Tuesday, August 15, 2017

The Obama Administration’s Long History of Shady Surveillance By Stephen Miller

Source: https://web.archive.org/web/20170405082140/https://heatst.com/politics/the-obama-administrations-long-history-of-shady-surveillance/

April 3, 2017

The Trump administration is twisting itself into knots attempting to prove or justify the President’s tweets about Barack Obama and his former administration officials’ “wiretapping” Trump Tower between November and Inauguration Day, while some of those high ranking Obama officials are once again using their twitter accounts to fire back at Trump

“When will Sleepy Eyes Chuck Todd and @NBCNews start talking about the Obama SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL and stop with the Fake Trump/Russia story?” Trump fired off from Twitter early Saturday morning. Former Deputy National Security Advisor Ben Rhodes, fired back, as he is prone to do with little self awareness, “There is no Obama SURVEILLANCE SCANDAL even when you capitalize the words.”

As the facts about who surveilled whom during the transition get sorted out, it is useful to remember why Trump’s team and his supporters have reason to be suspicious, thanks to a long documented history of Obama using shady surveillance tactics on both political opponents and international allies. Rhodes himself knows this history but that doesn’t seem to matter as he once again attempts to make people believe he fell out of the sky and onto Twitter on January 21st, 2017.

To help jog Rhodes’ memory, below are all the documented instances of the Obama administration using and in some cases abusing surveillance.

1. Fox News reporter James Rosen

In 2013 the news broke that Eric Holder’s Justice Department had spied on James Rosen. Obama’s DOJ collected Rosen’s telephone records as well as tracked his movements to and from the State Department from where he reported. Rosen was named as a possible co-conspirator in a Justice Department affidavit. Rosen claims that his parents phone line was also swept up in the collection of his records and DOJ records seem to confirm that. Despite the targeting of Rosen, there were no brave calls to boycott the White House Correspondents Dinner.

2. Senate Intelligence Committee and the CIA

CIA officers penetrated a network used to share information by Senate Intel committee members, including Sen. Diane Feinstein, the committee’s Democrat chair. The bombshell New York Times report went on to disclose:

The C.I.A. officials penetrated the computer network when they came to suspect that the committee’s staff had gained unauthorized access to an internal C.I.A. review of the detention program that the spy agency never intended to give to Congress. A C.I.A. lawyer then referred the agency’s suspicions to the Justice Department to determine whether the committee staff broke the law when it obtained that document. The inspector general report said that there was no “factual basis” for this referral, which the Justice Department has declined to investigate, because the lawyer had been provided inaccurate information. The report said that the three information technology officers “demonstrated a lack of candor about their activities” during interviews with the inspector general.

The Obama White House defended CIA director John Brennan’s actions and response. Imagine that.

3. Prism
In 2013, it was revealed how the Obama administration and NSA were facilitating a secret government mass surveillance program called Prism, because the name Orwell would have been too obvious, I guess.

Prism was created to access private communications of internet subscribers through several IP providers. This was done without the knowledge (or at the very least, the denial) or permission of the leaders of the targeted companies, including Google, Yahoo and Facebook. Defenders of the program, including President Obama suggested that Americans were not intentionally being caught up in Prism’s net and that the program was only to monitor actively from outside the united states coming into the country as part of the FISA authorization.

This is the same claim that is being made in the Flynn case. Director of Intelligence James Clapper while under oath denied any American citizens were currently under surveillance. When pressed again, Clapper hedged his answer by saying “Not intentionally.” The Washington Post hammered Obama himself for a misleading claim in a press conference he gave post discovery, titled “Remember when Obama said the NSA wasn’t “actually abusing” its powers? He was wrong.”

4. Angela Merkel and German Foreign Press

Every country spies on every country. This is not exactly a shocking revelation, be it ally or enemy. When, using information provided by Edward Snowden, Wikileaks revealed in Der Spiegel that Obama’s NSA had possibly targeted German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s private communications however, it was a direct black eye to the President. Jake Tapper, not exactly known for his hackneyed loyalty toward the Trump administration wrote in 2015, “Obama administration spied on German media as well as its government.” Tapper reported:

Less observed this week was news that the NSA was eavesdropping not only on Merkel, but also in some capacity on Germany’s free press, specifically Der Spiegel. CNN has learned that in early summer 2011, the CIA station chief in Berlin (also representing the NSA at the U.S. Embassy) met with Heiss and his assistant Guido Müller. The CIA station chief urged the two men to take action against Heiss’ deputy, Hans-Josef Vorbeck, who he said was leaking classified information to journalists.
That the U.S. government thought it appropriate to spy on journalists doing their jobs is controversial enough. But why would it be appropriate for U.S. officials to use these tools—given to save lives and protect U.S. national security—to notify the German government about officials talking to reporters in the normal exercise of a free press?”

The Obama administration defense was that this all falls under POLICY DIRECTIVE/PPD-28

Merkel was not alone. French President Francois Hollande was skeptical of the Obama administration and NSA’s explanation as was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, when members of Congress were swept up in intelligence gathering while targeting top Israeli officials.

5. Associated Press Phone Records

Much like James Rosen and his shady al Qaeda looking parents, Obama’s Justice Department secretly obtained months of phone records belonging to AP journalists while investigating a failed terror attack. And much like the Rosen spying, this was personally approved by Attorney General Holder.

Mass surveillance and expansion of such under the Patriot Act is one of the most historically prevalent things about the Obama administration. There’s even a Wikipedia page dedicated to that alone. So why do the media and former administration officials act shocked and surprised when someone points the finger in their direction and asks if targeting an incoming President is possible?

