Tag: World

•Hunger is the eager devourer of the poor; it is the poor man’s constant fear and closet companion

This past week, international news networks have spent inordinate time reporting on leaks of confidential American government information concerning two massive surveillance programs operated in the alleged war against terrorism.

First, the National Security Agency has been gathering information from one of America’s largest telephone services. The NSA basically collected information on all American calls using this service. While apparently not eavesdropping to discern the contents of the telephone calls, the program was still intrusive. It collected information concerning the identity of the parties, their locations at the time of calls, and duration of the calls. While this might seem harmless, such information can become dangerous in unscrupulous hands. It can be mined to uncover more sensitive information about people.

The second aspect of the revelation is that the NSA gathers pervasive information from nine of America’s large internet companies, including Google, Yahoo, Facebook and Youtube. This time, the retrieved information includes the content of transmissions.

There are two sides to this story. Both sides are ugly but in starkly different ways and measures. To the chagrin of his liberal allies, President Obama vigorously defends these programs, claiming they strike the correct balance between an individual’s right to privacy and the imperatives of national security. He claims the programs have prevented terrorist attacks. While the presidential words sound reassuring, we shall never know if they are true. Because the programs are shrouded in secrecy, we are ignorant of the scale by which their effectiveness is measured. Since there is no independent and public oversight, we know not if the programs are being abused.

We do know the temptations of power. Whenever a large bureaucracy is given nearly unbridled power, the bureaucracy inevitably abuses its office. This has been the case since the beginning of civilization and will be an enduring feature. As long as man is mortal, some of us will be seduced by the power given to them. Where power and money are concerned, the tool often becomes the master.

Consequently, President Obama’s assurances fall to the floor. Most likely, the program has been abused and used for things outside the already wide scope of its stated mission.

More to the point, the intended mission of these programs troubles many Americans. The American national character values freedom and personal privacy. Americans historically have seen privacy from government interference or surveillance of their personal affairs as the main fulcrum hoisting the freedoms that constitute American constitutional democracy.

Modern technology now brings traditional notions of personal privacy into question. Advances in communication technology help us interact in ways impossible two decades ago. These advances are mainly used for decent purposes. However, a minority element employs them in mean, dangerous ways. Thus, prudent law enforcement uses elements of the same technology to checkmate the possible harm.

These leaked programs are stinging reminders that different aspects of that same technological advance may not only be used to fight crime, they may well impair old freedoms to communicate while affording us new abilities to communicate. This is the dilemma of government and modern communications. It is a dilemma neither America nor any nation that aspires to constitutional democracy and protection of human rights has resolved.

America would not be grappling with this dilemma in such dramatic fashion but for 9/11. That tragic event altered the America mindset. Openness has diminished and safety has become the first order. Most Americans will now tolerate a level of government intrusiveness prior generations would have rebuked. Given the terrorist threat, the President and many people believe they made a pragmatic decision to tip the scales a bit more toward safety and away from unmonitored freedom. While the changed equation seems reasonable in the abstract, human experience shouts caution. Whenever too much freedom is sacrificed for the sake of safety, eventually both are lost. At this juncture, America has not sacrificed too much freedom. However, these programs signal America may be headed toward those troubled waters.

This brings us to the second untoward aspect of this story. Why blow the whistle during Obama’s term? Ulterior motives to paint Obama as a transplanted African dictator are part of the play. Sadly, Obama may have traipsed into his opponents’ snare by being too lenient with the national security apparatus and being a bit too pliable to the demands of this vast, faceless machine. Loathe to being seen as weak on defense and not wanting to take any heat should a terrorist attack occur, the President has given the national security network all it wants which is probably more than it needs. Politically, this has served him. When the Boston Marathon attack occurred, subterranean leaks did not emerge from the national security agencies that the president had deprived them of the means to conduct their business of protecting the American public. He could not be blamed for lack of vigilance.

Yet, the price for his political cover is being paid in the coin of the civil liberties for all. In fairness, what confronts him is one of the toughest tests a leader must face. I fear he may have placed too much trust in the national security machinery by giving them too much latitude. He may sincerely believe these people will not abuse the expansion of their surveillance domain. History speaks against depositing such trust in those who see their mission as spying on fellow citizens. Every clandestine organization is infiltrated by a dark element that enlisted in that agency not to do heaven’s work but to do hell’s labor. They join because the clandestine nature of the agency provides them a cover of legitimacy under which they may pursue otherwise criminal inclinations. Some of the mankind’s most depraved criminals have worn police uniforms. The present situation is no different. If Obama actually believes in the fidelity of his snooping machinery, he has been had.

