The totality of the workings of our world today - succinctly wrapped up and synopsized in four minutes, courtesy of the year 1976.
There was a time one could receive Academy Awards for openly declaring this kind of awareness to large masses of people. Today if you try to speak this on the street it just gets you pepper sprayed, baton’ed or kettled by cops in places like New York, Oakland, or London.
UnCommon Sense TV - “David Barsamian: Occupy The Economy” Presentation by David Barsamian, producer and host of the internationally syndicated Alternative Radio program, at a public gathering at The Little Art Theatre, in Yellow Springs, Ohio, October 23rd, 2012. A noted journalist and author, Barsamian touches on a whole host of important issues, from the state of today’s media, to the increasing militarism in America’s foreign policy, and more. He gives particular focus the structural economic issues raised in the book Occupy The Economy: Challenging Capitalism which he co-authored with Richard Wolff, Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and currently a visiting professor at the New School in New York. Wolff has also taught economics at Yale University, City University of New York, University of Utah, University of Paris I (Sorbonne), and The Brecht Forum in New York City.
For more on Richard Wolff’s insights and perspectives as to why “capitalism has hit the fan,” watch this insightful interview with Wolff by Bill Moyers.
So, do you think the news you hear might be pre-scripted from some kind of centralized source? We have spent a fair amount of our time at USTV Media focusing on issues surrounding the media, the control of it, the processes and effects of propaganda, etc… With things like This, can you wonder why? If you can script this kind of conformity on gas, you can do it on much more substantive topics like war, Wall Street criminality, torture, the nature of Occupy Wall Street, and on and on… This kind of coordinating a nation-wide effort for keeping the news “on message” is the main focus of my writing about The Pentagon Military Analysts Program.
Free markets are good, essential even, to the workings of a truly free society. However, when one applies ‘market’ principles to society itself, then everything becomes for sale. Including the law. And when the law and law making are determined through financial clout, you get this. Crony capitalism, a rigged game, a plutocratic banana republic. America is becoming the biggest banana republic on earth, and we seem politically unable to stop it, because we have way too many people under the spell of a political philosophy that defines any civic constraints over a financial transaction, including one for the purchase of one’s politics, as akin to “communism” or some such. Thus, we reap the society of absurd injustice that we inhabit today.
For more on this, watch this interview from Bill Moyers talk with Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson, authors of Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer And Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, as they argue that America’s vast inequality is no accident, but in fact has been politically engineered.
Human Rights: Not Just for Humans (& Corporations) Anymore?
Corporations have the same rights as people. But do our communities and natural ecosystems have any rights? Thomas Linzey and Katherine Davies argue that in order to defend our bodies and our environment, they must be given rights under the law. Conversely, we must challenge the assertion of the primacy of rights by non-living entities, such as corporations.
The National Radio Project spotlights this issue in one of their recent reports produced in this edition of Making Contact.
It features an excellent presentation by Thomas Linzey from CELDF, whom friends of UnCommon Sense TV Media will know through our many previous references and affiliations with them and their work. Linzey and the work of his associates has served as a notable inspiration to the focus and direction of our own work at USTV Media.
Special Thanks to Pirate Television for the video.
Ian Ruskin, author and actor of the one-man play To Begin the World Over Again: The Life of Thomas Paine, presents Paine on the topic of God and religion. Paine was not in opposition to belief in the transcendent power of the almighty creator, just the prostitution of such faith by power for its own material ends.
You can also watch Ruskin as Paine discuss the nature of GOD AND CREATION.
Ruskin as Paine…
“I have been much maligned, misunderstood and misused by our America, and many people, of all political and philosophical persuasions, have seen fit to quote and to misquote my words. This matters little in regards to the man Thomas Paine, but it matters much in regards to the ideas of the man Thomas Paine. And therefore, to correct some of these misunderstandings…”
UnCommon Sense TV - “Occupy The Economy: Interview with David Barsamian” USTV’s Andy Valeri talks with journalist and author David Barsamian about his book, Occupy The Economy. Based upon eye-opening interviews with prominent economist Richard Wolff, Barsamian probes the root causes of the current economic crisis, its unjust social consequences, and what can and should be done to turn things around. While others blame corrupt bankers and unregulated speculators or the government or even the poor who borrowed, the authors show that the causes of the crisis run much deeper. Barsamian is the author of dozens of books, and is the producer and host of Alternative Radio. Wolff is Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst and currently a visiting professor at the New School in New York.
Produced by USTV Media in conjunction with WYSO public radio.
Listen to the interview in its entirety online via WYSO.
