MIRANDA: ONE LEG TO STAND ON

On the night of Sunday August 18, officers of the London Metropolitan Police pulled David Miranda, a Brazilian citizen who happens to be the partner of Guardian journalist Glen Greenwald, out of a transit area of Heathrow International Airport, held him incommunicado for 9 hours, showering him with tough questions and barely veiled threats, and denying him access to a lawyer, or Brazilian diplomats, before seizing his computer, his cellphone and digital files containing copies of many of NSA whistle-blower Edward Snowden’s stolen documents.

Miranda was held under a British anti-terrorism law, not because he was a suspected terrorist, or had ever committed any terroristic crimes, but because the cops suspected, correctly, he might be transporting files pertaining to official American (and British) security secrets.

That they had struck paydirt, was obvious within the minutes it took for Miranda to surrender everything in his possession.  The extra 8-plus hours of detention was about payback, again, not so much against the unfortunate file-mule Miranda, but against Greenwald, his investigative partner Laura Poitras (who had given the data to Miranda) and The Guardian, the British newspaper which has, with the Washington Post, been publishing a careful selection of Snowden’s damaging, revelatory documents.

Implicit in the extraordinary detention was also a clear message of intimidation aimed at all journalists: “Learn and report information we want hidden from citizens of the UK, the US and the world, and see what happens.”

The message was reinforced when British security agents visited The Guardian, and in a little bit of theater that was simultaneously tragic, farcical and futile, forced Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger to witness the destruction of computers and accessories which also contained copies of Bowden-collected documents. Other copies, Rusbridger has said, remain in journalistic hands in the US, Germany and Brazil, if not other locations.

For a day or 3, this (and the White House’s role of passively greenlighting the detention before the Bobbies moved in on Miranda) was big news.

And then, quickly and quietly, the story died, except for continuing coverage by (unsurprisingly) The Guardian and, to a considerably lesser degree, the BBC.

The Miranda detention, which, in those heady first few days, several British experts on the Terrorism Act, the security issues at stake, human rights, press freedoms and journalism denounced as a gross overreach and dangerous abuse, all but disappeared from the US and UK media.

The story’s lack of what we newspeople call “legs” is easily documented.

Since their reporter’s partner’s detention, The Guardian, which, by the way, had paid for Miranda’s air tickets, has run 85 stories related to the security shakedown, more than twice as many as the BBC, and exactly 5 times as many as any other British news organization.  But even their vigorous coverage has run out of gas.  Of the 85 stories in The Guardian since August 19, 74 appeared that month, missing only 2 of 13 remaining days, and averaging 6 ½ stories a day for August.  Since September 1, The Guardian has, by its own count, published 11 stories in 50 days.

Worse news is that almost half of those stories appeared on one day, September 18, and 5 of those 11 stories were devoted essentially to one issue: the angry debate at the annual Directors’ conference of the Liberal-Democratic Party, in which all the Lib-Dem Directors but one voted for a resolution demanding changes in the letter and the application of the 13 year old Terrorism Act.

Coverage of the conference

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2013/sep/18/david-miranda-lib-dems-anti-terrorism-powers

included some high Party officials making some pertinent observations: “Home Office minister Jeremy Browne (remember the Lib-Dems are part of the Conservative-led ruling government coalition) condemned schedule 7 to the Terrorism Act 2000 as "too broad and overbearing," [while] Sarah Ludford, the Lib Dem MEP who secured the debate, said she suspected the use of schedule 7 to detain Miranda "was no less than an attempt to intimidate and shut up the Guardian."

And so on, yada, yada, yada.

More recently, The Guardian worked the Miranda story back into the paper through a lengthy analysis of the material relating the British version of the NSA, GCHQ, and by covering an instance of “Miranda-lite” treatment accorded a well-respected Yemeni human rights professional.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-uk-drone-opponents-threats

“Baraa Shiban, the project co-ordinator for the London-based legal charity Reprieve, was held for an hour and a half and repeatedly questioned about his anti-drone work and political views regarding human rights abuses in Yemen.” He says he was specifically threatened with “the full Miranda,” 9 hours in detention.  

