Edward Snowden: No regrets

Snowden and human rights activists in Moscow

We share this Snowden interview from Reader Supported News for our readers interest.  The media war against Snowden is intense with absolutely no response whatsoever from the heads of organized labor to this attack on the rights and freedoms of all workers and despite over half of Americans considering him a whistleblower and not a traitor according to a recent poll.

 

 It Was the Right Thing to Do

By Edward Snowden, Reader Supported News

13 July 13

NSA Whistleblower asks for support from international community and human rights campaigners.

ello. My name is Ed Snowden. A little over one month ago, I had family, a home in paradise, and I lived in great comfort. I also had the capability without any warrant to search for, seize, and read your communications. Anyone's communications at any time. That is the power to change people's fates.

It is also a serious violation of the law. The 4th and 5th Amendments to the Constitution of my country, Article 12 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and numerous statutes and treaties forbid such systems of massive, pervasive surveillance. While the US Constitution marks these programs as illegal, my government argues that secret court rulings, which the world is not permitted to see, somehow legitimize an illegal affair. These rulings simply corrupt the most basic notion of justice - that it must be seen to be done. The immoral cannot be made moral through the use of secret law.

I believe in the principle declared at Nuremberg in 1945: "Individuals have international duties which transcend the national obligations of obedience. Therefore individual citizens have the duty to violate domestic laws to prevent crimes against peace and humanity from occurring."

Accordingly, I did what I believed right and began a campaign to correct this wrongdoing. I did not seek to enrich myself. I did not seek to sell US secrets. I did not partner with any foreign government to guarantee my safety. Instead, I took what I knew to the public, so what affects all of us can be discussed by all of us in the light of day, and I asked the world for justice.

That moral decision to tell the public about spying that affects all of us has been costly, but it was the right thing to do and I have no regrets.

Since that time, the government and intelligence services of the United States of America have attempted to make an example of me, a warning to all others who might speak out as I have. I have been made stateless and hounded for my act of political expression. The United States Government has placed me on no-fly lists. It demanded Hong Kong return me outside of the framework of its laws, in direct violation of the principle of non-refoulement - the Law of Nations. It has threatened with sanctions countries who would stand up for my human rights and the UN asylum system. It has even taken the unprecedented step of ordering military allies to ground a Latin American president's plane in search for a political refugee. These dangerous escalations represent a threat not just to the dignity of Latin America, but to the basic rights shared by every person, every nation, to live free from persecution, and to seek and enjoy asylum.

Yet even in the face of this historically disproportionate aggression, countries around the world have offered support and asylum. These nations, including Russia, Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Ecuador have my gratitude and respect for being the first to stand against human rights violations carried out by the powerful rather than the powerless. By refusing to compromise their principles in the face of intimidation, they have earned the respect of the world. It is my intention to travel to each of these countries to extend my personal thanks to their people and leaders.

I announce today my formal acceptance of all offers of support or asylum I have been extended and all others that may be offered in the future. With, for example, the grant of asylum provided by Venezuela's President Maduro, my asylee status is now formal, and no state has a basis by which to limit or interfere with my right to enjoy that asylum. As we have seen, however, some governments in Western European and North American states have demonstrated a willingness to act outside the law, and this behavior persists today. This unlawful threat makes it impossible for me to travel to Latin America and enjoy the asylum granted there in accordance with our shared rights.

This willingness by powerful states to act extra-legally represents a threat to all of us, and must not be allowed to succeed. Accordingly, I ask for your assistance in requesting guarantees of safe passage from the relevant nations in securing my travel to Latin America, as well as requesting asylum in Russia until such time as these states accede to law and my legal travel is permitted. I will be submitting my request to Russia today, and hope it will be accepted favorably.

If you have any questions, I will answer what I can.

Thank you.

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The NSA, Snowden, spying on Americans, Brazilians and everyone else

We reprint this article by Glenn Greenwald which includes the video . It is from the Guardian UK via Reader Supported News. The Charlie Rose interview with Guardian editors is also interesting. Rose wants to make it all about Snowden and not the actual spying itself. That's standard for the bourgeois media and its spokespersons like Rose.