In a sense, the disclosures will benefit Obama in the long-run, although causing him short-term heartburn. The leaks should make him more vigilant in constraining the domestic snooping apparatus. For a period, even this vast, anonymous bureaucracy will be more circumspect. Hopefully, public scrutiny will recalibrate the balance now struck between liberty and security so that it reflects America’s traditional presumption of freedom and no longer leans toward the intrusive national security state.

This brings us to the second part of this story. These recent disclosures of potential government overreach seem to be an installment in a larger pattern of attacks against the Obama Administration. Just weeks ago, Congressional Republicans launched broadsides at the White House, alleging scandal in the Benghazi tragedy, the Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department. That these new revelations walk so quickly in the footsteps of the prior allegations is not coincidental. A foul air wafts through the corridors.

While right-wing critics speak of a sinister Obama conspiracy to undermine American democracy, some of these critics are chin-deep in conspiracies of their own. They seek to depict Obama as the archetypal ruthless African dictator come to trample the roots of American freedom. It is the latest version of the tale that a black man has a tail. Obama might wear a suit and bear a Harvard education; but he is nothing but Daniel Arap Moi or Idi Amin in the making. Thus, these revelations. The disclosures are made in the name of civil liberties. To the extent this is true, the leaks are condign.

However, an ulterior motive is in play. Conservatives want to scuttle the boat. They detest the very idea of black leadership and fear what it represents for the future. Their task is to make things messy, even ungovernable, so it looks like a black man is incapable of governing the nation. Disclosure of these surveillance programs has been a surprisingly long time coming. The programs began in the Bush years but were keep secret. However, they now explode in Obama’s face as if he prepared the admixture.

Without proof Obama directed these extant programs into a more nefarious turn, he deserves no more flak than his predecessor. Since Bush was not scathed, neither should Obama suffer. In this regard, Obama should be judged by the standard applied to Bush, no more and no less. However, Obama suffers the special infirmity of race. When they see his black face, many critics see red. They are more foe than critics. Many serve in the Administration itself as career civil servants. That they are careerists does not divorce them from racial or political bias. Many present senior civil servants came into government during the Reagan era and adhere to the ideology of that era. They tell themselves they work for the American government but Obama can never be their boss. It is an abomination to see him as their superior. Thus, they undermine him. The constant leak of sensitive information helps accomplish this task.

For Obama, more than any other president, the civil service upon which he should rely is not always reliable or even civil toward him. In it, exist fifth columnists working to undermine him. Some of his worst enemies man offices nominally in service to him.

While this story is salient, a more profound story has goes unreported by corporate media. Steadily, large corporate combines and hedge funds act in concert to seize vast tracts of agricultural land and control the food supply. The net result will not be more food at lower costs. The result will be more artificially modified foods; however, the total food supply will contract and the price of it all shall increase so as to profit those who now engineer this new method of imposing hunger on much of the world’s already supine populations.

In the northwestern United States, unapproved genetically modified wheat was discovered growing on a farm. The culprit was the international corporation, Monsanto. Yes, the same company that told the world the deadly pesticide, DDT, was safe to spray around children, pregnant women and on crops.

Discovery of genetically modified organisms (GMO) on a farm seems minor. Not so. It should scare people. It already frightened wise governments in Japan and several EU nations to halt American wheat imports for fear of contamination of their natural food crops and supplies.

So quick to make a profit, Monsanto and other companies have introduced GMOs into the food chain without understanding the long-term effects of this experimentation. We know not what consumption of these unnatural combinations does to the human body. We equally should be concerned what the proliferation of GMOs might do to the earth.

Evidence suggests these crops, if not monitored, could spread like weeds or wildfire. By wind, bird, human activity or odd happenstance, seeds could spread. Once spread, they might overwhelm and choke off the more natural strains of a crop. From a few accidental seedlings, a farmer could see his fields decimated, inexorably changed from a natural harvest to this man-made complexity.

The change entails more than a different variant of a crop. GMOs require materially different types of fertilizers and care than do natural crops. Most of these fertilizers and other materials are unaffordable to most peasant farmers. They also can only be purchased from a handful of companies. Once GMOs invade, a farmer is left helpless. He must go to Monsanto or a similar company to pay their toll or risk losing all. As such, introduction of GMO is the equivalent of turning decent farm land into a cocaine addict: Unless it gets its GMO fix, it becomes useless.

This shall be the plight of the farmer’s worldwide should this danger be let loose.