions esteemed for their independent scholarship don’t disclose donations from corporations and foreign governments.

Ken Silverstein

As I stated in the piece, CAP will not comment about its donors, and spokesperson Andrea Purse had refused to confirm or deny the names of Business Alliance members on three previous lists I had obtained, all from 2011. The lists were maintained by Chris Belisle, who CAP described as a “junior staffer” in its letter of reply to The Nation.

Belisle, who no longer works at CAP, carried the title of “senior manager” of the Business Alliance while at the think tank. In a résumé posted online, he said his job was to oversee the Alliance, which he said had more than sixty members, and that he worked “directly with senior or head of government relations in representing their company interests within the organization,” and was in charge of “programming” for members, including “the planning of monthly Roundtable discussions and customized policy briefings.”

When reporting the original story I sent Purse one of the 2011 lists, which she said contained dozens of errors (despite there only being a few dozen names on it), while failing to specify which names were incorrect. I was able to confirm more than a dozen names by calling the companies on the list, going through their foundation reports or obtaining independent confirmation.

The lists were sent internally to staffers so they would know to be careful when writing about companies that financially supported the think tank, sources told me. Numerous corporations appear on all four lists. They include Abbott Laboratories, Amgen, Bank of America, Carefirst Blue Cross Blue Shield, Citigroup, Eli Lilly, General Dynamics, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Pfizer, The Carlyle Group and Verizon.

Last week, I sought comment for this story from Purse; Neera Tanden, CAP’s president; and John Podesta, CAP’s chair and counselor. I listed the names of companies on all four lists and asked for confirmation that they were CAP donors. I did not hear back from Tanden or Podesta. Purse declined again to confirm or deny particular names, saying, “Our work speaks for itself. Your inference that corporate donations shape or drive the content of CAP and CAP Action is false.”

I also asked if CAP felt that taking secret donations from corporate donors neutered its ability to address the issue of campaign finance reform, and if it believed that money in politics was a serious problem. I asked as well if CAP would consider changing its policy of taking money without disclosure from corporate donors.

In response to my questions about campaign finance, Purse said, “Our work shows that we believe campaign finance reform is a vital issue for our democracy and an issue which merits serious attention,” pointing to CAP’s coverage of the issue, through reports and ThinkProgress blog posts.

CAP has similarly cited all the ways in which it has been critical of its (otherwise unacknowledged) corporate donors as proof that they do not influence its policy agenda. CAP has pointed to many ThinkProgress posts going after Goldman Sachs, for example. But this argument obscures the indirect way influence is usually exerted. In most cases, a donor’s gift is not understood by either party as buying complete loyalty to its cause. As I note in my reply to CAP’s letter to the editor in The Nation, Wall Street companies gave a lot of money to President Obama not because they expected to get his support all the time but to get it more than they would if they didn’t give him money at all. A similar dynamic appears to be at work at CAP and other think tanks.

And in fact, there is evidence that CAP’s interest in wooing and pleasing corporate donors has shaped coverage—beyond what I included in my original piece. Multiple former staffers told me of editorial intrusion by senior think tank officials, in cases that included Saudi Arabia, when CAP was seeking Saudi support.

CAP pitched the Saudis for funding sometime after Tanden took over as president in 2011, I was told. Two people said to be involved in the pitch were Ken Gude, Tanden’s deputy, and Rudy deLeon, a former Boeing lobbyist and now CAP’s senior vice president for national security and international policy. (Boeing, of course, is a major supplier of weapons and commercial aircraft to the kingdom.) While the pitch was in play, some staffers were told to avoid criticism of the kingdom, sources said. It was not clear if the think tank was seeking money from the Saudi embassy directly or from a Saudi company or other cutout.

In response to my questions about this, Purse did not deny that CAP was seeking Saudi money. She said, “We have not received any money from the Saudi government, Saudi companies or any associated interests. We have not and will not allow corporations or others to censor our work as any examination of our extensive record of reports, columns and posts clearly shows.” Again, citations of critical coverage were offered to demonstrate an absence of influence; but, while it is true that CAP has run tough pieces on the Saudis and on some of its donors, the question remains whether that coverage would have been different had the pursuit of donations not been a factor or if the pitch had been successful.

Incidentally, my numerous sources all gave very good reasons for speaking off the record. I provided their names and notes of our conversations to my editor at The Nation. Some of them are disillusioned with CAP while others still view it with affection, but with one exception, they were all troubled by the think tank’s relationship with its donors.