*********************

The NSA's Mass and Indiscriminate Spying on Brazilians

By Glenn Greenwald, Guardian UK

07 July 13

As it does in many non-adversarial countries, the surveillance agency is bulk collecting the communications of millions of citizens of Brazil

've written an article on NSA surveillance for the front page of the Sunday edition of O Globo, the large Brazilian newspaper based in Rio de Janeiro. The article is headlined (translated) "US spied on millions of emails and calls of Brazilians", and I co-wrote it with Globo reporters Roberto Kaz and Jose Casado. The rough translation of the article into English is here. The main page of Globo's website lists related NSA stories: here.

As the headline suggests, the crux of the main article details how the NSA has, for years, systematically tapped into the Brazilian telecommunication network and indiscriminately intercepted, collected and stored the email and telephone records of millions of Brazilians. The story follows an article in Der Spiegel last week, written by Laura Poitras and reporters from that paper, detailing the NSA's mass and indiscriminate collection of the electronic communications of millions of Germans. There are many more populations of non-adversarial countries which have been subjected to the same type of mass surveillance net by the NSA: indeed, the list of those which haven't been are shorter than those which have. The claim that any other nation is engaging in anything remotely approaching indiscriminate worldwide surveillance of this sort is baseless.

As those two articles detail, all of this bulk, indiscriminate surveillance aimed at populations of friendly foreign nations is part of the NSA's "FAIRVIEW" program. Under that program, the NSA partners with a large US telecommunications company, the identity of which is currently unknown, and that US company then partners with telecoms in the foreign countries. Those partnerships allow the US company access to those countries' telecommunications systems, and that access is then exploited to direct traffic to the NSA's repositories. Both articles are based on top secret documents provided by Edward Snowden; O Globo published several of them.

The vast majority of the GuardianUS's revelations thus far have concerned NSA domestic spying: the bulk collection of telephone records, the PRISM program, Obama's presidential directive that authorizes domestic use of cyber-operations, the Boundless Informant data detailing billions of records collected from US systems, the serial falsehoods publicly voiced by top Obama officials about the NSA's surveillance schemes, and most recently, the bulk collection of email and internet metadata records for Americans. Future stories in the GuardianUS will largely continue to focus on the NSA's domestic spying.

But contrary to what some want to suggest, the privacy rights of Americans aren't the only ones that matter. That the US government - in complete secrecy - is constructing a ubiquitous spying apparatus aimed not only at its own citizens, but all of the world's citizens, has profound consequences. It erodes, if not eliminates, the ability to use the internet with any remnant of privacy or personal security. It vests the US government with boundless power over those to whom it has no accountability. It permits allies of the US - including aggressively oppressive ones - to benefit from indiscriminate spying on their citizens' communications. It radically alters the balance of power between the US and ordinary citizens of the world. And it sends an unmistakable signal to the world that while the US very minimally values the privacy rights of Americans, it assigns zero value to the privacy of everyone else on the planet.

This development - the construction of a worldwide, ubiquitous electronic surveillance apparatus - is self-evidently newsworthy, extreme, and dangerous. It deserves transparency. People around the world have no idea that all of their telephonic and internet communications are being collected, stored and analyzed by a distant government. But that's exactly what is happening, in secrecy and with virtually no accountability. And it is inexorably growing, all in the dark. At the very least, it merits public understanding and debate. That is now possible thanks solely to these disclosures.

The Guardian's reporting

One brief note on the Guardian is merited here: I've been continuously amazed by how intrepid, fearless and committed the Guardian's editors have been in reporting these NSA stories as effectively and aggressively as possible. They have never flinched in reporting these stories, have spared no expense in pursuing them, have refused to allow vague and baseless government assertions to suppress any of the newsworthy revelations, have devoted extraordinary resources to ensure accuracy and potency, and have generally been animated by exactly the kind of adversarial journalistic ethos that has been all too lacking over the last decade or so (see this Atlantic article from yesterday highlighting the role played by the Guardian US's editor-in-chief, Janine Gibson).

