The Media and Elections

 In 2013, I was asked by the ACLU (Shasta Chapter) to give a one hour presentation about 'Government Secrecy', Drones, and Militarization of Police.    Social media was not yet a hindrance to our liberties at that time, although it did plenty to interfere in other countries.  So sadly, the issue of social media was never discussed.  But it is not separate from the mainstream media/corporations and other issues discussed in that talk.

Given what has happened in the 2020 elections, I am posting my talking points (all of it, mistakes and all) in the hope that it may help us understand what the media did in all this.

Incidentally, Trump's maker, i.e. Murdoch and Fox abandoned him as early as early-mid October.  See link here

ACLU talk   April 13, 2013

 

 

I would like to thank the ACLU (Shasta chapter) for inviting me to be here with you today – to talk about grave  issues  which are of so much concern to us, our rights, and our country --  "Government Secrecy, drones, and militarization".

 

 

A functioning democracy requires the people to hold their government to account. Accountability, in turn, requires knowledge about government activities.

 

 

Our fourth President, James  Madison  believed  Knowledge would always  govern ignorance; and the people must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives .

 

 

Surely then,  Secrecy is disempowering   cyber security bill  known as the Cyber Intelligence Sharing and Protection Act, CISPA would create a loophole in all existing privacy laws, allowing companies to share Internet users' data with the National Security Agency, part of the Department of Defense, and the biggest spy agency in the world — without any legal oversight. Increasingly, on a daily basis, while our rights are beign trampled upon, such as with CISPA bill,   government secrecy is increasing.  There seems to be direct correlation between government secrecy and our right to privacy!

 

A 2005 report found that for every $1 spent on declassification, $148 is spent to classify.

 

In 2011, The federal government spent more than $11 billion to protect its secrets, double the cost of classification a decade ago —and 1.2 billion dollars over the previous year. This sum  does not include the costs incurred by the Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and other spy agencies, Pentagon, ….  — classified.. 

 

  It is

 

Moreover,  the government diminishes criticism by keeping information secret, and thereby regulates criticism.

 

There is no statutory base to what should be stamped as secret. , classification and declassification have been governed  by a series of executive orders, with no  legal framework.

 

 

Why should we care/  Some may argue it is to protect us and the country. 

 

The liberties of a people are not  secure when government transactions are concealed from them.

 Excessive secrecy, which is what we witness today, has significant consequences for the national interest when we cannot engage in informed debate and so government is not held accountable for its actions.   

 

Politics carried out in our name, in secret and without our knowledge or consent, have often – too often, led to blowback .   the unintended consequences of policies that were kept secret from the American people.

 

 

Somewhere on this planet an American commando is carrying out a mission.   a secret force within the U.S. military, the US special forces, taking operations in a majority of the world’s countries.  Some 120 of them. 

 

 

 

CIA coups

Iran Contra, 

cia rendition flights, torture

Underwear bomber -  CIA operative

Drone base in Saudi Arabia – 9/11 Osama bin Laden, first Gulf War…

Syria -

 

book  The Foreign Policy Disconnect, Benjamin Page and Marshall Bouton demonstrated that most of the crises in post-1945 U.S. foreign policy could have been avoided if U.S. leaders had paid more attention to the views of the public.  But how can the public have any influence on secret policy-making? 

 

To understand why, or how, we should look at who is pushing the buttons in Washington. In that the Powerful interests run today's America, there is no doubt.  Identifying them is not always so easy – as they seem separate, but often they are not.    

 

Who and what is big business?   This is a question that can’t be answered in one hour, or one day.  But there are some  which immediately jump to mind.

 

In 1935, a Major General in the U.S. Marine Corps. Smedley  Butler who died in 1940, and one of only two Marines to receive the Congressional Medal of Honor twice and author of a book called “War is a Racket – 1935) wrote:  "I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high-class muscle man for Big Business.

 

Today, the military is part and parcel of big business.  

 

Drones that can become chemichal biological warfare weapons

Radiological dispersal becomes possible and potentially effective with a UAV over large urban areas, but only if the source material is cesium chloride--the one radiological source that comes in powdered form.[18] Dispersal of chemical or especially biological agent is ideally suited for a UAV; its flight stability permits the release of agent evenly along a line of contamination

http://www.nti.org/analysis/articles/unmanned-air-vehicles-terror-weapons/

 

 

 

President Eisenhower spoke of the military industrial complex.    But today,  we are facing a greater danger -   the military-industrial-media complex.   Media magnates and people on the boards of large media-related corporations have close links with the military industry and Washington’s foreign-policy – no longer separate from domestic policies.    

