More from Glenn Greenwald

Revealed: the top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant - Guardian

Document One.

Document Two.

If we stumble upon your data "accidentally", well, it's fair game...

• Keep data that could potentially contain details of US persons for up to five years;

• Retain and make use of "inadvertently acquired" domestic communications if they contain usable intelligence, information on criminal activity, threat of harm to people or property, are encrypted, or are believed to contain any information relevant to cybersecurity;

• Preserve "foreign intelligence information" contained within attorney-client communications;

• Access the content of communications gathered from "U.S. based machine[s]" or phone numbers in order to establish if targets are located in the US, for the purposes of ceasing further surveillance.

"The broad scope of the court orders, and the nature of the procedures set out in the documents, appear to clash with assurances from President Obama and senior intelligence officials that the NSA could not access Americans' call or email information without warrants.
The documents also show that discretion as to who is actually targeted under the NSA's foreign surveillance powers lies directly with its own analysts, without recourse to courts or superiors – though a percentage of targeting decisions are reviewed by internal audit teams on a regular basis."

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From Truthout: Indefinite Surveillance: Say Hello to the National Defense Authorization Act of 2014 

NDAA 2014 builds on the powers granted by both the Patriot Act and FISA by allowing unrestricted analysis and research of captured records pertaining to any organization or individual “now or once hostile to the United States”. Under the Patriot Act, the ability to obtain “any tangible thing” eliminated any expectation of privacy. Under NDAA 2014 Sec. 1061(g)(1), an overly vague definition of captured records enhances government power and guarantees indefinite surveillance.On May 22, 2013 the Subcommittee on Intelligence, Emerging Threats and Capabilities, one of several Armed Services Committees, met to discuss the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) for Fiscal Year 2014. The main subject of the hearing was Sec. 1061, otherwise known as Enhancement of Capacity of the United States Government to Analyze Captured Records. This enhancement provision of NDAA 2014 would effectively create a new intelligence agency, one with the authority to analyze information gained under the Patriot Act, FISA, and known spying programs such as PRISM.Sec. 1061(a) authorizes the Secretary of Defense to "establish a center to be known as the 'Conflict Records Research Center'" (Center). The main purpose of the center, according to the bill text, is to create a "digital research database," one with the capability to "translate" and facilitate research on "records captured from countries, organizations and individuals, now or once hostile to the United States." The authorization also says the Center will conduct research and analysis to "increase the understanding of factors related to international relations, counterterrorism and conventional and unconventional warfare, and ultimately, enhance national security."

Send in the drones!

Don't worry, we'll figure out all the little details later... But rest assured, we have no plans to execute any americans at this time.

Send in the drones (with apologies to Stephen Sondheim)

Isn't it rich?
look up in the air?
that surveillance airplane,
can fly anywhere.
Send in the drones.

Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
A predator aircraft,
tracks every move.
Where are the drones?
Send in the drones.

What a surprise.
Who could foresee
A teflon coated missile 
pointed right square at me?
What a surprise.
What a cliché.
We quietly watched as they stole 
our rights away.

Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer?
That our liberal old president 
has left us all here.
And where are the drones?
Quick, send in the drones.
Don't bother - they're here.

© 2013 Robert Sommers

Faultless Flatfoots

One of the issues that has come to the fore in recent weeks is the issue of federal oversight. Nine zillion instances of data collection and you will be happy to know that the government says they haven't made one mistake, well at least according to the secret FISA court. When the government investigates itself you can see that they have this incredible batting average.

There is an interesting article in the New York Times today about FBI shootings, The F.B.I. Deemed Agents Faultless in 150 Shootings. They've all been "good" shots, even the following one where an innocent man gets shot in the face. Please pardon me if I sound a bit skeptical.

Occasionally, however, there were alternative reviews. One, involving a March 2002 episode in which an agent shot an innocent Maryland man in the head after mistaking him for a bank robbery suspect, offers a case study in how the nuances of an F.B.I. official narrative can come under scrutiny.
In that episode, agents thought that the suspect would be riding in a car driven by his sister and wearing a white baseball cap. An innocent man, Joseph Schultz, then 20, happened to cross their path, wearing a white cap and being driven by his girlfriend. Moments after F.B.I. agents carrying rifles pulled their car over and surrounded it, Agent Christopher Braga shot Mr. Schultz in the jaw. He later underwent facial reconstruction surgery, and in 2007 the bureau paid $1.3 million to settle a lawsuit.
The internal review, however, deemed it a good shoot. In the F.B.I.’s narrative, Agent Braga says that he shouted “show me your hands,” but that Mr. Schultz instead reached toward his waist, so Agent Braga fired “to eliminate the threat.” While one member of the review group said that “after reading the materials provided, he could not visualize the presence of ‘imminent danger’ to law enforcement officers,” the rest of the group voted to find the shooting justified, citing the “totality of the circumstances surrounding the incident,” including that it involved a “high-risk stop.”
But an Anne Arundel County police detective prepared an independent report about the episode, and a lawyer for Mr. Schultz, Arnold Weiner, conducted a further investigation for the lawsuit. Both raised several subtle but important differences.
For example, the F.B.I. narrative describes a lengthy chase of Mr. Schultz’s car after agents turned on their siren at an intersection, bolstering an impression that it was reasonable for Agent Braga to fear that Mr. Schultz was a dangerous fugitive. The narrative spends a full page describing this moment in great detail, saying that the car “rapidly accelerated” and that one agent shouted for it to stop “over and over again.” It cites another agent as estimating that the car stopped “approximately 100 yards” from the intersection.
By contrast, the police report describes this moment in a short, skeptical paragraph. Noting that agents said they had thought the car was fleeing, it points out that the car “was, however, in a merge lane and would need to accelerate to enter traffic.” Moreover, a crash reconstruction specialist hired for the lawsuit estimated that the car had reached a maximum speed of 12 miles per hour, and an F.B.I. sketch, obtained in the lawsuit, put broken glass from a car window 142 feet 8 inches from the intersection.
The F.B.I. narrative does not cite Mr. Schultz’s statement and omits that a crucial fact was disputed: how Mr. Schultz had moved in the car. In a 2003 sworn statement, Agent Braga said that Mr. Schultz “turned to his left, towards the middle of the car, and reached down.” But Mr. Schultz insisted that he had instead reached toward the car door on his right because he had been listening to another agent who was simultaneously shouting “open the door.”
A former F.B.I. agent, hired to write a report analyzing the episode for the plaintiffs, concluded that “no reasonable F.B.I. agent in Braga’s position would reasonably have believed that deadly force was justified.” He also noted pointedly that Agent Braga had been involved in a previous shooting episode in 2000 that he portrayed as questionable, although it had been found to be justified by the F.B.I.’s internal review process.
Asked to comment on the case, a lawyer for Agent Braga, Andrew White, noted last week that a grand jury had declined to indict his client in the shooting.

