Author: TarheelDem

W. W. Huston in The Economist:
Secret Government: America against Democracy

You see, democracy here at home must be balanced against the requirements of security, and it is simply too dangerous to leave the question of this balance to the democratic public. Open deliberation over the appropriate balance would require saying something concrete about threats to public safety, and also about the means by which those threats might be checked. But revealing such information would only empower America’s enemies and endanger American lives. Therefore, this is a discussion Americans can’t afford to have. Therefore, the power to determine that this is a discussion the public cannot afford to have cannot reside in the democratic public. That power must reside elsewhere, with the best and brightest, with those who have surveyed the perils of the world and know what it takes to meet them. Those deep within the security apparatus, within the charmed circle, must therefore make the decision, on America’s behalf, about how much democracy–about how much discussion about the limits of democracy, even–it is safe for Americans to have.

This decision will not be effective, however, if it is openly questioned. The point is that is not up for debate. It is crucial, then, that any attempt by those on the inside to reveal the real, secret rules governing American life be met with overwhelming, intimidating retaliation. In order to maintain a legitimising democratic imprimatur, it is of course important that a handful of elected officials be brought into the anteroom of the inner council, but it’s important that they know barely more than that there is a significant risk that we will all perish if they, or the rest of us, know too much, and they must be made to feel that they dare not publicly speak what little they have been allowed know. Even senators. Even senators must fear to describe America’s laws to America’s citizens. This is, yes, democracy-suppression, but it is a vitally necessary arrangement. It keeps you and your adorable kids and even your cute pet dog alive.

He goes on:

Mr Snowden may be responsible for having exposed this hypocrisy, for having betrayed the thug omertà at the heart of America’s domestic democracy-suppression programme, but the hypocrisy is America’s.

Can America handle the truth about its foreign policy and its consequences?  I think Huston raise the most important question.

This story repeating information gained from the hacking of HBGary and reported in the media bears widespread distribution given the current debate about NSA.  Some things to notice: (1) the revolving door between government (FBI in this case); (2) the use of military grade cyberwarfare and surveillance technology for private clients (the Chamber of Commerce, in this case); (3) the absence of follow-up after the news was reported.

The NSA scandal goes beyond NSA itself and oversight there to the use of contractors to create a “Digital Blackwater” beyond the the control of the executive, legislative, and judiciary and available to the highest bidder.

Cybersecurity Contractors Behaving Badly

By Josh Glasstetter

Whether you consider National Security Agency whistleblower Edward Snowden a hero or villain, there’s good reason to be concerned about the contractors that carry out much of our government’s surveillance and cybersecurity work. Roughly 70% of the N.S.A.’s estimated budget is reportedly spent on outside contractors. Former agency director Michael Hayden coined an unintentionally apt term for these contractors — Digital Blackwater.

The N.S.A. turns to an array of contractors to help it make sense of the vast amounts of information it harvests each day. A good example is Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley data-mining company that works with the military, government and intelligence community. I first learned of Palantir in a rather different context. In February 2011, emails were leaked by Anonymous that revealed a series of proposals by Palantir and its partners to virtually surveil and undermine labor unions, progressive advocacy groups, Wikileaks and journalist Glenn Greenwald.

I was working for the Service Employees International Union at the time, which was one of the chief targets. Reading the emails back and forth between Palantir and two other contractors, Berico Technologies and HBGary Federal, I pieced the plot together. Initially, Palantir engineer Matthew Steckman reached out to the others about “offering a complete intelligence solution to a law firm that approached us.” That firm was Hunton & Williams, a well-connected corporate law firm that recently hired the F.B.I.’s cybersecurity counsel.

As Patrick Ryan of Berico explained, a Hunton client was being “targeted by another entity, specifically a labor union, that is trying to extract some kind of concession or favorable outcome.” All signs point to my then-employer, S.E.I.U., which was seeking an organizing agreement with a multinational services conglomerate.

The cybersecurity firms got to work on a plan for using military-grade technology to undermine the union. At Palantir, which was launched with backing from the CIA’s venture fund, Steckman and his colleague Eli Bingham got sign-off from company leaders to “exclusively partner with Berico in conjunction with Hunton to license this product to law firms for corporate campaign work.” By November 2010, the three contractors had a plan, dubbed the “Corporate Information Reconnaissance Cell,” and a name — Team Themis.

Themis boasted in its proposal that it was “ideally suited” for the job based on its “extensive experience in providing game-changing results across the Intelligence Community and defense/government sector.” Themis would provide Hunton with a “full spectrum capability set to collect, analyze, and affect adversarial entities and networks of interest” and “utilize the powerful Palantir platform as the centerpiece.” Berico would manage the project, and HBGary Federal would, in Steckman’s words, focus on “digital intelligence collection” and “social media exploitation.”

Working with partners at Hunton, Themis tailored its proposed services to meet the needs of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Themis recommended planting fake documents and using fake personas to infiltrate and undermine U.S. Chamber Watch, a watchdog group. Photos of two of my friends, taken without their knowledge at a rally, appeared in their sample work product.

Hunton pitched Themis to other clients as well. Booz Allen Hamilton — Snowden’s former employer — expressed interest in hiring Themis to attack Wikileaks on behalf of a major U.S. bank. HBGary Federal’s Aaron Barr recommended targeting journalist Glenn Greenwald because “without the support of people like Glenn Wikileaks would fold.” Steckman added it to the proposal, which also recommended “cyber attacks” against Wikileaks “to get data on document submitters.”

All signals were `go’ for Themis, and a high-level meeting was set with with Hunton and the Chamber to operationalize the plan. But days before the meeting, HBGary Federal’s emails were hacked and released, and Themis was exposed. The story exploded in the press, twenty members of Congress demanded an investigation and HBGary Federal folded. The Chamber even denounced Themis as “abhorrent.”

