Enabling The Illusion of Political Change: Bush, Obama, Brennan, Geithner, and Gates

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  (88 fans)by Michael Collins http://www.opednews.com/author/author3863.html

We're six years into the Obama administration and nothing much has changed concerning the most fundamental challenges facing the citizens of the United States.   Those challenges are:

• Reviving and reforming an economy that is rigged for only the very wealthiest interests;
• Ending the usurpation of individual rights by the national intelligence cabal; and
• Freeing the nation and the world from the endless insertion of U.S. intelligence and military operations throughout the world.

We have the same lousy economy with the same greedy interests in charge of the same too big to fail institutions making sure that they alone prosper.  Tax incentives and government supports are for the very few in the top 0.001%.  It is all about Wall Street at the expense of working people and Main Street.
Thanks to Snowden's revelations, we know that domestic spying capabilities and activities have expanded considerably since the Bush administration.
While the death count is lower, U.S. sponsored subversive activities and military interventions overseas are a constant.  The destruction of Libya under the guise of humanitarian relief, the open source conspiracy to destroy Syria, and the fantasies about the Ukraine having anything to do with our national security are just three of many morally repugnant, profit-generating projections of power around the world conducted in our name.  PNAC prevails.
Why and How Did this Happen?
There's an obvious answer to the why part of the question.  Those very few individuals and interests in control are not willing to share any of their wealth.

Even if they were willing to share, their fear of retribution for their massive crimes against the people is so profound; the super elite seek safety through full spectrum surveillance and control.  They see their clumsy efforts as somehow controlling the populace and offering protection from the imagined wrath of their victims.
Endless war in Asia and serious subterfuge everywhere else provides a level of public distraction that those in charge hope will substitute reactive hysteria for a critical examination of the grand scam that the power elite use as the basis for their wealth and power.
How the seamless transition of policies between Bush and Obama occurred is a bit subtler although fairly simple in principle.  You change parties, creating the illusion of change.  At the same time, keep key figures from the previous administration are retained to sustain old policies under the mantle of a new party.
Bush becomes Obama on a substantive level while social issues are used to make people think that there's a real difference between the parties.  For example, the Obama administration is supportive of gay rights issues but both gay Americans and those who oppose gay rights all suffer the consequences of a locked down economy in which resources are funneled to the super wealthy, domestic spying, and foreign adventures.
The careful placement high-level Bush operatives and a Wall Street shill in charge of critical elements of the government assured the preservation of right wing, neoconservative economic and foreign policies.  Nothing of substance changed in 2008 or 2012.
During the 2008 presidential campaign, the liberal hope, as candidate Obama  presented himself, indicated that he'd like Bush Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to remain in that position for the Obama administration.  Gates said yes.  It took five years to get out of Iraq, we're still in Afghanistan, and the policy of no defense system left behind is still in place bleeding billions from the Treasury every single day.  Mission accomplished.
Just before the 2008 inauguration, president elect Obama announced his choice of Tim Geithner as Treasury Secretary.  Geithner was head of the powerful New York Federal Reserve Bank during the critical period leading up to the 2008 financial collapse.  As one of Wall Street's chief regulators, he told the world, it's all good, no problems here.  We know how that worked out.  Dutifully, Geithner assumed the role of Bush Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and carried out the biggest bailout in the history of the world.   Despite the efforts of honest bankers and others like Elizabeth Warren, the wholesale looting of the Treasury by Wall Street continued.  Socialism for the extremely rich and survival of the fittest for the rest of us is the motto.
The expansion of domestic spying and continuation of secret operations around the world shows that a nominal Democrat can do just as much damage to the Constitution as a right wing Republican.   A carryover from the Bush administration, John Brennan, made happen.  Brennan latest work for Obama is Director of the CIA.  As Robert Parry pointed out in a recent article, Brennan was at the center of 1984 like activities under Bush.  Under Brennan, the CIA stands accused of cyber sabotage against congressional committees to block, of all things, an investigation into CIA prisoner abused by the Bush administration.
As the saying goes, people can have differing beliefs but not different facts.  The roles and products of Obama, Brennan, Geithner, and Gates are indisputable facts.
There is no Democratic Party, no Republican Party.  There's just The Money Party.  It's the real power behind the theatrics referred to as a two party political system.   The party has no permanent friends or enemies, just permanent interests; preserved at any cost as long as the costs and suffering are borne by the people.
     

The Ever-Changing American Enemy: Thank you, Russia ?

