First, Your Shoes; Next, Your DNA: Elliot Cohen on How Surveillance Is Erasing Freedom and Autonomy, Step by Incremental Step

Alissa Bohling
t r u t h o u t
Interview

Elliot Cohen's reputation for prescient reporting precedes his new book, "Mass Surveillance and State Control: The Total Information Awareness Project." In 2007, years before today's comparatively widespread coverage of the Comcast-NBC merger and other threats to net neutrality, Cohen won the first place Project Censored award for his story about the free speech implications of the 2005 Supreme Court decision cementing the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) position that telecommunications laws could not be applied to cable modem services.

This time, Cohen zeros in on the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency's (DARPA) Total Information Awareness project, a comprehensive surveillance program begun under the Bush administration that continues under Obama and that Cohen characterizes as an "Orwellian nightmare." In the book, Cohen tackles a topic ripe for speculation and paranoia with an approach that is both urgent and measured, tempering the terrifying results of his research with two simple questions – how bad could it get, and what can we do about it?


Alissa Bohling: People are exposed to a lot of apocalyptic narratives these days. What would you say to readers who might think a book like this is alarmist?

Elliot Cohen: It's certainly sounding an alarm, but the urgency of sounding the alarm is warranted; it's evidence based. There are a lot of reasons for thinking that this needs to be taken seriously. There are two kinds of alarms. One is just panicking and not really having any evidence and not knowing what to do. The book, on the other hand, has a rational approach. Basically what I'm saying is that there's evidence for thinking that we're moving in a direction of a controlled society, a controlled culture. It isn't that we're one hundred percent there, but there are dangerous trends, and if we don't do anything to offset them, then we really will be in some serious trouble. If the book is perceived as being overreactive, it's better - as I say in the book - to go in that direction than to simply put one's head in the ground and act as though there's really no problem.


Roots of Arizona's Violence

Stephen Lendman

"Ultimately, the ability to reject pseudo-excitement, pseudo-meaning, and pseudo-fulfillment depends on the extent of positive real life experiences. They're absent for millions in a society experiencing growing poverty and despair, exacerbated by its longstanding addiction to violence, proliferated by America's infatuation with imperial wars, conquest, and repression."

As expected, America's major media won't explain it. Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel ducked the issue, saying it's "a time for grief, not grievance." Blaming a "crazed act of a clearly unstable man," she called it "an assassination of democracy....shut(ting) down speech to slay those seeking its exercise," then added "we still don't know whether (violent rhetoric) was responsible for last weekend's horror."

A Wall Street Journal "Murder in Tucson" editorial deflected blame from hard right extremists, and rejected political reasons for the attack, saying:

"....Loughner is a mentally disturbed man who targeted Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and anyone near here....because she was prominent and they were tragically accessible....Whatever confused political motives he expressed seem merely to be part of the maelstrom of his mental sickness."

In other words, blame a "deranged" gunman, not society, its extremist politicians, demagogic media hosts and pundits, and America's longstanding culture of violence. More on it below.


Britain's War on Islam

Stephen Lendman

Western vilification of Islam is longstanding, cruel, and unjustifiable. In his 1978 book "Orientalism," Edward Said explained a pattern of Western misinterpretation of the East, especially the Middle East. In "Culture and Imperialism" (1993), he broadened Orientalism's core argument to show the complex relationships between East and West by referring to colonizers and the colonized, "the familiar (Europe, West, us) and the strange (the Orient, East, them)."

He explained Western high-minded/moral superiority notions compared to culturally inferior Muslims. They're now portrayed as dangerous bomb-throwing terrorists, making them easy prey to wrongfully victimize.

Ramsey Clark is a former US Attorney General and International Action Center (IAC) founder. He's also a committed activist for social, economic, political, and racial justice. In his new year's message, he expressed worry and hope looking ahead, saying:

"During the past year, there has been a dangerous upsurge, largely manufactured by the media, in anti-Islamic bigotry. Simultaneously, supposedly, in the name of 'peace,' " American and Western allies have attacked and occupied non-threatening Muslim countries preemptively and lawlessly.

Notably post-911, they've viciously targeted Muslims for political advantage. Throughout America, continental Europe and Britain it rages, harming innocent men and women. With no regard for democratic values and justice, they're bogusly charged and imprisoned for crimes they neither planned or committed. Yet supportive media reports convict by accusation, the public unaware that supposed threats were lies, yet it repeats endlessly.

No wonder former Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi once told a Kuala Lumpur audience that Muslim vilification was "insensitive and irresponsible," adding that false accusations and hate are "widespread within mainstream Western society....The West should treat Islam the way it wants Islam to treat the West and vice versa. They should accept one another as equals."


Israel negotiates with bulldozer blades and hydraulic jackhammers

Khalid Amayreh in occupied East Jerusalem

As Hillary Clinton sought a stronger "alliance" with the Gulf's Arab states, America's real friend and client, which is Israel, was demolishing yet another Arab property in occupied East Jerusalem. The demolished building was the Shepherd Hotel, which served once as home to the former Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the late Haj Amin Husseini.

The demolition of the highly symbolic building was carried out despite objections from many quarters, including the European Union and Obama administration.

The visibly helpless Palestinian Authority (PA) once again appealed to the international community to take a strong stand against Israel.

"This intransigent and illegal behavior on behalf of Israel must not be allowed to proceed unchecked," said Chief Palestinian negotiator Sa'eb Ureikat.

He added with desperation and frustration clear in the tone of his voice

"what is happening today is part of the political program of the Israeli government to preempt any solution on Jerusalem . While Netanyahu continues his public relations campaign regarding the peace process, on the ground he is rapidly moving to prevent the establishment of a sovereign Palestinian state.

"Israel continues to change the landscape of Jerusalem aiming to change its status and turn it into an exclusive Jewish city. This process of cleansing and colonization must be stopped to change the dark reality of Israeli occupation into free and sovereign Palestinian state with East Jerusalem as its capital."

Ureikat's exhausted words, which had been uttered ad nauseam but to no avail, are most likely to fall on deaf ears in the indifferent West, especially in Washington where the Obama administration has discovered, probably belatedly, that it would be the ultimate loser in any confrontation with the current Israeli government, the most hawkish in Israel's history.


Silent Surge: A Shocking Act of Political Violence

Chris Floyd
Empire Burlesque


The majority of deaths in Afghanistan since 2001
have been innocent civilians. (Fight with Tools)

Americans showed their remarkable collective wisdom once again last week, when a shocking act of violence was met with a steady calm across the political spectrum. Indeed, it seemed the entire country was united in a steadfast effort to downplay any disturbing implications of the despicable act and to keep doggedly to business as usual.

We speak of course of Barack Obama's latest "surge" in Afghanistan: his third such escalation of the murderous militarist misadventure in that ravaged land, now heading toward its 10th year of American occupation. Yes, while everyone -- including our leading progressives -- were occupied first with the sight of the orange vulgarian John Boehner waggling the sacred Speaker's gavel then with the latest mass shooting by an American following what George Bush called "the path of action" (i.e., the pursuit of politics by deadly violence) -- the Nobel Peace Laureate was sending 1,400 more troops into the killing fields of Afghanistan.

This move guarantees that there will be an "uptick" in civilians deaths, to borrow the hideous argot of Vice President Joe Biden during the very first Obama "surge" -- which took place less than a month after Obama's inauguration. More killing, more resistance, more extremism, more grief and hatred, more corruption and war-profiteering -- but what of that?


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