But what happened next was shocking — nothing. Hunton kept its head down, and its clients denied any knowledge of Themis. Palantir and Berico made a scapegoat out of the shuttered HBGary Federal and denied high-level knowledge of Themis. They claimed, despite the evidence to the contrary, that they would never condone such tactics or the targeting of law-abiding Americans. Both firms hired lobbyists and sent them off to Capitol Hill. Steckman was placed on leave but then quietly rehired.

Two years later, there have been no consequences for the contractors. Berico just won a contract with Special Operations Command, HBGary Federal’s parent company was purchased by a larger contractor, Mantech, and Palantir is rumored to be worth $8 billion — your tax dollars at work.

There is currently nothing to prevent Themis-like schemes from happening in the future, if they aren’t already. Digital Blackwater is free to turn its virtual guns on Americans in order to boost its bottom line. More than ever, Congress needs to evaluate the role of cybersecurity contractors and ensure that proper controls are in place.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation and others have called for the creation of a commission like the Church Commission to investigate allegations of para-Constitutional but legal use of mass surveillance on US citizens.  The Church Commission actually had a broader mandate and so should any current commission.

This proposal seeks the most practical way to honestly and truthfully deal with allegations that have arisen against national intelligence and counter-terrorism operations of the US government.

So, comment away.
Composition:
Senator Ron Wyden, Chair
Senator Johnny Isakson
Senator Amy Klobuchar
SenatorJohn Hoeven
Rep. John Conyers
Rep. Walter Jones (NC)
Rep. Keith Ellison
Rep. Mark Amodei

Scope:
The Commission shall investigate all allegations of extra-Constitutional and para-Constitutional action in US intelligence and counter-terrorism activities since the the Church Commission was impaneled.

The Commission shall consider the actions of, but not limited to, the following agencies: Office of Director of National Intelligence, Department of Defense, Central Intelligence Agency, Department of Justice, Department of State, Department of Homeland Security.  It shall consider the actions of employees and contractors of these agencies and the actions of any coordinating or grantee jurisdictions, including foreign nations.

The Commission shall have the power to declassify materials necessary to presentations of its work to public scrutiny or for referral to Article III federal courts.

The Commission shall have the power to subpoena any public or private individual witnesses or documents necessary for its work.  Witnesses shall be immunized or otherwise protected from retaliation by management as a result of their testimony.

The Commission shall consider allegations of abuse or corruption presented in books, media reports, testimony of whistleblowers, government investigations, or other sources and shall identify them by date, location, and agency as an index.

The Commission shall produce a declassified report to the public of its findings.

The Commission shall consider the impact upon Constitutional government of state secrecy, including secret locations, secret personnel, secret information, secret budgets, secret laws, and other departures from an open society and make recommendations for expanding an open society while fulfilling national security requirements.

The Commission shall consider the difficulties that the large numbers of clearances and the overclassification of information, particularly to avoid accountability, impose on national security.

The Commission shall consider the use of informants, the inflation of charges brought by prosecutors against suspects, and determine whether these practices have resulted in the conviction or persecution of innocent people.

The Commission shall determine whether intelligence agencies have violated the Geneva Conventions specifically or other laws of war generally in their operations and shall refer cases for proseucution under US laws.

The Commission shall be financed out of contigency funds available to national intelligence agencies at the discretion of the President.

The Commission shall have at a minimum a chief of staff, counsel, technical staff familiar with the information technologies involved. amd other employees as they shall decide.

The Commission shall have the power to put persons testifying under oath.

The Commission shall solicit the advice of experts and advocates in preparing its recommendations for legislation or reorganization of national intelligence and counter-terrorism activities.

The Commission shall ground its recommendations in arguments that explain how the Constitutional guarantees of rights in the Bill of Rights will not be violated by implementation of its recommendations.

There are several dates for Confederate Memorial Day. The April 26 date celebrates the surrender of Gen. Joseph E. Johnston at Bennett Place near Durham, which effectively ended to war. The May 10 date, the surrender of Jefferson Davis or the death of Stonewall Jackson in 1863.

In all, Memorial Days are remembrances of the failure of politics that war is, and the human consequences of such failure.
 And celebrations of obedience to the nation states that sent these men and women to war. All colored with patriotism and flag-waving and bunting and crass commercialism and escape.

All wars have been a “rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight” as the Northern draft riots in 1863 pointed out. Hundreds of thousands of poor Southerners who had no slaves not any prospect of creating a plantation even if the entire continent comprised slave states fought because they thought they had prospects or simply because they were drafted or were paid to go in the place of a rich man’s son or a rich man himself.

On Memorial Day we should remember that the post-traumatic stress syndrome of one war can be the cause of the next. Or the insane notion that males in our society have to “prove their manhood” in war. As if peacetime never demands courage, quick thinking, diligence, and persistence–the supposed marks of the military that go by the name of “discipline”.

The nation that celebrates absolute individual freedom also lionizes the the one institution in society in which obedience is absolute, the protections of the Bill of Rights don’t exist, and is the only legitimate (in the eyes of conservatives) employer of last resort. It is the one indispensable government institution, at thus socialist at its core. And no one finds this strange.

No one finds it strange because it is an institution in which your life depends on people you don’t necessarily choose to be with or don’t necessarily like but whom you trust to defend your life in battle as they trust you to defend theirs. And who you mourn when you hear of their falling. That bond captured in the phrase “band of brothers”.

They do need honor on this day, but also do the folks who sacrificed careers, spent time in jail, were beaten, or were killed for saying not only that “War is nonsense” but the “This war is nonsense.” As best we know, William Thoreau was one of the first. The Mexican War was the first with an anti-war movement.

James Russell Lowell was another of those critics of the Mexican War. The last stanza of his anti-slavery poem “The Crisis” (which forms the basis of the hymn “Once to Every Man and Nation”) is apropos of this Memorial Day.