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In its letter to The Nation, CAP said that it currently receives 6 percent of its budget from corporate contributions and that figure has never hit double digits. Even if the 6 percent figure is accurate—and we have only CAP’s word to take for it, since unlike most major think tanks, it doesn’t publish or make available an annual report or otherwise disclose at least basic financial data—it’s impossible to know its true significance given CAP’s refusal to provide other information.

In a story in March, The Huffington Post reported that CAP pulled in “nearly $20 million from philanthropic groups in 2012, more than half of its funding base.” The story said that while CAP does not publicly disclose its donors, “the fundraising numbers were provided to HuffPost by a CAP source and confirmed by Tanden.” So again we only have CAP’s word to go on as opposed to a financial report, but even if what they say is true, a few obvious questions arise, which are unanswerable because of the think tank’s lack of transparency.

* Will CAP provide a full list of foundations whose support it receives? Is CAP including corporate foundations in this category?

* If 6 percent of the budget comes from corporations, and “over half” comes from foundations, that presumably means that somewhere around 40 percent comes from individuals. Who are they? Do any of them have ties to major corporations?

It’s not complicated. CAP should disclose its donors, corporate and otherwise.

At an Obama fundraiser, twelve undocumented immigrants and allies were arrested for protesting record deportations. Read Aura Bogado’s report.

Ken Silverstein

May 30, 2013

Le Brésil et la géopolitique de l’indignation

par Breno Bringel , le 25 juillet

Quelles sont les ressorts des manifestations géantes qui agitent actuellement le Brésil ? Important « laboratoire démocratique » dans le monde, les institutions du pays ont multiplié ces dernières années les mécanismes sociaux de participation et de délibération. Selon Breno Bringel, ce processus cherche aujourd’hui à s’inventer dans l’espace public lui-même.

Ce texte est une version augmentée de l’article original, publié en portugais, le 27 Juin 2013 dans le journal Brasil de Fato.

Les immenses manifestations qui secouent le Brésil depuis juin 2013 ont surpris presque tout le monde, à l’intérieur du géant sud-américain comme à l’extérieur. Même s’il est hasardeux de prévoir des tendances lorsque l’on analyse des conjonctures politiques, il y a bien deux raisons à cette stupéfaction. Tout d’abord, ces dernières années, le Brésil a acquis le statut de « pays émergent », assumant de fait un rôle dominant dans la région, et une stature symbolique dans le contexte international, fondée sur l’alliance de la croissance économique et de politiques sociales. La deuxième cause d’étonnement face aux protestations et mobilisations récentes tient au fait que même s’il existe au Brésil des mouvements sociaux fortement organisés et territorialisés, comme le Mouvement des Sans Terre, le pays ne connaît pas, comme ses voisins latino-américains, de tradition dans l’action et le conflit collectifs, ou des mobilisations populaires de masse.

Mais comme tout ce qui brille n’est pas or, il convient de chercher des éléments d’analyse permettant de réévaluer les deux causes énoncées. Il est vrai, concernant la première, que l’entrée dans le XXIe siècle a donné au Brésil une nouvelle position au sein de la géopolitique mondiale. L’arrivée au pouvoir de Lula a impliqué une plus grande intégration sud-américaine, un rapprochement avec les partenaires stratégiques et tactiques, un renforcement des négociations multilatérales et la participation nettement plus active du Brésil dans divers sujets et agendas de la scène internationale. Le pays est devenu ainsi, pour beaucoup, le modèle à suivre pour combiner la croissance économique, même dans le contexte d’après-crise financière de 2008, avec les avancées dans le champ social, fruits d’autant de politiques publiques. On ne peut pourtant pas oublier que la politique du Parti des Travailleurs, une fois au gouvernement (ce que certains auteurs, à l’instar d’André Singer, appellent le « lulisme »), n’existe que sous le sceau de la contradiction. Les avancées sont bien réelles dans bien des secteurs et aspects (les indices de popularité de Dilma Rousseff restent relativement élevés en dépit des manipulations de la presse après le début des manifestations), mais toujours de manière ambiguë. On le doit à une politique schizoïde de « conciliation nationale », selon laquelle le gouvernement, à l’occasion de larges coalitions, tente de concilier des forces et des acteurs opposés au sein d’une société inégalitaire. Défendre à la fois l’industrie agroalimentaire et l’agriculture familiale en est un exemple, et cela a ses limites, comme nous le verrons plus loin.

