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The REAL Reason U.S. Targets Whistleblowers
U.S. leaders have long:
- Condemned China for spying and hacking our computers … But the Snowden leaks show that America is doing the same thing — on a much larger scale
- Considered waterboarding to be a war crime and a form of torture, including when the Japanese did it in WWII (and see this). But when we did it, we insisted it was not torture
- Proselytized other countries to follow free market capitalism. But we no longer follow free market capitalism in America. Instead, we have socialism for the rich and sink-or-swim capitalism for everyone else. Whether you call it crony capitalism, fascism, communist style socialism, kleptocracy, oligarchy or banana republicanism … it ain’t real capitalism
- Labeled indiscriminate killing of civilians as terrorism. Yet the American military indiscriminately kills innocent civilians (and see this), calling it “carefully targeted strikes”. For example, when Al Qaeda, Syrians or others target people attending funerals of those killed – or those attempting to rescue people who have been injured by – previous attacks, we rightfully label it terrorism. But the U.S. government does exactly the same thing (more), pretending that it is all okay
- Lambasted those who do not follow a rule of law as tin-pot tyrants. But the rule of law has broken down in America, and we now have less access to justice than in many parts of the world
- Blasted oppressive regimes which do not allow free speech, a free press and other liberties for their people … But have discarded most of those same liberties in our homeland
- Scolded tyrants who launch aggressive wars to grab power or plunder resources. But we ourselves have launched a series of wars for oil (and here) and gas
- Said that those who support terrorists should be treated as terrorists. But the U.S. government has long supported terrorists for cynical political purposes.
- Sought to “spread democracy” around the world. But democracy is not being honored at home (more here and here)
- Said that we must stamp out terrorism. But we are doing the exact same things we accuse the terrorists of doing (or worse)
Can you spot a pattern of hypocrisy?
Indeed, the worse the acts by officials, the more they say we it must be covered up … for “the good of the country”.
For example, Elizabeth Goitein – co-director of the Liberty and National Security Program at New York University School of Law’s Brennan Center for Justice – writes:
The government has begun to advance bold new justifications for classifying information that threaten to erode the principled limits that have existed — in theory, if not always in practice — for decades. The cost of these efforts, if they remain unchecked, may be the American public’s ability to hold its government accountable.
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The government acknowledged that it possessed mug shots, videos depicting forcible extractions of al-Qahtani from his cell and videos documenting various euphemistically termed “intelligence debriefings of al-Qahtani.” It argued that all of these images were properly classified and withheld from the public — but not because they would reveal sensitive intelligence methods, the traditional justification for classifying such information. The government did not stake its case on this time-tested argument perhaps because the details of al-Qahtani’s interrogations have been officially disclosed through agency reports and congressional hearings. Instead, the government argued that the images could be shielded from disclosure because the Taliban and associated forces have previously used photos of U.S. forces “interacting with detainees” to garner support for attacks against those forces. Even more broadly, the government asserted that disclosure could aid in the “recruitment and financing of extremists and insurgent groups.”
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The government’s argument echoed a similar claim it made in a lawsuit earlier this year over a FOIA request for postmortem photographs of Osama bin Laden. A CIA official attested that these images could “aid the production of anti-American propaganda,” noting that images of abuse at Abu Ghraib had been “very effective” in helping Al-Qaeda to recruit supporters and raise funds. The appeals court did not address this argument, however, resting its decision on the narrower ground that these particular images were likely to incite immediate violence.
The judge in al-Qahtani’s case showed no such restraint. She held that the photos and videos were properly classified because “it (is) both logical and plausible that extremists would utilize images of al-Qahtani … to incite anti-American sentiment, to raise funds, and/or to recruit other loyalists.” When CCR pointed out that this result was speculative, the judge responded that “it is bad law and bad policy to second-guess the predictive judgments made by the government’s intelligence agencies.” In short, the government may classify information, not because that information reveals tactical or operational secrets but because the conduct it reveals could in theory anger existing enemies or create new ones.
This approach is alarming in part because it has no limiting principle. The reasons why people choose to align themselves against the United States — or any other country — are nearly as numerous and varied as the people themselves. Our support for Israel is considered a basis for enmity by some. May the government classify the aid we provide to other nations? May it classify our trade policies on the basis that they may breed resentment among the populations of some countries, thus laying the groundwork for future hostile relations? May it classify our history of involvement in armed conflicts across the globe because that history may function as “anti-American propaganda” in some quarters?
