Big Brother is Watching You

[O Really]

OK, so I've inventoried my mobile,and unless there's something in there I don't know about, there's nothing I care if anybody in my firm sees. And I'm absolutely not going to carry around two devices. I spent most of a day recently tending Lady O Really's mobile, and it was a pain - even for a short time - to have two.

But on a related topic, did anyone see "60 Minutes" on "Hacking Your Phone"? http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes- ... our-phone/

Are you guys really sure it's NSA we need to worry about?

[Vrede too]

Are you guys really sure it's "Big Brother" we need to worry about?
http://www.cheatsheet.com/gear-style/5- ... ?a=viewall

Better than Google (or other hackers), if that case can be made, ain't saying much.

And you guys worry about NSA

There's an important difference: Clear Channel isn't going to use your data to arrest or torture you when the data raises vague suspicions....

Plus, most other Big Brothers aren't operating with my money, I avoid patronizing the ones I know about.

[Vrede too]

Email privacy bill unanimously passes U.S. House

The U.S. House of Representatives voted unanimously on Wednesday to require law enforcement authorities to get a search warrant before asking technology companies to hand over old emails.

The bill's prospects in the Senate remain unclear, though the 419-0 vote in the House was likely to put pressure on the upper chamber to approve it.

Under the Email Privacy Act, which updates a decades-old law, authorities would have to get a warrant to access emails or other digital communications more than 180 days old. At present, agencies such as the U.S. Justice Department and the Securities and Exchange Commission only need a subpoena to seek such data from a service provider....

[Vrede too]

Report: FBI infiltrated nonviolent protest outside Georgia army base

Overview of FBI Documents on SOAW

Seems the FBI was looking for terrorists on the wrong side of the fence.

SOA Grads Responsible For 1989 Jesuit Massacre Face Extradition, Military Officers Arrested in El Salvador
The 1989 massacre of 16-year-old Celina Ramos, her mother Elba Ramos, and six Jesuit priests in El Salvador, that galvanized opposition to the U.S. relationship with Central American death squads and that sparked the movement to close the U.S. Army School of the Americas, is making headlines again. (page 3)

[O Really]

So we're saying that the U.S. Army School of the Americas taught these guys the skills to kill kids, grandmas and priests and then they applied those skills 19 years later? Did the SOA turn them into monsters, or were they monsters when they attended SOA? Do we happen to know exactly what is taught there? Or what was taught in 1970? Can we really show a causal relationship between the training at SOA and the massacre 19 years later?

I don't know much (anything) about SOA or Central American death squads but the juxtaposition seems a bit loose.

[Vrede too]

SOA/WHINSEC Grads in the News

Most Notorious SOA Graduates

[O Really]

So we're saying that either (a) SOA intentionally recruits people with good dictatorial potential; or (b) doesn't screen enrollees very well; or (c) has such effective training that regular military people become violent extremists.

I guess it could be any of those. Certainly some US people have gone off the violent deep end after going through US military training and related experiences. I don't know what the process is to get into the school - seems I read they get sent there by their own government/military. An original purpose was to train "commie fighters" so I suppose they might like people who are willing to violently overturn their government.

Anyway, maybe we need to close Harvard, too. http://harvardwarcriminals.blogspot.com/

[Vrede too]

It doesn't have to be either-or. All it takes is a militaristic nation with a long history of oppressing Latin America that's willing to employ and share any tactics to further its interests and the rest falls into place, which also explains your link. Shrub's move to hands on torture wasn't the big leap from the decades of proxy torture that many people think.

Give Yale some due, Hillary endorsed the coup in Honduras.

[O Really]

Well, I don't know enough about the training to have a real understanding of its purpose, how the purpose might have changed, or the real-life results of the training. If 19,000 people take the training and a hundred or so turn into dictators and granny/priest killers, it doesn't seem to be that easy to draw a causal relationship. But in broad brush, it doesn't seem unreasonable that if South/Central American countries are going to be banana republics to offer training to whatever side is in US interests. Maybe when the US completes its transition to banana republic some of them will return the favor.

[Vrede too]

"a hundred or so" is a vast underestimate. One only has to look at what the countries they've come from have done. Clearly, advancing democracy and human rights is not an SOA priority.

"if South/Central American countries are going to be banana republics" implies no US role in that outcome.