Note that Shiban was neither suspected nor accused of terrorism.  He got the “locked room, hard questions” treatment because he has annoyed US and UK security bureaucrats by publishing reports documenting the so-called collateral civilian deaths caused by, and angry civilian response to, US-directed drone-borne missile attacks on suspected operatives of Yemen’s Al Qaeda subsidiary.

Aside from this story, and an accompanying comment on it from Guardian reporter Greenwald, the most enterprise The Guardian has shown, in terms of keeping the Miranda Case alive was a recent article by the paper’s ombudsman, Readers Editor Chris Elliot.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/22/guardian-coverage-of-government-surveillance

Elliot seemed surprised at how little reader response he’d seen to The Guardian’s coverage, not just of Miranda, but the whole Snowden NSA revelations story.

“More than 300 articles have been published since the first, on 6 June 2013, which revealed that a top-secret court had ordered a US telephone company, Verizon, to hand over data on millions of calls. However, since then, the readers' editor's office has received only 108 emails in relation to the series, of which just 13 were critical. Of the 13, only two specifically criticised the Guardian for publishing the disclosures, which is unusual for such a high-profile story.

“Of the rest, 48 were supportive of the Guardian's reporting, 27 offered further information or further case studies, and seven wanted to know how they could help Snowden, with some of them offering money, advice on visas, or even places to stay. A further 13 wanted to know more about what this kind of surveillance means for them personally.”

So, what about the rest of the UK media coverage?

The BBC, with 37 stories since August 19^th, has been by far the most active.  But even the Beeb has published only 4 stories since the end of August; and the rest of the Fleet Street and TV mob have been even more AWOL on the Miranda story.

UK Channel 4, probably the best television source for daily news coverage in English has done only 9 stories overall, one since the end of August.

SkyNews, Rupert Murdoch’s all-things-English satellite news channel has offered its viewers a total of 6 stories, none since August.

On the print side, Murdoch’s Times of London (once upon a time a “paper or record,”) has also totaled 6 Miranda-related stories, 2 this month (both on the arrest of the Yemeni drone-tracker).

The Daily Mail and The Telegraph have had 17 Miranda-related stories each, but only a single story (Yemeni arrested) in the Mail, this month, while The Independent has had 13 Miranda stories since August 19, none after August 30.

There is, of course, an American angle to this story.  The detention was done largely in America’s interest, and, as we noted above, with passive approval from President Obama’s White House.  But this has been of scant interest to American news outlets. 

A search of the NY Times database shows 11 Miranda Case-related stories in all, none since August; while the Washington Post archive coughs up just 6 references.  Again, no mention of the the case since the end of August.  As for America’s so-called “news channels,”  CNN has had 15 stories, MSNBC 5 and Fox News 3, but with the exception of one Fox story, none has said a thing since August 22, and only 1 story on CNN even mentioned the US’ enabling role.

As for that one September Fox story, it was merely a pass-along of an AFP report on the European Commission’s unease at the treatment British authorities had given Miranda. There has been no American newschannel coverage of the White House green light.

It’s not like the Miranda matter has gone completely unnoticed.  In addition to the European Commission, the UN special rapporteur on freedom of expression, Frank La Rue, and Ben Emmerson, the UN special rapporteur on human rights and counter-terrorism, have written to David Cameron's government requesting further information on the legality of Miranda's detention, and The Guardian reported, 

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/sep/04/un-press-intimidation-state-secrets

they have warned the British government that the protection of state secrets must not be used as an excuse to "intimidate the press into silence."

These comments got zero coverage from the US news media, print or TV.

And there is this comment made to BBC’s radio 4 soon after Miranda’s Heathrow detention, by David Anderson QC, the British government’s independent reviewer of terrorist legislation: “The police, I'm sure, do their best,” he said, “But at the end of the day, there is the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which can look into the exercise of this power, there is the courts, and there is my function.”

If anyone in the British news media is curious about what the terrorism law reviewer or the Police Complaints Commission, the courts or Parliament is thinking about the Miranda case or the Terrorism Act, they’re keeping it to themselves.  Not a word has been published, not a question has been asked in print, or on radio or TV. 7 weeks now, and no sign anyone in the British media is waiting for results.