I don't need to say any of this, but do so only because it's so true and impressive: they deserve a lot of credit for the impact these stories have had. To underscore that: because we're currently working on so many articles involving NSA domestic spying, it would have been weeks, at least, before we would have been able to publish this story about indiscriminate NSA surveillance of Brazilians. Rather than sit on such a newsworthy story - especially at a time when Latin America, for several reasons, is so focused on these revelations - they were enthused about my partnering with O Globo, where it could produce the most impact. In other words, they sacrificed short-term competitive advantage for the sake of the story by encouraging me to write this story with O Globo. I don't think many media outlets would have made that choice, but that's the kind of journalistic virtue that has driven the paper's editors from the start of this story.

This has been a Guardian story from the start and will continue to be. Snowden came to us before coming to any other media outlet, and I'll continue to write virtually all NSA stories right in this very space. But the O Globo story will resonate greatly in Brazil and more broadly in Latin America, where most people had no idea that their electronic communications were being collected in bulk by this highly secretive US agency. For more on how the Guardian's editors have overseen the reporting of the NSA stories, see this informative interview on the Charlie Rose Show from last week with Gibson and Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger:

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NSA leaks add fuel to the global cyber war

"The United States would be better off monitoring its secret services rather than its allies". * So says the Luxembourg foreign minister Jean Asselborn on learning through the documents leaked by Edward Snowden that EU offices in Washington were bugged. It's not that other countries don't have spy agencies it's that the US surveillance industry is so vast and penetrating storing personal information from millions of its own citizens.

The extent of US spying revealed by Snowden boggles the mind and has placed considerable strain on US capitalism's relations with its allies. Of course, capitalism is a permanent state of war and in that sense there are never any real allies, military conflict is only one aspect of that warfare.

The problem is that the US is the richest and most powerful of the group; they're the guys with the big stick and the greatest resource for capital.  Some of the major institutions of global capitalism are headquartered in the US which makes it all the easier for US capitalism to spy on its rivals.

The other side of this is that most of the global communication giants are based in the US. Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple etc.  Snowden's leaks revealed that these internet companies were giving the NSA and the FBI "direct access" to their servers.  Millions upon million of people worldwide use these services.

The tech companies denied that the spy system we now know as Prism was used in the way that Snowedens leaks described it.  The battle has moved somewhat in to the open as firms like Google have moved to cover their asses.  Google has filed a motion with FISA (Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act) asking for permission to make public the number of "national security related orders it receives" says Bloomberg BW. 

According to BW, these tech giants are concerned that they'll be "lumped together" with the telephone companies that have to comply with the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act (legislation passed in 1994) which forced the telecoms to place surveillance equipment and maintain it and upgrade it.

The problem for the tech companies is that millions of their users/customers are outside of the US borders.  "Essentially there is one law for Americans and one law for everyone else.", Caspar Bowden, a privacy adviser working for Microsoft tells BW. Under FISA, a US law, foreign citizens have no rights.  This has caused a serious backlash as global reports indicate as it could lead to a sort of Internet protectionism which, as Business Week put it, could be "the beginning of the end to Silicon valley's domination of the Internet.".   Already, there is some interest in the EU for creating a European open sourced cloud system as an alternative the US.   Another issue is that many of the global institutions of capitalism are headquartered in the US, the UN for one.

I think it's important we do not underestimate the increased level of conflict in what is a global cyber war.  But I have to return to another issue that might slip people's attention and that is the deafening silence on the part of the heads of organized Labor in the US, as with the struggle on the job, the Union officialdom are nowhere to be see.  Snowden and the NSA activity is being talked about in coffee shops, bars work places and throughout the globe.  The revelations have increased tension between nations and threatened an already unstable set of global relations. US requests for other countries to assist in or directly hand over Edward Snowden are not being given much attention as countries like Ecuador defy the US.  It is a huge global issue and yet if you go to the websites of the national organizations of the organized working class in the US, organizations with 12 million workers affiliated to them,  you will read nothing about this issue. It is nothing less than criminal and activists, and most importantly militants, socialists and anti-capitalists of all types who are active in Unions should raise this glaring omission among the ranks and move motions to rectify it and force a debate on the issue and all issues relevant to the working class as a whole, organized or unorganized, at home and internationally.

