Wired State

"Your government murdered far more people than Stalin"

You know, if I could do just one thing to fix US 21st century public diplomacy and counterintelligence, whatever it takes, it would be to fix this: make it so that the world's Internet idiots get some pushback at the very highest and deepest levels on this notion that "the US has killed the most people in the world".

The US has never killed "the most people in the world" -- not in the past, not now. That dishonour belongs to the Soviet Union, who has committed the world's worst mass atrocities -- bar none -- totalling some 50 million people; there are 6 million people killed in the Holodomor or terror-famine alone, and millions who executed or worked to death in the GULAG, not to mention entire "punished peoples," like the Crimean Tatars, stuffed into trains and sent to remote exile, dying along the way.

Ernst Ametistov, the Constitutional Court judge, a colleague of ours who died some years ago, once described to me how, as a small boy living in evacuation himself in Kazakhstan, he saw the bodies thrown off trains like that into the snow.

Even Yegor Kuzmich Ligachev had to admit that when the spring thaw came in Sverdlovsk, the river always turned up bodies from the mass graves...

Dmitry Prigov, God rest his soul, had a macabre poem that went something like this, "Here a corpse, there a corpse, everywhere a corpse corpse."

The Soviet Union was entirely built and maintained on people's bones -- millions upon millions of them.

The strange meme that you meet on social media -- especially from people who should know better, like people who live in the former Soviet Union -- that "America has killed the most people in the world" is in part a result of the Kremlin's active measures and agents of influence. But it's also simply ignorance and stupidity. These people think if they see a war in front of them this minute, and the press covers American actions, then that's all there is to the story.

This stuff is so stupid, so unbelievable, that the intelligentsias of the world don't bother to counter it. They think it self-discredits. But it doesn't. More and more ignorant Internet children are appearing spouting these idiocies. Even the wars that the US is in, whether you support them or not, involve not US troops killing most of the people, but militants supported by Iran or Syria or other bad actors, and terrorists like Al Qaeda. I started this site "Not Killed By American Troops" which I only maintain sporadically just to try to have some place to park all the links -- the stories of time after time, 50 people, 40 people, 100 people, 20 people killed in terrorist bombings -- and no one cares. No one wrings their hands. Nobody talks about the murderous terrorist policies in Pakistan and Afghanistan. No one condemns them.

They are "other people's civil wars" at best -- and then someone we are still to be blamed for them by showing up.

I'm for having an office in the State Department that does nothing but stop this meme in its tracks. I'm dead serious. It's becoming a national security disaster. If the Tsarnaev brothers grow up on the Internet watching Youtube and reading stupid comments and fora like this Facebook discussion, they believe that "America has killed the most people in the world" - and then they think their actions are justified. Jihadists in Africa and Asia think the same thing. They imagine they are in a just war. Most people never even stop to realize that more people were killed in Chechnya and the North Caucasus in 10 years -- by a very long shot -- than were ever killed in Israel/Palestine in the intifada years or following. Yet they got 1/100th the attention. I'm for stopping this. I'm really sick of it.

• October 26 at 5:01pm · Like
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  Barrie Hebb I live in the former soviet union - you idiot!! And I would accept these republics over your country any day!!!!! Your government murdered far more people than Stalin - not that this makes Stalin okay - both are wrong. But come on - democratically - Putin has oddly won a democratic contest in a way that no US president ever has - and this is sad - for Russia and for the the USA. Your country has murdered and raped far more people than it has helped - and that is no excuse. That you can name some people does not matter - those the USA has harmed - there simply is no excuse. And i do not hold the USA to a higher standard than Russia - those Russia has harmed I have also spoken against - civilization knows no boundaries.

  47 minutes ago · Like
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  Barrie Hebb By the way Catherine - you forget that the Taliban has been sponsored and financed by - you guessed it - the USA - you are completely brainwashed by the Tea Party you belong to - and you are, I assume, older than 18 and capable of reading - yet you make no use of it. And also the Al Quaeda network is also well financed by, you guessed it - the USA - and event he CIA admits this - I do not get your enemey list at all. And Iran has been more than helpful to the USA- they have picked up the tab for the reguees - more than 2 million - as a result of the USA attack on an innocent country - Afghanistan - which never harmed anyone - Iran paid for everything - and they never ever ever attacke danyone int he past 100 years - unlike the usa - which has invaded illegally 75 % of the worlds coverage - and raped , murdered, pillaged - people after people. Burned the skin off children in Japan and m,any other countries. You should be ashamed of yoruself for defening such terrorists. Really. In my mind you are a vicious- stupid - terrorist ideogue - willing to see anyone who disagrees with the myth of the USA destroyed. This is why I rightfully cited you as a neo-Nazi before - and now - more than before - I remain completely convinced you are a menace to civilization. I wish you had the opportunity to got school, get an education, and perhaps even meet people who are non-white - then maybe you would have a different view.

  40 minutes ago · Like
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  Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick @Barrie Hebb, Um, no. Even Wikipedia will explain to you that the US didn't "finance the Taliban" and certainly didn't finance Osama bin Ladn. When *your friend* the Soviet Union committeed a *mass crime against humanity* and massacred MORE THAN A MILLION civilians in *their war*, the US did indeed help some mujahedin fight back. Good! It's like Syria today. There is a certain moral thing to do here. If you don't want rebels to become radical anti-American Islamists, you need to have a hand in. The US response was so late and so small it did little to affect the outcome of the war -- in which, as I said, in case you're still having comprehension problems, MORE THAN A MILLION people were killed. I don't belong to any Tea Party, that's ridiculous. I'm a registered Democrat. I voted for Obama the first time, and didn't the second time, making a protest vote to Romney particularly over foreign policy issues like Russia. As for your silly conspiracy theories about Al Qaeda, what do you read, infowars? anti-war.com? Or some other crazy conspiracy site? Afghanistan is not an "innocent country" when it harboured the people who committed a crime against humanity on 9/11, massacring 3,000 people and injuring numerous people and causing millions of dollars of damage. No, international law accepts that in that case, the victim gets to respond. You didn't see Lavrov weeping over that. As for your notion that "Iran picked up the tab," the US has funded refugee care for years, and Pakistan bore the brunt -- and they are no angels, as it is their secret police supporting the Taliban all along as everyone know. The OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of civilians killed in THIS war were KILLED BY THE TALIBAN and its allies -- 85% according to the UN. The other 15% are by Karzai and his allies. The US slice of this is miniscule. It's bad enough, but utterly dwarfed by the Taliban. Your bland and blind acceptance of THEIR raping, murder, pilllaging is just breath-taking. Even Michael Anderson would concede the Soviet massacres and the Taliban massacres and not wake up crap about the US being the problem. As for burning the skin of children, I'm glad you care so much about little children. The US using the atomic bomb against militarist Japan is indeed a grave crime. Of course, it was response to all kinds of grave crimes as well, including the rape of the "comfort women" and of course murders of many. And if you care about little burned children, we missed you in Laos and Vietnam and Cambodia where the Soviets and their allies used chemical warfare -- or doesn't your memory stretch back that far? I'm hardly a neo-Nazi. A person who doesn't believe your Soviet communist views is a liberal, not a Nazi. I've had an education, and guess what, including in Soviet Russia where I heard this first hand. You're too young to reiterate Soviet propaganda circa 1970. Free your mind, your ass will follow.

  12 minutes ago · Like
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Joshua Foust is Playing the Game

There he goes again.

Joshua Foust has styled himself as the "anti-Greenwald," criticizing the Snowden leaks, and as far as some gullible media is concerned he is "the only one" doing this -- because of course the bloggers he cribs from like Streetwise Professor or Jeremy Duns or me or LibertyLynx or anyone else on Twitter don't matter.

And that's as it should be, in a way, as tweeting and blogging shouldn't matter as much as mainstream or liberal/left established media -- except here's the thing. To get published in Business Insider or The Atlantic or Talking Points Memo, you have to tack left when the tacking is noticeable -- just enough to establish cred, and you have to tack pro-Administration when that's required -- and that can be understood as "progressive" (pro-Obama) or "establishment" (but hey, not neo-con).

It's quite a game, and Foust is getting better at it, but it still hasn't landed him a job. I'm confident it will eventually, and we should all wish for that -- indeed, we should all be sending out Foust's resumes to any job openings -- because an unemployed and increasingly rabid and desperate Foust is not good for civil society. This is like the problem of unemployed Soviet nuclear engineers. Make sure they're adequately employed, and under supervision!

So Foust's expert tacking with every passing wind of doctrine isn't just about holding one's finger to the wind and moving about like a weather vane, although Foust can do that, too. This is a method -- and a method he used to his advantage on the drones issue.

Oh, you human rights activist emos! You shouldn't be against those innocent, even effective non-animated machines, he would opine. If you don't like drone collateral damage -- and who does! -- why, go back to the policy-makers in Congress. THEY are the problem. After all, the military is just following its civilian guidance.

That way he can excuse himself from ever confronting the moral imperatives around unmanned weapons and remote control, and also never have to confront military commanders, either.  Oh, it's the American people. They're to blame.

In the same way, as we can see from this highlighted quote in the Verge, he plays the Snowden story. Oh, yes, Snowden=bad -- and even Snowden=bad with Russians. But, well, if you don't like the NSA, well, reform the NSA or go to their masters -- oh, Congress again.

Why, if Clapper lied, why, try him for contempt of court. Of course, Foust doesn't come clean on whether he himself believes Clapper lied, but just by tagging that base, he can get street cred with all those people in Twitterland who do think he lied. That's how it works!