We were told to lie.

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Yikes!

I hate to make predictions. You know how I get when I am right... But read these two articles and see if they give you pause for concern. With the prospect of war diminishing, is the DOD going to turn inwards and start going after "domestic criminals?" You know environmentalists and people like that. Read these two articles at your leisure. Will flesh this out later.

NSA's Domestic Surveillance Is Motivated by Fears That Environmental Disasters Could Fuel Anti-Government Activism

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TransCanada Is Secretly Briefing Police About Keystone XL Protests and Urging Terrorism Prosecutions

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Clear Evidence That Corporate America Wants the Govt. to Treat Protesters as 'Terrorists'- Thom Hartmann

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Corporate Spooks Are Watching You: The Dangerous Rise of the Industrial-Surveillance Complex - AlterNet

Moń General

© Robert Sommers 2013

Thousand miles from nowhere

Happy cows

Interesting article in the New York Times today about grass fed beef, Where Corn Is King, a New Regard for Grass-Fed Beef by Kathryn Shattuck. Ranchers have figured out that the yuppie boutique thing is where their financial bread is buttered and are getting on board. Now I personally think that grass fed can get a funky taste at times but it is probably a lot better for the cow than getting grain getting stuffed down its gullet like a pre ban goose. 

And we find that if you want to make a change, once again we have to create a new lexicon; in the beginning was the word...

“When the wine industry started out in California, nobody had a language for what a bouquet was... Vintners had to come up with a way an audience could have a conversation about hints of raspberries, of camomile. And that’s what we have to do with beef.”
Prescott Frost

“You want a minimum-input type cow, with more depth of body, more thickness, good udder structure and a good disposition... An angry cow is not a very good eating experience.”
Rick Calvo

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Is it too late for me to jump on the bandwagon? Padres are the hottest team in baseball, eight straight, took down Los Gigantes last night. They are now a game out of first. This is the first time they have been over .500 since two thousand ten. Congratulations to all concerned - keep it up. Kyle Blanks playing well is huge.

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Tesla, the revolutionary car maker and the brainchild of one Elon Musk, is now offering battery swaps as a refueling option.  Tesla was in the news last week because their direct to customer sales approach is running afoul of the retail dealerships in North Carolina, who have used their political muscle to fight sales in their state.

It seems pretty ludicrous that customers should have to go through a third party to buy a car if they don't want to. Why should they? Cause that's the way we've always done it.

David Westcott, chairman of the National Automobile Dealers Association who has a Buick-GMC dealership in Burlington, N.C., said Tesla's effort to sell direct to consumers was important to all dealers and something the national association was watching.
"The system has worked for a long time," he said. "We only want Tesla to play by the same rules," Mr. Westcott added.

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Interesting story out of Egypt today. Hotel owners and residents in Luxor are pretty pissed. Why? Because the Morsi led Islamic government has just appointed a new governor, Adel el-Khayata. This man  happens to come from the same group, Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiya, that bombed the Luxor Hotel in 1997, killing 58 people. Wack.

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John Morris sent this one over. A New Mexico bill that would criminalize abortion after rape on the grounds that it is tampering with evidence. Lord help us.

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How to beat your wife.

Curtis Mayfield

This was from Curtis's last album prior to his passing. He lived the latter part of his life in a great deal of pain. An amazing talent that is truly missed.

What's your price?

I have been thinking a lot about Abbie Hoffman of late. We don't have anyone like him around anymore and it is too bad for us. We could use him. Abbie's FBI file was over 13,000 pages long. Abbie did it all, he was a freelance writer for Crawdaddy while on the lam, tried to fight the despoliation of the Saint Laurence River under a pseudonym. Never stopped fighting for what he believed in. Hear that, Al Franken?

Ken Seals took a wonderful picture of Abbie in the sixties while he was working as a Kansas photojournalist but won't let me publish it, no matter how hard I beg.

I never met him but a close friend was a confidante of his. I will never forget watching a film of Abbie talking about the dangers of getting co-opted, getting turned so that you end up fighting against the things you stand for. It made a lot of sense. A lot of our politicians today, not to mention regular people, need to do their own gut check, see if they still recognize themselves in the mirror.