* Al Jazeera report

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Glenn Greenwald: A breath of fresh air in a sea of smog

As I pointed out in a blog the other day, the NSA says it is only interested in any one of the billions of personal e mails and phone calls people make if there is a reason to target someone.  It's a bit like Iraq when the US flunkie Saddam Hussein ruled. You were in no danger as long as you stayed out of politics.  Your NSA info may never be scrutinized unless you become politically active in opposition to the present crowd of thugs here in the US, then when you do all the little personal details of our lives become news fodder through the journalists that are CIA /NSA stooges. In different times Mr. Greenwald would have been outed for being gay, the times when it was a crime. He could never find a job in his field and would be isolated.  Greenwald is a breath of fresh air in a world of smog.

And I will take this opportunity yet again to admonish the heads of organized labor in this country for their cowardly role, not only in refusing to fight the bosses but in refusing to even comment on the events surrounding Edward Snowden and Glenn Greenwald which is a serious matter of civil rights.  Go to the AFL-CIO and Change to Win websites and not a word will be seen about this issue that millions throughout the world are discussing daily, in workplaces, bars, coffee shops, and on the streets.  Shame on them.

RM

Reprinted from Reader Supported News

The Personal Side of Taking on the NSA

By Glenn Greenwald, Guardian UK

27 June 13

hen I made the choice to report aggressively on top-secret NSA programs, I knew that I would inevitably be the target of all sorts of personal attacks and smears. You don't challenge the most powerful state on earth and expect to do so without being attacked. As a superb Guardian editorial noted today: "Those who leak official information will often be denounced, prosecuted or smeared. The more serious the leak, the fiercer the pursuit and the greater the punishment."

One of the greatest honors I've had in my years of writing about politics is the opportunity to work with and befriend my long-time political hero, Daniel Ellsberg. I never quite understood why the Nixon administration, in response to his release of the Pentagon Papers, would want to break into the office of Ellsberg's psychoanalyst and steal his files. That always seemed like a non sequitur to me: how would disclosing Ellsberg's most private thoughts and psychosexual assessments discredit the revelations of the Pentagon Papers?

When I asked Ellsberg about that several years ago, he explained that the state uses those tactics against anyone who dissents from or challenges it simply to distract from the revelations and personally smear the person with whatever they can find to make people uncomfortable with the disclosures.

So I've been fully expecting those kinds of attacks since I began my work on these NSA leaks. The recent journalist-led "debate" about whether I should be prosecuted for my reporting on these stories was precisely the sort of thing I knew was coming.

As a result, I was not particularly surprised when I received an email last night from a reporter at the New York Daily News informing me that he had been "reviewing some old lawsuits" in which I was involved - "old" as in: more than a decade ago - and that "the paper wants to do a story on this for tomorrow". He asked that I call him right away to discuss this, apologizing for the very small window he gave me to comment.

Upon calling him, I learned that he had somehow discovered two events from my past. The first was my 2002-04 participation in a multi-member LLC that had an interest in numerous businesses, including the distribution of adult videos. I was bought out of that company by my partners roughly nine years ago.

The lawsuit he referenced was one where the LLC had sued a video producer in (I believe) 2002 after the producer reneged on a profit-sharing contract. In response, that producer fabricated abusive and ugly emails he claimed were from me - they were not - in order to support his allegation that I had bullied him into entering into that contract and he should therefore be relieved from adhering to it. Once our company threatened to retain a forensic expert to prove that the emails were forgeries, the producer quickly settled the case by paying some substantial portion of what was owed, and granting the LLC the rights to use whatever it had obtained when consulting with him to start its own competing business.

The second item the reporter had somehow obtained was one showing an unpaid liability to the IRS stemming, it appears, from some of the last years of my law practice. I've always filed all of my tax returns and there's no issue of tax evasion or fraud. It's just back taxes for which my lawyers have been working to reach a payment agreement with the IRS.

Just today, a New York Times reporter emailed me to ask about the IRS back payments. And the reporter from the Daily News sent another email asking about a student loan judgment which was in default over a decade ago and is now covered by a payment plan agreement.

So that's the big discovery: a corporate interest in adult videos (something the LLC shared with almost every hotel chain), fabricated emails, and some back taxes and other debt.

I'm 46 years old and, like most people, have lived a complicated and varied adult life. I didn't manage my life from the age of 18 onward with the intention of being a Family Values US senator. My personal life, like pretty much everyone's, is complex and sometimes messy.