These are truly must-see presentations by some of America’s most courageous patriots and civil libertarians. This presentation on U.S. Whistleblowers Being Targeted by the Secret Surveillance State is essential reading/viewing. Compiled by Firedoglake.com, It features Jesselyn Radack, who blew the whistle on ethics violations in the case of John Walker Lindh when she was an ethics adviser under Attorney General John Ashcroft, after it became clear the government was brazenly lying and suppressing information about torture and the violation of the basic rights of its prisoners.
The pivotal moment for her was when she realized the Justice Department was concealing work on the case… “My heart sank,” Radack states. “I literally felt sick. They were seeking the death penalty for this person and the relevant evidence had not made it to the court, evidence that would have a bearing on whether or not his confession would be admissible against him.”
She was eventually able to recover the missing emails. Under the Whistleblower Protection Act, which ultimately gave her no protection, she handed over evidence of misconduct and wrongdoing to Newsweek. She had no idea what would happen as the ”full force of the entire Executive Branch of the United States government” was unleashed.
As Radack states…
“The war on terrorism should not be a war on ethics, integrity, technology and the rule of law. Stopping terrorism should not include terrorizing whistleblowers and truth tellers who raise concern when the government cuts corners to electronically surveill, torture and assassinate its own people. And it is not okay for a president to grant himself the power to play prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner of anyone on the entire fucking planet.”
Thomas Drake, who blew the whistle on government misconduct and illegalities at the National Security Agency, speaks after Radack and describes what it was like to see the rise of the Surveillance State after the September 11th attacks. He compares the rise to the Stasi secret police in East Germany, which operated under the motto, “To know everything.”
Continuing with the report by Kevin Gosztola at Firedoglake…
In the Cold War, everything was suspect. “Today in the post Cold War era,” Drake states, “I do find myself asking myself and others, how can an open and vibrant democracy exist next to a secret security state?”
Drake faced the prospect early that he could be indicted and sentenced to prison for life if he did not cooperate. He was charged under the Espionage Act, as part of an escalating government trend to turn whistleblowers and truth tellers into criminals.
In the few days after 9/11, “I had people coming to me in private extremely concerned saying, Tom, why are they taking equipment that we normally use to monitor foreign nations and we’re now redirecting it against our own people?” he recounts. He learned the secret surveillance program was authorized by the White House and, as President Richard Nixon said, “If the President says it’s okay, it’s legal”…
Drake concludes, “Besides fearing for the future of the United States I do fear the creation of a universal wiretap record of a person’s life—the ability to have vast access to databases and on the fly be able to profile anybody at anytime anywhere.”
Finally, there is an eye-opening report from William Binney, a former NSA technical director who was raided and subject to investigation like Thomas Drake. He retired because he could no longer tolerate the corruption between employees and private contractors, the incestuous relationship where security was being traded for money.
Binney learned about a program called Stellar Wind, where the NSA was spying on Americans. He knew it was pointless to go to heads of the NSA because he knew the people running it. He went to the House Intelligence Committee because they were supposed to, under Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act and other intelligence laws, monitor any spying on citizens. He told them and all they did is send someone to talk to then-NSA director Michael Hayden. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Porter Goss did nothing. Nancy Pelosi, a ranking member of the Committee, did nothing about violations being committed because she was “co-opted into the program” and agreed not to push for Bush’s impeachment if she was kept informed of covert programs.
Binney says, “AT&T was providing 320 million records a day of US citizens talking to other US citizens.” And, “You can quickly build a communities on virtually everybody in the country.” There were no limits. This extended to all the people of the world.
What is most disturbing to me is Binney’s description of how there is so much money to be personally made by directors and operatives within the NSA, who use their positions to leverage notable sums for personal gain. In essence, feeding the infrastructure of surveillance in order to feed their own personal well-being, and to hell with the consequences to others, or even more importantly, to the very fabric of a democratically-accountable civil society. These people are by most definable accounts, traitors.
Kevin Gosztola also reports on this presentation by Tor software developer and WikiLeaks volunteer Jacob Appelbaum on Resisting the Surveillance State. This is another must read/watch presentation, in which Applebaum provides first hand experience in having one’s life completely violated by the secret surveillance state. Yet, he also provides a call to hope and clarity in how to confront and overcome the state of fear, paralysis and paranoia that can debilitate one’s ability to live a fulfilled life of meaning and purpose.
“Despite the fact that there are these oppressive systems of control and despite the fact that we do now live in a surveillance state,” it may still be possible to “resist the surveillance state and to turn things around if we wish. I think that there may come when that is not true. I don’t believe that time has arrived.”
For attendees (who likely are people who mostly work with technology), he asserts that there are “simple things” one can do to decide if working on something is oppressive or not.