I don't think Clapper lied. When I watch the tape, I see a tired man with his head down who has been barraged with questions that aren't of his doing and even of Congress' initiative, but which came about because -- as I put it on Twitter - a coup. The idiot @jmcest (what a name!) and his friends contemplated whether the US military was active on US soil now and could the NSA powers lead to a military coup.

Well, a contractor for the NSA -- which is a military agency when all is said and done, it does SIGINT -- on his own initiative or with secret others we don't know stole data and leaked it with a band of anarchist coders, film-makers and adversarial journalists. That is a coup. The coup already happened. And it was from inside, even if not very high up in the palace. The plumber, if you will -- but a plumber with a top view of all the kitchens and bathrooms and keys to them all. And now they've set up a revolutionary junta and they are deciding all matters of domestic and foreign policy, when and as they please -- the rest of us can only play catch-up.

Who is deciding foreign policy  now? Obama? Kerry? Power?  None of them -- not when Glenn can spin the dial and decide today it's France who will be mad; tomorrow it will be Spain. Will it be the Netherlands the next day?

Foust pretends to oppose this arbitrary Greenwald rule, but he doesn't see it so starkly, because he imagines a reformed NSA with a place for himself in or around it -- so he himself becomes part of what undermines the NSA in the name of reform -- and by selectively telling the story. If the currents are such that "everybody" is clamouring for reform -- even people inside the NSA that themselves leak to journalists -- then Foust will chime in. If "everybody" decides that the NSA has to be locked up tighter, he will fall mum, too.

I don't think Clapper lied, because he answered "no" to the question of whether the government was keeping dossiers on Americans. The government is not keeping dossiers on Americans. It is targeting some persons of interest in terrorist or other criminal cases. It is doing due dilligence tracking enemies, and that means foreigners with ties to the US. In the process of doing this, yes, Americans' phone meta-data is swept for matches. So what? This does not intrude on the privacy of the phone call. If the government has metadata about whom I've called or emails and found that, oh, it's six jumps away from Anna Chapman or even Edward Snowden, this hasn't impacted my freedom of speech or movement. There's no evidence that the government has used that capacity or read the jumps with human intelligence or dipped into the emails or phone calls further. And that's just it -- there's no story here until Team Snowden comes up with a case.

So Foust makes it sound like he's for bashing Snowden but also reforming the NSA -- and that plays nicely into the position that former NSA officials John Schindler and Tom Nichols have maintained about reforms that are needed -- except it's not quite the same thing (because Foust is opportunistic, and they aren't -- they speak from deep experience. Foust was not in intelligence; he was a defense contractor, which is different). And I get where the former NSA professors are coming from because they know a lot more of the innards that we civilians do. They can speak knowledgeably about reform while remaining loyal to their oath and their country. Greenwald cannot. What I appreciate about the two former NSA men is their deep understanding of our real and formidable enemy Russia and the inroads the Kremlins has made.

As Michael Weiss put it beautifully today:

Russia wants a port in Egypt, arms sales to Iraq, a nuclear plant in Jordan, new arms sales to Iran, Assad forever. The US wants a puppy.

— michaeldweiss (@michaeldweiss) October 28, 2013

 

But every time anyone hobnobs and retweets Foust, they are ensuring that an unprincipled person gets that much closer to employment in or near our government, and that's worrisome -- but for the mandate of finding Foust employment -- and a proper menter -- as a public necessity.

Even if Clapper turns out to have "misled" people or felt regret that he didn't explain himself in the way his interlocutor wanted him to, it would really, really be a stretch to charge him with "lying". After all, "lying" suggests preparation, stealth, concealment, subterfuge -- and all Clapper did was answer the question immediately, the best he knew how under the circumstances. When he felt that it was misleading later, he doubled back to clarify, even if it made him look bad. That's why I respect him. I'm sorry he felt he had to do that, but that's not a case of "lying" for me. It's a case of having a secret agency that did secret things -- rightfully so -- which are now being questioned *by force* by a kind of junta now in power over it. Yes, that's how we should see it.

Perhaps Foust thinks collection of metadata should end. I don't. If it was useful in tracking Muhtorov, good! But of course, Foust doesn't agree that Muhtorov is a legitimate case. And that's another example of his gaming the system and his methodology -- he says just enough to gain the street cred of all the progs and terrorism-minimizers in Washington, DC by sounding "outraged" that someone be arrested "Interneting while Muslim," but then if it turns out he is found guilty, and found guilty with FISA intel, why, he'll just tell everyone they should go back and change the law and have better oversight. Yes, you have to be nimble to keep shifting focus to the particulars of one case to the generalities of how the system might change but memory is short on Twitter.

Then Foust concludes with an airy and superior little dig at Congress -- which is always the easy target to blame because he's never had anything to do with Congress, doesn't anticipate looking for work with Congress, and doesn't care about Congress:

But as long as Congress is comfortable giving national security agencies a free pass on those issues, we’re unlikely to see any change coming out of it.

But Congress isn't giving a pass. Foust himself today highlighted Dianne Feinstein who was described as "driving a bus" over the NSA -- and then backing up and driving over again.

Why? Because she conceded that the NSA shouldn't have been spying on heads of state. I'm not sure she's right about that - and I don't believe for a minute this nonsense about Obama not knowing for five years or five minutes. He gets intel briefs and of course is aware of the chain that produces them.  The NSA is merely falling on its sword here to save the president, which is about saving the American people's trust. I don' t know if they should bother because Obama does not have that trust.

The NSA was doing its job, and at some point, the political leadership has to say, "We're sorry this is so unpleasant, but you do it, too, and ultimately, you guys in Europe do have to choose and stop having it both ways. Either you're for Israel or Palestine (ok, right, you've chosen Palestine, so noted, okay, you are our adversary then). Either you're for us or for Russia (okay, we noticed that already, so -- enjoy!"). And so on...

Now here's where it will be interesting to see what Foust does -- the Muhtorov story. In his old job as Central Asian expert, which meant full-time tweeting, posting on Registan frequently and appearing on Al Jazeera -- and occasional security paper-writer for American Security Project, his nominal day job -- Foust took the position that Muhtorov was unlawfully arrested. The government had no probable cause. If they used intelligence they got without a warrant, secretly, then the case was no good. Throw it out, because the IMU is a nothing, he said.

In his new position as freelancer aspiring to land a real intelligence/security job, Foust probably won't be so reckless. After all, he can't sound like an intelligence expert and a security expert if he completely discounts what the FBI or NSA or anybody has done on this case. So what will he say? He's likely to wave his jazz hands and say that if people don't like the outcome of the Muhtorov case, or the fact of his arrest, why, go back and blame the Patriot Act and other anti-terrorist legislation and the NSA "unreformed" practices. We're not likely to hear stories of "Interneting while Muslim," however, from him anymore.

Let's see.

Should Glenn Greenwald Be Arrested?

One of the more important texts to emerge in the debate over newsroom objectivity. Ever. @ggreenwald and Bill Keller: http://t.co/26Cosf4LHB

— Jay Rosen (@jayrosen_nyu) October 28, 2013

 

Really, Jay?

Then I see Dan Gillmor warbling about how journalism has to be defined as a verb (!).

 

People who should know better keep insisting that we have to define who's a journalist. Define journalism instead. http://t.co/3KVpMitPhM

— Dan Gillmor (@dangillmor) October 27, 2013

And that's when I figure out better what this is really about: guild envy. That is, Greenwald has been dying to be accepted into the journalism guild -- it's like he took the job at Wachtell just to prove that he could get into the top law firm --- then quit it, to show that he was "above" that "corporate evil." Both Gillmor and Rosen have always suffered from guild envy. And I think it works in reverse -- Bill Keller at some level is desperate for a kind of street cred  -- he doesn't want the activist journalists to call him a sell-out, so he agrees to take ill-advised meetings with WikiLeaks operatives that make him and his employer look bad, and he agrees to put Greenwald in the newspaper, which he shouldn't have done.

I'm not for legitimizing Democracy Now! activism as journalism. Let Omidyar fund it until it collapses of its own weight.

As for the twitterati commentariat, Jay Rosen was a journalist for a brief period before he went into criticizing and teaching journalism and starting a boring politically-correct journalism project for students. Dan Gillmor also is a former journalist who failed with a politically-correct journalism project that had attracted investment before it bombed. Both of them have a grudge. Gillmor in particular is infamous for wanting to change language in order to change thought and make it more politically correct.

These progresses sneer at a liberal like Bill Keller, and so they're rooting for Greenwald, whom they worship.

The exchange between Keller and Greenwald is actually kind of dull -- you wonder if the Times is desperately trying to stay relevant and have traffic by putting in a byline of "the star" of "the journalism". You wonder if in fact Greenwald was edited -- or manicured his usual blistering prose to ensure he wasn't edited with his "journalism." Actually, adversarial journalism, which is what Greenwald now calls it -- which is like martial to music and people's to democracy, you know, if you have to put in an adjective, you're already taking away its true essence.

Here's what I put -- and the Times didn't let it through because commenting on their journalistic craft never get through, even on a meta column like this:

What the Times does most of the time, which I value, is not occupy "the view from nowhere" as Jay Rosen so scornfully calls it, nor does it achieve some mythic impartiality; rather, it presents 4 or 6 perspectives and sources in most stories *so that the reader can judge for herself*. That's really important -- having a variety of perspectives and streams of information to *judge for yourself*. That's how the Times builds up credibility, and it goes below its standards when it fails to put in critics, i.e. on stories about Snowden.

Meanwhile, Glenn Greenwald bludgeons the reader with only one perspective -- and makes it a moral imperative to believe -- or else. He picks up the cudgel of Dan Gillmor and others on the use of the word "torture" re: whiteboarding. The Times reported accurately that the Bush Administration did not consider it torture. Yes, human rights groups and UN bodies consider it torture, as I do. But not everyone does, and the Times reflected that. If it were up to the PC, the Times would have to use judgmental language for many phenomena to please this or that constituency.