If journalists really believe that, in response to the reporting I'm doing, these distractions about my past and personal life are a productive way to spend their time, then so be it.

None of that - or anything else - will detain me even for an instant in continuing to report on what the NSA is doing in the dark.

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Snowden and the intelligence debacle: A declining empire's travails

Snowden: being called a traitor by Dick Cheney is an honor

by Richard Mellor

So it appears Edward Snowden, who, like Bradley Manning, has done us all a favor by exposing the rotten nature of the regime in Washington, is somewhere between Russia and Cuba or Cuba and Ecuador.

The whole affair reveals the declining influence of US imperialism on the global stage as bullying and threats have so far failed to produce Mr. Snowden.  Hong Kong authorities allowed him to leave and Russia refused to hand him over. Ecuador is harboring another journalist, Julian Assange in its embassy in London and had indicated it will likely offer Snowden asylum.

This is all very embarrassing for US capitalism but it is also part of the blowback from an arrogant global presence, violating the sovereign rights of mostly poor former colonial countries and proclaiming itself the cradle of democracy and democratic rights, the two million people in US prisons notwithstanding.

An NSA spokesperson made it clear when he announced the charges against Mr. Snowden that they, “send a clear message……In the United States, you can’t spy on people.”  It’s a bit like a Monty Python skit and gets worse, “Only by bringing Mr. Snowden to justice can we safeguard the most precious of American rights: privacy” said the spokesperson.  And as Andy Borowitz points out, it is all said with a straight face.

The affair also raises some serious issues about the nature of US intelligence gathering, after all, unmanned drones have assassinated numerous figures (along with killing hundreds of civilians). “Snowdens unexpected flight to Moscow” , the Wall Street Journal points out today, “…exposed the apparent limits of America’s diplomatic and intelligent gathering reach”.

Oh dear, might it be the case that the successful “taking out” of suspected enemy combatants or “alleged” militants as they are often called, that are based on US intelligence sources, might not be as precise and accurate as we are told? And what about the Guantanamo inmates?  We know that the US offered so much a head to their thuggish allies in Afghanistan to go find terrorists and sure enough, they found them. The level of deceit and deception on the part of the US government with regards to its own population is staggering

There is no doubt that the whole affair is a big embarrassment for the US intelligence gathering agencies, “I guess we were so busy monitoring the everyday communications of every man, woman, and child in the nation that we didn’t notice that a contractor working for us was downloading tons of classified documents,” the agency spokesman said. “It’s definitely embarrassing, for sure.”  (The Borowitz Report)

There is a scramble not to try and contain the damage and tough talk is abundant, “Jennifer Psaki, a US State Department spokesperson warns that Snowden, “Should not be allowed to proceed in any further international travel, other than is necessary to return him to the United States.”

The US was “double crossed” by Hong Kong says one prominent extradition lawyer.

So far Snowden has been charged with theft of US government property, unauthorized communication of national defense information and willful communication of classified communications intelligence information. The last two charges according the media are espionage related.

The US ruling class is very upset at the refusal of some nations to comply with its requests.  Little Ecuador is already putting up Julian Assange at its embassy in London and it appears that Snowden will find refuge there if he can make it. 

As workers we will be asked as part of our patriotic duty to support the 1% and their political

Nancy Pelosi

representatives in Washington and call for Snowden’s head.   But the US public is not so easily persuaded.  Liberal Democrat, Nancy Pelosi, was booed by her own supporters when she defended the NSA’s spying at a meeting in Silicon Valley.  One man was removed from the hall, “Leave him alone! Secrets and lies! No secret courts! Protect the First Amendment,” the audience members shouted, according to the San Jose Mercury News.

And we should stop and think for a minute about the activity of the US intelligence and spy agencies around the world and how that effects what people think of us, from the retina scans they force on people in countries the US occupies to the kidnapping of individuals around the world, sometimes in other countries without the permission of their governments.  Obama and the CIA have been bombing Pakistan with unmanned drones violating that country’s sovereignty and refuses to even acknowledge it despite pleas to halt the practice.  This activity, the torture, renditions, drone warfare from Somalia to Pakistan, is what is driving terrorist activity and anti-American feeling.  The l% and their political representatives in the two Wall Street parties don’t care that we as Americans can’t travel in numerous countries throughout the world due to the activities of our own government, they are well protected and taken care of, primarily through US taxpayer funds.