Until darkness fell, most of the coverage of the Miranda detention in the British print press (except in The Guardian) was harshly unsympathetic. Typical was this from The Telegraph’s Dan Hodges:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/danhodges/100231711/why-does-being-a-relative-of-glenn-greenwald-place-you-above-the-law/

“Should being a relative of Glenn Greenwald place you above the law? I ask the question because this morning many people are arguing Greenwald’s partner David Miranda should, in effect, enjoy immunity from investigation solely because his spouse writes very lengthy articles for The Guardian.”

And, on August 30^th, when Oliver Robbins, deputy national security adviser at the Cabinet Office, went on the record to warn that ‘lives’ had been ‘put at risk’ by Miranda, ‘if the documents’ he was carrying had fallen ‘into the wrong hands,’ The Times, The Telegraph and The Daily Mail all rushed into stenography mode with uncritical repetitions of the charge, often adding Robbins’ comment that  Miranda had ‘showed very bad judgment’ by, as David Barrett wrote in the Telegraph:  ‘http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/10276460/David-Miranda-was-carrying-password-for-secret-files-on-piece-of-paper.html

“carrying thousands of British intelligence documents through Heathrow airport [while]  also holding the password to an encrypted file written on a piece of paper.”

If Barrett or any of the other British journalists who wrote about Robbins’ charges had bothered to check with Greenwald, or any expert on digital security, they would have learned that for encrypted files like those Miranda was ferrying, one code word is not enough.  Usually 2 or more keys are required to open the secured materials.  Suffice it to say, that weeks after seizing Miranda’s copies, the UK security services had managed to read, according to the notes taken by The Telegraph’s Tim Stanley:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100233498/david-miranda-accused-of-carrying-secrets-that-threatened-spies-lives-this-look-bad-for-glenn/

“just a small portion of an astonishing 58,000 pages of intelligence documents.”

In all of American journalism, the only substantive look at the Miranda case this month came from CJR.org’s Ryan Chittum:

http://www.cjr.org/the_audit/british_spooks_dont_quite_unde.php

Chittum seemed spurred by, and led with, the fact that the British Spook-in-Chief Robbins had misquoted him (admittedly with egregious carelessness or dishonesty).  But, Chittum did take the opportunity to add that “only a dozen” or so of the encrypted documents had by then been accessed by UK Security because Miranda’s “bad judgment” had been trumped by Poitras’ encryption tradecraft, and to note the fundamental stupidity of Oliver Robbins’ on-the-record rant:

“’Indeed it is impossible for a journalist alone to form a proper judgment about what disclosure of protectively marked intelligence does or does not damage national security,’ [Robbins said.]

“This is misleading, [says Chittum]. It’s not as if Greenwald is doing a Wikileaks-style document dump and crowd-sourcing the reporting (that’s one major difference between Edward Snowden and Bradley Manning, by the way). The Guardian is vetting the information, and you can be sure the paper is going back and forth with the government, perhaps even with Robbins himself, before it reports anything.”

So, as CJR has always put it, “laurels” to Chittum (with an ink-stained cluster for pointing out why Manning was a “leaker,” and Bowden a “whistleblower,”) and “dart” after dart after dart to just about everyone else in journalism for cutting the “legs” out from under one of the year’s most important stories.

Silence means consent.

ANTI-ANTI-DRONE WARFARE

“I have visited the UK before without incident. I have long admired British culture.”

So begins Yemeni drone warfare investigator Baraa Shiban’s description of what happened to him at London’s Gatwick Airport on September 23, published 2 days later by The Guardian.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/like-david-miranda-interrogated-british-airport

“I spent part of my education in Wales,” Shiban continues. “This time I came at the invitation of Chatham House to speak at a seminar on Yemen. Standing at passport control, bleary eyed from the long flight, I expected another routine trip.

“The border agent asked what my job is. When I explained I was the Yemen project co-ordinator for London-based legal charity Reprieve he said, ‘Sir, please come with me. We have a Terrorism Act and I have some questions I need to ask you.’"

