The NSA Controversy

++Since Snowden released NSA documents to investigative journalist Clem Greenwald,the story has taken many turns.

++Snowden's second interview triggered accusations from the right that he was a spy for China. Peter King went on the floor of the House to point to his study of Chinese. Meanwhile,pro-Communist papers in China said he would be valuable to the government. In Hong Kong, there have been rallies for Snowden and a poll said a majority of Chinese say they don't want him sent back to the United States. The Chinese government has been mum about the subject. The British, who have retained interests in Hong Kong, put Snowden on a no-fly list and both the UK and US have urged airlines not to allow Snowden to travel by air. Christopher Boyce, famed spy from the Snowbird and the Falconer, said that Snowden by his interviews keeps putting nails in his coffin. Snowden upset his American supporters by revealing American programs of surveillance in precise targets in Hong Kong and China. As of today,the US has not made a move on extradition but the FBI says that a case is being made against Snowden.

++Snowden's Chinese actions have triggered some interesting commentary. Charles Pierce who writes for Esquire was turned off by Snowden's revelations of America's spying on China. Naomi Wolf,certainly no neo-conservative, posted a fascinating set of observations on Snowden on her Facebook page. Ms. Wolf just wanted us to consider how Snowden has acted compared to other whistleblowers. He does not exhibit the usual signs of nervousness and he speaks in full paragraphs as if a PR firm wrote his talking points. His roll-out of a materials seemed deliberate and planned. And Naomi raises the most interesting point--where are his lawyers? Julian Assange and other whistleblowers always have lawyers hovering in the background whenever a reporters interviews them. But none are here. She's not arguing that he is not genuine but suggests we should be cautious and watch how he behaves and notice the differences between him and true blue whistleblowers before we make our conclusions.

++Clem Greenwald has been attacked. Rep. Peter King wants him tried and said he threatened to expose CIA agents--which he did not. On the other side, he has been blasted because he is anti-Obama and was for Ron Paul. But the criticism that I think is most cogent is from the techies. Verge,Wired and other internet magazines have said that he failed to get either Snowden or an expert to walk him through the Prism program and write accurately what he was proclaiming. Was his Prism confused with the Blarney program? While the internet giants claim the NSA does not have an automatic way to Hoover the contents of your e-mail,does this contradict Greenwald's reporting. Facebook and Microsoft have released tabulations of how many requests they have received from the NSA, a number which is minuscule to the number of their customers. Is this meaningful or not?

++Kevin Drum of  Mother Jones has raised questions about the "scoop-ness" of Greenwald's reporting since these programs were public knowledge for years. Is the scope of them as large as Snowden claimed? 

++Baby boomer lefties have been invoking the Church Hearings, etc. Are we all so yesterday? A dissent on all this appeared on the DailyKos that argued with lost all privacy but didn't we gain so much more. As individuals we can data-mine and aggregate information in ways we as individuals couldn't before. That's the price of the Internet and private computing.

++To me the real issue lies in the fact that 1,900 private corporations are conducting the intelligence work of the United States and they have immunity from any lawsuits. Now I have written along with others how the 4th Amendment has disappeared. But consider this,can a corporation violate the 4th Amendment or can only a government?

++Today, it was announced that Booz-Hamilton, a subsidiary of the Caryle Group, has the contract to erect an NSA for the United Arab Emirates. UAE spokespeople said that Booz-Hamilton is teaching data-mining and creating the infrastructure for surveillance. Doesn't this pose a security risk to the United States? What prevents the UAE from using this system against their own opposition?

++The NSA has surprised many by admitting that,yes, system administrators and conduct surveillance on anyone without a court order. The NSA, however,said that the number of Americans this applies to is minimal. Rep. Jerrold Nadler made it clear that his classified briefings showed the NSA could monitor everyone.

++But the issue of private contractors is extremely important. Booz-Hamilton subcontractors were hired by the Chamber of Commerce to conduct intelligence operations against Clem Greenwald, Lee Fang, and others when they were investigating corporate mis-doing. Where is the firewall here between government spying and corporate spying? There are approximately 500,000 people working in this field. 