New occasions teach new duties; Time makes ancient good uncouth;
They must upward still, and onward, who would keep abreast of Truth;
Lo, before us gleam her campfires? We ourselves must Pilgrims be,
Launch our Mayflower, and steer boldly through the desperate winter sea,
Nor attempt the Future’s portal with the Past’s blood-rusted key.

Zbigniew Brezinski’s new book Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power seeks to address these four questions:

1. What are the implications of the changing distribution of global power from the West to the East, and how is it being affected by the new reality of a politically awakened humanity?
2. Why is America’s global appeal waning, what are the symptoms of America’s domestic and international decline, and how did America waste the unique global opportunity offered by the peaceful end of the Cold War? Conversely, what are America’s recuperative strengths and what geopolitical reorientation is necessary to revitalize America’s world role?
3. What would be the likely geopolitical consequence if America declined from its globally pre-eminent position, who would be the almost immediate political victims of such a decline, what effects would it have on the global-scale problems of the twenty-first century, and could China assume America’s central role in world affairs by 2025?
4. Looking beyond 2025, how should a resurgent America define its long-term geopolitical goals, and how could America, with its traditional European allies, seek to engage Turkey and Russia in order to construct an even larger and more vigorous West?  Simultaneously, how could America achieve balance in the East between the need for close cooperation with China and the fact that a constructive American role in Asia should be neither exclusively China-centric nor involve dangerous entanglements in Asian conflicts?

You might detect an optimistic note in the way that Brezinski has asked the questions, but reading between the lines what is apparent is that Zbigniew Brezinski is granting that the US imperial adventure launched in the idea of the American Century is over.  The US empire with its veneer of the US being first among equals is giving way to a transitional period that is highly risky.  And Brezinski is not sure that the US has the domestic politics, economy, or national leadership that can avoid catastrophe.  When Brezinski was in the Carter White House, the administration that negotiated the Camp David agreements and brought Deng Xiaoping to Atlanta to finesse the “one China, two systems” cover for China becoming a permanent UN Security Council member–when all this progress happened, it was not supposed to end this way with US power dramatically weakened within a decade.
There are four audiences for Brezinski’s book outlining a strategic vision: general audiences like you and me, intellectual policy elites, US powers-that-be, and foreign ministries.  To the first Brezinski offers a short comprehensive strategic view of how he sees the world (likely shared with other members of the intellectual policy elite).  To the second he brings an academic argument to which they will respond with alternative strategic visions rooted in their own particular framework of ideas; out of such debates came the Project for a New American Century, to cite a relatively recent example.  To the third he brings a wake-up call that the domestic political stalemate and loss of power through two needless wars potential dangers down the road if they continue business as usual.  To the fourth, there is a message to be patient with the US while cooler and more realistic heads work through the issues brought about by American overreach.

What scares Brezinski is not the possibility of the rise of the power of China, but the potential conflicts that that might cause with nations on China’s periphery–India, Russia, South Korea, Vietnam, Phillipines, Taiwan, Japan.   He is also scared about Russian reassertion of its imperial claims, which could affect Georgia, Belarus, and Ukraine.  He is scared of the collapse of Afghanistan and instability in Pakistan as the US withdraws from Afghanistan.  He is scared of the consequences of a decline of US power in the Middle creating general conflict around Israel.

And then there is Mexico, already beleagered by a US drug war, deportation of immigrants, an increased internal violence from drug gangs–the American “good neighbor” policy replaced by bigoted hectoring. (No, Brezinski does not state it this bluntly).  What happens with declining American power and populist resentment in Mexico and areas of the US?  The implications taken to reasonable conclusions point to the dangers of significant border conflict.

Finally, there are the implications of the withdrawal of US power, influence, and concern for what Brezinski calls the “global common” — the strategic common (sea  and air) and the environment.  Both require globalized management to, for example, suppress piracy on the seas.  The BRICS countries are playig a greater role in this managment responsibility but the need for consensus among a larger number of countries delays effective responses.  Three areas of special concern to Brezinski are the Internet (cyberspace), space, and the Arctic.  All three are dominated by American power now but are devolving toward more international management.

Brezinski argues the following in transition:

The argument that America’s decline would generate globay insecurity, endanger some valuable states, produce a more complicated North American neighborhood, and maake cooperative management of the global commons more difficult is not an argument for US global supremacy.  In fact, the strategic complexities of the world in the twenty-first century–resulting from the rise of a politically self-assertive global population and from hte dispersal of global power–make such supremacy unattainable.  But in this increasingly complicated geopolitical environment, an America in pursuit of a new, timely strategic vision is crucial to helping the world avoid a dangerous slide into international turmoil.

By “international turmoil”, Brezinski means turmoil on the order of World War I and World War II.  Situations that could suck in alliance of large military forces with seeming inevitability–that would cause even an isolationist America to be drawn into significant war.  Like I said, Brezinski is in a quiet panic about US politics and policy although he cannot say this except obliquely.

What he proposes as a strategic vision will be received as bold, even impossible or dangerous.  It is none of these; it is a clear attempt at salvaging and restoring American global influence over events.  The first part of the vision is to unify Russia and Turkey into the Atlantic alliance to create what he calls a revitalized West.  Geographically, it really is the circumpolar North.  The second part of the vision is to cooperate with China and Asian nations to ease the tensions that exist between China and each of them on certain issues, the US role being the military shield that allows more regional countries not to have to get into an arms race with China.  Importantly, the vision depends on continued good relations with China and general Chinese economic and political stability.  In other words, a pretty conventional NATO-like strategic vision that even builds on NATO as an institution.  But to do it, the US must get its economic and political house back in order.  And that’s where the issue is for Brezinski and no doubt a purpose for the book.