This is a pretty cool clip. Says it all.

Wake me up if I'm late for the police state.

Nobody apparently wants to be late to the Orwellian party. Now the locals want in on the invade your privacy game. Not enough to know who you are talking to, we must know where you have been as well.

The Union Tribune ran an interesting story today, SANDAG knows where you've been Regional program collects and stores license plate data. It turns out that Sandag is taking pictures of your license plates. Lots of pictures.

'Police vehicles equipped with cameras pointing every direction canvass parking lots and streets, gathering data about the time, date and place individual license plates are spotted.The information gets fed into a database maintained by the San Diego Association of Governments, a transportation and planning organization, cross-referenced with information on stolen vehicles and used to track down the bad guys.The data trove had 32 million data points as of January, with 2 million records added each month.'

The cops want pictures of your car, just in case you ever decide to commit a crime.

Entrepreneur Michael Robertson, 46, sees the warehousing of such data very differently, as an affront to privacy and opening for government abuse. He asked SANDAG to divulge information it had collected on him, and when the agency refused, he sued.“They (the government) may collect it under the guise of stopping child molesters or catching terrorists or looking for stolen cars,” Robertson said. “It’s always a good premise, but ultimately when they have this data they can’t help but seem to use it for bad purposes, and I think that’s a real concern, and we’re seeing that exactly happen right now with the IRS and the NSA.”Robertson filed his challenge late last month in San Diego Superior Court.At least one other agency in the state has handed over records similar to what Robertson requested, though an expert said the legal limits of disclosure under the California Public Records Act are still being tested.

In denying Robertson’s request for any records dealing with his own vehicle, SANDAG cited an exception to state public records law that shields information used in a police investigation — something he said does not apply to his situation.“I’m not a drug dealer. I have two kids, drive a minivan,” Robertson said. “I’m not aware of any wrongdoing I’m suspected of.“My strong assumption is they’re just declaring 3 million people in San Diego County as being under investigation.”

They say not to worry, that they get rid of the data after a couple years. The EFF thinks that their refusal to disclose is on shaky legal ground, the public-records exception being cited can only be used in cases where the investigative work involving the records is ongoing, not for more blanket crime prevention purposes.

Take pictures of everybody, driving anywhere, anytime. If it stops one poor sap rolling through a stop sign, it will certainly be worth it.

Face Time

I recognize that I am part of the 46% national minority who gives a damn about all of this privacy, spook stuff and I must once again apologize. Readership is getting bored, my analytics show it, or maybe people have just thrown their hands up, perhaps happy and secure in their beds, doubly secure in the knowledge that their government is watching out for them, stopping all those nasty terrorist attacks. More pictures of birds please, don't depress us.

It is, well, hard for me to get off the subject, I get a bit obsessed with the whole thing, I know. I think that we/I  are/am in some sort of "morning after" type shock, as if the veils of the scope and reach of the intrusion have been finally laid bare and I believe that the repercussions on the national psyche will reverberate strongly into the future. Of course, I could be wrong, I often am.

I honestly have no idea if the supposed safeguards that our leaders say are put in place to guard against domestic spying are working or not. The stuff is secret and the NSA types say their oath to protect our privacy is sacred. Taking them at their word, you suppose they ever make a mistake or step over the line? Are there people in the system that will look over the shoulder of the people that gather and sift our information and say "Hey, you've gone too far, that stuff about Joe Smith from Kokomo is none of your business. Cheating on his wife again, is he?"

I imagine the data analyst will be something like a conductor, looking at a symphony where every american is like a little tone and the algorithms of people who have used the word bomb in an email, or ordered the anarchist's cookbook at the library, or is known to not recite the pledge every day will make that particular person's tone a bit sharp or flat and cause them to rise out of the din for a closer looksee.

Last month our SCOTUS left the door wide open for a national DNA database. Police can now test DNA pretty much at will, without conviction of a crime. There was a very interesting story in the Washington Post yesterday about the ever increasing use of facial recognition systems titled State photo id databases become troves for police. 

Currently 37 states have facial recognition systems for drivers licenses. Over 120 million faces are currently in the drivers license database, the lions share who have never been accused of any crime. At least 26 of these states allow state, local or federal law enforcement agencies to search the databases in an attempt to learn the identities of people considered relevant to investigations. The state department database is comprised of over 230 million faces.

“As a society, do we want to have total surveillance? Do we want to give the government the ability to identify individuals wherever they are . . . without any immediate probable cause?” asked Laura Donohue, a Georgetown University law professor who has studied government facial databases. “A police state is exactly what this turns into if everybody who drives has to lodge their information with the police.”

I can imagine the contractor who has to pore over our data, sitting in his concrete cubical in some anonymous fortress. His system rings, "Okay, what we got, one Vern Johnson from Poway." He pushes a button and a holographic picture of poor Vern materializes in thin air, he quickly scans his database to see if the subject has ever associated with any known terrorists or political dissenters, checks to see if his bills get paid on time, the average length of his phone conversations, his search history, that sort of stuff. "Well he did know Bobby Sommers in college, maybe we should listen in on that conversation he had with him in May of 97, we've got the file right here..."

They have your picture, soon will have your DNA, obviously have access to the rest of your personal communications and data, what exactly is left? Some little old lady that will raise your arm and sniff your arm pit sweat? A national arm pit stink database?

I was struck by one comment in the article that sort of encapsulates the argument from the perspective of law enforcement.