By coming out in to the open Snowden may have made it more difficult for the CIA to assassinate him but they would clearly like to take him out, but he has considerable support at home and that will not happen without consequences, one of them increasing the distrust and dislike of the folks in Washington among their base at home.  There is already a lot of anger beneath the surface of US society at the bankers and politicians for their role in the Great Recession and the bailout.

Snowden, like Manning are national heroes.  We must not fall prey to this false patriotism and United We Stand mantra.  We must defend these Americans from the wrath of the US ruling class and their government.

As I wrote in an earlier piece, the leaders of the organized Labor movement continue their criminal silence on this issue.  It is being discussed in bars, on the job, in the streets and the papers of the world yet the heads of the AFL-CIO and the Change to Win coalition say nothing, their websites write nothing.  They should be organizing mass protests in the defense of Manning and Snowden.  We know of course that they will do nothing of their own volition except assist the bosses’ with the austerity agenda.  They abandon these heroic figures as they abandon their own members.  We cannot rely on them, or the Democrats to lead a fight against the capitalist offensive and the elimination of our civil liberties that go along with it.  We must organize and build for the American Spring.  The bosses will not let up.  They must make us more competitive globally as workers which means driving down wages and conditions even further which is something we naturally resist.  The attack on our rights and civil liberties is to render this resistance harmless.  The only protests or actions the bosses and their politicians accept are those that are ineffective.

Defend our rights. Defend Edward Snowden. Free Bradley Manning. Defy anti-Union laws and legislation through mass direct action.  Fight austerity.  

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Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden Working class Americans to be proud of

by Richard Mellor
Afscme Local 444, retired

"It's true, though rarely recognized in the control-freakery world of the military, that full spectrum dominance is impossible in the global information environment" *

The release of secret National Security Administration documents revealing the US government agency’s extensive spying and surveillance apparatus has thrown the US capitalist class in to deeper crisis.  Billions of e mails and other private communications between Americans are being stored and processed by the NSA.

Edward Snowden, the young man who revealed himself as the source of the leaks in an interview with the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald, is presently in hiding and no doubt fearing for his life.  Snowden’s actions come during the trial of Bradley Manning, the young US soldier facing a life sentence for sharing with the US public, information about US government war crimes and dirty diplomatic deals and as Julian Assange, a founder of the Wikileaks news service that published the material, is still holed up in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London.

The NSA’s gathering of the personal information of tens of millions of Americans and others, has been made possible in part by the agency having access to the “systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and other US Internet giants” according to a top secret document obtained and verified by the Guardian. The access to all this information was made possible through what the media has described as a “previously undisclosed program” called Prism.

The official line is that Prism functions with the assistance of these companies but all the companies involved have so far denied it.  Officials at Apple have said they never heard of Prism. "If they are doing this, they are doing it without our knowledge," some execs have stated.  That is highly unlikely.

We should not underestimate the severity of this crisis coming on the heels of the Wikileaks/Manning revelations which shed light on their phony diplomacy, a diplomacy rooted in lies and thievery. The extent to which this affects million of ordinary US citizens adds much more fuel to the fire.

Amid the turmoil, the profiteers and their representatives in Congress and the White House have condemned Snowden much as they have Manning and Assange.  Barack Obama has defended the massive surveillance network begun under his predecessor, the Imbecile Bush saying, "that on, you know, net, it was worth us doing" because "they help us prevent terrorist attacks."

Dianne Feinstein, a one-time darling of the liberals denied Snowden was a whistleblower, and publicly accused him of committing “an act of treason.”

The Wall Street Journal responded in much the same way pointing out sarcastically that, “At least Mr. Snowden has the courage of his misguided convictions” because he publicly identified himself as the source of the leak rather than remaining anonymous although his motives “..appear to be political paranoia and righteous good intentions.”

After all, the Journal adds, “If he did discover abuses, he could have gone to the multiple layers of oversight including congressional committees.”. These “multiple layers” are actually multiple obstacle courses, hoops for people to jump through until they become so fatigued and demoralized they cannot go on and the secrecy and phony façade of government is maintained. The objection to allowing any undermining of military commanders control over rape allegations in their units is motivated by the same concerns.

