Totalitarianism: Sadism Today

Quantum of Aggressiveness - Sadism Today - Shadow Self

I'm uncomfortable writing about this subject.  I am NOT an enemy of federal, state, and local law enforcement officials; for more info on that point see the second footnote here.  Overall, this subject is old-hat: some members of the American law enforcement community are wonderful, positive, committed, dutiful, and helpful.  

However, some, I hypothesize, constitute a quiet, raging sadism in line with Marcuse's 'quantum of aggressiveness', the subject of part 1.  I choose the word sadism from an intuitive perspective and to emphasize the pathological component of this question. 
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American Sadism

Police brutality is now a formality.
They're kicking our ass; and we're paying their salary.
          Brad 'Scarface' Jordan, City Under Siege, 1990
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About 5,000 Americans have died at the hands of the police since 9/11 - 400 to 500 per year.*  Some law enforcement agencies understand this perception and have asked Google to remove related footage from Youtube.  Apparently Americans are 9 times more likely to die at hands of an American nonmilitary law enforcementofficer than a global terrorist.  And that's based on a conservative 2011 estimate of 155 police killings.  

Some police officers seem truly motivated to serve the public.  Others clearly want adventure and prestige, which is fine with me.  And still others seem to want the power - consciously or not - which presents some issues.  Regardless I don't blame the police alone for American sadism.  We nearly all have a role in this matter and it all ultimately finds its home in some of the darkest components of European culture.  It has become an almost spiritual illness** - which fear and propaganda*** further complicate.  

State sadism has deep meaning today.  Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, the March 20th invasion, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, the bombing of Cambodia, and more all reflect a state-condoned sadism and a spiritual-emotional-psychological method of power construction and power maintenance.  (I am curious to locate research into this matter.  The testimony of Ursuline nun Dianna Ortiz tells is but one account of intimate state involvement in her own torture.)  

I have no evidence to suggest this sadism is explicit state policy but I suspect TPTB (who are not omnipotent) understand the method in play and simply let it unfold once it arises.  I'm also not saying state sadism is not without benefit although I question whether is exhibits a net benefit.  

My point: illegitimate police violence in the US is not state policy.**** Illegitimate police violence is, however, almost certainly, related to the spiritual-emotional-psychological method of power construction and maintenance.  Police brutality is, among other things, our own internalization of aggressive foreign policy and our failure to own the ugliness of the colonial era and to heal those ills.   
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Petite Sadisme

The enduring attraction of war is this: Even with its destruction and carnage it can give us what we long for in life.  It can give us purpose, meaning, a reason for living.
          Chris Hedges, War is a Force That Gives Us Meaning*****
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Not only do we like a good fight, state brutality and violence affirms our sense of and desire for order.  I call this the petite sadisme.  We respond positively to the images and video footage of the regimentation of life at Guantanamo Bay prisoners, prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, police violence at the 1968 Democratic National Convention, water hosing during the Civil Right Era, the Viet Nam War bombing of Cambodia, and even the beating of Rodney King.  It's not that we like it, condone it, or could participate in it.  It's that it satisfies something in many (though not all) of us.  

We respond to it in such a way as to enable it and allow it; and generally we do not take active steps to attenuate it.  More examples from entertainment abound.******

Just as our propaganda-driven fears leads us to give the state more power, a slowly brewing sadism finds satisfaction in watching the state implement violence.  Out of this mass of fear and sadism, Americans are themselves helping to construct a totalitarian future.  The whole tragedy - with its psychoanalytic, economic, political, and policy implications - feeds on itself. 

This arrangement often requires that a minority of people become the target of the state aggressiveness or that people either enjoy being mistreated or simply acquiesce.  The target of illegitimate external control has generally been classic minority groups: activists, the poor, racial minorities, the mentally ill, or misfits.  But that is changing for some reason.

In the last 20 years, a more diverse population of people is beginning to feel this pressure - particularly 2nd Amendment activists.  Alex Jones has been quite vocal on this subject for many years.  Former Navy Seal and activist Ben Smith has explicitly said that he believes the federal government wants to provoke veterans 'to do something' and justify a state response.

One the one hand, we have the global power conspiracies.  But on the other we have a growing emptiness in people - and simultaneously emerging depth in people, which is where I continue this piece in part 3.   

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* I learned of this estimate from RT News and came across it in a short film titled RELEASE US.  I was not able to locate the original figure as of December 2013.  To fully evaluate the meaning of that figure we also need to know the pre-9/11 figures.  I have not found definitive evidence so far but many believe police brutality is on the rise.

** I could be wrong but events such as the My Lai massacre seem much less coordinated and yet still reflect American sadism and the large spiritual crises we have in front of us.  As does the recent story about the 'death squad' of American servicemen in Iraq.  My point is that these are not simply questions of state policy but also something deep and something cultural.

*** Again this blog series on totalitarianism all originates from ideas I was considering in December 2013 in relation to the NSA series, which has an entry on synthetic terror and Managing the American Mind where I discuss fear and propaganda more carefully.  Fear and propaganda are as old as culture.  This episode of fear and propaganda I connect back to the Second Industrial Revolution and the birth of modern communication...which has everything to do with the Information Age...

**** To the extent that a shadow state (i.e. shadow gov't) exists, illegitimate police violence is almost certainly the policy of the shadow state.  But I have no evidence of this highly likely reality other than common sense.  These are all very important distinctions to make when you start to determine cause and to attribute responsibility.