Perhaps even more disturbing, this justification for secrecy will be strongest when the U.S. government’s conduct most clearly violates accepted international norms. Evidence of human rights abuses against foreign nationals, for instance, is particularly likely to spark hostility abroad. Indeed, the judge in the al-Qahtani FOIA case noted that “the written record of (al-Qahtani’s) torture may make it all the more likely that enemy forces would use al-Qahtani’s image against the United States” — citing this fact as a reason to uphold classification.
Using the impropriety of the government’s actions as a justification for secrecy is the very antithesis of accountability. To prevent this very outcome, the executive order that governs classification forbids classifying a document to “conceal violations of law” or to “prevent embarrassment to a person, organization, or agency.” However, a federal judge in 2008 interpreted this provision to allow classification of information revealing misconduct if there is a valid security reason for the nondisclosure. Together, this ruling and the judge’s opinion in the al-Qahtani FOIA case eviscerate the executive order’s prohibition: The government can always argue that it classified evidence of wrongdoing because the information could be used as “anti-American propaganda” by our adversaries.
Human rights advocates cannot rely on al-Qahtani to tell us what the photos and videos would reveal. The government asserts that his own knowledge of what occurred at Guantánamo — knowledge he gained, not through privileged access to government documents but through his personal experience — is a state secret. The words that Guantánamo detainees speak, once transcribed by their attorneys, are “presumptively classified,” and the government determines which of those words, if any, may be released. Legally, the government may classify only information that is “owned by, produced by or for, or is under the control of the United States Government.” Because the detainees are under the government’s control, so, apparently, are the contents of their memory.
That’s why high-level CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou was prosecuted him for espionage after he blew the whistle on illegal CIA torture.*
Obviously, the government wants to stop whistleblowers because they interfere with the government’s ability to act in an unaccountable manner. As Glenn Greenwald writes:
It should not be difficult to understand why the Obama administration is so fixated on intimidating whistleblowers and going far beyond any prior administration – including those of the secrecy-obsessed Richard Nixon and George W Bush – to plug all leaks. It’s because those methods are the only ones preventing the US government from doing whatever it wants in complete secrecy and without any accountability of any kind.
But whistleblowers also interfere with the government’s ability to get away with hypocrisy. As two political science professors from George Washington University (Henry Farrell and Martha Finnemore) show, the government is so hell-bent to punish Manning and Snowden because their leaks are putting an end to the ability of the US to use hypocrisy as a weapon:
The U.S. establishment has often struggled to explain exactly why these leakers [Manning, Snowden, etc.] pose such an enormous threat.
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The deeper threat that leakers such as Manning and Snowden pose is more subtle than a direct assault on U.S. national security: they undermine Washington’s ability to act hypocritically and get away with it. Their danger lies not in the new information that they reveal but in the documented confirmation they provide of what the United States is actually doing and why. When these deeds turn out to clash with the government’s public rhetoric, as they so often do, it becomes harder for U.S. allies to overlook Washington’s covert behavior and easier for U.S. adversaries to justify their own.
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As the United States finds itself less able to deny the gaps between its actions and its words, it will face increasingly difficult choices — and may ultimately be compelled to start practicing what it preaches. Hypocrisy is central to Washington’s soft power — its ability to get other countries to accept the legitimacy of its actions — yet few Americans appreciate its role.
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American commitments to the rule of law, democracy, and free trade are embedded in the multilateral institutions that the country helped establish after World War II, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and later the World Trade Organization. Despite recent challenges to U.S. preeminence, from the Iraq war to the financial crisis, the international order remains an American one. This system needs the lubricating oil of hypocrisy to keep its gears turning.
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Of course, the United States has gotten away with hypocrisy for some time now. It has long preached the virtues of nuclear nonproliferation, for example, and has coerced some states into abandoning their atomic ambitions. At the same time, it tacitly accepted Israel’s nuclearization and, in 2004, signed a formal deal affirming India’s right to civilian nuclear energy despite its having flouted the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by acquiring nuclear weapons. In a similar vein, Washington talks a good game on democracy, yet it stood by as the Egyptian military overthrew an elected government in July, refusing to call a coup a coup. Then there’s the “war on terror”: Washington pushes foreign governments hard on human rights but claims sweeping exceptions for its own behavior when it feels its safety is threatened.