“It’s a fine line where you need to protect the rights of the citizens, but you also are protecting the right of citizens when you ferret out crime,” said Anthony J. Silva, administrator of Rhode Island’s Division of Motor Vehicles and a former town police chief.

I think that this attitude illustrates a push pull situation where in actuality the crime ferreters will win the argument and civil libertarians will lose the argument every time. When people have tools, they use them.

Read the article, it is fascinating. The biggest player in facial recognition is a private concern in Boston named MorphoTrust USA and they are actually owned by the French conglomerate Safran.

What a world we live in. Thanks Edward, we thought we knew but now we really know. The surrender to the police state was quick and largely bloodless. People acceded with nary a peep. Feel better?

Roy Gaines - Dream girl

More breaking spy shit

From CNET:

 The National Security Agency has acknowledged in a new classified briefing that it does not need court authorization to listen to domestic phone calls.
Rep. Jerrold Nadler, a New York Democrat, disclosed this week that during a secret briefing to members of Congress, he was told that the contents of a phone call could be accessed "simply based on an analyst deciding that."
If the NSA wants "to listen to the phone," an analyst's decision is sufficient, without any other legal authorization required, Nadler said he learned. "I was rather startled," said Nadler, an attorney and congressman who serves on the House Judiciary committee.
Not only does this disclosure shed more light on how the NSA's formidable eavesdropping apparatus works domestically it also suggests the Justice Department has secretly interpreted federal surveillance law to permit thousands of low-ranking analysts to eavesdrop on phone calls.
Because the same legal standards that apply to phone calls also apply to e-mail messages, text messages, and instant messages, Nadler's disclosure indicates the NSA analysts could also access the contents of Internet communications without going before a court and seeking approval.
The disclosure appears to confirm some of the allegations made by Edward Snowden, a former NSA infrastructure analyst who leaked classified documents to the Guardian. Snowden said in a video interview that, while not all NSA analysts had this ability, he could from Hawaii "wiretap anyone from you or your accountant to a federal judge to even the president."
There are serious "constitutional problems" with this approach, said Kurt Opsahl, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation who has litigated warrantless wiretapping cases. "It epitomizes the problem of secret laws."
The NSA yesterday declined to comment to CNET. A representative said Nadler was not immediately available. (This is unrelated to last week's disclosure that the NSA is currently collecting records of the metadata of all domestic Verizon calls, but not the actual contents of the conversations.) 

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 6-16-13 postscript: Is this story false? It was quickly debunked by several sources. Of course, everything is debunked these days and then over time it is found to be closer to the truth than imagined when the real story eventually spills. Maybe Snowden has a disclosure or two left in him, can shed some light, if he hasn't already been vaporized, that is.

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I was thinking that the timing of the Google Glasses initial rollout could not be more poorly timed. Imagine, the government can now monitor everything you actually see in real time too. Keep your eyes front and center baby...

© Robert Sommers 2013

One of my more enterprising readers sensed an opportunity when the Boundless Informant story first broke. He registered the web address www.boundlessinformant.com in order to create a clearinghouse for this type of data/surveillance information. Very excellent, not to mention pretty, he did a real nice job.

My friend, who shall be now officially known as Spooky, just emailed to tell me that all of his site servers were just taken down or have mysteriously crashed. Hmmm, wonder what that's about? How farfetched is it to believe that the national spy apparatus is not primed and ready to squelch domestic dissent?

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Postscript - site is now back up. Somebody at Fort Meade must have sneezed.

Spooky asks the age old question, "Who is No. 1? Any real fans of the show know that it was the midget butler/doorman the whole time...

Not at this address

A friend sent me an email a few weeks ago with a curious message. He had mistakenly received a magazine from the next post office box and it was a very strange magazine called Culture Wars. The content was pretty scary. He gave me the neighbor's name. Did I know him? I said that it sounded familiar but that I did not. Would I take a look at it and let him know what I thought?

I looked up the magazine on line (not going to link) and found a link at the SPLC website which explains its ideology. Here is a snippet:

In 1996, Jones changed the name of his magazine to Culture Wars, and he has increasingly focused on the alleged evils of the Jews as he adds to his "continuing series on the Jews." The magazine's cover stories over the last year or so are instructive: "Judaizing: Then and Now," "John Huss and the Jews," "The Converso Problem: Then and Now," "The Judaism of Hitler," "Shylock Comes to Notre Dame" and so on. Jones runs through all the usual anti-Semitic canards -- the ideas that "Jewish media elites" run the country, that Jews are "major players" in pornography, and that Jews are behind Masonry and the French Revolution -- but that's only the start. He also accuses Jews of poisoning society with thinkers such as Karl Marx (a devotee of Satan, says Jones) and Sigmund Freud (who set off an epidemic of sexual sin, he says). And he describes the World War II Nazi genocide of the Jews as "a reaction to Jewish Messianism (in the form of Bolshevism)." Last April, in an article raging about a new president of Notre Dame University, Jones charged that anyone who went to a mainstream university would emerge "with a Jewish world view … and maybe a Jewish spouse." 

I am not real comfortable with hatred or hate speech. Wasn't the way I was raised. I do find that it is increasingly prevalent on the internet. Yesterday I was cruising the web when I ran into a neo nazi publishing house called Counter Currents written by a guy named Dr. Greg Johnson that was equally if not more frightening. Do not check it out unless you have a very strong stomach. Don't get on anyway, you don't want to get any of this stuff on you. Nazi chit chat.