***** It's not a great quote because it addresses war.  But it's completely related in that violence does unify groups.  And that's the point.  People often don't get involved politically in the police brutality issues, I suspect, because it's someone else's problem and the victim 'probably deserved it' and it keep people under control.  I think that thought is more powerful than people know.

****** Cops is a show where you can watch the poor get chased and captured.  Border Wars is slightly more sophisticated except you're watching illegal immigrants.  The Hunger Games and The Running Man clearly reflect these themes.  In the song Superstar, Lupe Fiasco explicitly talks about the crowd's anticipation to 'see the lights get dim'.

Totalitarianism: Quantum of Aggressiveness

Quantum of Aggressiveness - Sadism Today - Shadow Self

My extended NSA blog series has an entry that got me thinking about totalitarianism.  (Check out the quotes in that entry from the following: Binney, Schell, Moglen, Alexander, and Hunt.  They are enlightening.)  Also, in another entry in that same series, under the heading Disciplining and Punishing the American People, I touch on the issue of illegitimate external control and provide examples.  Here I address the dynamics that I see in play and not so much the examples.*

  

Cases of state brutality abound.  People on the Right such as at the Cato Institute cover police misconduct; meanwhile, people you'd more traditionally associate with the Left cover police brutality.  It is an issue wide in scope and audience.

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Intro

I secretly think reality exists so we can speculate about it.

          Slavoj Zizek, contemporary philosopher, 2008

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Americans need to speculate much more on this subject - especially in light of 20th century Asian and European totalitarian legacies, not to mention whatever is exactly going on in Russia right now.  

Even though totalitarian states killed nearly 130 million people in the prior century, the subject seems distant, absurd, or just boring.  It is the obsession of the academic, the conspiracist, and the intellectual.  That is true at least until it's too late per the 'Then-they-came-for-me'-adage.  Perhaps we are all too aware that confronting power is dangerous work and, or worse, that possessing it is even more horrifying.

Whereas we may have survived the Orwellian vision of totalitarianism (heavy-handed, propagandistic, external, and traditional), we are perhaps slipping into the Huxleyan vision of it (subtle, doctrinal, pharmacological, and technological).  Whereas Winston drinks gin, Lenina takes 'soma'; it has no hangover - making it all the more insidious.  For Orwell, the self still existed despite the state's impositions.  For Huxley, the state and the self had become a single nightmare.  (I'm not the first to make this observation.)

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'A Quantum of Aggressiveness'

[Anna Freud] and Bernays provided the ideas that were used by the US government, big business, and the CIA to develop techniques to manage and control the minds of the American people.  But this was not a cynical exercise in manipulation.  Those in power believed that the only way to make democracy work and create a stable society was to repress the savage barbarism that the psychoanalysts told them lurked just under the surface of normal American life.

          Adam Curtis, filmmaker, 2002

This prosperity...consciously or unconsciously leads to a kinda of schizophrenic existence...In this society an incredible quantum of aggressiveness and destructiveness is accumulated precisely because of the empty prosperity, which then simply erupts.

          Herbert Marcuse, 1967 (near 53:00, emphasis added)

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Although conspiracy plays a role**, I suspect the ultimate origins of totalitarianism lie in the public mind and the efforts to manage it.  Anna Freud, Sigmund's daughter, and Bernays felt that people in a democratic society required external control - precisely to avoid the political implosions that had created totalitarian states in Europe.  The irony of course is that that external control precisely tends toward totalitarianism of one sort, as Marcuse suggests.  He felt that that very control and its attendant 'empty prosperity' inhibits healthy growth and even creates in people 'an incredible quantum of aggressiveness and destructiveness', which itself could manifest in totalitarianism of yet another sort.***  (A proper discussion of this subject could fill a book.)

We don't see much hard physical evidence for this aggressiveness in society at large; crime has fallen in recent years.  But we see this aggressiveness in another place: among the police and other law enforcement officials, the subject of part 2. 

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* As of 2007, USA Today reported increased police brutality.  I have not found recent definitive evidence so far but many believe police brutality is on the rise today.   

** American totalitarianism, if it emerges, will not simply be the fruit of our own mass irrationality; conspiracy will have played a role.  But nature of that conspiracy is potentially quite subtle.  Nevertheless, I am certain average people face a conspiratorial class who, in effect, manages the maelstrom of history.  More on that here soon.  

Bernays, Anna Freud, Paul Mazur, and all the purveyors and beneficiaries of corporate propaganda are not real conspirators on the level of which I speak.  They participated in an ordinary (and deceitful) sort of class warfare and partisanship for the sake of their vision of stability and personal gain.

*** Marcuse's words: "By virtue of the way it has organized its technological base, contemporary industrial society tends to be totalitarian.  For 'totalitarian' is not only a terroristic political coordination of society, but also a non-terroristic economic-technical coordination which operates through the manipulations of needs by vested interests. Not only a specific form of government or party rule makes for totalitarianism, but also a specific system of production and distribution which may well be compatible with a 'pluralism' of parties, newspapers, 'countervailing powers,' etc."

420 Legalization: Getting Real

A Perspective - Getting Real - Drawing The Line

Getting to the root of drug distributor violence in Mexico, you must go back to the first principle: demand.  For now and for me, it's a question of marijuana demand.  Maybe someday we will all likely address all drugs.  It is a brave new world, indeed. 

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Culpability and a Real Solution to Mexican Violence

[W]e accept our share of the responsibility...