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Manning’s and Snowden’s leaks mark the beginning of a new era in which the U.S. government can no longer count on keeping its secret behavior secret. Hundreds of thousands of Americans today have access to classified documents that would embarrass the country if they were publicly circulated. As the recent revelations show, in the age of the cell-phone camera and the flash drive, even the most draconian laws and reprisals will not prevent this information from leaking out. As a result, Washington faces what can be described as an accelerating hypocrisy collapse — a dramatic narrowing of the country’s room to maneuver between its stated aspirations and its sometimes sordid pursuit of self-interest. The U.S. government, its friends, and its foes can no longer plausibly deny the dark side of U.S. foreign policy and will have to address it head-on.
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The era of easy hypocrisy is over.
Professors Farrell and Finnemore note that the government has several options for dealing with ongoing leaks. They conclude that the best would be for the government to actually do what it says.
What a novel idea …
* Note: That may be why Guantanamo is really being kept open, and even prisoners that the U.S. government admits are innocent are still being blocked from release: to cover up the widespread torture by keeping the evidence – the prisoners themselves – in a dungeon away from the light of day.
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I entertain the possibility that Herr Heisenberg was merely prone to sloppy labwork.
Yea... I get the uncertainty part must not ready to call it a principle Brilliance in any era doesn't mean god-like perfection.... and that is why calling scientists shaman is on the mark ... I think some cultivate that and some are to busy being brilliant to give a f*** lol. I cannot get around the idea of what empty space is... There cannot possibly be any such thing lol and we all just talk like the universe is a big Tupperware bowl out of habit
Scientists are the modern day Shaman; do not confuse science with the business of exploiting science.
Galileo got it right, he was willing to risk even his life on the personally honest realization that direct observation always trumps the ideas of believers. We don't even have to call that 'science'. A first-principle of being honest would be enough for the rest to follow from there.
Today mainstream 'science' has devolved into the psychology of advertising ideas to the masses to concoct a political 'consensus' of believers. But in pretty much every historical instance of where consensus belief was invoked from science, it resulted in catastrophic error, derailment and grand mistakes.
Hence the need for courageous whistle-blowers who will risk it all for what's observed and actual ... just like the politically detested, suppressed and threatened ... Galileo.
Oh dear. The kool-aid is getting around. When you called scientists shaman I assumed you meant society thinks of them science as magic. Unfortunately science business and the government have been exploiting the public faith for a long time. Certainly not every single scientist but there is a long history of mutual exploitation. Just one for instance but I'll let GW do another column sometime. In 1960 federal budget administrator Carey (1960) pointed out that from 1940 to 1960 fed spending on Sci and tech (including the Sci and tech part of defense budget) went from 400,000 to 5 billion dollars and that ain't all cost of living... Scientific expertise from sociologists to particle physicists had so outstripped politicians ability to understand even their statistical analyses that scientists had to become advisors to the same people who were deciding how much grant money they would get. Today to get tenure and or promotion a professor of any kind of science is required not just to publish but to seek federal dollars (your taxes) to pay for research and the salaries of less well qualified instructors to teach your child's classes because teaching is a hassle. So depts recruit based on who can get the most of your tax dollars to not teach and do research..they constantly look for new things to count as teaching and new ways to report teaching load so they can write more grants and publish more papers. Wherever they can, they use the same data set broken into small pieces to publish as many different papers as possible. Anyone who can publish articles etc. and teach your child's classes without big grants because they have figured out low cost ways to do research thus doing their jobs for fewer tax dollars will not get tebnure or promotion because they aren't or dont thinking of watlys to do expensive research. Most recently, some departments have policies stating minimum grant levels to get tenure or promotion at 50, 000$ The most important break throughs in the 20th century were theoretical, cheap, or only had to be demonstrated once because the theory and the math were the breakthrough. PS it is now widely known that Watson and Crick plagiarized data and analysis rom a young member of lab without giving credit, e.g. So scientists are human and science is not magic pixies or ever going to save the world. It can be very useful but for the most part tax payers are the ones getting exploited and scientists, govt and industry have been in on it forever.
Yeah. Like he said, don't confuse science with exploiting science. Science in the right hands, government funded or not, can provide great advances in society. Science in the wrong hands, or pseudo-science, can set mankind back hundreds of years (climate science).
Geez, imagine anyone in a position of power in any field or company taking the credit for some idea their protoge' came up with. Get a grip, that happens in all walks of life, not just science.
Science doesn't exploit faith, dumbass, politicians do. Science presents proofs or disproofs and politicians use those to their advantage by twisting and expanding them beyond their intentions. You disgust is pointed in the wrong direction, except in the case of climate scientists. In that case, you are spot on.
@failsafe
For the sake of having your posts read ... please try paragraphs. An amazing little literary invention that would help you greatly.