D’autre part, le soulèvement brésilien surprend dans la mesure où, ces deux dernières décennies, dans la majorité de la société brésilienne (à l’exception de certains mouvements sociaux et de certains secteurs de la gauche) la coopération a prévalu sur le conflit. La participation sociale existait, mais elle était canalisée essentiellement par des mécanismes et espaces institutionnels, portant les acteurs sociaux à se préoccuper bien plus de « Politique » (avec un grand P) que de la « société ». Cela a fait apparaître, au sein de la gauche brésilienne, des lacunes et des déficits dans les débats sur la cohésion sociale, la lutte face aux nouvelles formes de domination et la formation des bases. On peut expliquer ainsi, partiellement tout au moins, pourquoi le sentiment d’indignation qui se fait jour au Brésil n’est pas davantage structuré ni articulé politiquement.

L’émergence d’une « indignation à la brésilienne »

L’indignation n’est pas un mouvement social. C’est un état d’esprit. Il peut dès lors s’exprimer de manières bien différentes. Au Sud de l’Europe, par exemple, le sentiment d’indignation sociale de ces dernières années a eu de multiples sources, mais l’un des principaux fils conducteurs reste encore le refus de payer les conséquences directes de la crise, que l’on voudrait voir assumées par ceux qui en sont la cause. Les mobilisations sociales ont ainsi pris pour principales cibles banquiers et spéculateurs. Aux États-Unis, les « occupiers » ont adressé en général leurs revendications aux mêmes acteurs, mobilisés par l’argument selon lequel 1% de la société, totalement étranger aux espoirs de la population, ne peut décider de l’avenir des 99% qui restent.

Actuellement, au Brésil (mais la conjoncture change à une vitesse ahurissante ces derniers jours) l’indignation est encore très diffuse, mais de plus en plus polarisée. Dans les rues des manifestations, actes, sentiments, arguments et sens divers et contradictoires coexistent. Certains expriment leur mécontentement vis-à-vis du fonctionnement des transports en commun (le refus, couronné de succès, d’une augmentation des tarifs des autobus a été à l’origine des protestations). Plus largement, certains exigent le droit à étendre et améliorer les services publics en général (tout particulièrement dans les domaines de la santé et de l’éducation). D’autres invoquent les coûts faramineux (économiques, sociaux, environnementaux, culturels et politiques) du Mondial de Football en 2014, et d’autres grands événements qui auront lieu dans le pays. Des jeunes issus des classes moyennes inférieures, voyant que les politiques sociales du gouvernement ne les ont pas tirés de leur « citoyenneté au rabais », s’indignent de la profonde persistance des inégalités. Enfin, il y a aussi ceux qui sont mobilisés autour de questions plus spécifiques et/ou sectorielles, non moins importantes : par exemple, la Proposition de Modification de la Constitution 37/2011, qui doterait la police, en cas d’approbation, du pouvoir exclusif lors des enquêtes criminelles, dessaisissant les organes publics.

La plupart de ceux qui ont participé à ces mouvements sociaux, des jeunes pour la plupart, ne possèdent encore qu’une idée diffuse de l’indignation, peu articulée politiquement, dans la mesure où pour beaucoup il s’agit là de leur « baptême politique ». L’indignation, la rogne, la colère ou la haine ne sont pas encore cristallisées autour d’une action politique structurée. Ces jeunes, à l’instar de la vague d’indignation globale qui a traversé divers pays du monde ces dernières années, associent leurs frustrations au refus des systèmes politiques, des partis traditionnels et des formes conventionnelles de l’organisation politique. S’ils veulent participer à vie politique, ils ne parviennent pas à trouver les canaux appropriés. Avant de leur en faire reproche, comme cela arrive au Brésil comme dans d’autres pays, il faudrait se demander ce qui ne fonctionne pas, et pourquoi, et rechercher des pistes pour comprendre les enjeux de ces nouvelles subjectivités.

Les mobilisations sociales sont les baromètres de la société, et n’indiquent pas toujours les directions les plus souhaitées. Habituellement, elles partent des secteurs les plus mobilisés et organisés de la société (au Brésil, le mouvement déclencheur, le Movimento Passe Livre [Mouvement Entrée Libre], se définit comme autonome et anti-capitaliste) et se propagent vers d’autres, moins mobilisés ou organisés. Au Brésil, ce premier groupe a été totalement débordé par les manifestations massives, échappant au contrôle exercé par des organisations sociales et politiques, et essaimant dans toute la société.

Étude comparée de l’indignation

Au sein de la vague d’indignation globale et contemporaine, le cas brésilien possède des caractéristiques intéressantes. Il est fondamental, à mon avis, de considérer trois dimensions de ces nouveaux espaces de contestation. Tout d’abord, contrairement à certains processus récents en Europe, en Afrique du Nord et aux États-Unis (en dépit du sentiment de solidarité exprimé dans divers endroits du monde, et de l’usage d’outils en commun), il n’y a pas de diffusion directe et systématique, hors des frontières du Brésil, de ses propres formes d’action, des répertoires et des cadres de contestation. Cela mérite d’être souligné pour montrer le manque d’expérience dans le partage des luttes sociales, ce qui pourrait grandement servir dans le pays.

