June 11, 2013 at 4:35 P.M. I was assigned to NYPL, Inwood branch, #03. Obstructions prevented me from signing-in. I wonder whether "Raymond Hernandez" of the New York Times can shed any light on this mystery? Is "Raymond Hernandez" also "Manohla Dargis"? What other names does this person use as bylines at any (or all) periodicals for which he/she writes? Does Mr. Hernandez do "favors" for Albio Sires? Bob Menendez? For some reason, a number of television channels are blocked or blacked-out, including Time/Warner's New York 1. I wonder why this is happening? Cybercrime? Am I the only Time/Warner customer affected by this? Is this about "Verizon"?
June 10, 2013 at 8:15 A.M. My discussion is based on the listed sources. Interviews with "Edward Snowden" (alleged source for Mr. Greenwald) appeared at "Democracy Now," June 10, 2013 at 8:18 A.M. then were discussed on Al Jazeera which claims the British government is involved in the spying.
Attempts to create links at these blogs are obstructed. I cannot access any e-mail account, no images can be posted here. I suspect that my calls may be monitored. I am not now nor have I ever been charged with a crime.
Mark Landler, "Obama Appoints Rice to Key Post On U.S. Security," The New York Times, June 6, 2013, p. A1.
Edward Wong & Didi Kirsten Tarlton, [Manohla Dargis?] "Wide China Push is Seen to Obtain Industry Secrets," The New York Times, June 6, 2013, p. A1. (China is engaging in illicit intelligence gathering on-line.)
Declan Walsh & Salman Masood, "Pakistan's New Premier Calls For Drone Strike Halt," The New York Times, June 6, 2013, p. A6. (No more drones.)
Salman Masood, "U.S. Drone Strike Kills at Least 7 in Pakistan as New Prime Minister Announces His Cabinet," The New York Times, June 8, 2013, p. A6. (U.S. humiliates Pakistan's new Prime Minister.)
Charlie Savage, et als., "U.S. Confirms Gathering of Web Data Overseas: Officials Defend Surveillance Programs," The New York Times, June 7, 2013, p. A1. (The U.S. is the world's leader in illicit on-line intelligence gathering, including from China.)
Mark Landler & Allison Kopicki, "Skepticism Over U.S. Involvement in Foreign Conflicts," The New York Times, June 7, 2013, p. A16. ("Wars against terror may take 20 to 40 years," the Defense Department said.)
Eric Schmidt, et als., "Mining of Data Is Called Crucial to Fight Terror: Obama Sees a Trade Off," (Editorial) The New York Times, June 8, 2013, p. A6.
"President Obama's Dragnet: Scooping up all our phone records is an abuse of power that demands a real explanation," The New York Times, June 7, 2013, p. A26.
Noam Cohen & Leslie Kaufman, "Blogger With Focus on Surveillance, Is at Center of Debate," The New York Times, June 7, 2013, p. A18.
A wise writer once explained that there are people in America whose rights are taken seriously and many more who don't matter, whose rights may be ignored or violated by powerful officials with impunity.
I am in the category of people who do not matter to the U.S. government -- like Pakistanis killed by drone weapons, a billion Chinese persons (including hundreds of thousands who may have visited these sites), and most of the planet's black and brown populations. ("What is it like to be tortured?" and "What is it like to be plagiarized?" then "'Brideshead Revisited': A Movie Review" and "How censorship works in America" and "Have you no shame, Mr. Rabner?")
Recently, some of the people whose rights are not usually violated in America are experiencing what the rest of us have come to know all too well:
" ... Mr. Greenwald, a lawyer and longtime blogger, published an article in the British newspaper The Guardian [sic.] about the existence of a top-secret court order allowing the National Security Agency to monitor millions of telephone logs. The article, which included a link to the order, is expected to attract an investigation from the Justice Department which aggressively pursued leaks."
Mr. Obama's policies are having a chilling effect on First Amendment rights of journalists, writers, philosophers and intellectuals in America. As a lawyer, Mr. Greenwald is especially vulnerable and is, already, facing "pressures" which may include ethics charges from the New York Bar Association. ("New Jersey's 'Ethical' Legal System" and "New Jersey's Office of Attorney Ethics.")