“Ask if you are working on a system that helps to control others or if you’re working on system that helps to enable others to have control over their own lives,” Appelbaum states. For example, “if you are working on deep packet inspection that will be deployed on people who do not have a say in it, you are probably working for the oppressor.” He adds one can make a choice. “It is possible to make a living making free software for freedom instead of closed-source proprietary malware for cops.”
A point of particular note is when Applebaum describes NSA director Gen. Keith Alexander as probably the “most powerful man in the world,” one who controls the intelligence structure of the NSA. Detailing the kind of power this gives him, a sort of Hoover-esque surveillance capability on massive steroids with global reach, is not the kind of thing that should inspire comfort among just about anyone outside the inner circles of the ruling elites (and even they’re not immune. Just ask Gen. David Patraeus about that).
He also talks about how the secret police and surveillance agencies are actually changing our ability to govern ourselves freely. They do it in a way that is not obvious, and is seemingly impossible to be able to resist. But when we build free and open source software and hardware (the kind of work that is often supported by organizations such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation, we are enabling people to be free in ways they were previously not. “Literally, people who are writing free software are granting liberties.”
Read/Watch Applebaum’s presentation Here.
Another essential piece of journalism comes from the ever-insightful Tom Engelhardt, who provides this inside look at our Supersizing Secrecy, and the increasing visibility of the invisible government of covert power, which has breached all sorts of boundaries in a nation once considered to operate as a democratic republic.
In the past, American presidents pursued “plausible deniability” when it came to assassination plots like those against Congolese leader Patrice Lumumba, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, and Vietnam’s Ngo Dinh Diem. Now, assassination is clearly considered a semi-public part of the presidential job, codified , bureaucratized, and regulated (though only within the White House), and remarkably public. All of this has become part of the visible world (or at least a giant publicity operation in it). No need today for a Wise or Ross to tell us this. Ever since President Ronald Reagan’s CIA-run Central American Contra wars of the 1980s, the definition of “covert” has changed. It no longer means hidden from sight, but beyond accountability.
It is now a polite way of saying to the American people: [your government is] not yours. Yes, you can know about it; you can feel free to praise it; but you have nothing to do with it, no say over it.
In the 48 years since their pioneering book was published, Wise and Ross’s invisible government has triumphed over the visible one. It has become the go-to option in this country. In certain ways, it is also becoming the most visible and important part of that government, a vast edifice of surveilling, storing, spying, and killing that gives us what we now call “security,” leaves us in terror of the world, never stops growing, and is ever freer to collect information on you to use as it wishes.
With the passage of 48 years, it’s so much clearer that, impressive as Wise and Ross were, their quest was quixotic. Bring the “secret power” under control? Make it accountable? Dream on — but be careful, one of these days even your dreams may be on file.
Engelhardt’s warnings about even one’s dreams being put on file is not out of the bounds of reason, when one considers how the security state is completing work on its massive data compiling center in Bluffdale, Utah, under the auspices of the Orwellian Operation Stellar Wind program, which puts anything the old German Stasi could have wished for to shame.
Binney, whose work at the NSA was perverted into this program, speaks on this and a number of other highly disconcerting issues in his presentation in this video. It would behoove all Americans who care in the slightest for their personal freedom and civic well-being to watch and heed Binney, Drake, Raddick and Applebaum’s words here.
UPDATE: And on a very related note, JFK’s speech of April the 27th, 1961, to the American Newspaper Publishers Association at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York, on how secrecy corrodes a democratic society is very eye (and ear) opening, and more relevant today than ever.
The very word “secrecy” is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings. We decided long ago that the dangers of excessive and unwarranted concealment of pertinent facts far outweighed the dangers which are cited to justify it.
You can read the full transcript of the speech Here.
“American Voices For American Values: The Campaign To Ban Torture” - Event which took place at the University of Dayton, October 13th, 2008, and sponsored by the UD Human Rights Studies program and the Center for the Victims of Torture. It was organized as part of the campaign to promote the adoption of the Declaration of Principles for a Presidential Executive Order on Prisoner Treatment, which unequivocally rejects torture and cruelty to prisoners, and which was signed into law by President Obama on his third day in office. This program features presentations and audience discussions with a number of former high-ranking CIA, defense department and military officials, as well as religious leaders.
This program was co-produced by UnCommon Sense TV Media, in conjunction with Dayton Access Television, with live streaming video of the event provided by DONet, Inc. (now DataYard).
Can’t say I’m really surprised by this, but it is a bit striking to see some of the overall strategic picture referenced so cavalierly by those in positions of such power (or at least, in Patraeus’ case, were in those positions. But have no fear, he’s still around. He’ll be back. You don’t run the CIA and leave without an arsenal of secrets that can be wielded as a weapon of political influence).