This long-winded exchange doesn't go to the heart of the matter, which is that WikiLeaks and Greenwald have intimidated the Times, and they feel they have to placate them with exchanges like this. Instead, they should be asking why Greenwald never tells the story of his first contacts with Snowden the same way twice:

http://3dblogger.typepad.com/wired_state/2013/07/idiot-wind.html

OK, so what's it all about?

Should Greenwald be arrested? Someone asked me the other day if I'd like to see Greenwald arrested, and I said "no," because I'd like to think that reporting about issues -- even controversial ones -- is not going to lead to arrest. I'd like to think Greenwald, for all his offensiveness, has stayed behind that thin membrane, just barely.

Oh, I don't think he gets to be called a journalist at all, however. He's a lawyer-turned-blogger. What could be worse? Oh, I know, a coder-turned-lawyer. They mangle all the professions in this manner.

Journalism is an occupation. It's a guild. It's like plumbers only with words. It does take skill, it can be learned on the job but some people never get good at it. Journalists will go on being recognized and validated in a free society with a free economy in ways that Jay Rosen and Glenn Greenwald and Dan Gillmor hate: by the free market. That means good newspapers that a lot of people read like the New York Times, even with all its insecure hang-ups now, will establish what journalists are by hiring them and publishing them. You can wail and gnash your teeth, but there it is. And that's a good thing. Journalism is a commodity in a free market, and that's a good thing, too. It's the best way to keep its quality up and ensure it is free.

State-run or party-run manufactured news fails, and never sells on its own without state subsidies. And leftist PC journalism doesn't sell either because most people view it as skewed, as a political operation -- that's why the Nation has to keep pestering its readers for donations and subscriptions to cruises with Victor Navasky. I read the Nation, but I read it because it's a political journal, not the news.

So for now -- although this may change and I think it's more than fine to keep debating the question -- I'm not for Glenn Greenwald being arrested for possessing and publishing the Snowden documents, but I'm not for calling him a journalist, either. I think every day in every way we should ask if Glenn's latest antics should lead to arrest because this is how we as a free people can democratically decide our security and maintain our liberties. Otherwise, we're overrun by goons. Glenn thinks this very question is off-limits -- see his famous debates on talk shows i.e. with David Gregory  -- but I don't think we can shy away from it at all. Glenn should be challenged every day in every way about what his motives are and why he is doing what he is doing -- and what his end game is. Because he's not reporting all sides of a story, he's making the news itself.

And that's why he shouldn't be called a journalist. He doesn't deserve that. He is a radical activist serving an anarchist agenda. It's a naked struggle for power -- people forget that anarchism isn't about absence of power but about destroying existing power and letting those for whom the ends justifies the means to rush in. Greenwald put it starkly in his interview with Ken Auletta, where he does not deny that he threatened the British government with more disclosures out of spite over his husband's arrest:

The Guardian sent its lawyers to help extricate Miranda, who Rusbridger said was acting on behalf of a news outlet; he claimed that the British authorities were “conflating terrorism and journalism.” Reuters quoted Greenwald saying that British officials would be “sorry” for detaining his partner: “I will be far more aggressive in my reporting from now on. . . . I have many documents on England’s spy system.” Asked what the implications for the British government might be, he said, “I think they will be sorry for what they did.” Greenwald later told me that he had been misquoted and that he never threatened the British government. “I was stressed and angry and tired,” he said. “I was probably not as careful as I should have been.” But he added, “What I said was actually fine.”

He also explained that he was frustrated with due process and wanted to inflict damage:

Gellman and the Post produced some impressive N.S.A. exclusives, including the first account of PRISM, on which Poitras shared the byline. But Greenwald and the Guardian dominated coverage of the leaks. With stories of such complexity, a newspaper often delays publication while it meets with government officials, who try to persuade editors of the harm that would come from publication. The Guardian did seek comment from government officials about the revelations. But Greenwald, outraged by the content of the material, pushed to publish quickly. “I was getting really frustrated,” he told me. “I was putting a lot of pressure on them and insinuating that I was going to go publish elsewhere.” He helped produce five stories that ran on five consecutive days in June. “I wanted people in Washington to have fear in their hearts over how this journalism was going to be done, over the unpredictability of it,” he said. “Of the fact that we were going to be completely unrestrained by the unwritten rules of American journalism. The only reason we stopped after five days was that even our allies were saying, ‘Look, this is too much information. We can’t keep up with what you’re publishing.’ ”

That's not journalism. That's radical, destructive activity. In the name of what? Power over other people who will have fear in their hearts. No one should be having the debate about whether Glenn is a "journalist" after reading Auletta's unwitting disclosures (because it was meant to be a puff piece).

What would be the circumstances whereby Glenn should go to jail? Well, for one, if we could establigh that he didn't just receive leaks from Snowden, but directed them -- gave him ideas for what to steal. That's why I think we have to keep asking lots of questions about him, his organization Foundation for Freedom of the Press, and his accomplices, Jacob Appelbaum and Laura Poitras.

They worked directly with Snowden, and the same question has to be asked of them: did they tell him what to take? Did they give him ideas? Did Appelbaum provide technical expertise to facilitate the swiping, moving and storage of the documents?

How about if any of these parties discuss with Snowden what would be best to select out of his huge trove of 30,000 or 50,000 or however many documents? Hmm, that might qualify as aiding and abetting. It isn't just reporting. But...Obviously, one could use judgement about what to pick and choose, perhaps really leaving unpublished things like lists of agents' names. But what if Snowden has the access to the files and knows what is in them, but the others don't understand or don't see the significance, and he keeps giving them tips?

It seems to me that those helping steal and move the documents are liable to arrest and that's where Jacob Appelbaum's activities bear more scrutiny -- and he's already been questioned precisely because of this kind of relationship to WikiLeaks -- which isn't just about publishing, but is about getting, moving, and storing files.

But if a journalist did his own moving and storing, then would he be exempt? And if someone playing a secondary role in the adversarial journalism just gets and moves files, why should they be the only ones to get arrested? Or is moving and storing files a secondary activity? I ask these questions because they need discussion.

Greenwald will always remain a blogger and an activist. Not only because he threatened the US and UK and choose the most damaging files at strategic times to inflict the most damage -- that's making the news, not covering it.

Of course, the job of a journalist, according to the old aphorism, is to afflict the comfortable and comfort the afflicted. So again, Greenwald's work is just behind the membrane. And BTW, I'm for free speech that applies to bloggers as much as journalists, which is why it doesn't matter to me if he is defined as a journalist.

However, what is the limit? And what about the manner in which these disclosures are made, so as to inflict maximum damage?

For example, we don't get the full story of the Merkel telephone -- we get part of a story, and then the White House is left to scramble to compensate. But what about what John Schindler is saying, that bugged phone wasn't the one Merkel used as head of state, but used for party business, which was less secure?

I have to wonder about James Risen -- if he deliberately ran a story based on a CIA source disclosing a program against Iran, that's not just news, that's a political action on his part. Why? Because clearly this isn't just "news reporting" but he belongs to that concerted lobby of people who want to take Iran's side in the nuclear dispute, who dislike Israel and don't wish to support it on this issue, and think America should make peace with Iran, even with accommodations. This is a very political view, and not just merely covering news. The people in the White House who have leaked stories about Iran are in the same camp. This is a very aggressive and angry lobby which is really convinced they're right and simply don't see what they're doing as wrong or as a betrayal. They think the real betrayers are those backing Israel. They are vehement -- obsessive -- on this point and you can't reason with them. I know these types in the State Department; in Embassies; in multilaterals. "We have to make friends with Iran," I've been told extremely earnestly and fervently by more than one foreign service officer.

So if Risen or other journalists have weakened our country's defense by leaking things about Iran to bolster their lobby inside and outside of government and defeat the pro-Israel lobby, should they be required to reveal their source? I'm leaning towards that perspective now. That's because I think it wasn't news judgement to cover this Iran story, but part of a fervent ideological stance which is politics, not journalism. I think it's no accident that Risen then moved on to cover the Snowden story so blindly.

So why isn't ensuring the status quo of the pro-Israel lobby on Iran policy "activism"? Because it is part of maintaining the liberal democratic state and ensuring that it is not overrun by enemies of liberal democracy. That's why.

Well, why can't he fight a lobby he doesn't like, though? He can, but then, I don't think he can also demand that he remain employed at a mainstream newspaper. I think there is a public trust that the corporate media has - and that's more than fine for it to be corporate, and to have that mass trust. It doesn't bother me in the slightest that there is a liberal establishment, and one that draws the line at Amy Goodman and Glenn Greenwald. They can publish in their little publications. Pierre Omidyar's short-lived project is going to be one of those little publications. Money thrown at holes in the Internet called publications does not make people come to them -- leftist talk radio and its failures should help you understand that, and the sagging finances of Huffington Post should tell you that (I also wonder when the Grumman Northrop ads are going to help put TNR into the black, as it has been operated on a deficit in the past, too.)

So what about David Miranda? Well, he wasn't a journalist. He took the files from two other people who are activists and at best bloggers who merely got themselves bylines because they played gatekeeper -- Appelbaum and Poitras. I think it was right and proper for Miranda to be stopped with the files and to have them confiscated.

But then, what if Greenwald went around picking up and dropping off his own files? Would he be exempt? And then I circle back to wondering again if Greenwald should be arrested -- merely because of the massive size of this leak and its mega damages.