Yeah, GMadScientist, that is partially true, and it should become more true! I regard the emergence of the scientific method as the most important thing to come out of Western Civilization, (most of the rest of which I have a very low opinion of.) I grew up being given an academic-technical education in British Columbia, which was based on respect for evidence and logical arguments. However, it became clear since I was a teenager, several decades ago, that the combination of exponential growth, backed by atomic weapons, was a HUGE PROBLEM!!! Back in the early 1980s, the runaway arms race to build more atomic bombs by both the USA and the USSR motivated me to finally become involved in registered political activities in Canada. Although I always "knew," from the time I was a boy, that politics was mostly bullies and bullshit, after working primarily upon the issues of the funding of the political processes for 30 years I have added a lot more depth to the perception of the ways that most of our laws are almost totally legalized lies, backed by legalized violence. One of the reasons why I started reading Zero Hedge is because I believe that the runaway insanities of fundamentally fraudulent accounting systems are the worst problems we have, since those drive us to behave in ways that are becoming increasingly insane, as the basic debt slavery from force backed frauds drive its numbers towards debt insanities. That acts in ways that are almost totally backwards to the scientific method itself, since triumphantly fraudulent financial accounting systems are based on deliberate ignorance towards evidence and logical arguments, because the established economic system is simply the result of applying the methods of organized crime to take control over the government, which denies that truth about itself as much as it can.
Now, everywhere one looks, the supreme paradoxes arise that the ways that "the business of exploiting science" actually operate is pretty well totally backwards to the way the ideals about science say it should be. For decades I have been day dreaming that the "Scientists who are modern day Shamans" could become a more significant political force. However, the degree to which the banksters, and their foundations, etc., have been able to use their power to fund things to take over the schools, and universities, and mass media, and so on and so forth, have driven all those things in the opposite directions, further and further! All of the big banks and corporations tend to have slogans and advertizing which is extremely hypocritical. It would be nice if what they advertize themselves to be was not almost totally the opposite to what they actually do. Like the government, which now is mostly privatized, and its powers transferred to, or captured and directed by big banks and corporations, they too use hypocrisy as a weapon, and for them too, it is no longer so easy to get away with that hypocrisy. I like to think that enough people will break through enough different levels of the dominate propaganda to comprehend the degree to which we are living in a Bizarro Mirror World, where what the scientific method should be is pretty well totally opposite to "the business of exploiting science," because mostly the ways that the scientific methods are exploited by big businesses operate on lies, backed by violence, which is the opposite to what ideal science should be.
Most of my points above were made in that context, where deeper and deeper levels of understanding energy systems attempts to approach useful ways to deal with the central social facts that the biggest bullies dominate civilization with their bullshit social stories. I think that the main point of the article above by George Washington is that those biggest bullies are having a harder and harder time making their bullshit work, in the ways that it used to do. My main interest is whether enough people will wake up to the deeper levels why the biggest bullies became successful spouting hypocritical bullshit, and how they may have been doing things which are still necessary purposes to achieve, IF there evolved a more enlightened human ecology, which was operated by more genuine levels of appreciation of the scientific methods, which went through more revolutions in the structure of basic scientific ideas.
Not if the US can summon the will to make sure that peril follows anyone associated with his leaked information.
The reason why that doesn't happen Seth is because TPTB do not actually believe any of their own propaganda, and most of their lieutenants, cadres and flunkies know it's deep-bullshit ... then there's the true-believers, ... like you, ... who can't figure out why nothing happens. From your past posts my guess is you're current or former military, with significant zionist leanings.
You need to snap out of it.
That's right, Seth...shoot the messenger! That's always been a winning strategy...LOL...
the trail of the Spanish Inquisition to kill the heretics and patriots fighting the Universal empire of Habsburg, covered all continents.
"From the halls of raped Montezuma to the shores of Ottoman Tripoli"...
The fight with lutheran Germany lasted 120 years; that with protestant Low COuntries lasted 80 years. Not to mention main rival France...from 1521 to 1710.
Guess what? The Universal empire collapsed in 1648 and it was downhill all the way after that for Catholic King and Empire of Spain.
Every drop of heretic blood feeds a thousand flowers against the evil empire. Always has.
Let's call for a world leader naked summit. No clothes, no secrets, no cell phones.
No shirts, no shoes!
no leaders too
(sounds like a John Lennon song)
so much ugliness in one view could cause instant death if viewed by accident
Not the same. We do it to preserve freedom and democracy, china does it for economic gain and to preserve their elites. Theoretically.....