[O Really]

I wouldn't know the real count. I just looked at the lists and thought a hundred or so was too many. What-ever. But do you disagree that it's reasonable to take sides in fights that have an effect on the US, assuming "taking sides" doesn't include sending US military. But things like selling supplies or providing training is inherently a bad thing?

[Vrede too]

There weren't always "sides", sometimes it was just internal repression. Yes, I think providing training for dictators, death squads and human rights abusers, including training in how to repress, is inherently a bad thing. It's even a bad thing from a jingoist's point of view. In the long term having whole populaces hate us for sponsoring their repressors hurts US interests.

[O Really]

"dictators, death squads and human rights abusers" aren't necessarily all bad. I'm pretty sure a lot of people in places like, oh, "the Iraq," were having a better life when Saddam was still running the place. Probably depends a lot on the alternatives. If it's angels and devils, pick the angels and maybe they'll be better at some version of democracy and human rights. If it's devils and devils, sale of democracy and human rights would be pretty tough.

[Vrede too]

Oligarchs and juntas vs. the poor and middle class was the usual, still is in Honduras.

Reagan/Bush facilitated Saddam use of chemical weapons. You okay with that?

[O Really]

It's kinda hard to find any good guys among the crowd of Iran with Khomeini, Iraq with Hussein, Reagan, Bushes, Cheney. But to the specific question or chemical weaponry, no, I'm not okay with that.

[rstrong]

Reagan/Bush facilitated Saddam use of chemical weapons.

Not really. That's one of those things that sounds truthy, but isn't.

Wikipedia: Iraq chemical attacks against Iran: Background
Wikipedia: Iraqi chemical weapons program

Yes, "According to Iraqi documents, assistance in developing chemical weapons was obtained from firms in many countries, including the United States, West Germany, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, and France. A report stated that Dutch, Australian, Italian, French and both West and East German companies were involved in the export of raw materials to Iraqi chemical weapons factories."

But it was almost entirely European, the bulk of it from Germany.

As part of Project 922, German firms helped build Iraqi chemical weapons facilities such as laboratories, bunkers, an administrative building, and first production buildings in the early 1980s under the cover of a pesticide plant. Other German firms sent 1,027 tons of precursors of mustard gas, sarin, tabun, and tear gasses in all. This work allowed Iraq to produce 150 tons of mustard agent and 60 tons of Tabun in 1983 and 1984 respectively, continuing throughout the decade. All told, 52% of Iraq's international chemical weapon equipment was of German origin. One of the contributions was a £14m chlorine plant known as "Falluja 2", built by Uhde Ltd, a UK subsidiary of a German company; the plant was given financial guarantees by the UK's Export Credits Guarantee Department despite official UK recognition of a "strong possibility" the plant would be used to make mustard gas. The guarantees led to UK government payment of £300,000 to Uhde in 1990 after completion of the plant was interrupted by the first Gulf War.

[Vrede too]

I chose "facilitated" carefully.

Reagan/Bush obfuscated and delayed international recognition and condemnation of Saddam's use of chemical weapons in the Iran-Iraq war, which had been confirmed by November 1983 and strongly suspected earlier.

History lesson: When the United States looked the other way on chemical weapons

I'd call that facilitation given that the attacks continued for years afterwards, including supplying battlefield intelligence on Iranian troop buildups to the Iraqis on through to still rejecting sanctions after the chemical weapons attacks against Kurdish resistance forces in 1988.

[Vrede too]

Somewhat related - just stumbled on this while reorganizing files, from the 2/13/1984 Newsweek:

Ronald Reagan's insistence that "you can't have social reforms while you're having your head shot off by guerilla forces that are armed and supported by the Soviet Union and Cuba" prompts the question: How does Reagan expect the Nicaraguans to institute social reforms while having their heads shot off by guerilla forces that are armed and supported by the United States and Honduras?

-- me and a friend

[Vrede too]

“We can certainly argue about the way in which Snowden did what he did, but I think that he actually performed a public service by raising the debate that we engaged in and by the changes that we made. Now, I would say that doing what he did – and the way he did it – was inappropriate and illegal.”

-- Eric Holder

So, if something is a public service and it leads to positive changes, is it the problem or is the problem with our laws and our definition of inappropriate?

[O Really]

I guess you could look at it either way. If you look at it only from the standpoint of bad law and definition of inappropriate, the next time somebody shoots a child molester we'd have to make vigilantism legal.