All well and good. Big whoop.  Except that Brezinski as a part of the elite is in a quiet panic about what comes after America.

So he plays out one scenario.  What are some other scenarios?

When I got back to North Carolina, I relaxed by reading the last volume of John Birmingham’s alternative history of the noughts.  The first volume is Without Warning, the second After America, and the third Avenging Angels.  This is military science fiction with a high degree of military hardware detail, black ops, and graphic violence.  The title of the second volume attracted my attention a couple of years ago, and I read the first two volumes in sequence.  The characters were so well drawn, the settings detailed, and the plot involving that I eagerly waited for the third volume.

The plot is this.  A force field of unknown origin destroys all of the people in the United States except for a part of Washington and Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii.  The population of this new country comprises overseas military, ex-pats, overseas black operations personnel, and the folks in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, and Hawaii who were lucky enough to miss the force field.  When it was started, it was probably the only plot device that Birmingham could use to raise the question of American power.  So what happens when on one day American power essentially disappears, leaving Europe, Japan, Australia without their dominant ally and the rest of the world without the dominating presence of US power?

There is another scenario for you.  Exactly how does the American government get re-established and how does the American President govern?  Who becomes the main geopolitical players and how to they get established?

It’s fictional and unconventional.  And extreme.

But both Brezinski and Birmingham raise the critical question:  What are the consequences that the American people will be dealing with as a result of the squandering of American power and reputation?

How do you think this unraveling of American empire will play out?

Promoted by Steven D. I recommend reading every last word, and then sharing it on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Update [2012-6-8 7:57:12 by BooMan]: Returned to the diaries by BooMan.

Crossposted from Firedoglake

I had returned from attending a book signing by Kevin Gosztola of his book Truth and Consequences: The U.S. vs. Bradley Manning and arrived back at the Halsted El station in Bridgeport, Chicago around 10:00 pm. I took the bus to within five blocks of the apartment that was housing a number of protesters for the upcoming protest of NATO on May 20. When I climbed the back stairs to the second floor apartment, I met two people on the second floor porch I had not seen before. A guy with a black bushy beard introduced himself as Turk and said that the lady in the hoodie with him was his cousin Nadia.

After introducing myself, I went inside and told folks who had been staying there about Kevin’s book signing and sat down at the table. While I was seated at the table, Turk came to chat some more and said his name was Mo and then went to join the other folks in the living room of the apartment.

I was tired and went to sleep in my sleeping bag on the kitchen floor while the others were talking and partying in the front room.

I awoke to the sound of a loud bang near me and the shout of “Police!” As I opened my eyes to see what was going on, I was staring into the muzzle of an automatic handgun held by one officer and a flashlight shining in my face, held by another officer. They ordered me to stand up, and helped me get out of the sleeping bag when I complied. They told me to hold my hands up and spread my legs while they frisked me and then ordered me to put my hands behind my back as they led me by the arm into the living room where the others were standing, legs apart, hands behind their backs, and heads resting against the wall. We were frisked again; the officer who frisked me felt the chest belt of my heart monitor and the strap of my money belt (called in the inventory a “fanny pack”). He searched through the money belt and found my drivers license, Medicare card, senior discount transit IDs, and a CTA 30-day fare card. He took the drivers license and left the rest and left me wearing my money belt.
After everyone had been frisked, we were handcuffed (tightly), led into a bedroom and told to sit down. One of the others chastised the officers saying that they should “be easy on the old guy,” meaning me. The officers brought a chair for me to sit in, facing the others and with my back to the bedroom door. The officers then asked those of us who hadn’t had cell phones on us where they were. I told them that it was in my electronics bag; they found it and a small camera that looked like a cell phone and came back to confirm that they were mine. I identified which was the cell phone and which was the camera.

During this time, someone asked “Where is the warrant?” and someone else asked “What are we being charged with?” An officer replied, “You’ll find out in court.”

Having secured all the cell phones, the officers began dividing the group to transport based on the orders from a commander of the Organized Crime Unit. (I identified his rank as a gold leaf and saw “Organized Crime Unit” on his name plate peeking out from under his “Police” vest. I also noticed that the officers were dressed in black shirts, not the light blue of beat cops in Chicago. They brought those of us who did not have shoes our shoes; the logic for who went first became who had shoes on. I stepped into my shoes, unlaced and the officer leading me by my right arm led me (and supporting my balance) as we slowly went down the back stairs of the building.

We went out the sidewalk between the building and the one to its east and to an unmarked car, not a police cruiser, that did not have a screen between the back seat and the driver seat. As he started driving away at high speed, forcing pressure on my tight handcuffs, the officer said, “What sights of Chicago do you want to see?” We went to the Dan Ryan and then to the Eisenhower and turned off at Homan Avenue. As we were going up the ramp to Homan Avenue, the officer said “Who wants ice cream?” We were silent. “Uh, nobody wants ice cream?” he asked with a mock-hurt tone.

We went into the back alley and entrance to the lockup, arriving at a garage entrance between two sections of industrial woven wire mesh, like businesses use to create supply areas in industrial plants. After the car in front of us unloaded the first three folks from the apartment, the officers led us through the gate, a door, up a few stairs and down a short hall that had three doors on each side. They took me into the middle room on the left. It was maybe 10 feet by 12 feet, lit by fluorescent tubes on the left and the right, and had a metal bench fitted with a round rail on the wall opposite the door.

I sat on the bench, and the officers put shackles on my legs. Then the officer asked which hand I wanted handcuffed to the rail on the back of the bench. I told him it didn’t matter to me; he handcuffed my right hand to the rail on the back of the bench. And then he left and locked the door.

I noticed, across from me, posters of the Illinois statutes regarding arrests (big print) but could read none of the provisions (little print) from where I sat. I also realized that I had not been able to ask for an attorney or to talk to someone. I had also not been asked about any health conditions or whether I required medication. I do. I have a heart condition, and my meds were were in my backpack in the apartment.