We know that the demand for drugs drives much of this illicit trade.
        Hilary Clinton, former Secretary of State, 2010*
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Legalizing pot here will allow growing here and reducing demand in MX (not to mention it will spur industry here).  Reducing demand in MX will reduce i) drug business operations, ii) funds for arms and for paying corrupt police and other officials, and iii) ultimately the power of drug distributors.  In the short run, violence might rise as groups fought for a smaller market but overall their position in society will weaken.

Americans are fundamentally responsible for many who have died in Mexico since 2006 and prior.  In the context of drug consumption and demand, this idea is obvious.  In the context of NAFTA, it's a more complicated.  Dr. Peter Watt of Department of Hispanic Studies at The University of Sheffield explains it well.

"[T]the neo-liberal policies brought in during the 1980s basically drove millions of Mexicans into poverty, and so provided a cheap labour force for the drugs cartels.  In the run-up to NAFTA in 1994, the people pushing for it were the big multinationals and big Mexican companies who were funding the PRI.  The process meant a new subordination of the Mexican economy to the US economy.  For example, subsidies were lifted on production of Mexican corn, and then Mexico was flooded with imported corn from the US, where government subsidies were still in place.  This meant that in the first six years of NAFTA some two million small farmers in Mexico left the land. This migration from the land to the cities, to the maquiladoras on the border, and to the US itself has helped produce a flexible labour pool for criminal organizations to employ, a massively cheap labour force."**

Clinton obviously does not accept responsibility in the sense that Watt explains it.  (For the record, I am not anti-'free-market'.  That's a whole other enormous discussion for another day soon.)

Legalizing marijuana in the states and building our domestic industry is the real answer to reducing distributor violence in Mexico and preventing it from transforming our own society; coordinating legalization between nations is even better.  In 2009 (!), The Wall Street Journal did an excellent job outlining some of this thinking. ***  (As Noam Chomsky said many years ago, you can always rely on the financial news writers to assess issues in the clearest terms.)
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Distributors, Vigilantes, and Civil Society

They are all the same.
        lime grower in Michoacan re vigilantes and criminals, 2014

We respect El Chapo more than any elected official.

        printed sign at a February event in Culiacan, Sinaloa, 2014
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Overall, the situation in Mexico is exceedingly complicated.  Here's an article on how some Mexican citizens are scared of the vigilantes potential future intentions.  And here's an article on how some Mexican citizens support 'Chapo' Guzman's leadership.

The Knights Templar organization - a group that originated in 2011 out of the collapse of La Familia Michoacana - is another interesting story.  According to this interview piece, the head of Knights Templar, Servando 'La Tuta' Gomez, is a former school teacher who points out astutely that the distributors are a 'necessary evil'.  It has taken me a long time hold that view.  I hold it now.  In preparation for Pope Benedict XVI's 2012 visit to Guanajuato, this same group put up 14 banners reading "The Knights Templar Cartel will not partake in any warlike acts, we are not killers, welcome Pope."  Supposedly even Los Zetas have begun to reach out people to build a 'social base'.

Obviously, we view this all with deep cynicism but it reveals much about these distributors that many people don't understand.

The distributors in Mexico are a real power source; to the extent that people support them (even if under complicated terms) and to the extent that they have a monopoly on violence, they exhibit some limited aspects of authority and legitimacy.  That is something most establishment politicians in the States will not understand.

To complicate matters further and as an illustrative example, some evidence suggests that Chevron killed people in Nigeria.  Here's my point: I imagine (maybe) drug distributors kill many, many more innocent people than than oil and gas producers (maybe not).  But the fact remains that big economically productive organizations tend to kill people in the process of their operations.  I'm not making excuses; I'm looking for real solutions to violence as it really occurs.

Also, recall that the DEA has worked with the Sinaloa cartel for some time.  And severals financial institutions - such as BofA, Western Union, and JP Morgan - have dipped into the drug game; not to forget HSBC.  All the money is dirty.  Many institutions are involved.  It is the real world of war, money, and power.****  None of these organizations are all that different.*****

Personally I think the distributors, the vigilantes, and civil society organizations in Mexico need to exchange ideas (covertly or not) on how to create functioning, profitable, and safe (albeit illegal) drug markets and transportation and cultivation operations so people can buy drugs safely, learn about rehabilitation, and seek out out public health services.

The distributors may also want to understand two things.  First, they won the war but they haven't yet won the peace.  Winning the peace is generally much, much harder.  Americans have failed to win the peace in every major war we have fought since Korea.  Second, legalization is coming; and if they want to win the peace, they will have to transform their organizations to meet the needs of the Mexican people and to account for legalization.  I can already see a new war and more lawlessness as vigilante groups begin to take shape.  The predicable outcome is that the vigilantes go into cultivation and distribution to fund their efforts - whether it's to maintain order or build their own power.  It would better for everyone to work together now, share the proceeds, and move forward with life.  You can always find time to fight an enemy.  He might win.  You might win.  But there's also always a third option.   It's usually risky but the benefits are also often large.

As a communication of goodwill, the distributors may want to consider devoting monies to orphanages, mental health facilities, and institutions that protect and support Mexican woman.  (Will those organizations accept the money...questions abound.)

For part 3...
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* The full quote covers more issues that I do not want to address now.

** Adding insult to absurdity, Watt outlines the nature of President Calderon's failure: "Prohibition of substances has been going on in some form or other for almost 100 years, and has always been a failure.  But the Calderón militarization of this has been an unmitigated disaster.  Look at four measures of this - based on the government's own statistics.  First, the overall violent crime rate had been falling in Mexico before this new initiative.  In the past six years though it has increased by more than 200%.  Similarly with the homicide rate: it had been falling, but has now more than doubled.   Thirdly, it has not reduced addiction rates within Mexico itself.  These have always been low compared to other countries, but if anything, they have now gone up half a per cent, and so the 'public health' argument to support the drugs war doesn't make sense.  And finally, the number of human rights abuses committed by the military during their attempts to control the drugs cartels – illegal detentions, torture, deaths, have shown a six-fold increase."

