Before PRISM: The Curious History of the US World-Wide Surveillance Network- Part Two

by Nomad

In Part One of this three-part series we examined one small aspect of the long history of illegal surveillance conducted by the US government on its own citizens.

Started back in 1945, Project SHAMROCK which involved the collecting of all telegraphic communication coming in and out of the US was by no means a small operation. It could never have existed without the kind assistance of the Western Union and its associates RCA and ITT.

Back in the 1970s, the Church Committee- which had investigated illegal snooping activity by the CIA and NSA- concluded that in its 30-year life, Shamrock constituted “the largest government interception program affecting Americans ever undertaken."

Like PRISM, Project SHAMROCK laid the groundwork for the same kind of shady collaboration between government and corporations to the cost of everybody's privacy.  

Findings by the Congressional committees would lead to the creation of new legislation called Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) which sought to provide some kind of accountability, some kind of formal process.

As we shall see, by the end of the millennium, with the coming of technological advances like the Internet, those laws were becoming less and less effective.

The Temptations

Being able to listen to private conversations is, of course, a great temptation even under normal conditions. For a president faced with immense challenges any one of which hold the potential for catastrophic errors, the lust of more and more information must be addictive. During wartime or during a national or international emergency, that temptation becomes quite irresistible.

Author Bob Woodward in the book, Veil-The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987, recounts one instance in which timely surveillance (not of an enemy but of a key regional ally) provided key information that led to one of the America’s most astounding victories against terrorism.

Divorced Michael Reagan: Casting the First Stone at Same-Sex Marriage

Before Michael Reagan launches into a diatribe about the evils of same-sex marriage, he might want to review the Bible's view on divorce. He might not be able to look at himself in the mirror.

Michael Reagan was on Piers Morgan the other night giving (free of charge) his opinions on gay marriage. He said he didn't believe in it. Piers also called upon Reagan to explain his recent op-ed piece in which he equates same-sex marriage to “polygamy, bestiality, and perhaps even murder.”

It's not an original argument, of course. Limbaugh and Beck and Bachmann and so many other lunatics have trotted it out time after time.

In that article, Reagan called upon churches of all denominations to "fight back" unless they were cowards who were "afraid to lose their 501(c)(3) tax-exempt status by engaging in political activity." (A taunt that could prove costly to many violating organizations if the IRS could ever be roused from its slumber.) 

Inside Grover Norquist: The Jonas Savimbi Connection

by Nomad

The name, Grover Norquist, made a name for himself by crusading against taxes. Though he has never been elected to political office, his influence in the Republican party has made him a fixture in every election.

Yet, most people are unaware that the man has a long and colorful history in conservative circles. 

The Advocate of Bad ideas

Michael Grunwald of Time’s Swampland once called Grover Norquist “an idealistic advocate of bad ideas." His ideas, however, haven't always been confined to thoughts alone. When Norquist's principles led to action, the results, at least, for one African country led to the carnage of war and misery of the innocent.  

Most of us are familiar with his bad idea of “Taxpayer Protection Pledge" to oppose all tax increases and under all circumstances. We all know how he has bullied Republicans after they foolishly committed themselves to the poorly conceived notion.

However, there’s another less publicized bad idea hidden in Norquist’s background that has failed to get a lot of attention in the mainstream media. Actually, that’s a shame because his famous war against tax cuts represents a small part of the colorful Norquist biography. In this post, we will take a closer look at his Angolan connections. 

What sparked my interest was this remark. Norquist once told an interviewer: 

"During the eighties, l was very active with the Afghan resistance, and in Mozambique and Angola.” 

That intriguing remark, (confirmed by his own mother), is worth a closer look. 

The Great Society, Medicare and the Summer of ‘65

The summer of 1965 was one of many critical moments of American history. The Great Society, President Johnson's ambitious policy to overhaul the country, became a reality. However, at the same moment, a new movement of a different kind was emerging. It was a kind of backlash that would take 15 years to mature into the conservative movement.