++Except for short remarks on the NSA issue, President Obama has been strangely quiet. Today, his spokesman reiterated that the government did not invade any American's privacy. The President is supposed to speak about these matters this week. Stay tuned.

The Koch Brothers--the Corporate Welfare Kings

Charles and David Koch appear to be honestly shocked that their activities generate such public hostility. What's so fascinating is the emergence of libertarian opposition to them as "statist interventionists". When you think about it, this makes alot of sense. The Koch Brothers depend on government subsidies for their oil company, special deals for leases, handsome personal tax breaks guaranteed under the Bush and now Obama tax laws,waivers from the new healthcare law, and no bid contracts at a state level and from our own defense department.

In fact, the whole Koch fortune is based on winning favors from the state. Fred's initial fortune was made as a partner with Stalin's regime to build 15 oil refineries and his relationship with Nazi Germany. So much for the free market. Fred's hero "Benito Mussolini" was one of the great theorists that the state should support private corporations. So why did anyone think the sons would be any different? After all, they were at the table at Dick Cheney's secret energy taskforce to map out this country's future energy policy.

Now it seems we are going to have a struggle between the anti-Koch Brother tendencies. Glenn Greenwald and Lee Fang of Thinkprogress are beginning to make documentaries on the various aspects of the Koch Brothers' political activities. Exiledonline is repeating its best hits on the Koch Brothers and are acting a bit miffed that they haven't got the credit for their groundbacking reporting. Some of these guys used to write for Reason magazine. I am sure more Koch critics are going to come out of the woodwork.

It was really the Wisconsin union-busting law by the Koch funded politicians that triggered the intense interest in the Koch Brothers. Their funding of the teaparties and their plans to destroy President Obama seemed more abstract than the tangible, immediate effects of their policies at a state level. And the blowback has been terrific.

ALEC, the Koch-funded think tank that creates model legislation for states, is now busy doing damage control by issuing press releases trying to distance themselves from the disasterous legislation that they sponsor. Previously, ALEC had tweeted about their maazing success until journalists and professors started to zoom in on them.

If you want a sense of the volume of anti-Koch sentiment, just check out the comments at www.KochBrothersExposed.com . Greenwald does a short clip of the various Koch "hits" on America and asks you to vote of them. Unfortunately,the list is too narrow so far but awesome enough.

I found one recurring theme of the comments very interesting. There is a recent myth that the Koch Brothers created the CATO Institute, the Washington-based libertarian think tank. This is repeated by Koch-friendly journalists and the brothers themselves. But commenters on Greenwald's website claim that the Koch brothers hijacked the think tank, kicked Murray Rothbard off the board and has tried to silence libertarians Lew Rockwell and Ron Paul. In short, they hijacked libertarianism.

This episode deserves more exploration because it would also provide an insight into their M.O. in seizing control of the teaparty phenomenon. Remember the first teaparty activities were the creation of Ron Paul's Crusade for Liberty. Then these were replaced by the Freedomworks' astroturf events funded by the Koch Brothers. In short, they acted like communists taking over a popular movement. I would say the same for their efforts in the Republican Party. With the Republican Party, their goal is simply to increase their fortune by being given carte blanche over environmental and regulatory policy.

I wish all the investigative journalists good luck and look forward to seeing the Greenwald documentaries. But as he said, he has had a team researching them for months and coming up with such vast amount of material that he doesn't know how much more there is to discover.

I would also suggest another theme that should be explored is the relationship between Glenn Beck and the Kochs. Tea party populists complained about Beck's Washington rally as being more a religious revival than a protest. Observers of Beck's behavior suggested that his general lunacy had taken him into the realm of religious revivalism. Perhaps, there is a more politically practical aspect of this in that the teabaggers had to be brought into control to do the Kochs' bidding.

But the spotlight on them obviously makes them uncomfortable. Everyone remotely linked to them is now noticed. For instance, the man Governor Walker picked as the head of the state utilities commission is a former Koch employee. You would never had known that before they drew all this attention.

I still say--Focus on Charles Koch. He believes he is another Martin Luther--as in the leader of the reformation. Or as in noted German.