My heart monitor was on the time-of-day function. I noticed that it was 1:18 am, a hour or two after the raid I guessed. That became my benchmark for how long I was there.

The flap over the one-way glass was flipped up and someone looked in. Then the door opened and the officer began chatting, finally getting to “How did someone your age get hooked up with these young guys?” “I was sleeping on the floor; it was a place to stay,” I replied. “Were you all anarchists?” “There was a diversity of opinions in the house.” “What does your family think about what you are doing?” “My daughters contributed money to help me get to Chicago.” He left and locked the door.

A long period of sizing up the situation and my surroundings and fitful attempts to sleep by resting my head on my hands with my elbows on my knees ensued.

The door opens again and an officer with a card to fill out says, “I thought there was a table in here.” pointing to two metal plates on the floor toward his side of the room. He then puts the card up against the door and asks me for a list of identifying information-name, address, phone, emergency contact, Social Security number, and more. Then he left, and I was alone until the next morning.

I tried various ways of sleeping, finally figuring out how to lie on the bench on my left side, my right handcuffed hand keeping me from falling off the bench.

I must have gotten a fair nap. I heard the door open and a voice say “Breakfast” as a hand handed me a White Castle Breakfast sandwich in a waxed paper envelope. I ate it and prepared mentally for a very long day. I wondered why I was there; no one in the apartment had done anything in my presence that would merit either a raid or being locked up in solitary rooms. I wondered if anybody outside knew we were there. I wondered how long it would take the National Lawyers Guild or my wife to find out where I was. I tried telepathy with my wife to tell her to call and inquire as to whether they were holding someone with my name.

“Officer, I have to use the restroom.” The loud sound came from another room. “Officer, I have to use the restroom.” “We are short-staffed. I’ll be there in a minute.” Minutes pass. “Officer, I have to use the restroom now.” “Officer, I have to use the restroom now.” The hollering from another room continued. “You have a black flag by your name,” said an officer in reply. And later, for almost twenty minutes, “Officer, I have to use the toilet.”

I determined that the officers holding us were denying us access to the toilets, and being a quiet sort decided to wait them out in silence. However, the breakfast sandwich was doing its work. It became more difficult to hold it, and I was beginning to feel like I had to pee too. I considered the possibilities. Going directly on the cell floor seemed preferable to being released and having to ride the El back to wherever with soiled clothes. I tried holding onto a ring used to store handcuffs an squatting. Nothing. I struggled with one hand to get my pants back up. I held out some more. I figured out that I might be able to crap between the bar and the bench without soiling either. I waited some more. I struggled to get my pants clear enough and sat up against the bar and let go; the sound of a splat on the floor seemed a major victory. I then peed down the same space. I had positioned myself way at the far end of the bench; that end of the bench became my bathroom. The other end my living room.

I then moved back to my living room and sat with my head in my hands trying to take a nap. The flap over the mirrored window lifted, and I heard someone say, “Great God”.

I waited. I began to be chilled and lay down on the bench. The door opened and someone said “Lunch”. “I’m not terribly hungry.” “I’ll sit it right here just in case.” The door closed and locked.

After a while, I felt better and saw a McDonalds bag sitting on the floor away from me. A little later I felt good enough to eat and reached out to the bag. It was beyond my reach. Later I extended my feet to see if I could reach it. I could, but I had to be careful not to turn over the tall cup containing the medium Coke. When I finally got it to the bench, the bag contained two McDonalds cheeseburgers and a bag of fries. The thought occurred to me that the diet for breakfast and lunch was exactly that which would catalyze the need to go to the toilet, but I wrote that off as coincidence.

After lunch, the flap on the door lifted and two people looked in, one a lady with long blond hair. Taking the chance that it might be a National Lawyers Guild lawyer, I hollered, “I want to see my lawyer.” The flap closed, and nothing happened.

Later, in what now was clearly afternoon, I heard “Officer, I have to use the toilet.” “Who’s calling?” Someone in another cell hollered out their name. “Just a minute.” I then heard a door open and feet shuffle down the hall. It gave me hope. I was now feeling I had to go to the toilet again. When I heard voices again in the hall, I called out, “I have to use the toilet.” “Who’s that?” I hollered out my name. The lock made a noise, the door opened, the officer looked in, and then escorted me to the toilet. On the way back, he asked why I had gone on the floor. I said honestly that I had hollered out three times and no one had come to take me. He asked when that was. I said it was around 11 am. He offered to give me diaper wipes to clean up the mess in my cell and a trash can to dump them in. I cleaned up the mess and thanked him.

And settled in for what I thought was going to be a very long time by myself.

I took another nap, awoke, and sat up thinking about how long it would take someone to find out where I was.

From the hall I heard, “The State’s Attorney wants to interview you.” Then again, at another room the same message. And then the door opened and I got the same message.

Shortly afterward, an officer came to get me and escorted me into the room of another person taken from the apartment. The two of us were handcuffed to the bench awaiting what we thought was an interrogation by a prosecutor. An officer opened the door and asked the person I was with, “Do you want to talk to a National Lawyers Guild lawyer?” “Yes.” He was led out. When he returned, I was asked the same question. I answered “Yes.” I was taken to a holding cell with wire mesh. The NLG lawyer and I talked through the wire mesh. And then I was returned to the room, after being able to use the toilet again.

The two of us sat in the room waiting for the State’s Attorney to come interrogate us. Instead, officers came in and told us we were being taken for processing, walked us to police cruisers, and transported us to what the sign on the wall said was the 11th District – Fillmore. After we were taken through a secure entry, our shackles and handcuffs were taken off and we began being processed. We were asked if we had any medical conditions; I did and I needed my meds; the desk officer placed a call to get transport to a hospital for me to get a prescription. We were photographed (mug shots) and fingerprinted and placed all together in a holding cell.