*** Recall that Fernando Henrique Cardoso, Cesar Gaviria, Ernesto Zedillo, and Ricardo Lagos - the former presidents of Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Chile - all support a marijuana liberalization bill in Mexico City; Vicente Fox, another former Mexican president supports similar thinking.

**** The preeminence of war, money, and power is not a function of a physical law or law of social dynamics.  Especially now, I believe humanity can re-imagine itself in ways not possible in the past.

***** In an upcoming interview regarding the NSA, my guest Marcy Wheeler makers a very somewhat similar point regarding JP Morgan.  I was so shocked when she made the point I laughed and spit up my coffee.  The idea itself wasn't shocking but rather that she would say it so bluntly.  Here's a preview.

420 Legalization: A Perspective

A Perspective - Getting Real - Drawing The Line

You can find many reasons to support marijuana legalization; the medical applications are quite provocative.  As long as alcohol is legal, I cannot find a single rational reason to not support legalization even for the most conservative thinking of people.  It simply makes no sense.  In a booze legal world, criminalizing and not legalizing marijuana is irrational.

For me, the kicker is violence in Mexico - in particular violence against innocent people, poor people, Brown people, journalists, and activists.  In simple terms, this blog advocates for some form of marijuana legalization on both sides of the border as a way of reducing violence in Mexico and keeping it from spilling over further into the US.  The sub-texts of this blog is the crucification of people under globalization and the question of femicide in the Americas.*
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I started this blog in May 2012; I left some of that earlier voice below.  When I wrote it then I was certain that whenever published I'd find new stories of mass graves.   The old links are included with the new.
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Blood and Death

We have a generation of individuals that are willing to take some body's life for 50 dollars...100 dollars.
        Former undercover DEA agent, Celerino Castillo III, 2012
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Last week - in early May 2012 - I read an article about on how Mexican authorities had found 15 dismembered bodies in Jalisco.  I debated whether or not the subject was 'timely'.  Then Sunday - again in early May 2012 - I read of an even larger discovery involving 49 torsos in Nuevo Leon.

More recently...here is a new story from February 6 in Michoacan, another with 64 people found in Jalisco from December, yet another involving 17 people in Jalisco from February 22, and yet new story I found with 500 sets of remain scattered across 11 municipalities in Coahuila.  I truly believe some people probably could care less about these deaths.  I care.

Either way Americans eventually are going to figure out this issue is an American issue. The two of the three biggest graves above are close to the US border.  Furthermore, to quote 'Senor X', a Chicago drug trafficker, regarding the Sinaloa organization's influence in Chicago, "It's very strong and it's getting worse.  There's people in Chicago who have a relationship with gang members.  The cartel is, the cartels are, have direct contact now with the gang members...  The cartels, for example, Sinaloa cartel recruit the gang members and now they have direct contact with the gang members in the United States.  And the worst part of it is that they're armed.  It's only a, it's a time bomb."

The body count of the Mexican drug war now exceeds the Human Rights Watch estimate of more than 60,000 people since late 2006. I've seen more recently the figure of 80,000. Some place the death toll far higher at 150,000. Wikipedia indicates 90,000 to 106,000 deaths and 1.6 million people displaced from 2005 to 2012.  Not to forget: 26,000 disappeared.

As you likely know, many, many violent act sit on sites such as Liveleak.  Some have the death edited out.  Some do not.  I've watch one.  I felt it was necessarily to complete this blog with authenticity.**
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The Life of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz

This struggle is not only for my daughter.

Let's not allow one more young woman to be killed in this city.

        Ortiz, 2010 (referring to Juarez)
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However, with the death of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz, much is different.  First, it's on Youtube.  Second, she did not die in a field on her knees giving up names and addresses after having gotten caught up in the game.  She died an activist demanding the truth and justice for her own blood and daughter Rubi Marisol Frayre.  When I watched her get shot in Plaza Hidalgo in Chihuahua city, I felt an immediate clarification in my thinking about marijuana in America - and probably drugs more generally.  In my opinion, people who care about human rights, Christian values, human values, reducing violence, and a 100 other issues have an obligation to re-evaluate marijuana legalization very seriously.***

Ortiz had a deep insight into the nature of modern protest.  My understanding is that in one protest she walked from Juarez to Mexico City partially naked.  In protesting naked, I believe she communicated at least two deep truths to us.  First, average people will ultimately have to face the darkness of our times with the truth and the truth alone; the street is devolving into madness; and, as I've argued, the modern administrative state is failing.  Second, the murderousness of her daughter's death exhibited a vulgarity that nakedness in one way or another helps to communicate.

She was a warrior.   Such people will go into history among the mothers of global renewal.   As with woman globally, women in the Americas - especially women of indigenous descent - carry an enormous burden on behalf of our societies.  My belief is that this debt will not go unpaid.

If I offend the family of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz in recalling her story or activists south of the border in any way, I apologize.  I do not mean to politicize her death.  I believe it was political before I learned of it.  I speak from the heart and this was my experience when I saw what happened.
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Pathological Killings

They would show a new recruit how to kill.