My friend brought the Culture Wars magazine over for me to check out. Anti-semitism with an outsider Catholic pov. Found out that "birth control is a victory for the devil or the masonic, Zionist ADL." That the islamic world and the catholics "needed to ally against the zionists and rid the world of their sinful control."That the rock band Def Leppard was a creation of Jewish "illuminati" record companies that used mind control to help enslave unwitting gentile youth. The Beatles Sergeant Pepper was, of course, an homage to occultist Aleister Crowley.  I learned from the Middle East Research Institute that jews are responsible for 82% of attempts to corrupt humanity. 82% mind you. And on and on...

I googled the name of the magazine's rightful owner. I know who the guy is, an older fellow. And I have run into a few of them around here over the years. The problem is they all look pretty normal. On the outside they look like the guy standing next to you in the pharmacy and maybe they are. You just never know.

I was trying to make a sale to a guy a few years ago, a pretty prominent man, very wealthy and was getting no where. I talked to the go between and told him I felt some strange vibes, maybe the guy, who had visited the gallery one time was a bit anti semitic. The go between said,"Anti semitic, what does that mean?" Well, it means he doesn't like jews so much. "That's it," he slapped his thigh."You're a jew. Gene hates jews."

Great. Problem solved.

I don't know what you do about these sort of things. Don't open up your neighbor's magazines, even if they are put in your box. Better not to know. Do not engage. You can't confront the way people think. You can't meet evil head on and think it will change. Jesus may have been on to something when he said to resist not evil.

Hate is an ever growing problem in society. A cheerios ad featuring a biracial family had the haters out in force on the Huffington Post this week. A San Antonio kid in a mariachi outfit was mercilessly ripped for singing the Star Spangled Banner. People getting vicious online when confronted with minority birthrate statistics. Things are getting pretty darn ugly. Whites, blacks, browns, gays, dems, reps, yids, catholics, everybody is a target.

The Rush Limbaughs and Ann Coulters of the world spew hate speech today that would have been unthinkable twenty years ago. Are we moving forward or backward?

Schools hire and tenure white supremacists. Even California Schools. People like this guy at Cal State University, Long Beach, Kevin McDonald, who is still there by the way. A man who praised Norwegian mass murderer Anders Breivik. Read some of these profiles. Any of these people happen to live next door?

Kenny & The Kasuals

This was the number one band in North Texas in the mid sixties. This song is a remake of an old tune by Blind Willie Johnson that you can hear here. Both versions are good. People sometimes forget that the psychedelic sound in Texas predated the genre's arrival in San Francisco. These bands included the Thirteenth Floor Elevators, Bubble Puppy, Red Crayola and the Lost and Found amongst many others. There was a time in my life when I really sought this rare vinyl out.

I lived in Texas during this time and my older sister was hip deep in this psychedelic stuff. Much of the music of the period was recorded by Kenny Rogers brother Lelan on his International Artists label. Highly collectable.

Jokerman

“Well, I think that Bob Filner is a bad congressman and he’s a bad guy.”
Doug Manchester

To the consternation of many in what has been traditionally a Republican run town, Bob Filner was democratically elected the mayor of San Diego last year. Anybody who was paying attention knew that he was planning to shake things up. This had the status quo very worried. Especially the big hotel operators. You see, they had a tax arrangement going where a so called hotel tax was actually funneled back to their pet projects.

Filner wanted to step in and mess with the established program. The new Mayor went off half cocked and engaged in what some may rightly consider strong arm tactics, seeking money be reverted to the Balboa Park centennial among other things. He started stepping on people's toes. Big, scary people who don't particularly like their toes being stepped on.

"Papa" Doug Manchester was one of the hotel big shots. He also owns the local fishwrap. He despises the new mayor. He offered the mayor's opponents in the last election cut rate deals on election advertising, in violation of election law. They still lost. Now the paper takes shots at the mayor every chance it gets.

Since the Union Tribune is pretty much the only game in town for the vast majority of San Diegans, I am afraid that the people are getting a very skewed view of the mayor. Not that Filner is perfect by any means, who is? But he is trying to do some admirable things and he is definitely shaking things up. I think that the caricature that the paper is painting of him is a little unfair.

But this whole imbroglio is a great illustration of what happens when a rich guy like Doug Manchester decides that he can plunk a bunch of money down and suddenly he is a journalist, but manages to skip that whole part about journalistic integrity. Just wait for the Koch brothers to try their hand at the game.

Now you can argue that Filner is an asshole or that he is bad for business and that is your right. But he was democratically elected and you would think that the paper could at least respect the will of the majority and stop engaging in the character assassination. The paper is really going downhill, except honestly, for the sports section which is pretty darn good. Yesterday the paper unabashedly ran an article celebrating Papa Doug Manchester's new mantle as "Mr. Nice Guy"of San Diego." Please. Talk about an exercise in self flagellation.

Let's look back to an article I wrote in November of 2011 to stoke our memories about how Manchester and the U-T do business. The Coastal Commission had shot down a project that he was partnered in that would have obscured the views of the water. Manchester was evidently pissed and not ready to give up without a fight. He had a new megaphone although his acquisition of the paper had not even been announced and the editorial staff ran this piece:

The California Coastal Commission’s unanimous rejection of the Navy’s redevelopment project on prime downtown waterfront does not have to mean the death, or even the overly long delay, of the project, the thousands of jobs it would create and the hundreds of millions of dollars in economic stimulus it would spark for San Diego over the next decade. There is a path forward.
It will not be easy – besides the commission vote there are two lawsuits involving the project pending on appeal – but the consultant for developer Doug Manchester, the Navy’s partner in the project called Pacific Gateway, signaled that he is willing to continue working with the commission and its staff in search of agreement.
The biggest obstacle is the desire of commission staff for the 2.9-million-square-foot office-hotel complex to be scaled back by eliminating one of the four office towers and one of three hotels. The Manchester team views them as key components that would make the project economically viable while still providing the Navy a new headquarters building for free.
What’s needed, said Perry Dealy, Manchester’s consultant, is “a reasonable and fair balance – and I’m willing to do that.”
If the commission, its staff and project opponents adopt a similar spirit, Pacific Gateway can breathe new life.