After a while, the officers who were to take me to the hospital arrived. I was placed back in shackles and handcuffs and walked to the police SUV. My feet had swollen during the day and I mentioned to the officer that the shackles were hurting. “That’s what it means to be in custody,” was the reply.

I struggled to step up to the running board of the SUV in the shackles and was instructed how to get into the very narrow back seat. The officers then drove down a street with many speed bumps, the handcuffs hurting my hands as we went over each on. Then we got on the Eisenhower and went west to Lorette hospital. At the hospital, I had to walk into the emergency room in shackles and handcuffs and be admitted. Then I was taken to a hospital bed and one hand was handcuffed to the bar of the bed. A nurse took my blood pressure and heart rate and asked about my medications. Then a PA did the same. And then the physician came and listened to my heart and wrote a prescription. To each person that dealt with me, the officers showed a sheet with my mug shot, my charges, and other information.

A nurse brought my meds and waited until my blood pressure dropped in response to them. While we were waiting, the officers were chatty again. “What’s your beef with NATO?” “It was successful, and now is a hammer looking for a new nail.” “What’s your politics?” “Progressive democrat?” “What do you think should be done about drugs?” “It’s a medical problem, not a criminal problem.” After I found out that one of the officers thought school funding should follow kids (be available to private and parochial schools), another team of officers relieved them.

My blood pressure lower, these very quiet officers drove me directly back to the 11th District. After being asked to pick up a sleeping mat, I was led back into the the holding cell where the other males arrested in the apartment were. It was near midnight. An officer rapped on the cell an asked if we wanted bologna sandwiches. After handing out sandwiches, he asked if we wanted toilet paper and proceeded to hand out two-foot strips of toilet paper. Those who got toilet paper folded it up and put it into their pockets.

We went to sleep on the mats.

At 6 am the next morning a rap on the bars of the cell announced wake-up and we were instructed to carry our sleeping pads and stack them in the hall.

Shortly afterward, an officer came and called three of our names. He then escorted us out, without handcuffs and shackles to the front desk of the 11th District. A clerk there told us that we were released without charges and handed us the plastic bags containing our shoelaces and belts, which had been taken from us at the 11th District detention facility. We asked where our other property was and found out that it was at the Organized Crime Unit facility. The clerk called the officer at the Organized Crime Unit to have him bring our property. After a long delay, he arrived and I received my money belt back (still minus my drivers license). A National Lawyers Guild attorney arrived and took us to the coffee shop by the Woodlawn Mental Health Center occupation.

Later in the day, we had access to the apartment to gather up our belongings. All of my belongings were there but my electronics bag and the netbook, wifi hot spot, camera, cell phone, and associated adapters. But I had my belt and shoelaces. The chain of custody had worked for them.

There are five things to notice in this. (1) I was held over 12 hours before the National Lawyers Guild could find me; essentially, I was in a black site. And it was another 18 hours before I was released. (2) The experience was structured to be punitive before any charges were made not to mention any due process. (3) The police violated my privacy at the hospital in order to emphasize how “dangerous” I was and to build up the idea of a general threat. (4) I never saw a warrant, even a “no-knock” warrant for the police break-in to the house. (5) There is property that the police have not returned to me; if it is “lost”, either the CPD is violating their own procedures or there are officers on the organized crime squad stealing items in raids.

This is the finalized  call to action  of #OccupyWallStreet as posted at NYC General Assembly | The Official Website of the GA at #occupywallstreet.

Declaration of the Occupation of New York City
Posted on September 30, 2011 by NYCGA

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies.

As one people, united, we acknowledge the reality: that the future of the human race requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their neighbors; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.

They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give Executives exorbitant bonuses.

They have perpetuated inequality and discrimination in the workplace based on age, the color of one’s skin, sex, gender identity and sexual orientation.

They have poisoned the food supply through negligence, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.

They have profited off of the torture, confinement, and cruel treatment of countless nonhuman animals, and actively hide these practices.

They have continuously sought to strip employees of the right to negotiate for better pay and safer working conditions.

They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.

They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.

They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.

They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.

They have sold our privacy as a commodity.

They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press. They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.

They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.

They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.

They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.

They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.

They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty bookkeeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.

They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.

They have accepted private contracts to murder prisoners even when presented with serious doubts about their guilt.

They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.

They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.

They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts. *

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

*These grievances are not all-inclusive.

This was distributed by email last night as a working document. It will probably not be finalized until Sunday or so.

I thought you folks might have a discussion about it.

Have at it.
Declaration of the Occupation of New York City

As we gather together in solidarity to express a feeling of mass injustice, we must not lose sight of what brought us together. We write so that all people who feel wronged by the corporate forces of the world can know that we are your allies. As one people, formerly divided by the color of our skin, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or lack thereof, political party and cultural background, we acknowledge the reality: that there is only one race, the human race, and our survival requires the cooperation of its members; that our system must protect our rights, and upon corruption of that system, it is up to the individuals to protect their own rights, and those of their brethren; that a democratic government derives its just power from the people, but corporations do not seek consent to extract wealth from the people and the Earth; and that no true democracy is attainable when the process is determined by economic power. We come to you at a time when corporations, which place profit over people, self-interest over justice, and oppression over equality, run our governments. We have peaceably assembled here, as is our right, to let these facts be known.