Greenwald himself is no arbiter of what constitutes damage -- and the NSA itself is never going to tell us the real extent of the damage because to do so would aid the enemy -- and I'm fine with that. But we can see the damage to foreign relations and public trust already in all kinds of fallout from the Brazilian president canceling meetings to the EU in an uproar to UN resolutions. Maybe this is a lot of froth that may die down, but maybe not. I'm waiting to see if the cloud revenue is really down or not, as the haters predict. I bet it isn't because I bet most people take the Snowden thing in stride. But perceptions can move markets and this  may be all about perception and not logic.

I think journalists and editors can't endlessly demand shields and protections and covers and then use them to behave as partisan guerillas in political warfare. There has to be a limit? Where is it? Probably only actual court test cases will determine this because I'm not sure. I don't think Greenwald deserves a blank check and a certain point, is dancing around the line between journalism and partisan warfare, and the sheer massiveness of these leaks and his very opportunistic selection and deployment of them at strategic moments -- coupled with blackmail and threats -- does beg the question. What do you think?

 

Be Careful What You Wish For, Germany, in Re-Opening ICCPR Language for Re-Negotiation!

So in response to Snowden hysteria, Germany and other EU states are mounting an ill-advised re-opening of the language on free speech and privacy long contained in the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights.

They are doing this in the form of a General Resolution that merely calls for the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to issue a report to be discussed at another session of the General Assembly so it isn't the amendment of a treaty or even a general comment on the treaty jurisprudence -- yet -- but it still is a dangerous and slippy road.

Precisely for that reason, and because the Snowden claims really have not been impartially validated by any credible body or litigated successfully anywhere, the US has fended this off several times since the Snowden story broke. Germany seemed to see reason, but now since claims have surfaced based on Snowden's stolen files  -- not proven -- that Merkel's phone was tapped, they are back at it again.

Here's the draft text obtained by Foreign Policy.

Now, be careful what you wish for.

Opening up for re-negotiation of language like this related to this long-controversial treaty honoured more in the breach than in letter or spirit by some countries like Russia, Iran, China, Pakistan, Sudan, and Cuba is a bad idea because it enables enemies of free speech to come in the door and undo the hard-won progress of decades.

Waiting in the wings with great glee is the Organization of Islamic Conference (OIC), or the Arab League, which has been trying to undo freedom of speech for years, in the Third Committee of the General Assembly and the Human Rights Council in Geneva. The OIC calls for a notion of "defamation of religion," i.e. criticism of theocratic states like their own, and seeks to punish such "defamation" -- which is essentially a blasphemy law. The US worked long and hard in co-sponsoring a resolution on these issues with Egypt which held back some of these attempts -- indeed, if the US had used this language in statements at the time of the hate film in Cairo and Benghazi, there would have been a  lot more clarity (instead, they catered to Islamists, as Obama also did in his UN speech at the time).

Basically, the that HRC resolution called for recognizing a principle of hate speech prosecution only in cases when there was "incitement of imminent violence," i.e. the Supreme Court test also recognized by other countries. So general speech, even if insulting, would not be prosecuted if it did not call for immediate violence acts (and that doesn't mean speech that insults someone and then they get violent, as happened with the hate film at the time.)

The OIC is pushing this forward and now also introducing notions of "the rights of the family," i.e. family values to also attract other conservatives.

The countries that really put surveillance on religious and political dissidents and minorities are of course Russia, China, Iran, Pakistan, Sudan, Cuba and all the other "like-minded" as they call themselves (they are dubbed "the bad-minded" by NGOs).

Led by Russia, they've all been working hard lately to undo the effectiveness of the treaty bodies that examine compliance with these UN rights covenants in a variety of ways, attacking their independence and their cooperation with NGOs.

So now Germany is simply playing to this choir.

Once you open up hard-set treaty language like this to new negotations directed politically at the US, as UN states supportive of human rights surely know, you let in the flood gates of a lot of other killer amendments. To gain the support of the OIC -- which isn't going to like language curbing surveillance of course! -- the EU may make some compromises and let in some of this "Islamophobia" stuff which is antithetical to free speech and legitimate criticism of oppressive theocratic states and Islamist terrorist groups. Or it may not in this resolution, but it will have to them compromise somewhere else with these countires in the endless horse-trading that goes on at the UN.

And then of course you may get "family values" conservative notions and suppression of press freedom in the interests of some "better world" and all the rest. This is the UN. The UN is all about the bad-minded constanlty making bad-faith efforts to pretend to be about human rights even as they kill them off. Germany should know better, but it is so blinded by leftwing anti-Americanism right now it is willing to risk teaming up with Russia and China to savage America. Let's hope America will be there when they need it for other things (migrants).

The text is also filled with problems, starting with PP7, "Noting that while concerns about national security and criminal activity may justify the gathering and protection of certain sensitive information...."  Er, "may"? Why? DOES should be the word here, because concerns are legitimate and prosecution of criminal activity including terrorism is legitimate.

With good reason, in these freedom of expression covenants there is language about "except for such limitations as are necessary to maintain public order and safety in a democratic society". This bit was added in decades ago by the Western countries to ensure that the Soviet Union and other bad-faithed actors didn't use the notion that restraints were allowed on free speech for illegitimate purposes of suppressing dissent.

Now Germany is re-opening all this and subjecting it to the same manipulation by the bad-minded.

There is also reiteration and recapitulation of rights that already exist; indeed, if you were really serious about concerns about the NSA, you would have already plenty of language to use in the ICCPR and the later resolution on the Internet at the HRC, which notes that offline rights apply online, to submit any cases or concerns about the Snowden relevations.

Indeed, if the Soros crowd -- who sponsored Frank La Rue, the special rapporteur on Freedom of Expression, and helped him draft a lot of the language of his reports which you now see migrating into this draft resolution -- were really sincere about this and not just politicking, they'd submit a case re: the Snowden claims, say, on collection of phone metadata or the tapping of EU leaders' phone calls, to the Human Rights Committee. I suspect there it would wither for lack of substantiated documentation, even with some members there ready with great zeal to try to push it through.

Precisely because they can't make their case the normal way -- they don't have a case, and the ACLU lost in law-faring on this issue already in the US courts  -- they've re-opened negotiating the entire treaty language with these proposed amendments.

If/when it passes, like so many other bad-faithed efforts at the UN (like the "right to housing" used against Israel), it will be directed only against the US -- like the High Commissioner for Human Rights' recent speech which harangued the US on surveillance without any reference to Russia, which has added only more and more features to its SORM surveillance that dwarfs what the US does, without any of the checks and balances.

Perhaps people in Washington think that the UN doesn't matter, and they can let Germany vent its spleen here, and let the whole Soros-funded gang and Frank La Rue have their way in a place where it doesn't count. I'm sure that's the sort of thinking you're getting from the cynics in the White House and State.

But the UN does matter as it bleeds out into many other venues, and and this resolution then migrates to the ITU and IGF venues and helps the bad actors take over the Internet and kick out the US.

As I said, be careful what you wish for...

Jamshid Muhtorov, Uzbek Suspect in Terrorism Case, to be Test for FISA Surveillance Intelligence

Now that Jamshid Muhtorov's case is going to be a test case for the FISA court authorization of surveillance and the use of intelligence in prosecution, I'll post some links on this blog.

I've been covering Muhtorov's case on my other blog Different Stans ever since his arrest -- here are some links.

What do we know about Muhtorov's case.

Further thoughts on Muhtorov.

Discrepancies in Muhtorov's story.

Muhtorov insists on innocence.

Leftist blog takes up his defense and I debate them.

Daveed Gartenstein-Ross at first takes on Foust, as I had, but then ultimately caves to him.

Joshua Foust calls me a "liar, lunatic, and fabulist" because I think Muhtorov was properly arrested by the FBI; outrageously blames me for Muhtorov's continued detention.

Denver Post coverages tilts under pressure from Registan.

Now the Oathkeeper nutters are taking up his case.

So some quick thoughts:

o This is a case that will now move from regional experts' and local news obscurity to national and international news -- it will suddenly become of interest to adversarial journalists like Greenwald or Natasha Lennard at Slate, as well as the radical NGOs like EFF, ACLU etc because it will fit with their agenda -- even though it doesn't and they should care more about distinguishing between terrorists and human rights activists.

o Suddenly, everyone will think that because the US was silent about human rights abuses in Uzbekistan while it depended on Tashkent for the supply route to Afghanistan, and that some of the terrorist attacks in Uzbekistan might have been faked by the government as an excuse to crack down on Muslims, that therefore, this case was trumped up. I disagree. Sometimes a terrorist helper really is a terrorist helper. Yes, the Uzbek government persecutes thousands of Muslims unjustly, which I've covered and condemned many times on my other blog. But yes, it also faces a real terrorist threat as does the US, and it's okay to arrest people helping terrorists. The wisdom is to know the difference. I trust US intelligence agencies to know that difference more than I do radical NGOs and journalists with an agenda.

o The pressure of media and NGO assault on the court in Denver may lead to Muhtorov's release, in which case I don't change a thing about my views of him -- which remain this: that he was properly arrested.

o The trial may bring out facts that will help support the government's case, or its use of the FISA intelligence will be discredited. Perhaps this will lead to Muhtorov's exoneration. That's fine, and it's always good to have adversarial defense and vindication of trial truths in favour of innocence. That will not change a thing about my views of Muhtorov, which is that he is an opportunist and exploited the human rights movement for his own agenda, and likely was doing the same thing when he got involved with the jihadists.

o There's also the very distinct possibility that Muhtorov is a police informer working for the MNB, Uzbekistan's security agency. And it may just be that the Uzbek government has cast him loose rather than defend him and get his extradition and thereby outing their informants' program. There are at least three or four other Uzbek cases in the US:  one related to Muhtorov's case who raised money for the jihadist organization; another involving a young Uzbek man who grew radicalized after emigration and stockpiled weapons and threatened to assassinate Obama who was sentenced already; and one who had a lot of jihadist Youtubes and interest in bombs that ran some training sessions with explosives that led him to be arrested - his trial has been postponed and also seems to be related to FISA evidence.