A newspaper with any semblance of journalistic standards and integrity would have disclosed their publisher's vested interest in the development. But there was a new sheriff in town and from now on things were going to be different.

Why is Manchester so pissed off at Filner? Was it because he wouldn't clean up a few issues with code enforcement? Scratch a few backs? A tool of organized labor? Because he stood in the way of Manchester making a bundle on the construction of a new city hall? Was interfering with plans for a new football stadium? Wanted to change the culture of city government? Ruffled feathers with his lax attitude regarding medical marijuana patients and dispensaries?

Filner has certainly not been an angel. He has needlessly picked fights with his City Attorney Jan Goldsmith and the City Council. He is headed to a one term burn out with his recklessness and confrontational style. But it would be a shame if the election was to hinge on an unfair representation of the man promoted by a newspaper beholden to its own vested mercantile interest and with such a clear disregard for normal journalistic ethical standards.

Johnny Nash

One of the first Americans to go to Jamaica and work in the "rocksteady" idiom, Houston native Johnny Nash went to #5 with this one in 1968.

WWJD?

Have you read the story about the teacher Carie Charlesworth? The poor woman taught second grade at a catholic school in San Diego, Holy Trinity. Her four children attended the same school. Now she has been fired and her children forbidden to return to school. Her crime?

Her ex-husband had beaten her up and had been subsequently incarcerated on felony charges and the school was afraid that he would get out some day and come back and hurt the other school children. Her ex husband Martin had a twenty year history of violence and abuse. She had filed restraining orders, reported him, done everything by the book. Now she's out of a job. Talk about punishing the victim...

After fourteen years of teaching at the school, she received the following letter:

"We know from the most recent incident involving you and Mrs. Wright (the principal) while you were still physically at Holy Trinity School, that the temporary restraining order in effect were not a deterrent to him. Although we understand he is current incarcerated, we have no way of knowing how long or short a time he will actually serve and we understand from court files that he may be released as early as next fall. In the interest of the safety of the students, faculty and parents at Holy Trinity School, we simply cannot allow you to return to work there, or, unfortunately, at any other school in the Diocese."

From NBC7:

Several parents at Holy Trinity, not disclosing their names out of safety concerns, said the district did the right thing in a no-win situation because they feared for the safety of their own children. Several parents mentioned being part of a movement to “pull kids out of the school” if Charlesworth returned. 

“It’s very painful to know people I thought would be the first people to be there for us were the first people to turn away,” said Charlesworth. 

Maybe this is why some women don't come forward with their stories of abuse, maybe they fear being shunned and losing their jobs? But don't worry, the school says that they will continue to pray for her. Pretty despicable.  What spiritual message are we giving the students; all for one and one for all until there is trouble, then you just cut some poor soul out of the herd? So much for coming to the aid of the weak and downtrodden. Jesus would hurl.

6.13.13

I have a really bad cold. Airplane flights often wreak havoc with my respiratory system and I am out for the count. I must put life on hold for a couple days.

This tin foil hat is hurting my temples as well. My blog has been a bit strident of late, even for me. I need to back off a little bit.

It has been quite a couple of weeks. The deck has had a reshuffle like I have never seen. Glenn Beck and Michael Moore on the same side of the equation? Who would have thunk...The establishment against the outliers, the people who trust their government and the people who aren't sure that they can. I must cast my lot with the latter on this one.

People are shaken by the enormity of the state's intrusion. Even those of us who believe in protecting our country against terrorists. What is next, do we go after dissenters, demand loyalty oaths? Would be really simple to find the subversives, just sift for a few key search terms, like freedom and liberty... See what books you have been checking out of the library. Maybe we could send the I.R.S. after the President's political enemies? Wait, we already did that.

Let's see, on one side we have Feinstein, Franken, Harry Reid, Mitch McConnell, Wasserman Strauss, Lindsay Graham, Obama, etc. and on the other Udall, Wyden, Paul, Tester, Merkley, Mike Lee and the libertarians. Very, very strange. Rep. Loretta Sanchez left a classified intelligence meeting yesterday and said we have only seen the tip of the iceberg. Chilling.

Least Untruthful was published on Reader Supported News today. The early version. On a personal note, I have been incredibly prolific this year from a writing standpoint. Keeping the pedal to the metal. If I keep this up (and don't get disappeared) records should fall.

Hudg sent this article over from Wired on the NSA, James Bamford's The Secret War. I had already seen it but something popped up on second glance:

Inside the government, the general is regarded with a mixture of respect and fear, not unlike J. Edgar Hoover, another security figure whose tenure spanned multiple presidencies. “We jokingly referred to him as Emperor Alexander—with good cause, because whatever Keith wants, Keith gets,” says one former senior CIA official who agreed to speak on condition of anonymity. “We would sit back literally in awe of what he was able to get from Congress, from the White House, and at the expense of everybody else.”
Now 61, Alexander has said he plans to retire in 2014; when he does step down he will leave behind an enduring legacy—a position of far-reaching authority and potentially Strangelovian powers at a time when the distinction between cyberwarfare and conventional warfare is beginning to blur. A recent Pentagon report made that point in dramatic terms. It recommended possible deterrents to a cyberattack on the US. Among the options: launching nuclear weapons.

