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Socialists who Hate Capitalism

That's what John Stossel, MSNBC, called all those who think that maybe, perhaps, possibly, this global-warming thing may be cause for concern.

Link from Crooks and Liars.

Swift-Boating of Murtha Sinks

Crooks and LIars points out to the failed efforts to Swiftboat John Murtha. It was a newspaper in Florida (how convenient...) that misquoted Rep. Murtha. Good on the paper for explaining their error. Now, will Britt Hume correct his article online or Bill O'Reilly retract their assault on Murtha? As Keith Olbmermann says: Don't hold your breath. 

Let the Lawsuit Continue

Allow the Lawsuit to Continue.*

Whether you're for or against the NSA's spying on American citizens, hopefully you believe in the American judicial system enough to allow them oversight of the process.  Our judicial system was designed from the beginning as being the third arm of government to balance the powers of legislative and administrative branches.  The judicial branch is supposed to have the ability to provide an overview of what the other branches and judge whether their actions are legal within the confines of our legislative framework.  In other words, our judges are there to make sure that the other two branches of government don't overstep their bounds.

You mean let our government, formed of checks and balances, AND a free press perform its duties unimpeded? Makes sense to me.

Let the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Lawsuit Against ATT continue. It's a class-action suit. It represents us, you and me, and our 4th Amendment rights against ,not encroachment, but attacks by this current administration.

By coincidence, ATT just revised their privacy rules. YOUR data isn't yours any more.

* Column by Martin Mckeay at Computer World.

Big Oil and Bush: Winners in Iraq

Links from Greg Palast to an expose in Harper's points out that the real victor to date is Big Oil. You remember them don't you? There the ones who've reported record profits at your expense. Right, those guys.

[I]n plotting the destruction of OPEC, the neocons failed to predict the virulent resistance of insurgent forces: the U.S. oil industry itself. Rob McKee, a former executive vice-president of ConocoPhillips, designated by the Bush Administration to advise the Iraqi oil ministry, had little tolerance for the neocons’ threat to privatize the oil fields nor their obsession on ways to undermine OPEC.

Well, it's helped that the oil in Iraq has stayed mostly off the markets since our arrival in Iraq. Helped is a tricky word. But the oil industry has made record profits since the Iraq war began, have they not? But hey, that was the plan wasn't it?

Voting Rights Act Nailed to Cross. The Cross of the Burning Kind

Greg Palast nails it again. Republicans are formalizing their very effective 2004 campaign against color by announcing a 'delay' in renewing the Voting Rights Act.

It's not that at this time America is any more democratic than other nations. It's just that the obstacles to it are so much more institutionalized and the PR around them is so much more effective.

This group of power-mongers isn't leaving power without an ugly ugly fight. It's gonna get worse people before mid-term elections.

Voter lists unsecured in Florida

That's news? Well, kinda. 3 years after a program was implemented to create a secure voter database in ...yes, Florida...glaring security lapses rule the day. According to the article in Computer World:

Leon County Elections Supervisor Ion Sancho said that the auditor's report indicates "serious problems" with the security and integrity of the system that could take significant time to fix. "The first election is around the corner, and they have not been able to iron the bugs out of this. I'm getting very concerned," Sancho said.

And when you add in the use of electronic voting machines whose security is quite a bit less than gaming machines...ah, hell, just elect Bush one more time and do it now. Save us the time. This time it'll be Jeb Bush.

Warrantless Searches Give Worthless Leads

A recent article in Computer World, Why the NSA Spying Puts the US in Danger, written by a former NSA analyst, ask what's been the result of all those warrantless searches of our phone records?

To date, FBI agents have been sent out to do thousands of investigations based on this warrantless wiretapping. None of those investigations turned up a legitimate lead. I have spoken to about a dozen agents, and they all roll their eyes and indicate disgust with the man-years of wasted effort being put into physically examining NSA "leads."

I think Sen. Jon Kyl, a strong supporter of the NSA domestic spying program, said it best: "We have got to collect intelligence on the enemy."  I fully agree. But the enemy numbers in the hundreds at best. the NSA is collecting data on hundreds of millions of people who are clearly not the enemy.  These numbers speak for themselves.

Those hundreds of millions are US citizens. That means you and me. The Bush administration is spying on you and me. And they're wasting the resources of the FBI, yet again, from the real investigations.

Wake up, people.

Bush War on Liberties Only Intensifying

Glenn Greenwald, Bush Lynch Mob Against the Nation's Free Press, points out:

(1) There is not a single sentence in the Times banking report that could even arguably "help the terrorists."