Does the Uzbek government use spies to keep tabs on emigres and influence or even harm them? Indeed it does, this is amply documented. Could that be the case here? There isn't proof, but there is a distinct possibility.

The IMU is not a fiction. It really did attack our soldiers in Afghanistan as well as sites in Germany and Uzbekistan itself. Even if it is waning, it can have its bursts of activity, just like Al Shabaab, which was also said to be on the run until it staged a horrific attack on a mall in Kenya.

I'm critical of the faction that minimizes terrorism and makes talking to terrorists a scholarly enterprise  - J.M. Berger of Intelwire and those related to him, and Joshua Foust and others still at Registan today (he and the original gang have left). Joshua Foust has completely dropped writing about Central Asia, now that it is out of fashion and out of grant money, as our troops are being withdrawn from Afghanistan and the interest in the region is dropping rapidly. He may come back to write sympathetically of Muhtorov or he may not, now that he has taken up another industry, writing critically of Snowden. That would be humorous indeed, if he wound up endorsing the arrest of Muhtorov he once blasted me for justifying -- simply because of Snowden. On the other hand, most of Foust's so-called exposes and critiques of Snowden actually end up still taking his side on various issues -- he thinks there is wrongdoing at the NSA which I don't; he thinks David Miranda was wrongfully arrested which I don't, and so on.

We'll see how it turns out.

Refuting the Smears of XXTwitterWarCommittee and Tailgunner Joe

Typical griefer effigy scene in Second Life, where my effigy is "cooked" by giant chickens,  I am given a Soviet flag and Obama poster to harass me, and various objects are copybotted. Also featured is my picture from an interview I did for Wired critical of hackers.

The lengths some creeps will go to silence you on the Internet!

Today I come back home to a slew of messages about a hate post by somebody who made a parody account against John Schindler, the former NSA analyst who is a professor at the Naval War College

This followed an attack on email, including Schindler's work email -- a guy calling himself "Tailgunner Joe" wrote to both Tom Nichols, another professor at NSA, and Schindler, for the express purpose of discrediting me.

I think what must have thrown him into a hate frenzy is that Tom Nichol simply tweeted that while there were many tinfoil hat comments in response to his recent post, I had some good analysis. Just that -- a simple tweet, hardly anything, and this hater went into attack mode.

In the emails, this creep brought up Second Life, the "AIDS journalist" video and other elements that I refute regularly in my "Advice to Google Witch-Hunters" column. It's an old story.

I thought "Tailgunner" might be one of my regular stalkers related to Second Life -- perhaps it was Taco Rubio (Charles Callistro of Louisville, KY), who served in the USAF, who was a regular inworld and outworld persecutor of me for years and years.

The picture used on my Wikipedia  -- itself a work of vandalism regularly vandalized -- and in the XXTwitterWar Committee attack -- is cropped from a series of pictures his friend Chadrick forcibly took of me, where Taco put his arm around me and Chadrick to make it look like we were "friends". We aren't, of course. I don't object to photos being taken of me because I'm a public figure and I'm for free speech, but I point out that this was a picture taken to harass me. It was taken at the Second Life Community Conference in Chicago in 2007, and Taco -- a long time antagonist because of my critical blogging about favouritism at Linden Lab, makers of Second Life -- was furious at me because I blogged about the scandals in the organizing committee. His friends the convention organizers had not only run a deficit, but tried to make the musicians sign an agreement that would basically turn over all their intellectual property rights to the orgcomm and enable them to resell it. The musicians were so furious they quit en masse, and as a result, we had no live music at the event. I was among several bloggers and journalists who covered this scandal.

This was the same orgcomm that decided to ban me from the conference for my long-standing criticism of Second Life's elite, but also this conference's mismanagement. Interestingly, when the famous tech blogger Robert Scoble, whom I had befriended on Twitter, heard about this, he denounced it as horribly close-minded in a column in the San Francisco Chronicle. Then I was suddenly restored the right to participate. I expected trouble when I got there, but it was eclipsed by other dramas -- like a Linden Lab staff person, a long time buddy of Taco's, punching out one of the top-paying enterprise customers in a bar. Yes, that was Second Life!

Taco and his pals kept a grudge, and I think he/they are the ones who created my vandalized Wiki -- not only the picture used lets me know that, but some other clues. Either he, or that Linden Lab staffer, who had long been harassing me inworld and out and who tried to "friend" me for a time but ultimately, I blocked him on Facebook because he was so creepy and violent.

I would like to think Taco has now stopped his anonymous griefing, since he has settled down with a wife and child and a steady job and has better things to do, but you never know with people like that.

If it isn't not him or one of his Phreak Radio buddies, then it could be the Woodbury University goons, of course, a California commuter college digital arts course where the professor and the students all decided to harass me for years -- again, because I blogged critically of their destructive antics inworld, racist and anti-gay attacks in the 4chan style, and also protested about their budget waste and wrote to the vice president of the college. Linden Lab seized their simulators -- not because of my protest but because of numerous other violations of the TOS which they committed and far more serious offenses -- on three separate occasions, or four, and they kept re-spawning alts -- even this week I had a bunch of them at my rental houses again with the same racist "little black boy" shtick, and particle spewing with posters of Osama bin Ladn. Lovely.

Some other candidates might be RevJimJesus who harassed me also for years on end, although I think has stopped -- and then this Mr. X, who began attacking me on Streetwise Professor's blog claiming falsely that I was La Russophobe, another blogger who is definitely not me or my alt. I do not blog with any anonymous alts; I want the credit for my blogging and I stand by my views.

The common theme of this handful of stalkers is that they want to discredit me as a thinker to others who might read my blog -- and bully me into silence. Obviously, this has never had an effect in the more than 10 years I've been blogging.

Lately, as the Internet topics I've been blogging about for years now have become more mainstream issues and even national scandals like the story of Snowden and the NSA, and as I've also expanded into blogging more about my region of expertise, Eurasia, I've picked up more hecklers (like Joshua Foust) who mine Google for stuff they can "get" on me and use to harass me -- and usually they recycle the same tired memes that I "hate gays" or "am a racist" or "am living in a psychiatric institution" -- all untrue, of course.

This latest attack feels a lot like Mr. X, who also goes by the name SenorEquis1776 and other handles, and seems plugged into the survivalists' movement. But it picks up Russian terms and Second Life memes in the way of my past stalkers, so I don't know if it is a tag-team or chance use. Lately I've noticed that some of the most vicious stalking of me in Second Life -- where a creep with a series of Woodbury/The Wrong Hands type names puts up effigies of my real-life self, with broken glasses, or bloody chopped up limbs or head, or being roasted over flames, etc. Lovely! Although those soft of attacks abated once Soft Linden (himself a creep who banned me from the bug tracker) finally got to work identifying who it was and hash-banning them.

In any event, some people tell you "not to feed the trolls" and not to reply to smears. I disagree. Even some feminists are coming to disagree these days. I'm for fighting back. Accordingly, my rebuttal:

Stop Watching Us? Ok, Maybe We Will!

Live stream web page for stopwatchingus shows a wan social media uptake.

I think we can safely conclude that the Stop Watching Us rally in Washington, DC Saturday was a flop. Says Reuters:

Estimates varied on the size of the march, with organizers saying more than 2,000 attended. U.S. Capitol Police said they do not typically provide estimates on the size of demonstrations.

AFP was a little more generous, reporting 4,500, but then, they think their president is bugged by the NSA, and they tilt left. Even so, the numbers as paltry.

Good!

One participant tweeted enthusiastically that there were already 1,000 people there even before the buses arrived -- oops, that means not that many people showed up for the buses from New York, and even a few followers told him this was a poor turn-out.

So they want us to stop watching us, maybe we shouldn't. Or maybe the Congress in particular needs to stop thinking these people represent some big force or constituency -- they don't. They have social media amplification but it's not really all that much.

9030 retweets of a livestream web page -- the main one for the event -- is a shockingly low number for something that was hyped for weeks and had all kinds of big name adversarial journalists and leftist icons and companies like Ben & Jerries pumping it - and the Libertarians as well. G+ is once again revealed to be a geek ghetto with just 1787 hits -- and there, we have to figure something else is at stake here: the great iPhone jail-breaking geek masses (1.7 million) did not rise as one to this anti-NSA cause. Maybe because too many of them work for government and related corporations and want to keep their jobs? Or maybe because they aren't convinced there's such a spy problem here and it doesn't matter?

27,000 Facebook likes is better, but still pretty small beer, given that these Facebook groups have been active since June (liberals and lefties still use FB more than other services, which must drive some of the more PC anarchists crazy).

In fact, Restore the 4th, one of many such groups with this name in different cities on FB, as one sharp-eyed twitterer named Geranimo noted, was founded on June 8th, seemingly before the Snowden affair broke into the news. Actually, Glenn Greenwald's first article based on this leak was June 6, but it wasn't until June 9 that Snowden burst into the news by revealing his identity in Hong Kong in the videotaped nterview made by Laura Poitras. Suspicious?