This was Shiban’s welcome to the low-calorie version of what had happened to David Miranda, the life partner of Guardian reporter Glen Greenwald, and the business go-between for Greenwald and his investigative partner Laura Poitras.  Miranda was detained at Heathrow Airport on August 18, and dispossessed of his cellphone, his computer, and files containing more revelations by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, detailing the agency’s surveillance and other activities in the interest, the NSA would claim, of American national security.

Miranda was held incommunicado and harshly questioned by officers of the Metropolitan Police for 9 hours before being released.  Shiban’s security toss took just an hour and a half, but it shared some of the same abusive and deranged anti-terrorist assumptions that marred Miranda’s interrogation.

“The suited man quizzed me about my political opinions,” Shiban says. “When I suggested that these should have no bearing on whether I am allowed into the country, the agent threatened to hold me for the maximum extent of his powers. ‘I am authorised to detain you for up to nine hours," he said. "We have only been here for an hour, but we can be here for up to nine. So you understand what this can lead to.’

“He took my Reprieve business card and disappeared. When he returned,  … A telling exchange followed: ‘So,’ he asked, ‘does your organisation have anything to do with terrorism in Yemen?’

“I replied, ‘My organisation addresses counter-terrorism abuses inside the country.’

“‘Exactly!’ He said. ‘Why doesn't your organisation do something about the terrorism that happens in your country, instead of focusing on the counter-terrorism abuses?’

“What could I reply? Of course I oppose terrorism. But I also oppose the secret air war in my country – waged by the US, apparently with covert support from the UK and others. The drone war in my homeland has claimed innocent lives and terrorised civilians. It operates wholly outside the law, and serves only to fuel anti-western sentiment.”

I want to butt in here, to make 3 points:

1)    I agree with Shiban’s negative judgments of the American directed drone attacks against suspected Al-Qaeda operatives in Yemen.

2)    I have been impressed with the evidence he, and any number of reputable local and global news organizations have compiled, suggesting that although our targeting is intended to be selective and precise, it is often misinformed about its selections and indiscriminate in its effects.  The bottom line, any number of reports from Yemen have said, is that any tactical benefit derived from killing some “bad guys,” and I’ll agree with the NSA that the drone-missile-struck Islamist preacher and accused terrorist recruiter Anwar Al-Awlaki was a very bad guy, is negated, nay overwhelmed, by the strategic disrepute America has earned in Yemen by killing more than a few innocent, non-terrorist civilians.  One suspects, just to mention one case, that Al-Awlaki’s 16 year old son Abdurrahim, also drone-popped, in a separate attack, might not have been that bad.

3)    Whether you or the British government agree with Shiban’s conclusions, his subject is worth considering, and his evidence was bravely and professionally collected, and is essential to any rational consideration, affirmation or rejection of an increasingly important component of American and British military practice, missile-armed drones.

4)    Critically considering drone warfare is something every military, intelligence, or political official, indeed every citizen, should do, and is NOT to be confused with aiding or abetting terrorism.

If you think that distinction is obvious and can go without saying, you probably missed a Greenwald article published in The Guardian the same day as Shiban’s story of his arrest.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/sep/25/nsa-uk-drone-opponents-threats

In it, Greenwald makes public an entry identified by Snowden as being from “a top secret internal US government website,” used only by people "with top secret clearance and public key infrastructure certificates," which Greenwald notes equates “the most basic political and legal opposition to drone attacks [with] ‘propaganda campaigns’ from ‘America's ‘adversaries’”

“One specific entry,” Greenwald writes, “discusses ‘threats to unmanned aerial vehicles,’ including

1)    ‘air defense threats’,

2)    ‘jamming of UAV sensor systems’,

3)    ‘terrestrial weather’,  

4)    ‘electronic warfare employed against the command and control system’ [and]

5)    ‘propaganda campaigns that target UAV use.’”

What does this high-powered NSA analyst (I’ll bet my money these are the “thoughts” of a “Beltway Bandit” contractor) consider enemy propaganda?

One example is the idea, being pressed in the Federal courts by The ACLU and Center for Constitutional Rights, that executing American citizens, like the Awlakis, father and son, without formal accusation or trial, deprives them of their Constitutional rights to due process.