 

Just to give an example -  General Electric doesn’t just make appliances.   GE manufactures weapons – and it owns The vast NBC network .   GE designed, manufactured or supplied parts or maintenance for nearly every major weapon system used by the U.S. during the Gulf War 1991—including the Patriot and Tomahawk Cruise missiles.   Its media arm, NBC, then praised and justified the use of weapons made by their parent company. 

 

To the detriment of the public interest, and the world at large, the military-media ties have grown extensively.   

 

Top 10 media corporations share board director positions with the major defense contractors .  Example Disney (ABC), Boeing Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton, Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin ….

 

It is no accident that these giant weapons contractors use the news media as the public relations arm for their primary product - war and the weapons of war... big media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America. 

They are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, responsible for manufacturing consent - Their goal is to control the news and information available to society. The two most prominent methods used to accomplish this task are censorship and propaganda.

 

Not to left unmentioned is the role of think tanks, and the Diaspora – the exiles and some NGOS – which Colin Powell referred to as force multipliers.   No war, no coup, no regime change would be possible without the Diaspora’s role in facilitating, or pushing for same.    To give a few recent examples, the Iraqi National Council (Chalabi), The Libyan National Transitional Council, the Syrian National Council, 

Cubans, etc.

 

Grasping this  dynamic will give us a clearer picture of the rise of the drones!

 

The drone program cost billions of dollars, until cost millions, flight hours thousands of dollars per hour.   Or drone wars, as they are called – there was a program by the same name, rise of the drones, on PBS, in part, funded by Lockheed martin!

 

You’ve probably heard of the Congressional Black Caucus, or perhaps the Progressive Caucus, but we now have a drone caucus! . Officially, it’s the Unmanned Systems Caucus and top donors are   Lockheed Martin,  Boeing, Northrop Grumman.

 

 

Drones are aerial robots – unmanned aerial vehincles - remotely controlled, that carry visual sensors, navigation systems, and even weapons. They come in all shapes and sizes and go by a variety of names. Since 2005, the federal government has awarded at least $12 billion in contracts for drones and drone supplies and maintenance. That includes at least $270 million for U.S.

 

Between 50 and 60 percent of the workforce of the CIA's most important directorate, the National Clandestine Service (NCS), responsible for the gathering of human intelligence, is composed of employees of for-profit corporations.

 

 

Amazing fact considering that drone makers not only lobby  to get drones approved, but as importantly,  Corporate intelligence professionals from companies such as Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Booz Allen Hamilton, and others are thoroughly integrated into analytical divisions throughout the intelligence community. 

 

 

estimates as high as 98% of drone strike casualties being civilians (50 for every one "suspected terrorist"). The Bureau of Investigative Journalism issued a report detailing how the CIA is deliberately targeting those who show up after the sight of an attack, rescuers, and mourners at funerals as a part of a "double-tap" strategy . 

 

The drone war is carried out remotely, from the U.S. and a network of secret bases around the world – and we recently learnt that one of the drone bases is in Saudi Arabia -   9/11.  blowback.  Where else? 

 

When the United States kills people in foreign, sovereign states, the world looks to international law for the standard of justification. Use of drones is illegal.  There are Last monght, During a  national press conference in Atlanta, Jimmy Carter expressed  that Drone attacks are gross violations of international law and human rights and are outright immoral. The claim that the President of the United States has the ultimate power to determine who is guilty and therefore a legitimate target of assassination is dangerous.

 

AT about the same time as Carter’s speech, Attorney General Eric Holder did not entirely rule out a scenario under which a drone strike would be ordered against Americans on U.S. soil, but says it has never been done previously and he could only see it being considered in an extraordinary circumstance. 

 

 

 "federal authorities have stepped up efforts to license surveillance drones for law enforcement and other uses in US airspace".  Mayor Bloomberg, "Like it or not, the eye in the sky will soon be following your every move".

 

Arkansas State Fusion Center Director Richard Davis recently confirmed Americans’ fears: the center does in fact spy on Americans – but only on those who are suspected to be ‘anti-government’.    This may well be interpreted to include all of us!

 

But there is much more to drones.

 

A drone named "Switchblade", described as "the ultimate assassin bug",  can  worm its way around buildings and into small areas, sending its surveillance imagery to an i-Pad held by the operator, who can then direct the Switchblade to lunge toward and kill the target by exploding in his face.

 

There are insect drones with the ability to land on you and infect you with a virus, or take DNA, or plant a tiny microchip.   It could land on you and stay, so that you take it with you into your home. Or it could fly into a building through a window. There are well-funded research projects working on such devices with such capabilities.

Aside from the threat posed to our civil rights and liberties – in itself, of utmost importance,  there are untold dangers posed by the drones. 

 

Drones can be easily hacked.   In June last year, the University of Texas at Austin reportedly demonstrated in front of Department of Homeland Security officials that it is relatively easy to take control of an airborne drone by hacking into its GPS system.