To my knowledge, unlike me, Mr. Greenwald has not yet been subjected to interrogational hypnosis/torture, drugging, rapes or other assaults. I cannot say whether there have been illicit entries into his home. It is more likely that Mr. Greenwald will experience such things when the media spotlight "moves on." ("Terry Tuchin, Diana Lisa Riccioli, and New Jersey's Agency of Torture.")
With EWAN MACASKILL, Mr. Greenwald exposed "an NSA program, Prism, that has gathered information from the nation's largest Internet companies [Google] going back nearly six years."
Your life on-line -- purchases, websites visited, books purchased or borrowed from libraries -- is being monitored by one "James Clapper" of the NSA and his minions.
Apart from how we may "feel" about the NSA, there is no secure information. Any number of other agencies or entities may gain access to what is collected by the NSA, including foreign intelligence agencies.
Too much information may be as worthless as too little information. Ironically, the code-name of the NSA operation for secret spying on Americans is "Boundless Information."
In order to be meaningful, information must be bounded by logical and evidentiary constraints to say nothing of Constitutional protections.
Officials never think in terms of "less is more." The recent Boston bombings may lead them to accept limits on the unfettered power to spy along with a bit of humility. For now, Mr. Greenwald's troubles should worry every writer and thinker in America:
"The administration has now lost all credibility on this issue" -- of concern for civil or human rights as it fights a "war on terror," according to The New York Times Editorialist -- "Mr. Obama is proving the truism that the executive branch will use any power it is given and very likely abuse it. That is one reason we have long argued that the Patriot Act, enacted in the heat of fear after Sept. 11, 2001 attacks[,] by members of Congress who mostly had not even read it, was reckless in its assignments of unnecessary and overbroad surveillance powers."
The NSA is also able to gather Internet communications directly from the seven major servers. This may explain some of what I deal with every day and why I cannot -- it is important to repeat this -- send or receive e-mails nor can I post images on-line. This is a form of censorship and violation of privacy not only for me, but also for persons from all over the world who may wish to communicate with me. ("How censorship works in America.")
The defacements of my writings, prevention of editing efforts, violations of copyright, thefts, plagiarism may be traced to out-of-control censors and monitors.
"To casually permit this surveillance -- with the American public having no idea that the executive branch is now exercising this power -- fundamentally shifts power between the individual and the state, and it repudiates constitutional principles governing search, seizure and privacy."
Surveillance, monitoring continues (secretly) for reasons and based on criteria never examined in a court of law as millions of Americans are spied upon. This will not make us safer or more secure, it makes us less safe and a more frightened people.
"From Palestine through Iraq to Iran, Obama has acted as just another steward of the American empire, pursuing the same aims as his predecessors, with the same means but with a more emollient rhetoric. In Afghanistan, he has gone further, widening the front of imperial aggression with a major escalation of violence, both technological and territorial. ... Simultaneously, a massive intensification of aerial terror over Pakistan is under way. As The New York Times informed its readers, delicately describing the statistic as one that 'the White House has not advertised': 'since Mr. Obama came to office, the Central Intelligence Agency has mounted more Predator drone strikes than during Mr. Bush's eight years in office.' These [drone strikes] were justified in March 2009 by Harold Koh, a former Dean of Yale Law School [ethical?] and a former director of the Orville H. Schell, Jr. Center For Human Rights, and now a senior lawyer attached to the State Department. The unmanned drone strikes supposedly targeting terrorists were lawful, he argued, because they were necessary to defend U.S. national security. Most of those killed have been civilians, including men, women, and children."
Tariq Ali, "President of Cant," in The Obama Syndrome: Surrender at Home, War Abroad (London: Verso, 2010), pp. 56-57 and Tariq Ali, "Capitalism and Socialism in the Twenty-First Century," International Socialist Review, May-June, 2013, at p. 15. http://www.isreview.org (Government monitoring may prevent creation of a link to this publication.)