You don’t have to be a law professor to see the logic of this argument, agree with it or not, and I don’t.  But, you do have to be totalitarian or a fool to use the label “enemy propaganda” to try to preempt its presentation and discussion.

Not to say, you can’t be a totalitarian and a fool like those who tried to quash any consideration of the wisdom of continuing the war in Vietnam with labels like “Communist,” or “tool of Hanoi.”

Or the "senior American counterterrorism official" who smeared the UK-based non-profit The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, whose website says it has collaborated with such respected news organizations as the BBC, Channel 4, Al Jazeera English, the Independent, the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph, the Sunday Times, Le Monde, the Guardian, the Independent, the Daily Mirror, the Observer and the Daily Mirror.   Said this fellow, who undoubtedly has an access key to the “top secret website” mentioned above, "Let's be under no illusions – there are a number of elements who would like nothing more than to malign [drone warfare] and help Al-Qaeda succeed."

He must believe the crapulous in-house propaganda against “propaganda.”  And he’s not the only one.  Thus summer several folks in the Obama Administration conspired to deny a visa to Pakistani lawyer Shahzad Akbar, who represents family members of victims killed by US drones in a suit against the US government.

Akbar had been invited to come to the US to testify before a Congressional committee, not necessarily because members agree with his criticisms of the US drone campaign in northwest Pakistan, or endorse his arguments in behalf of his clients and their relatives allegedly killed or maimed in drone attacks, but because he has information about when and where drone attacks have occurred, and whom they killed or injured, and what the popular reaction to these attacks has been, in the affected “tribal areas,” and across the country, where every poll shows deep Pakistani hostility to the US drone campaign.

If you want to understand the leaders of Pakistan, from President Nawaz Sharif on down, something any responsible Congressperson would want to do, it is useful to hear Akbar out, perhaps even cross-examine him rigorously. But thanks to the Obama Administration, Congress, the news media, and the American people have been denied the chance.

Do you suspect that sometimes, the security apparat inflates the threat of terrorism?

Do you worry that drones kill too many civilians?

Do you think the net effect of deadly remote-controlled American attacks inside other countries’ national territory may be to alienate people over there, fuel more terrorism, and create more hatred of the US?

Someone high up in the NSA is being told that all these ideas are just "adversary propaganda themes."

In fact, the document Snowden showed Greenwald labeled  “the phrase ‘drone strike’ …a ‘loaded term,’ [designed to] ‘invoke an emotional reaction’. This, the document asserts, ‘is what propaganda intends to do.’”

Yes, Polonius, propaganda plays with people’s emotions, in large measure by limiting or eradicating their options for rational consideration.        

The Brits gave Baraa Shiban an unwarranted hard time, but they let him give his speech at Chatham House, which was probably not unlike the presentation he had been allowed to make to Congress back in May.

How’s the old song go? “It’s a long, long way from May to December, but the days grow short when you reach September.”  Too short for the beleaguered Obama Administration to permit a full discussion of the drones falling in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and soon, I’ll bet, in Somalia.

Wanna bet, at the NSA and the White House, they’ve already got a drones’ “enemies list?”

 

LIES, DAMNED LIES AND "NATIONAL SECURITY"

For virtually as long as it has been in business, the NSA's super-surveillance program has abused the US Constitution, and defied the instructions of the FISA Court which is supposed to supervise it, and lied about it, -- to the court, the Congress and the American people.

The revelation, just this week, of the NSA's persistent and dangerous misbehavior, found in the text of official rulings by FISA Court Judge John Bates in 2009 and 2011, does, in the words of the Director of National Intelligence, Gen. James Clapper, "harm to national security."

No, Director Clapper, making your lies and abuses public knowledge harms only you, and those within your organization who served you and neither the nation nor the Constitution.  Your attempt to frighten your critics by claiming your personal humilation is a national security disaster only confirms your unfitness to serve.  Resign.