Well, it's one more data point that needs study, but I think the explanation is simply that the people doing Restore the 4th are the same old cadres who have been at this radical transparency/absolute encryption game for a decade -- also attacking copyright and cybersecurity -- except when they run it. That's Electronic Frontier Foundation and their related front groups like Fight for the Future, Demand Progress -- all front groups that all trace back to the same activists and donors. If they are claiming to be "grassroots" now and representing some kind of authentic public backlash over Snowden, there's the evidence that they are not:

There were signs of trouble one could see before hand, like the fact that the chair of the Restore the Fourth chair Ben Doernberg had so few followers on Twitter (about 1500), and wasted his time battling critics like me instead of being persuasive to a larger circle. And that's a good thing, when hard leftists sink of their own sectarianism, I'm not complaining. As you can see, Ben also whined about a Reuters reporter saying there were "hundreds" and not "thousands":

Ben himself barely made a tweet all day, until he started in with the browbeating. That's how you know that things went wrong. People aren't going to tweet about low turnout. Try as they did to make all the shots close-up, to disguise the lack of people, we could all see the same puppets in each shot, and see that the turn out was extremely weak -- a few thousands. Even with the ACLU paying for the busses.

Possibly Tom Watson's protest on Slate that the left had hooked up with the libertarians on this one might have cost some attendance, but I don't think so.

Still, there was a certain amount of negativity around this that cost support. Ben tried to disassociate himself from a sign that was reported on the news and on Twitter of someone carrying a sign with Obama as Hitler. Look, once they stoop that low and become that crazy, you know they can't get followers. Good! But as you can see, Ben argues that these coalitions were necessary. This is supposed to be "mature politics" unlike Occupy weirdness and freaky cultism. Except, it still comes out the same because it's just too transparently what it is: socialist agendas trying to pretend they are something else.

The good news is that Tom Watson now declared himself as a *social democrat* which is indeed a form of socialism, so that this denial that these progs are socialist can maybe begin to subside. Better that they be straight about it.

Reuters tags and descriptions on Yahoo -- not the headline -- spoke of "hundreds" and the "far left and far right" getting together. That's not what social media spinners like Ben want to see --- they use the word "progressive" so they can sound like "everybody" from Democrats to McCain Republicans.

I think that a key reason this demonstration didn't have more people is that neither Google or Jon Stewart or anything with any real mass power got behind it. If Reddit the company endorsed it, Redditors themselves didn't.

And there's another strange thing -- Glenn Greenwald only had one tweet about Rep. Russ Holt speaking ats the rally -- he didn't live tweet it or send it any greetings or boost it in any way. Other lefties like David Corn said nothing or weren't even on Twitter. Well, it's a Saturday, even the progs like to take a break with their families. Katrina  vanden Heuvel also had only one re-tweet of RT.com the Russian Kremlin-supported TV station (what else) which live-blogged it all day - she had nothing to say, either. Look at all the other "stars" on the top billing and they also just had little to say. Maybe this was because of the Libertarian thing. Maybe because of poor turnout. Or maybe they don't actually care what happens on the ground.

And yet these were the people who, starting in the summer, threatened to turn every vote against Amash's initiative to defund the NSA into a "yes". Scary!

Come to think of it, Ron Wyden didn't seem to be speaking at this jamboree. Why? Too hard left/right even for him?

Was it just poorly organized or too riven with sectarian differences, or is it that in fact most Americans aren't on the hard left or hard right and just don't care?

I think there's a larger theme here which is 2016. Soros funds a lot of these groups that run "Stop Watching Us" -- millions of his budget go to national security issue nonprofits (which means making there be less of national security in the name of "open society" -- which is what I have come to see merely means the solid "progressive" line, not real openness and pluralism). But Soros is now looking ahead to Hillary in 2016. She is not as hard left as Obama -- she is not anti-business as he is, with his socialist "community organizing" training and Chicago lefty circles. And surely the Soros operatives know something maybe not so apparent --there is a huge backlash against Obama. Over so many things. Benghazi -- even the now-dismissed prog @natsecwonk questioned the narrative with his insider's knowledge -- the weird Syria whiplash, and of course the NSA and Rosen and Risen. All of it. That backlash might translate into a conservative or libertarian candidate that could prove wildly popular. Indeed, the EFF isn't stupid, either, and is building those political bridges now.

The Democrats won't be able to win again by moving to the left -- they've gone too far and are starting to meet the hard right coming round the corner. So to appeal to demographics within the Party and disenchanted GOP members, they will tack more toward the center. That's what I'm guessing. I'm not an expert on national politics though, just commenting.

I do hope we are seeing the Snowden movement fizzle out, just as we saw Occupy fizzle out. That's good news. Our country has a lot of damage to repair.

Of course, even if these people only turn out a few thousand, I still think it's worth tracking and opposing them because they are antithetical to human rights and think that ends justify means (like forming coalitions with some pretty creepy people). What I do hope is that Congress does not feel whiplashed by them and doesn't cater to them or accommodate them and realizes that Wyden from Portlandia isn't the nation.

P.S. I forgot to mention that Edward Snowden (or some facsimile) piped in a stilted message to the rally. It was yet another strangely-written piece that didn't sound like the guy we used to read on Ars Technica.

 

EU Faith in US May Be "Shattered" over Snowden, But US Pre-emptively Leaks to Show Where Bread is Buttered

A Russian journalist looking to find quotes from Americans for an article, asks:

 

He Catherine, how are? What do you think about overhearing of phone conversations of Europe leaders by CIA, Could this to change relationship between the USA and European countries? Best

To which I reply:

 

I don't run with the pack on Snowden as you surely know by now. I think it's an active measure by the Russians to stir up all this hysteria.

1) We don't know for a fact that these conversations are under surveillance.

2) Even if they are, there is very good reason to watch the French and Germans, they have grown close to Russia which continues to make itself our enemy and therefore needs containment.

3) These hysterical stories ignore the growing influence of Russia and its pervasive surveillance which has far less checks and balance and remedies and

4) the French and German spy too.

So it's nothing, and if it serves as an excuse to change the relationship, it's because the West Europeans who have already been long accommodationist to Russia now have an excuse to cave completely. Enjoy.

I'm trying hard to care about the "shattered allies' trust" and...I'm not caring. You know why? Because I get nothing but hate and sneers much of the time online from Europeans.

I studied in Canada and graduated from the University of Toronto, and I studied at Leningrad State University. So I know what it is to be an American abroad, and see hatred of Americans as a form of identity and bonding. And I think the Europeans are going through a real seizure of it now.

Let  them.

The more this goes on, the more clearly we can establish what both Snowden -- and the Europeans -- are really about. Helping Russia break up the Atlantic alliance which they see as undermining their power. Of course, undermining the Kremlin's power is a good thing, not only due to their history of mass crimes against humanity never punished, and ongoing criminality and human rights abuse, but because they continue to make us an enemy themselves in everything they do, whether threatening with nuclear weapons, kicking out USAID or halting foreign adoptions -- not to mention not cooperating in international fora and engaging in outright subterfuge (Syria). Oh, remember Syria? Is Syria saved  due to Putin's initiative?

We can see that far from being a "whistleblower's act" to help "reform" the NSA to protect privacy, we see that what all of this is about is hammering away at this alliance.

Of course, few are trying to determine if this story is even true:

The White House may soon face other irked heads of state and government. The British newspaper The Guardian said Thursday it obtained a confidential memo suggesting the NSA was able to monitor 35 world leaders' communications in 2006. The memo said the NSA encouraged senior officials at the White House, Pentagon and other agencies to share their contacts so the spy agency could add foreign leaders' phone numbers to its surveillance systems, the report said.

The Guardian did not identify who reportedly was eavesdropped on, but said the memo termed the payoff very meager: "Little reportable intelligence" was obtained, it said.

Merkel needs to posture on this for her domestic audience, of course, and that's also why she has ensured that there is not even any police questioning and quiet issuing of resident papers to two American exiles now from WikiLeaks key to the Snowden case in Germany -- Laura Poitras and Jacob Appelbaum. The US doesn't even complain about this because evidently, they can't make their case -- or are biding their time.

It's interesting that so far, despite whining that they are victims, the leaders of France and Germany want to "fix" things and "make it right":

"It's become clear that for the future, something must change — and significantly," Merkel said. "We will put all efforts into forging a joint understanding by the end of the year for the cooperation of the (intelligence) agencies between Germany and the U.S., and France and the U.S., to create a framework for the cooperation."

Meanwhile, Brie has gotten incredibly expensive. A tiny chunk sells for $4.00. I'm going to buy Lithuanian cheese.

I think the US would do well to show staunch indifference to tears about loss of privacy and use this occasion to demand that both these countries plug up the holes that enables Russia to influence them and spy on them so handily.

There's also this other related story about a Snowden leak regarding a NATO member spying on Russia. Did you wonder when he would start leaking things directly useful to Russia? (Everything has been useful to Russia, of course, but this is most direct!).

Snowden, U.S. officials said, took tens of thousands of military intelligence documents, some of which contain sensitive material about collection programs against adversaries such as Iran, Russia and China. Some refer to operations that in some cases involve countries not publicly allied with the United States.

Oh, but wait. This isn't a Glenn Greenwald or Snowden leak per say, it's the US saying "This is what we know he has." So in that sense, it's like the time the Independent leaked that the British had a station in the Middle East and made it seem like this came from cracked documents in David Miranda's possession.

Once again, this is a pre-emptive measure. Look what this official says -- not a former official, not a briefed Congress person, but an active official:

In one case, for instance, the files contain information about a program run from a NATO country against Russia that provides valuable intelligence for the U.S. Air Force and Navy, said one U.S. official, who requested anonymity to discuss an ongoing criminal investigation. Snowden faces theft and espionage charges.

“If the Russians knew about it, it wouldn’t be hard for them to take appropriate measures to put a stop to it,” the official said.

So what's up with that? Are they trying to deflect EU anger by pointing out that they have the goods on them helping the US to spy on Russia, which they've been growing closer to, and if they make too much of this latest Greenwald leak, they will regret it?