The Journal then went on to discredit Snowden personally, “His likely career path took him from community college washout to NSA security guard to Central Intelligence Agency IT consultant…”  Normally, a guy who never graduated high school ending up as a well-paid specialist for a major government agency would be good news for Wall Street Journal readers.  But you have to be on the team, you have to be prepared to suppress democracy and keep from millions of Americans information they have a right to know. 

US capitalism is experiencing a political as well as an economic crisis.  We have here a situation where its own internal regime is breaking down. US capitalism, the sole global superpower after the collapse of the Soviet Union is spreading itself very thin as it is forced to defend its global influence and the struggle for resources and has to put the US working class on rations to finance it. The self-proclaimed American Century lasted barely a decade. 

After the collapse of Stalinism, an editorial in the Wall Street Journal proclaimed, “We Won.”  The society the US capitalist class referred to as “Communism” had fallen under the weight of its own parasitic bureaucracy; the bi-polar world was no more and the US stood alone as the most powerful economic and military force on earth. Full Spectrum Dominance was the new mantra.

Officially known as full-spectrum superiority this term was defined by the U.S. military as:
“The cumulative effect of dominance in the air, land, maritime, and space domains and information environment that permits the conduct of joint operations without effective opposition or prohibitive interference.”,  “Full Spectrum Dominance” became the new order.  US capitalism must be free to travel the world uninhibited.  Even cyberspace must come under US capitalism’s control.  In the two decades since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the rapid technological advances and the events of 911, cyberspace has become the battleground of the future.

With the official goal of making the world “Safe for Democracy” after the events of September 11^th 2003, the US increased its military presence throughout the world and beefed up it security and surveillance forces at home and abroad to the point that some five million Americans hold US government security clearances. But the wars in cyberspace are real, despite possessing billions of dollars worth of military hardware, the right hacker with the right program can create havoc with a nation’s defense/offense system. The huge increase in private contractors having access to secret information is a product of the increasing cyber warfare and, as the WSJ points out, large US companies are lobbying the government to grant more security clearances for their employees, in part to, “..fend off hackers from Iran, China and elsewhere.”

The changed global relations since the collapse of the Soviets and the bi-polar world has increased tensions between nation states particularly with the rise of China and the Russian Federation.  The rising social movements from Egypt to Greece, Latin America, China and South Africa, very much aided by social media, have increased the need for surveillance and control of the Internet as well as increased police and security presence on the ground.  The US War on Terror is an announcement to the world that US capitalism has the right to wage war anywhere it wants.  Waged under the banner of saving the world for democracy it is a war for global domination and the plundering of global markets and resources; it is a war without end until the planet can no longer sustain it.

Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, are heroic figures.  The war to criminalize investigative journalism, another by-product of the War on Terror also has its heroic figures like Glenn Greenwald and others who refuse to “embed” their journalistic integrity in the cesspool of bourgeois politics.

Apologists for the 1%, as they do with Bradley Manning, claim Snowden is aiding terrorists and placing US troops in harms way.  But it is not terrorists (a term that encompasses any person or persons that oppose US imperialism’s agenda) that Snowden’s leaks were being kept from.  So-called terrorists know full well they are being tracked; the US has been imposing such measure like retina scans on civilian populations outside its borders for years.  It is the US population that was unaware of this extensive invasion of our privacy until Snowden revealed it to us. 

Snowden made it quite clear that had he wanted to harm the US as a nation he could  have. “If I had just wanted to harm the US, then you could shut down the surveillance system in an afternoon, but that’s not my intention.” He said in his interview with Greenwald.  He has made his intentions very clear:

“I can’t in good conscience allow the US government to destroy, privacy, Internet freedom and basic liberties for people around the world with this massive surveillance machine they’re secretly building.”

"I don't want to live in a society that does these sort of things ... I do not want to live in a world where everything I do and say is recorded. That is not something I am willing to support or live under,"

“I understand that I will be made to suffer for my actions.”  he said, and that he would be satisfied, “if the federation of secret law, unequal pardon and irresistible executive powers that rule the world that I love are revealed even for an instant.”