There is a long, decorated history of questionable—even unconstitutional—surveillance from the Obama administration none of which proves Trump’s twitter ravings to be true. But it certainly is enough to raise suspicions among Trump’s supporters and even some of this critics that he could be perfectly correct.

Monday, August 14, 2017

Why the case for the removal of Confederate memorials isn’t so clear-cut By Alfred L. Brophy

Source: https://theconversation.com/why-the-case-for-the-removal-of-confederate-memorials-isnt-so-clear-cut-44218

July 8, 2015

A detail of Arlington National Cemetery’s Confederate Memorial – unveiled in 1914 – depicts a black soldier fighting alongside his white master. Tim Evanson/flickr, CC BY-SA


On April 24, New Orleans city employees began the process of removing four Confederate monuments. But there are pitfalls in eliminating memorials to the Confederacy – statues and monuments, along with the buildings, parks, schools and military bases named after Confederate soldiers. Primarily, we risk forgetting the connections of past racial crimes to current racial inequality.

Confederate memorials abound

Statues of Confederate soldiers are common in the South in a number of courthouse squares, while streets and parks bear the names of people or events associated with the Confederacy.

In Southampton, Virginia, Black Head Signpost Road is named for the head of a slave executed during the Nat Turner Rebellion. (His head was put on a post along the road as a warning.) Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway, which runs from Florida to California, was named in the 1920s.

A map of Jefferson Davis Memorial Highway. Like most Confederate memorials, it was conceived in the 60 years after the end of the Civil War. Stuart Rankin/flickr, CC BY-NC

The Virginia legislature even continues to pay US$5 per year to cemeteries in the state for every Confederate soldier buried in them. (The money is supposed to help preserve the cemeteries.)

In prior years, some cities and institutions have responded to the concerns of those who view these monuments as distasteful symbols of discrimination and oppression. In little towns throughout the South, from Reidsville, North Carolina to Southampton County, Virginia (scene of the Nat Turner Rebellion), Confederate statues have been moved from courthouse squares and town centers to less prominent places, like cemeteries.

Meanwhile, buildings named after Confederate officers (such as Saunders Hall at the University of North Carolina), Klansmen (Simkins Hall at the University of Texas-Austin) and politicians supporting Jim Crow (Governor Charles Aycock at Duke and East Carolina) have been renamed.

In recent years, the call to remove or rename is getting even louder. In 2015, Senator Mitch McConnell said Kentucky should consider ridding the Kentucky State House of its Jefferson Davis statue; in Memphis, one City Council member drew up an ordinance to remove the statue of Confederate cavalry officer and Klansman Nathan Bedford Forrest from a public park; and Tennessee’s governor has suggested that a bust of Forrest be removed from State Capitol grounds.

Legal obstacles

Some monuments may be so offensive to the local community that they’ll need to be removed. And certainly, they can serve as rallying points for contemporary white supremacists. Others are particularly poignant reminders of the days of slavery and Jim Crow.

New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu has called for the removal of a statue honoring Confederate General Robert E Lee. Jonathan Bachman/Reuters

Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, in an African American section of Memphis, was renamed because the City Council thought it was an affront to the local population. In such cases, the redistribution of cultural capital may serve to stop a continuing harm.

This is a decision that should largely be made at the local level. However, the legislatures of four states – South Carolina , Georgia, Mississippi and Tennessee – have passed Heritage Protection Acts that prohibit the removal of Confederate monuments from public property (or renaming of public buildings).

This movement started in South Carolina in 2000, and the statues were pushed by supporters of Confederate heritage.

A case for preservation

Clearly, there’s a lot of work to be done if we’re going to completely wipe out all traces of names and structures that honor the Confederacy.

However, while I’m no supporter of the Confederacy, there are several reasons not to remove monuments or rename buildings.

As an aside: Confederate flags are entirely different. New flags have to be put up constantly, because they can wear out quickly. Thus, flying a Confederate flag reflects a continuing commitment to maintaining a symbol of white supremacy. Confederate monuments, on the other hand, were almost all erected decades ago.

For this reason, they’re part of our landscape. Yes, they’re reminders of the days of slavery and secession. But they teach important lessons: they point to a Southern political system that, from the 1870s to the 1930s (the period of most frequent commemoration), continued to support the ideals of the Confederacy. They’re graphic reminders of Jim Crow, and the ways white supremacy was codified in statutes, social practices and stone. And they reveal the psychology (however misguided) of an era and people: the fact that white Southerners and their elected leaders believed in the righteousness of their society.

Ultimately, removal of the monuments will, quite literally, erase an unsavory – but important – part of our nation’s history.

In present-day poverty, the echoes of a racist past

There’s a second reason to go slow on renaming. It’s important (for individuals, as well as communities) to understand how our past is connected to the present.

The legacy of violence and limited educational and vocational opportunities during the eras of slavery and Jim Crow are undeniably connected to the fact that one-third of African American children today live in poverty.

Those who argue for expanded social welfare spending to alleviate the ravages of poverty make the plea that poverty is related not to personal culpability, but to legacies of racism that have lasted for generations. Confederate statues are tangible symbols of this legacy of oppression.

They’re another reminder of the need for nuance in the telling of our nation’s history; in understanding how we get to where we are today, we need to acknowledge the good along with the bad – which means not tearing it down.


Editor’s note: This is an updated version of an article first published on July 8, 2015.