That's what it sounds like to me. I think the US basically wants to make the point that the EU has an opportunity to choose which civilization it prefers, Western or Eurasian, and it should choose wisely.

Lavrov says this won't change anything. But relations are chilly anyway. And Russia has made so much bank from all things Snowden that this latest maneuver with a US pre-emptive leak can't dent that.

What It's Like Trying to Debate Europeans on NSA and Snowden

Here's Michael Anderson, one of my nemesises on Facebook, a documentary film-maker who covers Central Asia: "Michael has been the Central Asian correspondent for Denmark’s Radio (Danish equivalent of the BBC), covering events in the former Soviet Union since the late '80s. He has produced numerous documentaries for Al Jazeera English."

This is the kind of person I run into all the time in my region of work and study, Eurasia. People who seem to "get it" about the awful regimes of Central Asia and even Russia, but who Blame America First and completely distract from the real dynamics of history and politics in the region -- more related to Russia and China than the US -- and of course their own governments' complicity and/or indifference in the EU.

So here's the kind of debate you get with these kind of people steeped in anti-Americanism -- throw in a Canadian who lives in the region who can hate America and call critics like me "Nazis" but admire Guriyev -- go figure. And then you get a Kyrgyz exile who lives in America, who owes America gratitude, but who buys the anti-government line of Glenn Greenwald.

In the 1970s and 1980s, most of the Soviet emigres who came to this country shared its ideals and supported either Reagan (negotiate from a position of military strength with the Soviets) or Carter (emphasize human rights and be prepared to boycott over mass crimes like the invasion of Afghanistan). There were almost never cases of the sort of rabid anti-Americanism you get now from people who were formally supporters of US policy.

How to explain this? Well, for one, US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan just never got support, including from people like me. But at least I understood that the real problem in these regions was Iran, terrorists and the Taliban -- I didn't have the illusion that the deaths of people killed by *those* forces in these countries were "caused" by the presence of Americans. The hostile forces remain and keep killing even when we've left or are leaving. Who will they blame then? Will they finally have to face the facts?

I think there's another factor for Europeans, Canadians, and Eurasians -- they need a bonding factor, they need to belong, they want to feel themselves part of an edgy world elite that is not viewed as a client of any state. So anti-Americanism fulfills the role of binding them and giving them a hate target that instantly puts them on par with the established elites of the US and UK. It's a class marker, if you will, like ridiculing Palin or Wal-Mart.

I think for dissenters in Eurasia, it helps cover up the fact that they didn't challenge their own governments, but fled them. The dynamics are different these days. But I also blame indifferent and callous US government officials who don't concentrate on education of people whose education we pay for and whose refugee status we sponsor, and leave it to Marxists in universities or hostile NGOs. And of course the US silence on human rights violations in Central Asia for strategic reasons while they relied on them for the NDN supply route is something I've endlessly discussed on my blog Different Stans.

In any event, the results of these policies are stupid and ugly and now not easily undone.

Sometimes I think an efficient way to get these Blame American Firsters to stop whining and sneering is to cut off all their study and business visas for a time. Would that concentrate the mind wonderfully, that they couldn't come here and study and run businesses while they bash on Facebook? Of course, America will never do that because its values are for free speech and freedom of movement of people. But 90 days, would that work to reverse the trends? You rant about being spied on and you think (wrongly) America kills and tortures most people in the world (instead of Iran, Sudan, China, Russia, Pakistan, etc.). Maybe don't come here then? Would that help?

Of course if the US  State Department were to do this, it would lead to only MORE outrage and Blame America First. It wouldn't likely work.

So I think the only thing to be done then is to keep debating people like this when they turn up in your feed.

Michael Andersen

October 24 at 4:06pm ·

• People! Let’s not forget the NSA spying was initiated by the Bush-Rummy-Cheney bastards. And as soon as Obama came to power, he….

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  • 2 people like this.
  • 

    Chris Schuepp closed Guantanamo?

    October 24 at 4:23pm · Like · 2
  • 

    Chris Schuepp ended a couple of wars?

    October 24 at 4:41pm · Like
  • 

    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick @Michael Andersen there you go again obsessing about America. Is it a placebo for all of politics everywhere for you? Spying is a legitimate activity in a world with hostile forces. I'm going to assume you don't want the Taliban and Al Qaeda to win. But of course, you minimize their harm and the threat they represent. It's too bad we've helped enable you to do that.

    October 24 at 8:11pm · Like
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    Arslan Jumaniyazov Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick,
    
    I'm really not sure of your point. As an observer, I see Michael regularly criticizing Uzbekistan state (he even has a documentary about andijan) and other central Asian dictators, Putin and other Russian politicians, Europe...See More

    Yesterday at 1:27am via mobile · Like · 1
  • 

    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick @Arslan Jumaniyazov 90% of the time when @Michael Anderson is "criticizing Uzbekistan," what he's actually doing is criticizing the US, which he holds responsible for all of Uzbekistan's ills. I'm as critical of the US on Uzbekistan and Uzbekistan itself as any of you, but I do point out his silly, infantile anti-American tilt that obscures the larger forces around Uzbekistan (Russia, China). Here's my critique of Michael's film: http://3dblogger.typepad.com/... The documentary bends over backward to Blame America First, which is ridiculous. The US risked its base over criticism and then got kicked out. As for his criticism of Putin, it comes far less than his regular obsessiveness with America -- which is typical of West Europeans and now we see it of course in people like you, who want to bond with West Europeans and feel a sense of belonging, which you get by bashing America, even though it's America institutions that likely paid for your NGO grants and educational fellowships and of course is providing your free Facebook now : ) There isn't "mass surveillance" against anybody. This is mass hysteria on the part of Greenwald and Snowden. There is legitimate surveillance of terrorists and other criminal suspects and lawful intelligence targets. Yes, that includes Germany, which snuggles close with the Kremlin and has a huge business presence in Russia and Central Asia. Why aren't you more concerned about THAT? I can see the main rationale in listening to Merkel's calls or anybody's is to see if she was losing to the social democrats and the communists -- the very freaks who were unconscionably willing to give the Sakharov Prize to Snowden, and who would have moved even more close to the Kremlin had they won and she lost. The US likes to get a heads up on things like that. Meanwhile, remain in your bubble oblivious to the far worse problem you have in the world: Russia.

    

    Michael Anderson's New Film: Who is to Blame for the Andijan Massacre? (Different Stans)

    3dblogger.typepad.com

    Dink! My i-phone is telling me it's Michael Anderson again, posting directly on ...See More

    Yesterday at 1:38am · Like · Remove Preview
  • 

    Arslan Jumaniyazov Where do you see me trying to bond with west Europeans? I just pointed out that I do not see a correlation between a need to massively spy on western Europeans, or the Brazilians, or listening to Merkel's phone calls on the one hand, and fighting alqaeda on the other. I just don't see it. As for living "in the bubble," you do seem to assume too much about people you don't even know, don't you think?

    Yesterday at 1:51am via mobile · Like · 2
  • 

    Michael Andersen Arslan Jumaniyazov, I agree very much with the points you are making, and thanks. Unfortunately, I am not sure that it is worth your time engaging too much in debate with this woman, sorry, as she will just keep repeating whatever she wants with no regard for facts, until the rest of us have fallen asleep/gone to bed.

    Yesterday at 2:07am · Edited · Like · 2
  • 

    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick @Arslan Juaniyazov you're chiming in right here, dear, and indeed you do live in the same bubble if you spout the same stuff. There is no proof that the US "massively spies" on anyone. These are tendentious claims made by radical activists who are bent on harming the US government's reputation as much as possible. The US spies on legitimate intelligence targets. That does include some European figures who are relevant to counterintelligence -- and you can't expect otherwise, given how your countries help the Russians. Say, your friend Snowden claimed his leaks were merely about reform of the US system or privacy issues, yet they involve turning allies against the US, now. Interesting that, eh? Again, I could see that listening into Merkel's phone calls *would* become likely because of Germany's proximity to the Kremlin. Russia is an enemy, and has always been so. It is not merely Al Qaeda one has to worry about when two refugees in the US from Dagestan appear to have had some help executing their jihad in Boston by the Russian FSB never telling the FBI what they knew about them. To cite only one of many ways in which Russia is an enemy.

    Yesterday at 4:58am · Edited · Like
  • 

    Nuriddin Mahkamov Остап Бендер буданашро бори дигар Солиев Абдукахор исбот намуд. У мехохад ки президент опозитзия надошта бошад, аммо Президент хохони опозитсияи пуркуват аст, чунки ин пешрафти давлат аст. дар хакикат ман маколахои бисёр навиштам, максади он пешрафти ч...See More

    Yesterday at 5:19am · Like
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    Arslan Jumaniyazov Catherine,
    
    Saying "There is no proof that the US 'massively spies' on anyone" is the exact definition of living in a bubble. I do not need Snowden or Greenwald to state that the NSA spies massively on millions of Americans as well as non-Americans around the world. That functioning was built into the institution of the NSA from the very beginning. The US government has been a mass surveillance state since the time of Woodrow Wilson.
    
    Does the NSA spy on legitimate targets? Sure, it does. But to state that that's the only thing they do and assume that folks within the system do not abuse that awesome power at their disposal is simply naivete. Nay, it is ignorance of American history. Let's put Snowden aside and talk of historical evidences. As a student of US political and cultural history, I look at exactly that. If there is no massive spying, where do we get declassified documents about NSA spying on civil rights leaders in the '60s? Where do we get Nixon spying on his own cabinet members, including Kissinger and then Kissinger in return wiretapping Nixon's phone calls? (If they did that to each other, imagine how they targeted others) Where do we get FBI and NSA spying on members of Congress, journalists, dissidents? Where do we get documents showing how critics of corporate and state corruption were targeted for surveillance, harassment, and blackmail? The examples from the US history when government spying had absolutely nothing to do with foreign enemies is abundant. These are not figments of Snowden's imagination but historical facts and there is a large bulk of documentary evidence to prove them. I'll add just one as an example below.
    