Oh jeez, just what we need. All those nukes are just sitting around getting dusty on the shelf, time to put them to good use. Unbelievable. That will show those damn hackers...

According to a new Time poll, 54% of Americans think that Edward Snowden did a good thing in exposing the scope of government surveillance. They also want to see him prosecuted. I believe that 54% is really a quite remarkable percentage.

南三陸町志津川高校から見た津波の様子

Big guy sends this over.

Etta Baker - One Dime Blues

Great photograph

Samantha Sals for the New York Times

Although I have mixed feelings about amnesty and definite strong feelings about a path to citizenship for people who have illegally entered the United States, I was struck by the pain and poignancy of this photo in the New York Times. If you are a human being you have to feel these mother and daughter's pain and separation. Very tragic.

The story is titled Divided Immigrant families reach beyond barriers and it was written by Rebekah Zemansky and Julia Preston, published yesterday. This is one of the two best photographs I have seen in the last year, the other one the photo of the Iranian boys awaiting the hangmen.

spy vs. spy vs. spy

Somebody in Washington has some serious egg foo yung on their face today. After weeks and months of self righteous saber rattling and chest beating about the extent of Chinese hacking in this country comes word that we have been maybe the worst offender of all, sucking up the entire backbone of many important Chinese data systems, both in Hong Kong and on the mainland. Oops.

Of course, it is always different when we do it.

“We hack network backbones — like huge Internet routers, basically — that give us access to the communications of hundreds of thousands of computers without having to hack every single one,” he told the newspaper.
According to Snowden, the NSA has engaged in more than 61,000 hacking operations worldwide, including hundreds aimed at Chinese targets. Among the targets were universities, businesses and public officials.

Papers, we will need to see your papers...

Germany has its schnitzel in a snit as well, on the heels of news that the Deutschland was the most spied on country in the world thanks to our cool new toys and spy gear. The timing of the disclosure could not come at a more problematic time for our great leader as he is set to visit the country on wednesday.

Germans are comparing the United States data collection methods to the dreaded East German Stasi secret police tactics from the late cold war. I believe that the best defense in this case will be a vigorous offense. How about something on the order of this: "Hey Merkel, an American named Al Gore invented the friggin' internet and we'll use it any damn way we please. Got it?" 

All kidding aside, one must assume that President Obama is at least responsible for the adoption of a sizable amount of the new data technology. With over a half a million people in the need to know loop, surely he had to know that the day might be coming where he would have to defend spying on one of our closest allies. It was probably easier in the old days. There was a general belief and quaint notion that a gentleman did not read another gentleman's mail. Have a nice time, Mr. President.

Fresh Air

Dan loved the music on Fresh Air this morning. You can find a link here. It is a story on backup singers. One of the Nevilles explains why the backups are almost always better singers than the solo artists.

If I was smart enough to find the podcast I would but I'm not.

Cybershadow

In the just because I am paranoid doesn't mean that they are not out to get me department, something odd is maybe going on with the blog.

That little feedjit window on the left margin shows me emanating from either Hogansville or West Point, Georgia. Every time I get on or off the blog. Been happening for about a week. I have tested it empirically, when I get off my blog to visit a site, somehow I am now in Georgia.

Any blog people from Georgia know the area? Any nearby military bases or defense installations perhaps? Obviously my conduct has been heretofore unimpeachable, wonder if I accidentally ended up on somebody's radar screen?

Least Untruthful

I really admired Director of National Intelligence James Clapper's recent tap dance routine on Capitol Hill. You know the one where he flat out denied that the government collected the personal data of American citizens, at least not wittingly. His cohort over at the NSA, General Keith Alexander, said we didn't even have the surveillance capability to do such a thing. Later Clapper fessed up and blamed the whole thing on semantics.

You see it is apparently all in the definitions. Invigorated by their sophistry and prevarication I thought I would try it out on my wife tonight.

She called about seven, a bit tired from a long day at work. "Honey, did you eat the rest of the pizza?"

"No," I responded, squelching an anchovy burp. "Dearest."

She got home about a half hour later, tired and really wanting to finish off the pie. Of course, she came home to an empty cardboard box, the pizza was in fact long gone, the contents resting somewhat unsettled in my stomach.

"I thought that you said you saved me a slice. You said that you didn't eat it."

"Define eat," I postured, taking a page from the good director. "It is really a matter of semantics, honey. When you say eat, I am thinking fine silver and linen, washing a chateaubriand down with a bit of pouilly fuissé. This was nothing like that, nothing more than a crude, primitive attempt at basic nourishment. Furthermore, pizza to me is something you get on a street corner in New York and fold over so that the oil and cheese doesn't run out. Whatever this was, it was assuredly not pizza." "And whatever I ate, it wasn't really conscious. I just shoveled it in, you might even say, unwittingly."

I would be lying to you if I said that my act went over real well. Think it might be sleeping on the couch and Swanson's tv dinners for me for a couple days.

Some people just don't get nuance.

They know who butters their bread

Justice bought and paid for department.

New study says that if you donate to judges you are statistically more likely to get favorable rulings from them. Go figure?