They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage.
They have taken bailouts from taxpayers with impunity, and continue to give CEO’s exorbitant bonuses.
They have perpetuated gender inequality and discrimination in the workplace.
They have poisoned the food supply, and undermined the farming system through monopolization.
They have continuously sought to end the rights of workers to negotiate their pay and make complaints about the safety of their workplace.
They have held students hostage with tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.
They have consistently outsourced labor and used that outsourcing as leverage to cut workers’ healthcare and pay.
They have influenced the courts to achieve the same rights as people, with none of the culpability or responsibility.
They have spent millions of dollars on legal teams that look for ways to get them out of contracts in regards to health insurance.
They have sold our privacy as a commodity.
They have used the military and police force to prevent freedom of the press.
They have deliberately declined to recall faulty products endangering lives in pursuit of profit.
They determine economic policy, despite the catastrophic failures their policies have produced and continue to produce.
They have donated large sums of money to politicians supposed to be regulating them.
They continue to block alternate forms of energy to keep us dependent on oil.
They continue to block generic forms of medicine that could save people’s lives in order to protect investments that have already turned a substantive profit.
They have purposely covered up oil spills, accidents, faulty book keeping, and inactive ingredients in pursuit of profit.
They purposefully keep people misinformed and fearful through their control of the media.
They have perpetuated colonialism at home and abroad.
They have participated in the torture and murder of innocent civilians overseas.
They continue to create weapons of mass destruction in order to receive government contracts.
They have participated in a directly racist action by accepting the contract from the State of Georgia to murder Troy Davis.

To the people of the world,

We, the New York City General Assembly occupying Wall Street in Liberty Square, urge you to assert your power.

Exercise your right to peaceably assemble; occupy public space; create a process to address the problems we face, and generate solutions accessible to everyone.

To all communities that take action and form groups in the spirit of direct democracy, we offer support, documentation, and all of the resources at our disposal.

Join us and make your voices heard!

I don’t understand why I am supposed to care about this whole #OccupyWallStreet protest. There is no platform, no legislative vehicle, no coherent call to action, no overriding message, and very little in the way of any point.

I have been liveblogging the events at FDL for over a week, and there is a huge point that the media until yesterday obtusely refused to get.  And it shaped what little coverage there was.

It is worth giving a shit about.
The point of OccupyWallStreet is that the political process and culture of the United States is broken, that a lot of people know that its broken, and that the anger has gotten to the point that folks want to deal with it.  But in order to deal with it, you cannot deal with issues or with legislative agendas, or with predefined principles of a specific ideology.  What has to happen is to build the national consensus again from the bottom up and not depend on the manufactured (marketed) consensus created by the media (and that includes the political blogs).  So the demand is for a new grassroots political process to arrive at consensus outside the media.  And the demand is for restoration of the public space — physical space as well as cultural space in which to deliberate and assemble to demand redress of grievances.

The don’t deserve the pepper spray because in the current security state (and New York understandably is more in lockdown than most cities), just holding a march in the street is illegal.  An event permit to assemble for anything in NY costs $4200.  That’s a high price for freedom to assemble.

Part of the local coalition is Critical Mass. And they point out that a part of the reason for the high permit cost is that vehicular traffic has priority over pedestrians.  But that is just one of the many side issues that feed into the conversation.

The fundamental grievance is that the 1% of top income earners have gained the power to create the economy, political institutions, and cultural norms that benefit them—no surprise there.  But that creation is not working and the 1% would rather the 99% be impoverished and oppressed by law that reform the institutions.  And folks in the 99% are finally saying “No” and undertaking a very detailed look at the alternatives.

The fact that they don’t deserve it is not a problem with the actions going on right now in (renamed) Liberty Park.  It is a problem with the NYPD and the security state that the PATRIOT Act has built.

To keep up with what has been developed (and consensus is a slow and agonizing process), check the New York City General Assembly site.  Let folks know that they can participate for a day or whatever.  See it from the inside instead of the media’s view.

The current work is on a principles of operation (“Principles of Solidarity”) document, which is still open to discussion.  And a call to action, which is still under discussion.

Unlike what you are demanding, these folks have not come with a ready-made set of ideas that they are marketing.  And they are seeking that the discussion be ideologically and demographically inclusive. Because the 99% are ideologically and demographically diverse.

The point is re-establishing the lower-level connections of small-d democracy that is now seriously disconnected after 30 years of conservative dominance.

Another site is Occupy Together, which is coordinating the replication of general assemblies across the US (seemingly beginning with cities that are home to a Federal Reserve Branch).

A site to understand the strategy and tactics is Waging Nonviolence.

It is too early in the process to tell whether this will work.   But if it does, it fundamentally changes the basis of the political conversation from that established by the Tea Party media campaign of 2009-2010.  And by January, I suspect that folks will have seen through what the Tea Party really was.

The success of the OccupyWallStreet process depend on the number and diversity of people who get involved in it.  And the extent to which the process is not  co-opted as media exposure grows.

Here is the diary form of my comment:

This one lost me:

    The outcome is that all mainstream economics is based upon a fundamental misconception through the reversal in accounting polarity that arises out of the ‘agency’ error. ie what is an accounting credit is assumed to be an accounting debit and vice versa.

It depends on whose books you are looking at.  One man’s credit is the counterparty’s debit.

The Fed’s relationship to the Treasury is indeed an agency relationship, not a counterparty relationship.  The Fed is an agency of the federal government, whose board is made up of public and private (national bankers, community bankers, other appointees) governors at each of the regional banks.  And those banks collectively govern the Fed through the Board of Governors that Ben Bernanke chairs.

The discussion of Tax and Spend (Myth #1) is way off.  Taxing and spending do not enter into what the Fed does.  The Fed functions as a permanent line of credit for banks and loans money to banks at a interest rate just for banks (the Fed funds rate).  That loan increases the assets of the Fed and lowers the assets of the bank; the double entries on various accounts to record this transaction will balance out to zero.