So, if these drones were created to be spies, or to kill, they can be hijacked and used against us. – turned on us.

 

They also be  duplicated.  Chinese  are making drones at a fraction fo the cost of US drones.  And looking for clients. 

 

No American safe.

 

The other public concern is the inability of drones to detect other aircraft (or each other!) in the area, creating safety problems in busy airspace. Law-enforcement agencies could use them to illegally monitor Americans.  

 

Drones are big business. 

 

 

 

What are the implications?

Historians and political scientists have warned us about  dangerous war fever sweeping the United States. Today we have gone beyond that.    

 

The "Global War on Terror" -  A war indefinite in duration, against an ill-defined and shifting enemy, al-qaeda the enemy, now being armed in Syria - and  without a clear explanation of American strategy, a specific definition of victory, or even a way to measure progress in the struggle has taken its toll on civil liberty.  The problem of militarization poses a danger to the very character of American government and society.

 

General Tommy Franks - in his first public interview after retiring from active duty in 2003, identified the single most dangerous possibility offered by an endless war on terrorism. An attack with weapons of mass destruction "just to create casualties ... to terrify" could lead "the western world, the free world" to forfeit its "freedom and liberty," to lose its democracy, and "begin to militarize our country in order to avoid a repeat of another mass-casualty event, ... to potentially unravel the fabric of our Constitution.

 

Over half a century ago,  Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson concluded   "by giving way to the passion, intolerance and suspicions of wartime, it is easy to reduce our liberties to a shadow, often in answer to exaggerated claims of security.".

That day is here.  Not only are we under constant surveillance , Take for example the kill list.  A  list which began under the Bush administration as a rationale for murdering suspect citizens of countries with which the United States was not at war has become Obama’s kill list and the scope of the list has been expanded to include the execution, without due process of law, of U.S. citizens accused, without evidence presented in court, of association with terrorism.   Blood ties to a suspect places you in the kill list.

And this is accepted by the people. Robert.

The framers of the Constitution recognized such dangers when they carefully subordinated the military to civilian authority and attempted to limit the power of the President to initiate war. 

 

Gregory Foster, a former Army officer and West Point graduate who now teaches national security studies at the National Defense University in Washington said that principle of civilian control of the military—an early building block of American democracy-  has become the  civilian subjugation to the military.   

Today, the degree to which  society's institutions, policies, behaviors, thought, and values are devoted to military power and shaped by war are alarming.   

The incursion of military recruiters and teachings into the public school system is well known..  .  Presidents favors speaking to captive audiences at military bases, defense plants, and on aircraft carriers.  lawmakers’ constant use of “support our troops” to justify defense spending, to TV programs and video games like “NCIS,” “Homeland” and “Call of Duty,” to reality show “Stars Earn Stripes,” Americans are subjected to a daily diet of stories that valorize the military while the storytellers pursue their own opportunistic political and commercial agendas

 

 

Former secretary of defense Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged publicly in an October 24, 2003, interview in the Washington Times:

       "We are in a war of ideas, as well as a global war on terror. Ideas are important, and they need to be marshalled, and they need to be communicated in ways that are persuasive to the listeners."

Embedded journalists in Iraq and Afghanistan –

This was part of his information operations roadmap.   As part of the plan,  “public affairs officers brief journalists”.   In 2005 it came to light that the Pentagon paid the Lincoln Group (a private company) to plant ‘hundreds of stories’ in Iraqi papers in support of U.S. Policies

 

 

The war has been internalized, whether you look at drones, kill list, or militarization of the police force, or in the classrooms.  

During the Clinton administration, Congress passed what's now known as the "1033 Program," which formalized  Reagan administration's directive to the Pentagon to share surplus military gear with domestic police agencies. Since then, millions of pieces of military equipment designed for use on a battlefield have been transferred to local cops -- SWAT teams and others -- including machine guns, tanks, armored personnel carriers,

The Pentagon's 1033 program has exploded under Obama. 

Clinton also created the "Troops to Cops" program, which offered grants to police departments who hired soldiers returning from battle, contributing even further to the militarization of the police force.

David Grossman 2005 Retired US Army

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/heart/interviews/grossman.html

the law enforcement groups, worldwide to kill. 

Law enforcement should be for protection of the civilians. 

most of what I do is I train military and law enforcement in what I call the bulletproof mind

Prior preparation is that one variable in the equation that we can control ahead of time, and one of the key things is embracing the responsibility to kill.

So when I teach, one of the things I believe we need to do is embrace this word "kill."

Bloomberg and Kelly are the proud autocrats who brag of “hav(ing) my own army in the NYPD” and who used that army to spy on peaceful Occupy Wall Street protestors.

Radiation