I am waitng on the relevation, which I think Snowden should heve led with, which is how certain parties with access to NSA abilities did so for fininacial gain to front run markets.
How rich would you be with access to accounting firms M&A due diligence reports or sneak peaks at earnings reports? Oh wait I forgot, Booz Allen is also a leading business consultant.
And gee what an easy way to raise funds for black ops that Congress and the white house need not know about, how about goosing a few government employee's retirement funds.....
Really why wouldn't the NSA tap the phones of the CEO's of the larger corporations, why stop with Merkle.
Most people could give a shit about Merkle but if the NSA abused it authority and stole from us and manipulated the market through the ultimate inside trading, now wouldn't you be pissed? How many readers would not abuse the power to make some money if they thought they could?
Wonder how many Hedge funds were tipped by their freindly NSA contacts in return for ....well almost anything.
Te thing is let's say there was irrefutable evidence that the American government (or shadow govt) was behind 911 - let's say there was a smoking gun (perhaps an insider like Snowden with evidence)
How would that change things? I suppose it would reveal the real nature of America to the brain dead fuckwits who still believe this is a great country.
But there is no voting this disease that infects the country out of office.
Of course there would be those who would rise against this tyranny - but then the fangs would come out - you would see EXACTLY what lurks in the darkness - the evil would then be forced to reveal itself.
And then you would see the totalitarian state that is behind the facade.
And of course these monsters have your every communication on file - they own you - they are the Stasi on steroids - and most of you will not lift a finger to oppose them.
When Carly was spying on her employees at HP, was that for freedom or for democracy?
The intelligence apparatchiks in the US have been running fronts that move many megadollars since J Edgar and the Coolidge administration; they laugh when some pissant grandstanding TeaParty rep from West Bumpkinville threatens them with defunding (and then everyone acts surprised when said bumpkin is found to have sent lascivious texts to schoolchildren or whatnot).
I am not as concerned about corporate espionage as I am about the NSA's potential to spy on judges and politicians. If the NSA was eavesdropping on Angela Merkel, what makes you think they are not snooping on the Supreme court justices and the leaders of both parties in Congress? Taking it one step further, let's assume they have collected some serious dirt on those people and are using it as leverage to further erode people's constitutional rights. The NSA is potentially the Edgar Hoover of the 21st century.
The politicians and judges winked at the whole damn thing. Are the public now to be cued to to feel sorry for them, for not doing their constitutional jobs, thus now getting spied on, so they can't allegedly do their constitutional job, free of carrot and stick threat, suppression and paybacks, as opposed to the promotions and kickbacks?
Who is it that's gaming the system and supporting klepto-oligarchs?
Why does it take a guy like Snowden to do something about it, when politicians and Judges could have done the same, or similar, long ago?
Of course they did and we know they could have. Snowden should have acquired tapes of a few select judges and politicians for release and watch the fun begin.
Tap certain key leaders who in "righteous indignation" might actual cause some trouble for the NSA. Though pinning down the NSA would be harder then catching a snake in a mud pit at night without a light.
Potential adversaries, economic advantage or DIRT; it's all good, in between some good porn movies.
@Singleguy:
Russel Tice reveals wiretapping of top government officials, senators, judges, Obama, etcetera:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1ZAzu_0YZU
Sometimes, kool-aid tastes bitter, but it's better than drinking hopium.
Oh, dear. You drank the Kool-Aid, didn't you?
It's the weapon of choice at the moment, it's difficult to cure among politicians, and since they are in denial and won't talk about it , there is not much hope for a cure. We should just start calling it political 6th disease.
Believe me, they already tap the CEO's phones and if they go rouge, then...
They get to do half their job, then fail to become Vice President?
...they call out stormtroopers from the SMP (Secret Makeup Police)...
re: "if they go rouge"
Once you go rouge, you never go back.
-- Rouge Paul
The real reason? Because they're criminals, DUH!!!!
It's only hypocrisy if you're stupid enough to accept their blatantly FALSE premises.
Why do statists insist upon being so fucking thick?
The real reason? Because they're criminals, DUH!!!!
True, and in their case rouge means telling the truth and trying "walk away with clean shield".
This is the reason I'm a "birther" - once O2008 started questioning where McCain's citizenship, it was clear the game is to lay the accusations for your transgressions on the opponent first. I'm sure it will be more civil campaign run by H2016.
The real reason?
They don't want their prison slaves to revolt, then they would have to stop stealing and actually get a job and work for aa living.