They would give them a machete.  If not, they'd give them a sledge hammer and they'd tell them to kill the people they had tied up.
        Wenceslao Tovar, sicario in Tamauliplas, 2012
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Killing has become a practical and commonplace exercise in parts of Mexico.  Killing is something that distributors practice and refine.   It is not a crime of impulse, revenge, or war.  Killing has become an exercise of business and has for some I suspect become an addiction.  For some not all, killing has become pathological in Mexico.  It is in the nature of pathology that you cannot confront it with ordinary incremental measures that address symptoms.  You must go to the root and remove what created the pathology - namely demand.  You could try to stop distributors at the physical level such as with a drug war but is impossible in practical terms and ridiculous in moral terms.
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Ending the Mexican Drug War

In drug trafficking, as long as there is demand, there will be a supply.  It's like energy.  You can't create or destroy it.  It only transforms.

        Javier Valdez, journalist and co-founder of Riodoce, 2014****

See, if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel.  That's literally true.
        Milton Friedman, Nobel economist, 1991*****
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Regarding the practical, unless people lose interest in drugs - which will take at least two centuries - you will never stop the drug trade; it is a fool's errand.  The distributors have won and have done so decisively.  They will continue to win.  The drug trade is effectively a protected industry with highly inelastic demand; it doesn't require sophisticated technology as with Apple and IBM or deep physical capitalization as with Exxon and BP.  And the drug trade is illegal so you don't have to report the income.

The money, the soldiers, and the arms required to fight it out are phenomenal.  The entire Mexican military budget for 2014 is possibly $12B and in 2012 was $7B.  The Columbian and Mexican institutions of drug distribution make $18B to $39B from American consumers each year.  You do the math.

People in the drug trade will always win as long as drugs are illegal because people in the so-called straight world (i.e. the non-black market realm) will always ultimately condone the the drug trade so they can dip into the drug world for cash.  (Both presidents Bush, 41, and Clinton have likely done just that.  I am referring to the Iran-Contra Affair and the Mena Cover-up where each president in one way or another dip into the drug world for cash to fund personal or political endeavors.)

Even if no one in the straight world condoned the drug trade, the drug consumer would still always keep distributors awash in money and arms.  Demand will always keep the distributors ahead of the regulators.******  Even if you somehow by a miracle beat the the distributors in one generation, you have no assurance that the same saga will not re-emerge in the next generation or in a neighboring country.  When Nixon declared the American War on Drugs in 1971 perhaps we did not have all this experience.  But we have it now.

Ending the drug war in Mexico or here in the states is simple; we just have to let go of it.  To paraphrase Will Rogers, if you're in a hole, stop digging...
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* I neither support nor abhor globalization.  It has begun.  It's on us to understand it and direct it as gracefully as possible.  Globalization presents opportunities and risks that deserve attention.

** Viewing them is at some level a form of participation.  Growing up I remember knowing about the Faces of Death series.  I never watched.   Killing has become a part of the music and consciousness of Mexico and the US.  For instance, Breaking Bad - among the greatest American TV shows - showcased a narcocorrido in 2009 called Negro Y Azul: The Ballad of Heisenberg by Los Quates deSinaloa.  These are all scary trends.

*** I had earlier named this blog "Legalization and the Life of Marisela Escobedo Ortiz". I changed it out of respect.

**** I love this quote. It harkens back to conversations I had at policy school regarding immigration. A few of my friends and I agreed on how American policy-makers simply do not understand the biological and economic drivers of immigration between Mexico and the US. Despite the periodic slowdowns as during the Great Recession, nothing will stop immigration between these countries. No wall is big enough. No penalty stiff enough.

Free market thinkers always talk about 'free trade' and the free movement of capital but they almost universally fail to regard the free movement of labor in discussions of globalization. I do not support global consolidations such as with the so-called North American Union but culturally the US and MX are intertwined as no other nations in the Western hemisphere.

***** Great related quote from US District Judge James C. Paine in 1991: "Alcohol didn't cause the high crime rates of the '20s and '30s. Prohibition did. And drugs do not cause today's alarming crime rates but drug prohibition does." "Trying to wage war on 23 million Americans who are obviously very committed to certain recreational activities is not going to be any more successful than Prohibition was."

****** Even if a single distributor in MX falter under some sort of failure of leadership, which people are saying might happen because of the recent arrest of Joaquin 'Chapo' Guzman, the power of drug distributors - even on a downward trajectory - will continue for at least decade or two.  And I don't buy even that argument.

To quote David Shirk of the Justice in Mexico Project, "As long as these other structures remain in place, all things being equal, Sinaloa will be able to continue to operate if not as normal, at least as the most powerful criminal organization in Mexico.”  After the Colombian National Police killed Pablo Escobar, his organization fell apart but the drug trade in Colombia moved forward.  In fact, Mexican distributors are in a perfect situation to continue to rise in power as an intra-competitive oligarchy.

Surveillance & the American Mind: Deconstructing Metadata

Face Value - Synthetic Terror - Illegitimate Control 
Nascent Totalitarianism - Deception as Policy - Deconstructing Metadata - 2020

[Series interviews with Thomas Drake and Marcy Wheeler.]

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Metadata is not what it seems and is not what is at stake.  Metadata is the timid public face of domestic surveillance, which is actually far more powerful and invasive.  By the term metadata, I mean section 215 metadata phone surveillance.

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Total Electronic Surveillance

[The NSA is] collecting everything, contents word for word, everything of every domestic communication in this country.
          Russ Tice, former NSA analyst, August

[T]hat's why they had to build Bluffdale, that facility in Utah with that massive amount of storage that could store all these recordings and all the data being passed along the fiberoptic networks of the world.  ...[Y]ou could store 100 years of the world's communications here.  That's for content storage.  That's not for metadata.