George Bush and his allies in the right-wing media (such as at National Review) have been running around for the last several years boasting about the administration's programs for tracking terrorists and innovating our surveillance methods. In doing so, they have repeatedly -- and in detail -- told the public, and therefore The Terrorists, all sorts of details about the counter-terrorism programs we have implemented

He quotes Bush's speech in Hershey, PA on April 19, 2004"

Before September the 11th, law enforcement could more easily obtain business and financial records of white-collar criminals than of suspected terrorists. See, part of the way to make sure that we catch terrorists is we chase money trails. And yet it was easier to chase a money trail with a white-collar criminal than it was a terrorist. The Patriot Act ended this double standard and it made it easier for investigators to catch suspected terrorists by following paper trails here in America.

And he goes on with:

The UN Al Qaeda and Taliban Monitoring Group , on which I served as the terrorism financing expert, learned of the practice during the course of our monitoring inquiries.

The information was incorporated in our report to the UN Security Council in December 2002. That report is still available on the UN Website. Paragraph 31 of the report states:

The settlement of international transactions is usually handled through correspondent banking relationships or large-value message and payment systems, such as the SWIFT...

And here is last year telling America how we can monitor cell phone calls as anyone changes cell phones to avoid detection:

Here is George Bush, on June 9, 2005, in Columbus, Ohio, disclosing to the terrorists that they can no longer change cell phones as a means to evade our surveillance:

One tool that has been especially important to law enforcement is called a roving wiretap. Roving wiretaps allow investigators to follow suspects who frequently change their means of communications

Again, this whole moral outrage at the NY Times is nothing but another salvo fired at the independent press. They've targeted the NY Times for it being a pre-eminent leader in independent reporting. If they knock the leader down...what happens to all the followers? They get in line with the program.

And it's only going to get worse as we approach mid-term elections and then in 2008 it's going to get very ugly.

Links from Empire Burlesque and Smirking Chimp. Smirking Chimp sums it up nicely with this:

Make no mistake: the Bush Regime intends to silence all dissenting voices and suppress all politically harmful information in the American establishment. They are perfectly happy to allow isolated enclaves of dissent to float around out there somewhere -- as long they remain isolated and, above all, ineffectual.

What they cannot tolerate -- and increasingly will not tolerate -- is any institution, organization or person in a position of genuine influence on the American power structure

It's not about SWIFT: It's about destroying the press

Enigmatic Paradox explains the real goal of Bush's vitriolic attack against the NY Times for revealing details of their searching international transactions, without warrants.

He starts with the reminder that from day one Bush told everyone he was going after the terrorists financing, that anyone involved with international financing knows they're fairly transparent, the terrorists use another system for moving funds, etc, etc.

The organized attack against primarily the NY TImes indicates this whole campaign is designed for no other reason than an excuse to undermine one of the few media outlets that still report somewhat independently.

Bush & Cheney...they'll come after you one at a time, separating you from the herd, making you an example for others...rewarding your colleagues for turning against you. Ask Joseph Wilson at the CIA.

SWIFT: Only Americans think it was a secret

According to Dan Froomkin at Washington Post,  SWIFT isn't exactly a secret around the world, only to Americans too busy for anything but FOX News and Tony Snow.  You need to register for Washington Post, so I'll share some of his text here:

But the existence of SWIFT itself has not exactly been a secret. Certainly not to anyone who had an Internet connection.

SWIFT has a Web site, at swift.com .

It's a very informative Web site. For instance, this page describes how "SWIFT has a history of cooperating in good faith with authorities such as central banks, treasury departments, law enforcement agencies and appropriate international organisations, such as the Financial Action Task Force (FATF), in their efforts to combat abuse of the financial system for illegal activities."

(And yes, FATF has its own Web site, too.)

An e-mail from White House Briefing reader Tim O'Keefe tipped me off to just how nutty it is to suggest that SWIFT keeps a low profile. Among other things, he explained, "SWIFT also happens to put on the largest financial services trade show in the world every year," he wrote. "Swift also puts out a lovely magazine ."

Furthermore, as I noted in Monday's column , it has been my personal experience that your garden-variety wire-transfer form mentions SWIFT. Mine warned: "With respect to payment orders executed through SWIFT, the SWIFT operating rules shall govern the payment orders."

I wrote in yesterday's column that in spite of leveling a monstrous charge against the New York Times -- of putting American lives at risk and aiding the enemy -- the White House has never definitively explained how any of these disclosures actually impair the pursuit of terrorists.

Seems like yet again, the purpose isn't protecting American lives, it's protecting Bush administration power. This action of the Administration to cry foul with NY Times' disclosure of yet another warrantless search program is merely designed to undermine the power of the press to question the illegal acts of Bush and his minions. Congress has already abdicated their role as an equal member among our 3 branches of government. All that's left now is the media. Bush and his minions will go after them one after the other. They'll first demonize the media who transgress by reporting the malfeasance of Bush and his crew. Then they'll isolate those members of the media by turning other members against them. FOX has already turned into a charade, nothing more than a mouthpiece for Bush & Cheney. CNN seems to be the next network volunteering to be a member of the Ministry of Information.