The application of the "national security" label to the disclosure of Cabinet-level failure, like the gratuitous use of the Espionage Act to condemn leaker Bradley Manning, and the foolish misuse of the Terrorism Act in the UK, to trigger the detention and interrogation of David Miranda and the meaningless destruction of computers and hard drives at the office of The Guardian newspaper all illustrate a corrupt use of language by the leading American and British War-on-Terror-ists, which slimes them like an exploding bag of funny money colors more common criminals like bank robbers.

But perhaps the most meaningful revelation on the counter-the-counter-terrorists front was the one made to the Washington Post by the latest Chief Judge of the FISA Court, the widely respected Reggie Walton: (as reported by Spencer Ackerman in The Guardian) "that the Fisa court remains reliant on government assurances, rather than its own independent oversight capabilities, to determine that the NSA and the government is in compliance with surveillance law and agreed-upon procedures."

That is to say, the FISA court is dependent on a band of unrestrained, unashamed liars, and has no weapons beyond its own wits to counter them.

Every day, it seems, we learn how much must be done to bring the National Security sub-state under control and to assure that national security and the public interest are truly synonymous, and not as DNI Clapper seems to think, concepts in conflict.

LETTER TO THE U.K. --THROW THE BUMS OUT

My dear friends in the United Kingdom,

I'm sure there is nothing more annoying than political meddling from an outsider from one of "the colonies," but ...can you say snap election?

The Metropolitan Police's anti-terrorism unit's raid on the editorial offices of The Guardian, a pre-cursor to the Securi-Bobbies' Heathrow detention of Guardian investigative reporter Glenn Greenwald's partner David Miranda just revealed today, shows the Miranda detention was not just a stupid mistake, but part of a concerted, and very stupid policy: to try to crush press freedom and hide from citizens facts about what their elected leaders are up to.

To put it mildly, such actions are anti-democratic, and show the British Government's fear of and contempt for ordinary citizens.

In short, the happy chumps who Guardian Editor-in-Chief Alan Rusbridger says forced Guardian personnel to destroy computers and hard drives before his astonished eyes were also putting David Cameron's feet deep into the shite, because I have a hunch, this nano-Krystallnacht for journalists, will not go down well with the British public.

So, if I may suggest...

Step #1)  Put it to Nick Clegg and Simon Hughes -- is this the policy of a government you can still support, still accept co-responsibility for?  Suggested answer: No.

2)  After the Lib-Dems withdraw from Cameron's Government, they should immediately join Labor in asking for a special session of Parliament for a vote of No Confidence.

3)  After that vote passes, and with the support of leaders of both parties it can hardly fail, call for snap elections.

4)  Polls suggest that the popular romance with the public school boys is already over; that their version of Thatcher II has been publicly judged to be not just mean-spirited, but incompetent.  If George Osborne's profits and impunity for the lending class, and higher unemployment, lower wage scales and crimped benefits and services for the struggling class weren't electoral burden enough, let David Cameron explain this week's security police crackdown.  It reeks of Mrs. T's bloody mix of simple-minded bossy-pants and single-minded intolerance.

5)  Even in our narrow little world of journalism, there is a fine distinction to be made.  On the one hand there are Cameron's relations with Rupert Murdoch, coddling his attempts to mislead Parliament, dominate news coverage, corrupt the cops and invade a dead girl's privacy, while professionally and personally cuddling with Murdoch's minion and mignonette, the indicted former chief editors of the late News of the World Andy Coulson and Rebekah Brooks.  On the other, there would be campaign promises by all anti-Tories to protect the freedoms of papers like The Guardian, while vigorously prosecuting the crimes of the right-wing Aussie-American publishing tycoon.

6)  I would also humbly suggest the anti-Tories demand a public airing and political reconsideration of Government's domestic spying and (shades of President George W. Bush's "lapdog" Tony Blair) enabling of America's attempts to spook everyone in the world.  Cameron has acted out the role of the "old school" elitist,  ignorant about and dangerous for the most widely-used freedom in the world, communication through digital devices.  Almost everyone, certainly almost every voter, has a computer, mobile phone or tablet and uses them to gather information and express ideas.  Therefore almost everyone can instantly recognize the futility as well as the ugliness behind trying to eradicate a message by chilling a messenger and and killing a few copies. This Government is too dumb to live.