From the National Law Journal:

A study released on Tuesday by the American Constitution Society for Law and Policy identified a "statistically significant" relationship between ballooning campaign contributions by business interests to state supreme court candidates and pro-business decisions by those courts.
Researchers studied more than 2,345 business-related state high court opinions between 2010 and 2012 and campaign contributions during that same time to sitting state high court judges. As the percentage of contributions from business groups went up, the probability of a pro-business vote by judges — defined as any decision that made a business better off — went up as well.

Huxley, Orwell and Kafka are sitting in this bar...

I don't want to run this wiretapping, civil liberties thing into the ground. Most of you are sick of it. 56% of Americans are apparently cool with the recently disclosed PRISM program. There was an interesting article in the New York Times today that brings up a fact that maybe bears repeating; it is that once the government gets a tool like this in their pocket they eventually use it for anything they want to;

...while use of the database may currently be limited to terrorism, history has shown that new powers granted to the government for one purpose often end up being applied to others. An expanded search warrant authority that Congress granted in the Patriot Act justified by the Sept. 11 attacks, for example, was used far more often in routine investigations like suspected drug, fraud, tax, weapons and extortion offenses.

That is why police departments all over the country couldn't wait to get their hands on the new drones for domestic use. Will be very useful in President Obama's drug war, help keep all the municipal coffers filled. Ditto the delayed notice warrant statutes that came courtesy of the Patriot Act. This was never about terrorism. Come on now. 70% of the cases were drug related. Police were absolutely giddy. It always starts out about terrorism and then pretty soon the government does anything it feels like with its new toys.

If I may be permitted to digress for a brief moment, what do you think reefer smoking Barry Obama of Punahou School's infamous choom gang would say to President Barack Obama, the man whose marijuana policy put over 800,000 people in jail last year? Probably spit in his face.

delayed notice warrants issued - 2006-2009

Anyway, as I was saying, the Patriot Act gave law enforcement a new tool, the delayed warrant, also known as the sneak and peak. This provision essentially rendered the fourth amendment useless.

Under the USA PATRIOT Act signed into law during the 107th United States Congress on October 26, 2001, sneak and peek warrants for the first time in United States history were used as standard procedure in investigations. Sneak and peek warrants are addressed in Section 213, under Title II or the Enhanced Surveillance Procedures. These warrants are not exclusive to acts of foreign and domestic terrorism. Sneak and peek warrants are applicable to any federal crime, including misdemeanors.

So hey, you haven't done anything wrong, you've got nothing to hide. So what if they keep all of your personal and communication data in some cold storage facility in Utah. Not like you can't trust the government...

The Bill of Rights is so old school. If it can't keep up with the new technology, we just may have to scrap it.

Former Senator Russ Feingold queries DOJ on Patriot Act 9/23/09

“Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI), a leading critic of the PATRIOT Act, challenged Assistant Attorney General David Kris about why powers supposedly needed to fight terrorism were instead being used for common criminal cases.

This authority here on the sneak-and-peek side, on the criminal side, is not meant for intelligence,” said Kris. “It’s for criminal cases. So I guess it’s not surprising to me that it applies in drug cases.

“As I recall it was in something called the USA PATRIOT Act,” Feingold retorted, “which was passed in a rush after an attack on 9/11 that had to do with terrorism it didn’t have to do with regular, run-of-the-mill criminal cases. Let me tell you why I’m concerned about these numbers: That’s not how this was sold to the American people. It was sold as stated on DoJ’s website in 2005 as being necessary – quote – to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists,” he said.
“I think it’s quite extraordinary to grant government agents the statutory authority to secretly breaks into Americans’ homes in criminal cases, and I think some Americans might be concerned it’s been used hundreds of times in just a single year in non-terrorism cases,” the Wisconsin progressive continued. “That’s why I’m proposing additional safeguards to make sure that this authority is available where necessary, but not in virtually every criminal case.”

I Can't Hear Nothing But The Blues

Canton Trade Days

When I was doing the show in Santa Barbara last month, my buddy Ted, who is a dealer and a promoter who has been in the business for a long time, was regaling me with stories of one of the most unusual flea markets in America, the First Monday Trade Days in Canton, Texas. This flea market started way back in the 1850's and was evidently originally known as "hoss monday".

The way he told the story is that the old circuit judge only rode through Canton one day a month. He would first adjudicate and then hang any miscreants on Monday.

The townspeople came from miles around to watch the proceedings and catch a few hangings and then the town fathers would raffle off the departed soul's horse and possessions.

People brought their own goods along to do a little swapping and so one of the first flea markets in America was born!

It bills itself as the largest flea market in Texas. Hard to believe that it is bigger than Round Top but I suppose I will have to take them at their word. Don't want to piss off an angry Texan now, do we?

These Texans shore know how to have a good time!

Double Hanging - Bellville, TX c. 1896

Known as the "great hanging" of 1864, wherein 40 suspected Union sympathizers are strung up. Cookesville, Texas

Quicksilver Girl

6.11.13

I decided to take the 300mm lens home from work last evening. It is lighter and I hadn't used it in ages. I made a promise to myself two years ago to try to have a camera within reach at all times and I have mostly stuck to it.

Luckily both juvenile red tailed hawks were close to the van as I passed by in the late afternoon sun. I was too lazy to get out so I just rolled the window down (note to millennials, this is an antiquated term for pressing the device on your door that causes the window to lower itself, in the old days we had to do it manually in a clockwise motion) and snapped a couple pics.

I interrupted this guy's coney or rodent (little hard to tell at this point) dinner but he or she seemed fairly nonplussed and just went on with business.

 The raptor's sibling was less happy with my interruption and quickly flew back to the safety of the nest.

The Tuttles and AJ Lee