Ensuite, contrairement aux autres phénomènes d’indignation contemporains, qui ont su articuler plusieurs échelles complexes, globales et locales (centrées sur l’échelle régionale en Europe), l’indignation brésilienne surgit à l’échelle nationale, comme un dispositif de blocage politique, ravivant parfois des idées nationalistes et de droite. Enfin, les lieux mêmes sont importants. Chaque manifestation, dans les capitales d’État ou les petites villes, a exprimé des revendications particulières, une critique des politiques locales ou régionales, réunies et parfois conditionnées par les différentes cultures politiques. Cela traverse tous les mouvements d’indignation, et les protestations en général. Pourtant, ces spécificités locales révèlent aussi des points d’inflexion dans les revendications et les composantes sociales des manifestants. C’est ainsi, par exemple, que certains groupes absents des rues de São Paulo ou de Ribeirão Preto ont battu les pavés de Rio de Janeiro ou São Gonçalo ; les corrélations de forces étant différentes dans chacun de ces lieux.

Soulignons également que les actes de vandalisme ou de violence qui ont eu lieu dans bien des villes brésiliennes ne correspondent pas toujours à un usage politique de la violence, contrairement à d’autres mouvements altermondialistes tels que Black Block. Ils font certainement apparaître les fractures, les inégalités profondes, les segmentations et la séparation des classes au sein de la société brésilienne. On y constate un usage opportuniste de la violence (du fait de kidnappeurs, policiers, de groupes racistes, xénophobes, et de membres de l’extrême droite), mais il faut aussi comprendre que les mobilisations récentes montrent l’indignation de classes oppressées convergeant lors d’actions diffuses et critiques.

La question principale, au Brésil, n’est pas étrangère à bien des pays qui ont connu, ces derniers mois ou ces dernières années, des mouvements d’indignation. Comment canaliser ce sentiment et l’ériger en mouvement social ? La réponse est loin d’être simple, face aux débats de fond concernant le sens à donner aux mobilisations. Les médias hégémoniques sont à l’origine des premiers blocages lorsqu’ils n’assurent pas un pluralisme informatif, et imposent leur interprétation des événements. Les réseaux sociaux constituent un outil important, mais insuffisant aussi, car en général ils ne proposent guère de contre-information systématique, ni d’interprétations à plus grande portée. Dès lors, la création de plateformes ouvertes à l’information alternative, pouvant atteindre une partie plus large de la population, est l’un des défis des mouvements sociaux brésiliens.

Investir dans la formation politique, au sein même du processus actuel, constitue un deuxième défi. Pour transformer le sens du sentiment d’indignation il faut former les individus, tout comme leur conscience politique. Pour donner une subjectivité aux acteurs sociaux il faut un terrain propice, qui ne soit pas une zone de vide politique. Cela est essentiel pour tenter de parer à la récupération par la droite des protestations. Celle-ci diffuse volontiers des idées simples et conservatrices, enracinées presque naturellement (et reproduites par le système éducatif et les médias traditionnels) dans la société brésilienne.

Il faut, pour ce faire, regarder à nouveau vers les mouvements d’indignation globaux. Lors des contestations, des espaces de convergence ont été créés, tout comme de larges assemblées et forums de débat dans lesquels les citoyens se sont initiés à la politique à partir d’autres bases. Ils y ont débattu, en partageant et faisant avancer leurs idées. Le Brésil devrait avoir sa propre Puerta del Sol, ses propres occupations permanentes. Cela permettrait d’approfondir les processus nés dans la rue. Il ne s’agit pas simplement d’échanger sur les places, mais d’élargir les espaces collectifs de débat. Le Brésil a été, ces dernières années, un important « laboratoire démocratique » dans le monde, multipliant la diversité des mécanismes sociaux de participation et de délibération, pour la plupart issus des institutions. Il convient de réinventer et de creuser ce processus dans l’espace public même. Les villes peuvent devenir de grands forums de débat, et canaliser ainsi l’indignation diffuse et fragmentée pour en démultiplier la puissance. C’est aussi une bonne occasion pour renouveler les forces et la forme de la gauche, tout comme toutes les sensibilités engagées dans la justice sociale et l’émancipation du peuple.

Traduit de l’espagnol par Marc Audi

par Breno Bringel , le 25 juillet

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Ken Silverstein

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Le Brésil et la géopolitique de l’indignation

L’émergence d’une « indignation à la brésilienne »

Étude comparée de l’indignation

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