7)  With speed and daring, its opponents can get voters to prove that.

8)  Here in the States, we don't have snap elections, but we do already have a fiery reaction, from the Tea Party Right to the Progressive Left to the unrestrained  and dishonest NSA surveillance machine.  Barack Obama will have to do much more than pay attention; he'll have to pay respect to that reaction, its logic and its values, or he will face political paralysis even worse than he experienced in his first term, and disgrace like he's never seen before.  Many have already noted Obama's kinship with the much-regretted President Richard Nixon, their paranoia about dissent, their hypocritical abuse of words like "transparency" and "reform."  But now they are revealed alike in their devotion to "imperial" Presidencies.  But where Nixon was infamous for his love for imperial fripperies like uniforms for White House servants and guards, Obama is intent on the essence of imperialism, absolute control of information and communication.  How fortunate for us, and for the world, that imperialism as as dead as secrecy and, alas, privacy.

Again, I apologise for being a buttinsky, but, unless I'm dead wrong, these are themes you'll be hearing plenty of from your own folks.

Hoping for the best,
dmarash

MIRANDA WRONGLEGS

The deer on the Scottish island of Jura got some good news.  British Prime Minister David Cameron had to call off his plans to “stalk” them because of severe pain from a “phenomenally bad back.”

Hopefully, PM Cameron is hurting even worse a bit lower down because of the grotesque bit of stalking the counter-terrorism specialists of his Metropolitan Police pulled off at Heathrow Airport.  The deer in the terror cops’ headlights was David Miranda, a transiting passenger from Berlin on his way home to Rio de Janeiro with more future headline news from the files of NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden he was delivering to his partner, Guardian journalist Glenn Greenwald.

Some secret warriors have certainly called Greenwald and his reporting partner award-winning documentary film-maker Laura Poitras a lot of nasty names.  But no one in their right mind could think of these non-violent practitioners of open-to-the-public investigative journalism as terrorists.  And when it comes to the man held and cross-examined for 9 hours, terrorist is a laughable label.  Even Snowden defies the terrorist tag.  His non-violent and public revelations have injured no one, except those whose lies and disinformation are meant to hide their own questionable use of official government power.

If breaking secrecy is a crime, and I think a case can be made that it is, Snowden’s was a misdemeanor compared to the crimes and abuses he has exposed. 

If an informed public is the absolute bedrock of democracy, then Snowden’s whistleblowing, mediated by the excellent journalism, focused interviews, and contextual background, provided by Greenwald and Poitras is among the biggest contributions of the last 50 years.

That's one reason why, for today’s London  newspapers, the Times, The Mail, The Telegraph, even The Mirror, not to mention The Guardian, this detention of an innocent traveler, suspected of no crime, threatening no persons save those frightened out of their wits by what might be in his bit of the Snowden files, is front page news. 

And the story is already showing what the news business calls, “legs.”  It will be with us for months.  Not only are opposition Labor Party leaders, Shadow Cabinet members and back-benchers demanding explanations from the police and PM Cameron’s government, but David Anderson QC, the government’s independent reviewer of terrorist legislation, told the BBC’s Radio 4 that Cameron and Co. have at least 3 non-partisan things to worry about.  'The police, I'm sure, do their best,' The Guardian reported him as saying.

'But at the end of the day, there is the Independent Police Complaints Commission, which can look into the exercise of this power, there is the courts, and there is my function.'

And it seems, the terrorism law monitor is functioning his ass off, already calling, The Mirror reported, for "'further 'safeguards' to be introduced to prevent the powers being abused in the wake of the case.

"He said Mr. Miranda’s treatment was 'unusual'.

"Mr. Anderson said: 'It seems to me there is a question to be answered about whether it should possible to detain somebody, to keep them for six hours, to download their mobile phone, without the need for any suspicion at all.

"'I hope at least it is something that parliament will look at.'"

Meanwhile, the editors at The Guardian are readying more headlines based on Greenwald’s reporting of Snowden’s revelations.  And an angry Greenwald says, now he will have a new target:  the UK.

“I’m going to publish many more things about England as well,” he is quoted in the NY Times. “I have many documents about the system of espionage of England, and now my focus will be there, too. I think they’ll regret what they’ve done.”