          William Binney, former NSA mathematician, August
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In a sense, we have two conversations taking place - a timid exchange and a sober one.  In the timid exchange, we have members of Congress, US district court judges, some lawyers, a large portion of the press, and executive branch officials discussing metadata.  In the sober exchange, we have NSA whistleblowers, other lawyers, a smaller portion of the press, and a good part of the blogosphere discussing total electronic surveillance.*/**

Indeed, the three biggest NSA stories of December - the Presidential Review Group report, US district court judge Richard Leon's ruling on Klayman v. Obama I (and not II), and US district court judge William Pauley's ruling on ACLU v. Clapper - are in the timid category and focus on metadata.  (Though Klayman v. Obama II was not a metadata case, Leon did not rule favorably on it.)

Let there be no illusions: as multiple former intelligence and law enforcement officials illustrate above (and below***), we live in a total electronic surveillance society.  Metadata is, at best, a red herring and, at worst, an uncoordinated or even coordinated limited hangout, which distracts an already regimented American people from seeing the social control apparatus that has been erected around us since 9/11.  

To the extent that the courts focus on metadata cases and Congress focuses on metadata questions, an entire subset of NSA programs, actions, and technological practices remain obfuscated in the public debate - despite appearing the most illegal, unconstitutional, and illegitimate.  We cannot overemphasize that the disclosures are not simply about metadata but rather total electronic surveillance - not to mention other subtle issues including decryption programs such as Bullrun.  
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Proffering Absurdities

First - as I said, I have great respect for Senator Wyden.  I thought, though in retrospect, I was asked a 'When are you going to start, stop beating your wife'-kind of question, which is meaning not answerable necessarily by a simple yes or no.  So I responded in what I thought was the most truthful, or least untruthful manner by saying no.           
          James Clapper, DNI, June (11:15)****

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'Least untruthful' is not 'too cute by half'; it's Rumsfeldian bullshit.  As many people know, NSA Director Alexander said in June the NSA had thwarted 54 plots under Section 215 and Section 702.  Then, in October, he said one or two plots involved metadata phone record collecting under Section 215.  Meanwhile in July, NSA Deputy Director John Inglis said that metadata phone record collecting helped catch Basaaly Moalin and three others successfully sending $8,500 to al-Shabaab, the Somali-based terrorist group that claimed responsibility for the Westgate shopping mall attack in Kenya.  

Moalin is a legitimate SIGINT success.  But there's a problem with these exchanges.

Alexander has four master's degrees - two in hard science fields; he's a four star general and a West Point graduate.  Inglis has two master's in hard science fields; he was a Brigadier general and US Air Force Academy graduate.  Together they manage an organization with a $10.8B annual budget and that employs 40K+ people.  Alexander and Inglis - who have for decades work in the fields of state secrecy - would have us believe that the crowning achievement of metadata phone record collecting under Section 215 is that they caught a cab driver in San Diego successfully sending $9K to Somalia.*****

Presenting Moalin as sufficient or legitimate evidence for the 'phone dragnet' (i.e. metadata phone record collecting under Section 215) is only possible in a political culture where lies, obstruction, and propaganda has become commonplace and truth has lost a significant degree of real meaning.  NSA officials are proffering the absurd.  Whereas these leaders have lied about specific issues, the greatest lie occurring here is the one of omission.  We are not only getting ordinary lies discussed in part 5, Deception as Policy, but a more sophisticated one.   The picture NSA officials have allowed to unfold is a cartoonish absurdity.  Although such is nearly impossible to verify, Moalin and metadata are likely uncoordinated limited hangouts.  

The question is: what are they hiding?  Parallel construction (a.k.a parallel investigation) is a candidate answer.
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Parallel Construction

Ultimately it's the metadata that they're going to use against people when and if they use everything that they have against them in court.  So, now here's the big thing.  NSA collects everything.  NSA collects word for word content of every phone call communication, of every email, of every Skype message system, of everything, of all the Facebook and all the google and that order information too.  They collect everything.
          Russ Tice, December (2:45) 

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The Intelligence Community (IC) has all the electronic communications in the domestic arena (or a meaningful portion it and the intention to getting all of it); but IC officials are not going to state in blunt terms that the surveillance system is approaching or has already become complete and omnipresent.  But they are pushing for metadata as the legal tool and public face of their methodologies.  They use (or may eventually use) the complete data set to examine a target and the metadata set to charge the target in court.  That is, as far as I can tell, what metadata is really about.  Ironically, Inglis in a sense reveals their hand when he said "That's not how these programs work". 

Reuters openly reports this very argument regarding parallel construction and the DEA.  The DEA also receives NSA tips, which enable further parallel construction.  Indeed, NSA, CIA, and the IRS all allegedly share intelligence, which also illustrates the power and use of parallel construction.  Total electronic surveillance is powerful; and intelligence and law enforcement officials unsurprisingly want it.  But American need to provide their consent.  That has not happened to date.

(In a larger sense, it's worth noting the surveillance state is likely as much about offensive, political objectives as defensive, strategic objectives.  For instance, emptywheel has noted that the NSA conducts infiltration - in other words creating and accessing strategic informants and other assets.  I'll further argue in A Wisdom-less Society that surveillance is very much if not completely about social control as Snowden argued.)  

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* For a comprehensive, evidence based portrayal of the NSA's technological capacity see this ProPublica piece.