“I’m no different than anybody else…”he went on,  “I don’t have special skills, I’m just another guy who sits there day to day in the office, watches what’s happening and goes, ‘This is something that’s not our place to decide. The public needs to decide whether these programs are right or wrong.’”

As this crisis deepens it is forcing some in the US Congress to try and cover their asses and question the level of surveillance activities in the US and a review of the Patriot act has been suggested.  Internationally, Obama and all US government officials will be facing questions form their counterparts throughout the world. They are all involved in this cyber warfare but the US has the big stick.

It is likely we will see more of this in the future and one can only wonder at this point what effect this will have on the Manning Trial.  There is no doubt Snowden has increased his chances of survival by coming out in to the open although the US state apparatus are masters of assassination.  It is the US working class that they are afraid of here; they have become a little overconfident and overconfidence in politics can lead to severe mistakes, even catastrophic ones.

Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden have stood up against the most powerful militaristic force on the planet, two working class young men against the US state.  They are truly heroic figures in every sense of the word. By comparison, if we go to the official website of the AFL-CIO we will see nothing, not a word about this episode that is being talked about across the globe (if there is anything it is hidden). The stifling bureaucracy that sits at the head of the largest national labor organization in the US is best described as similar to the old soviet bureaucracy without state power. For those of us proud of US working class history and those heroic figures who built our movement, the present heads of organized labor are nothing less than criminal in their cowardly retreat in the face of the bosses’ offensive. For organized workers, we are in a war on two fronts, one with the bosses and the other more difficult one with their allies who lead our movement.

Despite this, Republican Rep. Peter King’s statement that  “The United States must make it clear that no country should be granting this individual asylum. This is a matter of extraordinary consequence to American intelligence.”,  belongs in a time passed. US capitalism has limited credibility abroad as its allies are unreliable lackeys, bought, cajoled and bribed in to their camp and its representatives at home among the most hated and distrusted figures in society.

The world has changed much in the past 20 years. These developments are very positive and reflect the growing frustration and opposition to a bankrupt economic system that threatens to end life on this planet as we know it. Workers throughout the world should support Snowden, Bradley Manning and others like them, actively where we can. We owe them a debt of gratitude.

It is a good time to be alive. 

*Professor Philip Taylor of the University of Leeds an expert consultant to the US and UK governments on psychological operations, propagandaand diplomacy. source

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Is Obama Keeping the World Safe for Democracy? Ask Mumia!

by Jack Gerson

On June 6, investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald's blog on the Guardian newspaper site broke the story of Edward Snowden's revelations of the U.S. government's massive cell phone and internet surveillance program that "keeps the world safe for democracy" by spying on everyone, everywhere and by recording everything we say, everything we write. Within hours, black revolutionary and political prisoner Mumia Abu-Jamal recorded a piercing commentary from his jail cell in a column he titled "Big Brother".

We think Mumia's powerful conclusion should be taken to heart:

When Bush left the presidency, he did so armed with the greatest arsenal of presidential power in American history. That vast array of power was transmitted into the hands of his successor, where it has only grown.  Under Barack Obama, the national security state has only broadened its reach, in ways Bush/Cheney could only have dreamed.

We learn, then, that it matters little which party wins the White House; their essential elements are the same: amass more and more power to the President.

And whittle away the ‘rights’ of The People.

I urge readers to take this message to heart. And then find a way to view Stephen Vittoria's two recently released documentaries on Mumia: the full-length "Long-Distance Revolutionary", which vividly portrays his great spirit and courage, and the short film "Manufacturing Guilt", which presents records of investigations and court filings from 1995 to 2003 -- evidence denied in court and ignored by the press.  You will walk away convinced that the Philadelphia establishment -- the DA's office, the police, the state apparatus -- have conspired to frame an innocent man for the alleged 1981 murder of a Philadelphia cop, and continue to conspire to keep him locked up for the rest of his life.

Bush and the Republicans. Obama and the Democrats. They spy on us all. They victimize those who fight back, and reserve the harshest treatment for those, like Mumia, who they fear most. But all the surveillance and all the victimization and all the drone murders will not be enough in the end to save them. Our job is to take them down and their capitalist system with them and build a new world before they destroy this one.

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