    Mass surveillance was in place before there was Snowden. Now, the NSA's reach has just increased tremendously thanks to the advances in technology (the Internet, smartphones, cameras, etc.).
    
    http://www2.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB441/

    

    Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal: The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King,...

    www2.gwu.edu

    Disreputable if Not Outright Illegal: The National Security Agency versus Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Art Buchwald, Frank Church, et al.

    Yesterday at 7:23am · Like
  • 

    Barrie Hebb I think Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick would make a great neo nazi. All of her argumentation above are the exact excuses people used to support Hitler and totalitarian regimes. We are better, let us rule the world and spy on who we want, everyone is a potential enemy - you do a great disservice to the people of the USA and the world. You are not an American. You are a fascist in my view. And I have no apology for being so blunt. You would gladly see my rights and freedoms tossed to the sidelines for your grandeur view of a USA that controls the world.

    14 hours ago · Like · 1
  • 

    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick @Arslan Jamaniyazov the NSA does not spy "massively" on Americans. It legitimately spies on legitimate intelligence/law enforcement targets. Why do you believe the propaganda from WikiLeaks and Snowden? Try to be more critical. If you can find some abuses of this power, by all means, *find some concrete cases*. But on one has come up with a single one. You are completely mixing up two different eras, and that's actually what you need to understand. When in the 1960s, COINTELPRO spied on activists against the Vietnam War, or figures like Martin Luther King, Jr., *we had proof, we had those cases*. This led to reforms by Sen. Church and his committee. Where is the PROOF and the CASE of the NSA spying on a congressman or journalist?! Trust me, if these adversarial journalists like Greenwald *had* such proof, they'd have long ago published it. But they don't, and they know that this is the weakness of their case. I debated the ACLU and EFF at NYU University and pointed this out, and they indeed concede: they don't have cases. All they have are sweeping generalization, which they think is sufficient to incite the mob. I don't. Finally, you show a curious obsession with America, too, Arslan. You never look at your homeland or Russia or China? Why is that? @Barrie Hebb you're just hysterical. Just because I don't believe mass hysteria and anarchist hackers and radical journalists about this issue doesn't mean I'm a "Nazi". You deprive the word "Nazi" of all meaning if you're going to apply it just to somebody who happens to lack religious belief in Glenn Greenwald! I haven't advocated for any body's rights and freedoms to be tossed anywhere. In fact, our rights and freedoms have been damaged by Snowden and co. as they have made a liberal democratic state under the rule of law dangerously vulnerable to very illiberal enemies like Al Qaeda and of course Russia. Imagine, if someone has a different point of view, suddenly they are "not an American" or "a fascist". This is insane. *This is why we can't let people like you come to power, you are Bolsheviks who will wildly take away people's freedoms.*

    13 hours ago · Like
  • 

    Barrie Hebb No Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick, you are the ignorant person who has no idea what freedom is, what people died form, or what the real America is about. You are about excusing mass spying - and false threats to justify murdering, raping and pillaging poor people worldwide. You are a poor excuse for an adult. Once you are 18, sorry, you have no excuse. You are responsible for your thoughts, and your expressions. If you truly belive the rest of the world shlould be punished so harshly by brute US government force for "threates you mentioned above which don't exist, you belong in prison. You are a threat to global humanity. That is my belief based on what you wrote. You talk about threats - but your country has viciously attacked, murdered and raped people worlwide - meanwhile you talk about these terrorists who have never ever ever attacked the USA not even ONCE - yet you believe - and believe is the perfect word - that you have the sole right to puinish iwth murder those around the world. YOU AREA a DANGEROUS CRACKPOT - have you never been to scholol - travelled, read books, met with people who are non white - I would have a hard time believing so.

    4 hours ago · Like
  • 

    Catherine Ann Fitzpatrick @Barrie Hebb you spend time in the former Soviet Union and YOU have no clue about the *tens of millions of people* massacred in the greatest crimes against humanity in history, in a name of an ideology you still share and make excuses for by distract...See More

    7 minutes ago · Like

No, We Don't Want the Internet Governance Forum to Govern the Internet, Either

A screenshot of a powerpoint slide by Fumi Yamazaki from a presentation on child issues and the Internet at the IGF

I've been too busy with other things to check in on the Internet Governance Forum in Bali (where else). The IGF is essentially the ITU all over again in disguise (few every seem to realize that its a subsidiary body of the ITU, mandated by the UN Secretary General to "carry out" the agenda of the World Information Society Summit -- which was state controlled). As you might well imagine, the IGF is the usual cabal of Soros-funded NGOs, Big IT lobbyists,  bad governments also in disguise in the form of GONGOs (government-organized NGOs) and other assorted international jet-setter cadres who aspire to rule the Internet just as much as the ITU. The ITU is a known bad quantity anyone can agree on as bad for the Internet because it has Russia, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia etc there with a vote as states.

The IGF purports to be "better" because it represents that other fuzzy bullshit thing called "the multi-stakeholders" which -- as I just indicated above -- is really just a cover for Soros-funded NGOs, Big IT corporate interests (Google is all over it), etc. etc. to do the same bad things that the bad countries do, which is take over.

In addition to opposing almost exclusively what the US government does, the IGF NGOs like the "progressive engineers" have a hard time conceding corporate and commercial interests in general as valid on the Internet -- and of course the Googles of the world at these things try to cover this up with reputational laundering, as they are doing right now by rolling out various do-gooder helper things like Uproxy

(More on that later, not surprisingly, Libtech is going wild over this because it's not Tor -- my quick take on this, even given my suspiciousness of all things Google, is that it's great if Tor now has a real competitor by real smart people who are in a corporation that likely won't tolerate crime the way Tor has -- but let's see. No circumvention/encryption tool is safe from hostile governments or even good governments, nor should it immune to legitimate law-enforcement. Hopefully Google will do better than Tor on this but neither is an honest broker).

I'm afraid to look at what's going on there now because if I do, days will go by while I fume -- I got into a Twit-fight with Jillian York, which dragged in even comments from her pal Jacob Appelbaum (!) and I assume she's there, in spirit if not in body. More on that later if I have time to Storify or just look in my timeline, it's hilarious.

But since I can't cover this now, I give you Nitin Pai. God bless Nitin Pai. I always like his tweets. I have no idea of his back story. Perhaps he's some technolibertarian or conservative or Hindu nationalist or who knows what but he seems fine. And here's what he says -- which indeed, is the right thing for Indians to be saying if they want to keep on coming to the US -- and have a US to come to! -- that can help their best and brightest thrive and eventually help their country (always a debate with brain-drain, but let's have it.)

As Pai says:

New Delhi, with its habit of going with the flow of international multilateralism, is willy-nilly throwing its lot with China, Russia, Brazil and others that are leading the charge against the US for their own reasons. This enthusiasm is fashionable and popular with activists, but misplaced in the context of our national interests.

Both principle and realpolitik suggest that India is better off with continued US preponderance in internet governance.

The US Constitution, political system, civil society and media are better guardians of online free speech and privacy than some UN outfit. Yes, the US is massively spying on us, but it also produces the Mannings, Snowdens and Greenwalds that rightly or wrongly, but fearlessly, tell us what is happening. In a way, the rest of the world vicariously benefits from the US' commitment to liberty.

Amen.

I would add that it's not just that India "goes with the flow" -- they were recruited by the Soviet Union back in the day, and never really left the Kremlin ambit.

Now, I'm for leaving the Internet alone. It's actually pretty healthy, running with not the multi-stake holder approach, which is fake, but the free market and the free flow of ideas, goods, and services, such as they are. The Internet more or less is free in the US and actually much ohf the world, despite all the craziness you read about surveillance and chills on speech in the US -- they don't exist as you can tell by reading Glenn Greenwald leaking Snowden every day. Hello! And the Internet gets better every day even in places like Turkmenistan or Iran.

Yes, the Internet is in trouble in places like Russia or China or Iran. But some of these countries also produce capitalist corporations -- even if crony/oligarch capitalism -- that represent a challenge to Google and that's a good thing.  On the Russian Internet, I can click on a button and tip a blogger (if I have a Russian electronic wallet attached to a Russian bank). I can easily do things like donate to political prisoners or Navalny with that wallet. Why can't I do that in America?! These countries' citizens would rather have their own services in their own languages and culture even if they still want access to Facebook or Twitter as a supplement given state controls, so it's all good. The Internet freedom gang should spend less time fussing about the US spying on Merkel and work on freeing up the Internet for the people behind the electronic Iron Curtain.

Does leaving the Internet free meaning it has US dominance? Yes and no, as I've just pointed out, and I'm also not persuaded, as Pai obviously isn't, that this is a bad thing.

I wonder how much the standards bodies like IEEE and IETF now fussing about US dominance really matter. These entities get packed with "progressives" and outright technocommunists including from the US Department of Defense who are happy to suppress commerce, intellectual property -- its bastion -- and insist on copyleftistism. But hey, they lost on the struggle over DRM and HTML5. Good! that is a little sung progress story that I wondered whether would be lost with the likes of Cory Doctorow beavering away against it constantly. But it prevailed. Because business requires it. Good!

Eventually I will go take a peek at the damage of the IGF meeting -- but ultimately, it doesn't matter, in the words of Loren Feldman. The Internet routes around...