Sure the bastards spy on Merkel. Big surprise. What bothers me is they spy on you and me, and we are or should be of little to no interest to matters of importance between states and trading blocs.
They need a big broom. But, as Juan Cole speculates, maybe they've the goods on Obama. My guess, not that much compromise in his past - beyond Chicago politics being Chicago politics. But there was J.Edgar. Gone but not forgotten. Go back. Who threw Forrestal out the window, or did he really jump? Somebody 'back then' liked Reinhard Gehlen. So? Not that his name ever was a household word. All that stuff, it was before "Who shot Kennedy?"
Or spin that last question further, who really did Jack Ruby work for? And was Oswald really shot or was that entire thing staged? Was the Trade Center an inside job? What about building 7 there, dropped in its tracks with no airplane in its scenario? Does Francis still ride in public in a bullet-proof Popemobile, a pattern in place ever since John Paul II was shot? So, who did Agca work for? Is "Roberto Calvi" a household name, as someone you'd invite as a fourth, for bridge?
Hoover did not like Martin Luther King. So?
Then, there was Reagan's Bill Casey. Conveniently said to have croaked just before testifying about Iran-Contra. For Bill Casey, like Osama, I never saw the body. Did you?
Perhaps the two of them are in Dubai, right now, playing cribbage. Loser buys drinks. Would we be told that, were it so?
Tell me, I need to know to understand things well, does a particular question Ron Paul asks make sense? What has been the follow-up?
Back in law school, the old days of land lines, a Criminal Procedure prof musing, "If the founding fathers had planned the Revolution on the telephone, would we all be singing 'God Save the Queen?'"
I sure hope not. I don't know the words. A lot of that song is claimed as known by a widespread public. However, I think it has been alleged, the final two verses remain a state secret. Ask Snowden.
____________UPDATE_____________
Dan Burns emailed the Juan Cole link, but has no responsibility for the foregoing or the following, beyond noting that web post.
Just puzzling evidence.
And Juan Cole talk of Alexander and Clapper shown the door. So? Frazier's in a losing funk, with talk, fire the coaches; the cliche being you cannot fire the team. But NSA, like the team, you can go into rebuilding mode as long as the goal defined as "winning" makes sense and is soundly planned. Then, who's the other team? After all that's a preliminary question, as is, why spy on the fans. They pay the freight. And buy the goods. Your iPhone can recognize your fingerprint now. "Touch ID Security" they call it. Reassuring progress. If your iPhone is stolen, they get someone else's fingerprint login try, and know it is not you. They might even be able to match the print to the thief. Whoever they is.
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As is sometimes the case, the comments to the Juan Cole post carry interest by expanding on a theme. That theme appearing as distrust of politicians and the government they provide us, a common distrust, for cause.
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Last thought for here, for now. Two thoughts actually. First - History teaches the Tsar's secret police had Stalin in jail for a time. As usual, the space demands were such that they released him after a time hoping he'd reformed while they kept the space for those viewed as more of a threat to the status quo. Second thought, human nature being what it is, can you imagine the NSA totem pole? The lower rung guys thinking, "The higher ups get Merkel and the Pope. I get these clowns in Ramsey, Jungbauer, Landform. The Crabgrassing. Boring, BORING, BORING! Thank God for data mining. Elsewise I'd have to read and listen to all this stuff." Those tasked with Merkel wanting the Pope, those tasked with Francis wanting Merkel. Somebody paid to have to worry whether it's spelled Merkel or Merkle. Plus the need for polylinguistic skill. Sibel Edmonds employed as a part of the fabric, not fitting in. Round peg. Square hole.
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While Snowden's Guardian series of slow leaks one bigger in scope than the others has captured attention toward the NSA, what has the Pentagon been doing? What in particular as instruments of defining and implementing our nation's foreign policy, as an operating arm of our state? Sibel Edmonds' explanation is posted as simple as 1, 2, and 3 (perhaps with more in sequel to come). No Crabgrass editorial opinion, just read it, see if the footnote links ring true to you or not, but NSA is not the only game in question. (Actually, try Andrew Gavin Marshall as author, the site being Edmonds', the series being Marshall's. Web search the man's name if you care to. I did not do so.)
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Juan Cole, again, calling out aristocrat-peasant distinctions as feudal relics, still alive and kicking much. I have always not felt too akin to Diane Feinstein. Moving up on the corpses of Harvey Milk and Mayor Moscone. The real estate baron-spouse. The attitude. She votes with the better block on Senate organization, but give me Murray, Cantwell, Warren in a heartbeat. So, you have to like Juan Cole for dissing Feinstein and her attitude. She's surplus. Detritis.
If you are a feudal lord, you want to know what the peasants are up to. The revelation of the Tempora program whereby the NSA and its partner, the British GCHQ, attached sniffers to trans-Atlantic fiber optic cables as they came up into the UK and scooped up billions of actual emails and telephone records (not just metadata as lazy journalists keep maintaining), didn’t even produce a yawn. No one in official Washington or in the US press seems even to know about or understand this program.
Then Brazilian President Dilma Roussef was outraged to discover that her personal communications were monitored by the NSA. Moreover, the US was clearly engaged in massive industrial espionage on the Brazilian energy sector. She canceled a state trip to Washington. She denounced the NSA at the United Nations. She threatened to create a Brazilian internet harder for the US to treat as a hacking playground. But President Roussef couldn’t get off page 17 of the newspapers (or of Google News).
But the news that German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s personal cell phone was monitored by the NSA has finally made waves in Washington. Senator Dianne Feinstein, who vocally defended mass electronic surveillance of the American public and who wants to introduce legislation regularizing it, professes to find the Merkel tap unseemly. [...] Feinstein’s comportment has raised questions about privilege and corruption.
This reaction shows the class and racial hierarchies that dominate thinking in Washington. It is all right to spy on ordinary American citizens in obvious contravention of the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Because there is a Governmental Class that is typically wealthy and which, despite professing to be elected by and to represent the people, actually thinks of itself as lords over the people. Then there are the teeming hordes of the global South, and their leaders with unpronounceable names, who are also fair game.
But the German Chancellor is a European white person, a peer of the politicians in Washington, and it is not gentlemanly or ladylike to spy on their persons. (German industry or ordinary German citizens would be a different matter).
There is something almost medieval about the chivalry of Feinstein’s sentiments. [...]
Once you understand this class and racial code, American policy toward the Palestinians, whom Washington has repeatedly helped screw over, becomes perfectly understandable. Palestinians are the ultimate global South peasants, rendered stateless by Israeli and American policy (not so important since the standing of states in the global South isn’t much recognized).
But it should be remembered that working and middle class Americans don’t fall much higher in the hierarchy of worthiness than the other peasants. In a feudal system, there are no citizens, and the peasants have no real rights. There are subjects, who may at most be treated graciously by their overlords, but who may also be treated harshly if the Governmental Class is in a bad mood or feels threatened.
The NSA finally went too far. It treated an elite white member of the Governmental Class as a peasant, and for that must be mildly disciplined.
As for the rest of us, the message from Senator Feinstein is to move along, there is nothing to see here; and when so instructed, we are expected to bend over and assume the position.
Yeah, Juan. Spot on. That about says it all about special lady, Ms. DF. Squabble among ourselves, sure, but band tight if ever there appears a peasant uprising. The Bay Area deserves better.