Birds Gotta Fly, Fish Gotta Swim, Liars Gotta Lie

{VERY IMPORTANT MESSAGE AT THE END OF THIS ESSAY!}

“National Security” Agency boss General Keith B. Alexander used a Senate Appropriations Committee hearing to claim that the just-exposed NSA spy programs had foiled “dozens” of so-called “terrorism threats”- not all of them in the U.S. Funny that the oppression establishment waited three days to make this claim. And just what constitutes a “threat”? Sounds like something less than a plot, say, much less an actual action. [1]

Anyway there is no reason to believe him, especially about such a vague claim without any details. Who knows what he's talking about?

Experience shows us that when they claim to have foiled “terrorist plots,” there's a lot of exaggeration involved.

And the secret police bosses lie every single time they make a public statement.

Yet the establishment media, which must know better, accords a presumption of believability and authority to these liars' statements.[2]

He also claimed Congress “authorized” his activities- even though “Congress,” that is, MOST MEMBERS OF CONGRESS, have NO IDEA what the NSA is up to. And the few who know more than most, the members of the so-called “Intelligence” Committees in the House and Senate, are not allowed to tell anyone what they know, including other members of Congress, on pain of imprisonment.

Alexander also repeated the same lies that others in the Obama regime are spouting, including Obama himself, claiming he welcomes “debate” - putting out lies and propaganda when caught is what they call “debate.” Alexander actually had the nerve to say “We aren't trying to hide it.” WHAT!!!

Like I say, the man has no credibility. It's like someone saying the world is flat.

Another whopper was his claim that the NSA is “protecting this nation and our civil liberties and privacy” under the alleged “oversight” of the “courts” (the secret rubber-stamping judges of the FISA court) and Congress. [My italics.] Congress conducts no meaningful oversight over secret police and secret military activities, which has been proven over and over for years now. The NSA's blatant violation of Americans' rights and illegal spying (now “legalized” at least to some degree by the FISA rubber-stamps, which for some reason the Bush regime couldn't be bothered to obtain) is what forced NSA whistleblowers like William Binney, Thomas Drake, and others to complain internally and finally to Congress, resulting in FBI terror raids on their homes and heavy criminal charges, which they were eventually, at great expense and energy and psychic wear and tear, able to escape from, thanks in part to their visibility and political support from concerned citizens.

FBI secret police chief Robert Mueller also chimed in today, with the standard “national security” and “protection” racket bullshit.

Senator Dianne Feinstein, chair of the Senate “Intelligence” Committee, participated in the pacification track of the oppression establishment's response to the disclosures, claimed that the telephone records secret vacuumed up under the particular program Snowden revealed involving those records, are destroyed after five years. Believe her if you want.

Feinstein also let slip that the purloined data records aren't used just for counterterrorism. No kidding.

There are four main tracks to the eatablishment's counterattack. One track is justification of the spying, couched both in terms of protection of the American people and of “national security,” and claims of legality and oversight. Second is piteous cries of grave harm to their power to spy- absurd on its face, yet this claim persists. A third track is pacification, issuing soothing words like Obama's “no one is listening to your phone calls,” a completely disingenuous and dishonest claim typical of Obama. No, this particular NSA spy program doesn't collect the voice content of the calls. That is done under other programs. And of course various secret police and regular police agencies listen to the calls of many tens of thousands of people every year.

More pertinently to this particular spy program, the information contained in the metadata in fact is incredibly intrusive, as some people concerned with the increasing evisceration of civil liberties and privacy have pointed out. Dianne Feinstein and others contributed to Obama's minimization by claiming the NSA is merely taking the same stuff as is on your phone bill. (You might want to check your bill to see if it shows your location for every call you made and the location of the other party for every call, among other things that ARE NOT on your bill that the NSA is collecting and saving.) [3]

The fourth track is reviling Edward Snowden, calling him a traitor, and includes character assassinations by the likes of David Brooks and Thomas Friedman in their New York Times columns, and by Jeffrey Toobin, one of these fake New Yorker magazine liberals. [4]

Another liar, vicious GOP Congressman Peter King from Long Island, NY, slandered Glenn Greenwald, the Guardian columnist who broke the story, claiming Greenwald threatened to reveal the names of covert CIA officers. Greenwald called that a lie, and referenced King's support for the Irish Republican Army, officially a “terrorist” organization. King is a guy who revels in murder, wants to murder Julian Assange, and was glad to see the murder of the 16 year old son of Anwar al-Awlaki by U.S. drone, along with his teenage cousins, in a restaurant two weeks after al-Awlaki's assassination.