** Admittedly, I am simplifying matters; Jewel v. NSA and is not a metadata case; and many important cases remain open.  Also, as far as I can tell, the Intelligence Oversight and Surveillance Reform Act - the reform offered by Senators Wyden, Udall, Blumenthal, and Paul - is not (at face value) metadata legislation.  Nor is the USA Freedom Act - the reform offered by Senator Leahy and Representative Sensenbrenner.

*** Former FBI Director Robert Mueller in 2011: "We put into place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so it does not require an individualized search."  Former NSA senior executive and whistleblower Thomas Drake in 2012: "[T]he NSA has chosen to seize and save all personal electronic communications."  Former FBI agent Tim Clemente in May: "There's a way to look at digital communications in the past.  And I can't go into to detail of how that's done or what's done.  I can tell you that no digital communication is secure."  Snowden in June: "[T]he reality is this: if an NSA, FBI, CIA, DIA, etc analyst has access to query raw SIGINT databases, they can enter and get results for anything they want.  Phone number, email, user id, cell phone handset id (IMEI), and so on - it's all the same.  The restrictions against this are policy based, not technically based, and can change at any time.  Additionally, audits are cursory, incomplete, and easily fooled by fake justifications."

**** What exactly is a 'When are you going to start, stop beating your wife'-kind of question?  As it turns out Clapper is clearly alluding to an exchange between former Director of Central Intelligence Richard Helms, American journalist Daniel Schorr, and another reporter.

As shared (on page 57) in Challenging the Secret Government by Kathryn Olmstead, Helms says to Schorr: "I must say, Mr. Schorr, I didn't like what you had to say on some of your broadcasts on this subject.  I don't think it was fair, and I don't think it was right.  As far as I know, the CIA was never responsible for assassinating any foreign leaders."  

Another reporter asks if the CIA had discussed assassinations.  Helms: "I don't know whether I've stopped beating my wife, whether you've stopped beating your wife.  In government, there are discussion of practically everything under the sun."  "Of assassinations?"  The report quipped.  Helms: "Of everything!"

I'm really not sure what to make of all this beating-of-wives talk.  But it strikes me (no pun intended) as meaningful.  Without getting to far afoot and at the risk of myself being cute, one gets the impression that Clapper is subconsciously or even consciously admitting that he is in an abusive relationship with the American people and maybe even doesn't really give a shit.  If it conscious, you have to respect the boldness of it all.  Some have suggested that, in Clapper's decision to say he has "great respect for Senator Wyden", he was in fact saying in code that he has no respect for him.  More on that in Power and Illusions.

As it turns out and as many people know, the CIA had indeed helped to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the first democratically elected Prime Minister of the Republic of Congo, and others.  The Church Committee brought this subject to light precisely because of the work of reporters like Daniel Schorr.

***** Just to complete this discussion: according to ProPublica, three other cases exist in relation to Section 215 and Section 702 - one where no one was charged with crimes and two others where additional law enforcement methods played the key role; emptywheel takes this view as well - see bullet two.  emptywheel also confirms that Moalin is the primary achievement under metadata phone record collecting under Section 215.  It is worth noting that the NSA very well may have more cases from the 54 of value to present to the public - related to Section 702. 

Surveillance & the American Mind: Deception as Policy

Face Value - Synthetic Terror - Illegitimate Control 
Nascent Totalitarianism - Deception as Policy - Deconstructing Metadata - 2020

[Series interviews with Thomas Drake and Marcy Wheeler.]

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option3 is not just about the big picture.  The next four blogs address the current policy process surrounding the Snowden disclosures.   

The issues at hand include transparency, oversight, and effectiveness.  People who argue we cannot have transparency and security are mistaken.  After troubling articles in the earlier 1970's came out regarding intelligence activities then, Congress initiated the Church Committee in 1975 to re-position the nexus of transparency, American values, and effectiveness.  Now it's our turn.  But that's not what is happening in Congress.  

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A Structured and Rational Inquiry

If we can't understand the policies and the programs of our government, we cannot grant our consent.
          Snowden, October
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Americans today have very real enemies.  To quote current Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, "Saying 'Death to America' is easy.  We need to express 'Death to America' with action.  Saying it is easy."  That was in May; and he's not even a real terrorist.

The NSA needs to operate programs that meet SIGINT objectives and its mission - particularly given the real but "vanishingly small" risk of nuclear terrorism.*  In light of NSA whistleblowers, however, the Senate or House needs to establish a structured and rational inquiry - even if partially behind closed doors - into all NSA programs and computing platforms that operate in the domestic domain and make written findings - even if partially classified; the inquiry must free itself from the influence of the existing intelligence committees, which themselves need re-constitution.  All members of the body that produces this inquiry should have complete findings and access to the hearings.  Such an inquiry allows elements of the truth to coalesce throughout the entire Congress rather than remaining in the Executive, the Intelligence Community and the Congressional intelligence committees.

In the Congressional discussion of post-9/11 domestic surveillance, we have four primary parties: top NSA officials, intel committee Congress members, some of whom are brought off and others whom are perhaps hamstrung by Senate secrecy rules, non-intel committee Congress members who cannot get quality information, and the whistleblowers.

The real power brokers are the NSA officials and, to a much lesser extent, the whistleblowers; the former, however, benefit from the influence of propaganda and the true functional ideology in the US, discussed in part 2, Synthetic Terror.  The NSA is absolutely succeeding in avoiding a substantive exchange of information; we are witnessing the illusion of public policy - not the practice of it.  