Fractional Reserve System (Myth #2) is better but still sorta bass-ackwards.  The money that the Fed loans the banks becomes a liability to the banks, but so do the savings accounts and other investments deposited by the banks customers.  The assets that the bank holds are its loans.  The fractional reserve system allows the banking system as a network (not individual banks) to create money in the money supply greater than the reserves held by all of the banks in total.  Those loans in turn provide more money than the face value of the loan in purchases of goods and services, depending on how many transactions occur before that unit of money goes back to pay off a loan.  It is a very complex network interaction that produces enough money to service the purchases of goods and services in the economy.

What the fractional reserve system does is keeps the banking system from running away creating more money than the production of goods and services can support, creating a bubble and a panic.

And the way that the Fed controls this is to require banks to keep a certain percentage of its cash as reserves.  Now the cash combines cash that the Fed provided as a credit and the cash retained from the operation of the bank.  Total both of those, take a regulated percent out, say 10%, and loan the rest.  So the bank is not loaning out multiples of the money it has, it is retaining 10% and loaning out 90%.  And charging interest on the loans, some of which goes to pay back the Federal Reserve.

That’s the operation of the Fed with regard to the money supply.  It can control the money supply by raising or lowering reserve requirements or by raising or lowering the Fed Funds rate.

This is what Bernanke means by creating reserves in the banking system.  It loans what banks ask for, subject to reserve requirements and the Fed funds rate.  Because the Fed reserves assigned to a bank are a liability for that bank, the incentive for the bank is not to overborrow.

The Treasury issues debt in the form of many different instruments, but use the term T-bill to describe a bunch of what are essentially US government bonds sold for large (for ordinary folks) aggregate sums of cash.  The Treasury auctions T-bills which sets the original interest rate.  There is an aftermarket in which owners of T-bills sell to other private individuals, which has a different interest rate. The T-bill in this secondary market is discounted (up or down) for the changes in the risk that that T-bill might not have the same value later.  But let’s leave that aside.

Through its loans to banks, the Fed makes a profit in terms of its cash account.  That cash is available to be loaned.  It is also available to purchase government T-bills to finance government debt.  The Fed is a creditor just like private individuals or corporations or the Social Security Trust Fund.  But it is a special sort of creditor in that it is an agent for managing US Treasury interactions with the banking system so as to manage the money supply.

The Fed can also buy T-bills from the private aftermarket or from original holders to be able to essentially retire that debt before the T-bill maturity date.

Now lets look at coinage, which is the government taking a material and creating a face value that is greater than its material value.  In fact it used to be coinage that established the value of the material.  A pound of silver (Sterling) had the value  of 1 pound.  Dollars were different.  Dollars were worth 1 dollar, no matter what the material they were made of.  So there was a dollar-to-gold or dollar-to-silver price.  When I was growing up, the price of an ounce of gold was $35 and Fort Knox was the repository of all of the US’s gold assets.  Our boom during the 1950s and the wars of the 1960s caused an outflow of gold to other countries–essentially inflation for the US. So Richard Nixon took us off of that system.  Goldbugs have been delighted ever since.

The government prints currency out, not of thin air, but paper and various alloys of metal.  These essentially circulate for small transactions not worthy of keeping money in a bank.  (Remember money in banks is not currency; that’s just used to make change; money in a bank is magnetic bits on a hard drive that gives the total in some account or another.   With debit cards, the money in the money supply is much, much greater than the currency.

So how does this relate to the debt ceiling? It would be perfectly legal for the Treasury to issue currency too pay off its debts directly.  Before the Federal Reserve, the government used to do just that.  And the Secretary of the Treasury has the authority to do it.

So what’s the catch? Well issuing money directly to pay off debt at the rate that the government spends would increase the money in circulation without the restraints of interest rates or reserve requirements.  The Secretary of the Treasury would have to issue what had come due, not what was needed to support all transactions in the economy.  The means of measuring its impact and adjusting the release of funds would make it difficult to avoid inflation.

The financial whizzes have an idea for how to draw down the debt without killing the economy either through contraction of demand or through inflation.  The idea is to use a coin designed to be transferred to the Treasury’s agent the Fed to hold as a reserve that the Fed could then retire that amount the T-bills that it held as assets for managing the money supply.  The illustration is a platinum bar marked with the symbol “$1 Trillion” or whatever denomination.  The platinum itself would be a hedge against hyperinflation.  If the money supply got dramatically out of hand, the Fed could sell the  platinum bar at its metallic value and draw money out of the money supply.

The Fed gets a platinum bar and continues to manage the money supply.  The Treasury gets the amount of the face value of the bar and can pay creditors and vendors which puts government cash and hence resources in the hands of folks outside the banking system.  Which stimulated demand, jumpstarting the economy and raising government revenues so that at some point the Treasury can buy back the platinum bar from the Fed and retire it.

As the economy improves, more debt can be repurchased and retired ahead of time, unwinding the compound interest.  And allowing more investment in infrastructure and other government expenditures that lower the cost of doing business in the future (and are counter-inflationary).

What matters is the balancing the money supply equally with the real wealth or the GNP.  The wealth in goods and services are provided in a network of transactions that ripple in one direction in the economy and money paid for those transactions ripples through the other way and informs suppliers of supply and demand conditions.  People have gotten so obsessed with the stocks of money in their bank accounts (or lack of it) that the forget that the real wealth is in the value added flows of goods and services.  Which is why I say that American elites are the most stupid in the world.

The debt ceiling is mythical because the accounting reality in the government is that Congress has appropriated funds to be spent and passed laws that determine the amount of revenue coming in.  Those two facts override any debt ceiling.  As one wag put it, the pizza was already ordered and you’re saying that you don’t want to pay the pizza-man at the door.  And the “no new taxes” pledge is designed to cut off the flow of funds to government, which might in a functional Congress go to project that lower the cost of living.

Sorry to be so long, but Chris Cook does not understand the US banking system and the federal reserve.  Something a few hours reading the Fed’s and Treasury’s web sites would have cleared up.