With Republican presumptive nominee Mitt Romney’s announcement of Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan as his running mate, there’s bound to be a lot of talk about Ryan’s budget proposals, particularly the proposed reforms in Medicare and Medicaid. Democrats are no doubt pleased with Romney’s decision since any changes - no matter how necessary- to these social programs are bound to create some fear with some affected voters. 

Still, something has to be done. Everybody agrees on that, at least. Health care is the biggest driver of future budget deficits.

It is true that Ryan’s tweaking of his original plan should have removed some of this understandable anxiety and yet when it comes to something this complex, voters on both sides of the political spectrum are deeply suspicious of any tinkering. Even the ultra-right wing Tea Party movement is opposed to medicare cuts.
One source- correctly or incorrectly- captures the mood of the anxious voter.

Ryan’s plan has been rightly called “a thinly disguised assault on Medicare.” The House GOP knows they have no immediate hope of ending Medicare, but they’re telegraphing their long-term plans to cut all the cords holding up America’s social safety net. That should be a brutal wakeup call for all of us as we get a glimpse of how they would reshape America as a less kind, less gentle nation. They don’t plan to stop at Medicare; Social Security won’t be far behind.

It would be tempting for Democrats to scare the elderly voters with exaggerated fears about what Romney and Ryan might do. Even without the medicare fears, the less than charismatic Paul Ryan is certainly not going to be giving the Romney campaign anything close to a boost.

As I said, I will leave further discussion of that topic to others. 

Instead, I would like to take you back forty-seven years to a small town in Missouri where important events were happening.

A Nemesis in Washington: How The Evangelists in Reagan’s Administration Undermined the War on AIDS 1/2

by Nomad

Ronald Reagan's legacy has taken a lot of criticism over the years about his lame response to the AIDS crisis. How much of that criticism is based on fact and how much on perception? Reagan himself might not have been the real problem, but the company he kept most certainly had an impact on his way of dealing with the emerging epidemic.

Association and Contact

On July 5, 1981, less than six months after Ronald Reagan took office, an article appeared in the Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). The newsletter is a weekly report distributed by the CDC written by University of California-Los Angeles Dr. Michael Gottlieb and Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Dr. Wayne Shandera. In it, an article detailed the unusual cases of a new type of pneumonia which specifically seemed to target gay males. 

According to the report, the cases suggested “some association between some aspect of a homosexual lifestyle or disease acquired through sexual contact.” The article was to mark the first public announcement of the disease which became known as AIDS and later HIV infection.

American Dreams: My Father, Karl Marx and the Man who Sold the Rope 1/2

by Nomad

Let’s Begin With My Father

My father, born in 1929, grew up in the midst of the Great Depression, in what most people would consider extreme poverty. His father died one week after his birth leaving his widowed mother to raise her five children alone. Had it not been for a productive farmland, it is doubtful they would have survived. “We didn’t have two nickles to rub together,” he’d often tell me,”but we never even realized we were poor. Everybody we knew was in the same situation as we were.”

In 1951. he left the farm to join in the Korean War to fight the spread of the Communist threat. The Red Menace- China- was on the verge of expanding across the border into Korea. Following that, he received credit from a GI loan which allowed him to buy a very humble mobile home to start his married life.

In the economic boom of the 1950s, my father found employment as a precision sheet metal worker at a aircraft manufacturing plant. Along with thousands of other unskilled workers returning from Korea, the company trained my father with the idea of steady long term employment. In turn, my father worked at the company for thirty years. He did not particularly desire to rise up in the hierarchy of the company. He told me that he’d prefer not to have the stress that went with the responsibility. He preferred to spend more time at home at the end of his shift. There was also the goal that he knew that his children would, by his hard, boring and unsatisfying labor, have a better life than he did. It was an attainable goal. Through the use of collective bargaining of his union or the rare labor action, my father’s wage steadily increased.