Dear Laissez Faire Today Reader,
Baltimore, MD -- What happens when you spend a day at home searching the Internet for home appliances and maybe some back-to-school supplies? For most people, you get a lazy afternoon. But one couple in Long Island, N.Y., got a visit from their local police department. They had some questions about their peculiar Internet searches.
Better sit down before you read this. And move away any valuables you might throw at a wall in a fit of rage.
Michele Catalano was doing Google searches for pressure cookers. Her husband was looking for a new backpack. A couple days later, six members of the "Joint Terrorism Task Force" knocked on their door and asked them to explain their actions. These weren't people from the FBI, the NSA, or the Department of Homeland Security. Rather, they were local police officers. Yet they had access to Internet searches that only a few specific agencies were granted.
The news cycle is trying to draw the American attention away from the ongoing spying scandal, but it's stories like this that keep it from completely dying. This story of the Catalano family from New York merely confirms your worst suspicions. So why would police be looking at the Google searches of a normal, middle-class American family?
The government says that they can look at information of only Americans who are connected to terror suspects by no more than two people. And though it sounds small and limited in its scope, a simple example shows just how far their reach extends.
Let's say on average, a person calls or contacts 40 unique people. Under the current guidelines, the government would be able to mine the records of "only" 2.5 million people. So when the people behind the controls say they did "only" a few hundred searches, they're not including all the other records that fall under their extended network.
Which brings us back to the couple from New York. They're probably a lot like you and countless other people in America. People who accidentally fell into a government surveillance net. All because they knew someone who knew someone who knew someone who made a long-distance phone call to someone on a government watch list.
Fortunately, there isn't a sad ending to this story. The joint terrorism task force didn't arrest them for their inopportune Google searches. But it makes you wonder just how anonymous you are in the mass that is the Internet. Unlike getting lost in a physical crowd, there is an electronic marker that distinguishes you from all other Internet users. And now it seems like someone somewhere is always watching.
When Edward Snowden revealed just how deep the NSA spying rabbit hole went, he revealed how little privacy we really have. And as his story continues to unfold, America's reputation and honor quickly loses its credibility. Before, people saw America as a refuge from oppression. Now Americans are looking to our former enemies for the same protection.
But as Laissez Faire's own Jeffrey Tucker writes in today's article, America's fickle relationship with other countries seems to be a familiar theme throughout our history. See what it means for our current situation, and how Edward Snowden plays a key role for the foreseeable future.

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Introducing Jeffrey Tucker's... Thank You, Russia?

Jeffrey Tucker

Lon Snowden, father of whistle-blower Edward Snowden, gave an interview to the media this week. The venue: Rossiya 24, a state-owned station. His message was one of gratitude to Russia for considering his son's request for asylum. Edward, as everyone knows, is on the run for having revealed to the American people that their government is logging every communication and storing it for later use.
In other words, Edward is in big trouble for revealing that our government is doing to its own citizens what the U.S. once accused Russia of doing to its citizens. In what is really a bizarre turn of events, Russia has become a safe haven for an American whistle-blower. Any friend of freedom has to join Lon Snowden in expressing gratitude. Because as it turns out, there are only a handful of countries in the world that the U.S. government can't intimidate into compliance.
I'm as glad as the next guy that "we" won the Cold War. But sometimes you just have to wonder: What was the point of those 45 years of nuclear stalemate? All that time, we were told that this was a mighty struggle between individualism and collectivism, between freedom and tyranny, between capitalism and communism.
But at the end of the day, once everything has shaken itself out, it is Russia that is providing sanctuary to our best citizens.
Is this some sort of strange dystopian novel? Well, yes, and it has a name: Nineteen Eighty-Four, by George Orwell. Murray Rothbard once did a reconstruction of the hidden meaning of that novel. He demonstrated that Orwell was writing about the reality of the wartime and postwar period. A time when Russia's status as an enemy turned to friend and back to enemy again in the blink of an eye.
In Orwell's depiction, the world is dominated by three superpowers: Oceania, Eurasia, and Eastasia. Alliances would turn on a dime depending on political priorities. "We've always been at war with Eastasia," says the slogan. Sounds just like something we'd hear today.
Islamic fundamentalists were U.S. allies in my living memory. They were heralded in the 1980s as freedom fighters who held to traditional family values and served as a mighty bulwark against atheistic communism. After the Cold War, our friends became our enemies. Now the right-wing talk shows speak daily of how we've always been at war with Islam.
The Russia case is particularly interesting. In the 1920s, American politics was sporadically consumed with the Red Scare. By the 1930s, Russia had become a kind of paradigm of progress. It was a model after which the New Deal copied its planning schemes for agriculture and large industry. By wartime, Russia was our dearest friend, a heroic ally in the struggle against Japanese and German imperialism. But only a year after WWII ended, President Truman spun it again: Now Russia was the biggest threat to Europe's freedom, and thus began the long Cold War.
But it is even more complicated than that. As Rothbard wrote in 1986:

"Our deadly enemies in World War II, Germany and Japan, are now considered prime Good Guys, the only problem being their unfortunate reluctance to take up arms against the former Good Guys, the Soviet Union. China, having been a much lauded Good Guy under Chiang Kai-shek when fighting Bad Guy Japan, became the worst of the Bad Guys under commu­nism, and indeed, the United States fought the Korean and Vietnamese wars largely for the sake of containing the expansionism of Communist China, which was supposed to be an even worse guy than the Soviet Union. But now all that is changed, and Communist China is now the virtual ally of the United States against the principal Enemy in the Kremlin."

And today? Following some years of friendship in union with the anti-Islamist cause (the U.S. has tacitly backed President Putin in all his imperial wars), Russia is the enemy again. After all, this awful state is protecting a whistle-blower from capture by the U.S.! Meanwhile, Japan doesn't figure into world politics at all, while China is said to be an unrelenting menace to our industrial superiority due to its propensity to steal trade secrets.
As should be clear, Orwell was not so much writing about a future that might come to pass as a present that had already revealed itself in politics throughout the 20th century. This was the century of the total state. What does that mean? It means that no aspect of life is conceptually out of reach for the government. All your data belong to them. All your products, services, and activities are their business. Our property we own only at their discretion. No aspect of life is unplanned by our masters, provided they have the interest and means to make it happen.
The totalitarian mind is revealed in its fullness in the attitude toward war. Beginning in the age of democracy of the 20th century, entire populations were considered to be combatants and potential targets. You know how during U.S. wars, we hear about how civilians are just as culpable for tyrannical power because they are somehow permitting the dictator to rule by failing to overthrow him? We heard this constantly during the Iraq War.
This is a totalitarian mentality. No one is considered outside the political constellation.
Freedom and the total state are incompatible, except that, of course, any state is happy to use propaganda to proclaim itself to be the true land of the free and home of the brave. The reality is borne out in the state's attitude toward dissidents. If you see something and say something bad about the government, what happens to you? It's a basic test of freedom. In this case, the U.S. has been failing miserably.
But the humiliation is increased for Americans to see our former enemies (well, one-time enemies turned friends turned enemies turned friends, etc....) now providing a safe haven to a young man who told the truth about the U.S. surveillance state. Edward Snowden, said Doug Casey last week at Agora Financial's Vancouver Symposium, is not just a hero, but a superhero. He gave up everything to do a public service, all in the interest of making a dent in the inexorable tendency toward total control.
What's fascinating is to see how completely lacking in cynicism Snowden truly is. He thinks that the system can change. He wants Congress to do something. He wants the American people to rise up and demand that their government keep to normal standards of civility and afford their citizens some degree of privacy. In expressing that hope, Edward Snowden revealed himself as one of the last men to actually believe that the system can work to the good. Most of the rest of us lost that hope long ago.
Now he hides... in Russia.
Or as George Orwell might write, "Yet, after all, we've always been at war with Russia."
Sincerely,
Jeffrey Tucker
P.S. Try to remember for a moment what some of your most recent Google searches were. Maybe they were just harmless inquiries that popped into your head. But to some government employee looking for a lead on the next big break, it could be an unlucky combination for you and your family.
Police knocking on your door because you made an innocuous search at the wrong time. Someone combing through your emails because something you wrote as a joke could be construed the wrong way...
Imagine that one day as they're watching your Internet activity everything goes silent. Your electronic trail goes cold. And there's nothing on the Internet that ties you to anything. You've gone dark, and the watchers have no idea what happened.
This isn't the beginning of a new science-fiction techno thriller. It's what thousands of Americans are doing in response to the NSA's surveillance program. Compliance means consent, and a growing number of people in the country have not consented, nor will they ever consent, to this level of government overreach. And now, if you haven't already, you can join their ranks.
Click here to find out how to go dark