For 2 good reasons, (1) the Snowden information is likely to be good and valuable to anyone who cares about civilian control of national security politics, and (2) the escalation in this war to hide the truth was forced upon him, I say to Greenwald, “Go get ‘em, Tiger!”

By the way, if Cameron thinks the meaning of his police forces big mistake has gone unrecognized in the UK, let me quote a member of his home team, whose essay has gone global through the auspices of the NY Times: "Nick Cohen, a columnist for the conservative weekly The Spectator, wrote on Monday that the detention of Mr. Miranda was 'a clarifying moment that reveals how far Britain has changed for the worse.'

"Adding, 'The next time they try to tell you that the secrecy and attempts to silence legitimate debate are ‘in the public interest,’ do not forget what they did to David Miranda, because they can do it to you, too.'”

A final thought:  All of this could have been avoided, easily and completely, if anyone in the administration of American President Barack Obama had said, when given an official “heads up” by the Brits on what they intended to do to Miranda: “Gee, that’s a stupid idea.  Don’t do it.”

Instead, White House spokesman Josh Earley unashamedly told reporters, the whole thing was not America’s fault.  

“This is the British government making a decision based on British law on British soil about a British law enforcement action,” he said. “They gave us the heads-up, and this is something that they did not do at our direction, is not something that we were involved with. This is a decision that they made on their own.”

Josh, let me offer you an analogy.  Your puppy comes running happily up to you, wagging his tail, and proudly shows you your best friend’s best neck-tie half-chewed in his mouth.

The proper response is not, “Nice doggy.”  Any responsible pet owner would remove the tie, show it to the dog and in a memorable but not menacing tone, say, “No!  Bad dog!”

To do anything less makes you an accomplice, a willing accomplice. to your young pet’s foolishness.

In this case, of course, the terrorism-counterers of our oldest ally are not cute pups, but even old dogs must be prevented from new Stupid Pet Tricks.

 

MIRANDA WRONGS

THE MIRANDA WRONG

Some smart American general, I can't recall if it was Stanley McChrystal or David Petraeus said, every drone that kills 10 "militants" creates 100 replacements.

I think that's accurate, as far as it goes, but it is basically "old world" thinking. In the new world of instant and global digital communication, the world in which secrecy and assumptions of secrecy are both equally anachronistic, each attack creates not just 10 new fighters for every one killed or injured, it creates thousands, maybe millions of new enemies.

Perhaps this obvious lesson will now be drawn by the foolish security officials who detained David Miranda because he was Guardian columnist, and Edward Snowden revelation reporter, Glenn Greenwald's partner, and gave him 9 hours of "rubber room" treatment.

These apparatchiks of the formerly secret services, the ones who identify themselves to their victims, or in this case, their victim's partner, with numbers rather than names, and their very nonymous enablers like Prime Minister David Cameron, President Barack Obama, and DNI James Clapper should note, what you do is no longer secret. You can and will be held responsible by a global jury.  Think about, please.  It is well past time.

So, you may have given Miranda a hard time, and sent chills down the spine of Greenwald and his reporting partner Laura Poitras, but you have also enraged millions of once-undecideds in the ongoing war in which privacy as well as secrecy are casualties.

For Obama, the President of Faux-Transparency, this Battle of Bull Run in his war against journalism and freedom of speech further shrinks public tolerance for his performance and persona, and geometrically grows both sympathy and the audience for Greenwald and Poitras' print and video reporting.

As for OBama's crusade for East German STASI-style snitching inside America's security state, he should remember another truism of counter-terrorism: the counter-terrorists are never allowed to lose, while the terrorists need only to win once, or once in a while. Ordering everyone who works at the DOD or CIA or NSA to rat out "suspicious characters," only squeezes more secrets loose from an angry and demoralized workforce.

Few journalists will be deterred by what the Brit securi-thugs did to David Miranda, but thousands of potential visitors may divert to other places to visit and spend their money rather than support a British government which behaves so atrociously. And dozens of people who know, or investigate what Obama and Clapper call secrets will now be more motivated to make them public knowledge.