Such an inquiry would pose at the very least a simple two-part question: what is the NSA doing in the domestic arena and what did it accomplish in doing so?**  Senators such as Mark Udall, Patrick Leahy, Ron Wyden and others have attempted to answer this two-part question in a piecemeal sense within the committees where they sit.  Any inquiry - wherever it arises -  faces tremendous obstacles.

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Obstruction, Deception, and Failure 

Deception is a state of mind and the mind of the State.
          James Angelton, former CIA Chief of Counterintelligence

[H]aving dealt with the leaders of the intelligence community, not much surprises me.  They're in the business of secrecy and deception.  And unfortunately it carries over to their interaction with Congress.

          Rush Holt, US Representative, August

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Such an inquiry involves obtaining information.  That is proving quite a challenge to the US Congress.  Various intelligence officials have patently avoided, circumvented, and obstructed truth, oversight (Congressional and judicial), and transparency.  

Intelligence officials lie and divert attention from the issue at hand.  Army General and NSA Director Keith Alexander lied about the effectiveness of phone record collecting.***  US Solicitor General Donald Verrilli likely lied to the US Supreme Court in Clapper v. Amnesty International regarding a) whether the NSA informed Amnesty International that it had been subject to warrantless wiretaps and b) "the role of 'about' collection under the FAA".  Although NSA Deputy Director Inglis has not publicly admitted it like Alexander and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, he lied to Congress as well.  President Obama lied about domestic surveillance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Meanwhile, Obama's Review Group on Intelligence and Communications Technology aims to address "the risk of unauthorized disclosure and our need to maintain the public trust" - not NSA overstep.  Despite lying under oath about the surveillance of millions of Americans, DNI Clapper seemingly heads this group.  (Update: the fallout is still informative and reflects my larger claims; here is a piece by the amazingly well-informed Marcy Wheeler of emptywheel.)

US Representative Alan Grayson articulated it best: "Despite being a member of congress possessing security clearance, I've learned more about government spying on me and my fellow citizens from reading media reports than I have from 'intelligence' briefings...  In fact, one long-serving conservative Republican told me that he doesn't attend such briefings anymore, because, 'they always lie".****  Senator Leahy has reiterated this exact same point.

Intelligence committee members obstruct.  As Leaksource and others have suggested, officials on intelligence committees have earned a pretty penny protecting the intelligence industry and community from real oversight.  Anonymous aims to address this issue with #OpNSA.  (The money angle arises again in part 7, Policy Reform.)  As emptywheel blogged, Senator Diane, the Chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, went double Orwellian - promising a "total review of all intelligence programs" and then the next day watched over the mark-up of her own FISA Improvement Act, which patently strengthens the NSA's position.  Meanwhile, the House Intelligence Committee failed to share NSA documentation intended for 'all Members of Congress'.

Non-intelligence committee members cannot even get quality info.  Leahy and other lawmakers recently asked US Intelligence Community Inspector General I. Charles McCullough to perform an IC-wide review of Section 215 and Section 702 applications.  McCullough's response was that he did not have enough time or resources.  (He made a similar response to Wyden and Udall when they made an even more rudimentary request the year prior.)  Meanwhile, US Representatives Alan Grayson, Morgan Griffith, and Justin Amash have all faced obstructions  from the House Intelligence Committee.  

Judicial oversight has also failed.  A judge at the FISA Court, John Bates, despite his own reservations and knowing he could not retroactively authorize metadata collection, expanded it into the future.  According to top FISA judge Reggie Walton, the "FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing [government] compliance with its orders.”

The disdain and/or failure exhibited by top intelligence officials and their oversight officials across government suggests that real transparency or oversight are not on the table.

Just as public relations experts manage the American mind, various US intelligence officials hope to manage Congress's view of domestic surveillance; in the latter case they use obstruction, diversion, and lies as propaganda would fail.  The post-WWII national security state has effectively infantilized grown men and woman in Congress in the same way that corporate propaganda has done so to the average American.  

Part 6, Congressional Failure, outlines how the policy process in Congress is failing in the face of this deception.
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* Terrorists face "Herculean challenges" in making an effective nuclear bomb according to the Gilmore Commission, a congressionally mandated group researching nuclear terror and response capabilities from 1999 to 2003.  The likelihood of a nuclear terror plot is "vanishingly small" - to quote John Muller, political scientist, terror expert, and author of Overblown: How Politicians and the Terrorism Industry Inflate National Security Threats, and Why We Believe Them.

** A blunt and aggressive inquiry would cover each and every program and computing platform by name that involves Americans with respect to i) their purpose, technological domain, and operational timeline, ii) intended and actual targets, iii) recovered materials and analyzed materials, iv) related repositories, v) the involvement of warrants, vi) the role of suspicion, vii) the position of current judicial and congressional oversight, viii) legal justification, ix) the explicit financial costs and full economic costs, and ix) the strategic achievements and economic benefits.  

In truth, Congress needs to examine the entire US Intelligence Community and private sector surveillance; but that is nothing short of founding a research institute in and of itself.  Some topics include: modernizing the Electronic Communications Privacy Act, examining DHS Fusion Centers, and the use of Stringray by local police.

*** According to former CIA clandestine service case officer and and OSINT expert Robert Steele, Alexander is known to have "covered up and destroyed the ABLE DANGER discovery of two of the 9-11 terrorists prior to 9-11, rather than share them with the FBI".

**** One more story is both absurd and sadly funny.  In July journalist Justin Elliott at ProPublica filed a FOIA request to the NSA for emails between NSA employees and the National Geographic Channel.  The response he got was that "there's no central method to search an email at this time with the way our records are set up"; and that the system is "a little antiquated and archaic".