Murdoch's propaganda organ Fox “News,” provided the platform for King's smear. King also called for the prosecution of Greenwald and other journalists who publish the information revealed by Edward Snowden, the former Booz, Allen Hamilton Corp. systems administrator who “went rogue.”

By the way, “national security” is code for U.S. power. That is very important to remember whenever you hear them invoke that term.

1] Alexander is also the commander of the U.S. Cyber Command, the military arm that conducts cyberwarfare, both offensive as against Iran, and defensive, as in trying to stop Chinese cyberespionage.

2] Apparently I'm not alone in my doubts about the veracity of Alexander. The NY Times described unnamed members of the Appropriations Committee as “skeptical” during his testimony. [“N.S.A. Chief Says Phone Record Logs Halted Terror Threats,” 6/13/13, p. A18.] No word if he was testifying under oath.

The article also quoted former high ranking secret policeman Philip Mudd saying it's very hard for “terrorists” to function without using electronic communications, and that there's no way to do that without leaving a digital trail. So much for the “grave damage to our capabilities” line James R. Clapper, Jr, Obama's mendacious Director of National Intelligence is pushing, as are others. He's the guy who lied in Congress in March when Senator Ron Wyden asked him to his face if the NSA was collecting Americans' data and he said no. Now he says that lie was the “least untruthful” answer he could have given, whatever that means. These people never cease to amaze with their shifty circumlocutions.

3] For more on the uses of metadata and the long corporate media coverup of the massive NSA spying, these are good starting places with a number of links: Daily Kos, and the Government Accountability Project. Also Jesselyn Radack has been giving interviews on this topic. (She's a lawyer who represents persecuted whistleblowers. She had her consciousness raised when she was at the Department of “Justice” and warned that John Walker Lindh shouldn't be interrogated without his lawyer, and shouldn't be tortured. Of course both were done, and then she herself became a target of persecution, criminal investigation, and was put on the no-fly list. Some of the details of her persecution are at Wikipedia; also in interviews at democracynow.org.

4] One key leg of the character assassination of Snowden is sneering at his lack of a high school diploma. Thus do these bourgeois professional polemicists insult millions of people who never graduated high school. I guess those millions are collateral damage in the propagandists' smear campaign. Nothing like a little class snobbery by bourgeois blatherers.

Ironic thing is that a good number of the very smartest people leave the U.S. educational system before graduating high school because of its mind-numbing, stultifying nature. But as far as these privileged prattlers are concerned, they're all losers. Economically, most high school “dropouts” are, but not Snowden: he was making a low six figure salary before the age of 30.

{PSST! Buddy! Over here! I got a secret to tell you....

There's this special box on the top of this webpage. You put in your email address, click Submit, and you get confidential messages that the FBI and the CIA reads and the NSA collects and stores. And you can read them too! They tell you whenever there's a new essay posted here.

What? I told you. The top of the page. On the right side. I said, it's called “Follow By Email” I told you that already. Yes I did. I did so tell you! Well I'm telling you now, OK?! Don't be such a ballbuster, I'm doing you a favor here!! What are you, an ingrate? Hey, I didn't have to tell you!! Don't tell me to take it easy!!! Who do you think you're dealing with!!!! Okay Okay I'm calm I'm calm! Just hurry up and do it before they take it away. Whadda ya mean, “Who's gonna take it away?”! WHOEVER! DON'T ASK SO MANY QUESTIONS AND JUST DO IT, OK?

Sheesh! Some people just like to be difficult!}