The Most Transparent Administration Ever

August 10, 2013

Obama says phone spying not abused, will continue

To allay concerns, Obama endorsed modest oversight changes to a program he says already has plenty of it. None of them significantly changes the programs, and the president acknowledged they were intended to appease Americans, not to curtail the surveillance.
…
The White House chose to announce the changes and release the documents on a Friday afternoon in August when Congress was on vacation and much of Washington had cleared out.

Transparant. Indeed.

Posted by b on August 10, 2013 at 05:40 UTC | Permalink

Comments

U.S. Kills Another 14 People In Yemen
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article35793.htm
US kills people everywhere with impunity because noone says its regime should be sent to ICC and takes steps to charge them

Posted by: brian | Aug 10 2013 7:56 utc | 1

Great, now he tries to justifying the spying! Orwell where are you?

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 10 2013 7:57 utc | 2

The full transcript of Steppin Fetchit’s Press Conference is here. I like this little exchange:

Carol Lee, WSJ: Can you understand, though, why some people might not trust what you’re saying right now about wanting to —
Obama: No, I can’t.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 10 2013 8:34 utc | 3

I think that the whole world’s confidence … such as it was … in the security of data and/or communications in the USSA has disappeared.
The Germans have always been at the forefront of cryptography, electronic communications, and software engineering. And they’re not as thoroughly tarred with the same brush as the USSA is, not to the extent the Australians, British, Canadians, and New Zealanders are.
I no longer have a lavabit.com and, as Ladar Levison, the owner/operator of lavabit.com says.
“I would _strongly_ recommend against anyone trusting their private data to a company with physical ties to the United States.”
This is a wonderful opportunity for Germany, or Russia, but certainly Germany to just offer a straight-up inter-network of their own … implement ipv6 with ipsec … and eat Googles’ and Facebook’s and the USSA’s lunch.
Are they doing that b? What does it look like to you?

Posted by: john francis lee | Aug 10 2013 11:50 utc | 4

This is a wonderful opportunity for Germany, or Russia, but certainly Germany to just offer a straight-up inter-network of their own … implement ipv6 with ipsec … and eat Googles’ and Facebook’s and the USSA’s lunch.
Are they doing that b? What does it look like to you?
Germany=zusa’s bitch.
Still under military occupation by both zusa and zuk nearly 70 years after ww2. Germany ain’t gonna be doing anything of the sort of things you just recommended.

Posted by: OhLordy | Aug 10 2013 12:02 utc | 5

The TV News in Oz (ABC & SBS) spent more time on the skepticism than the bullshit itself. This is what happens to the reputation of glove puppets with friends like Bibi, the Neocons, the 1%, Sarkozi, Bliar and Cameron.
Oh yes, and that fuckwit Erdogan (Mr No Problems With The Neighbors (whom I imagine is deciding whether to say “Syria ‘rebel’ blowback” in English or Turkish).
I still reckon there’ll be a coup in USA in 18 months +/- 6.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 10 2013 13:13 utc | 6

The USG is never going to be smaller than it is now, so it’s probably a good time to take Grover Norquist’s suggestion seriously and drown the whole shebang in a convenient bathtub…

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 10 2013 13:24 utc | 7

We’ll know Obama is serious when he issues a Presidential Pardon, in writing, to the People’s spies Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden.
Hopey-changey Snowjobs don’t cut the mustard.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 10 2013 13:33 utc | 8

An expert opinion …
Lavabit’s Ladar Levison: ‘If You Knew What I Know About Email, You Might Not Use It’

“I’m taking a break from email,” said Levison. “If you knew what I know about email, you might not use it either.”

Posted by: b | Aug 10 2013 15:37 utc | 9

Debunking Yemen:
http://www.thestar.com/news/world/2013/08/08/yemeni_al_qaeda_expert_casts_doubt_on_terror_threat_claims.html

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 10 2013 16:41 utc | 10

Looks like Obama thinks throwing random insults will help the situation.

“President Barack Obama said Russian President Vladimir Putin has the slouch of “the bored kid in the back of the classroom” even as he said the two leaders “don’t have a bad personal” relationship”. “When we have conversations, they’re candid,” Obama said. “They’re blunt. Oftentimes, they’re constructive.” Obama said when the two leaders meet “the press likes to focus on body language,” and Putin has “that kind of slouch.”

Meanwhile Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov hits the nail on the head as always:

Lavrov cited progress that could have been made at at a Moscow meeting, saying the U.S. and Russia “need to work as grown-ups, and this is what we’ll do and this needs to be reciprocal.”

Source: Bloomberg
So is Putin “the bored kid in the back of the classroom”? Or is Obama the spoiled kid throwing a tantrum because Putin won’t give him his NSA toy back?

Posted by: Colm O’ Toole | Aug 10 2013 19:05 utc | 11

I don’t think Obama ever taught school, did he? He taught university students. Let’s see. Yes:

He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago Law School for twelve years, as a Lecturer from 1992 to 1996, and as a Senior Lecturer from 1996 to 2004.

He was not, however a ‘Professor’, as he liked to claim. As the Hillary Clinton campaign pointed out with some glee:

Sen. Obama has often referred to himself as “a constitutional law professor” out on the campaign trail. He never held any such title. And I think anyone, if you ask anyone in academia the distinction between a professor who has tenure and an instructor that does not, you’ll find that there is … you’ll get quite an emotional response.

I think one can infer that he had, and has, an exaggerated self-image as ‘teacher’. This seems like an overcompensation. Not having read his memoir, I can’t say whether it’s based on racial resentment or not. If it is, then the essential part of his fantasy will be that he can assume a professorial or teacherly role to white people, specifically, and ‘talk down’ to them, or condescend to them.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 10 2013 19:19 utc | 12

ahh, I’m finding myself disagreeing with you Rowan @ 12
As an undergraduate, I thought of all my ‘instructors’ as professors… they were called Professor ____ whether they had tenure or not. In fact, there were a few who had tenure that seemed to me to not warrant it (except for hanging around long enough to get it, they never would have had it)
making the distinction the Clinton campaign did is a bit snobby, don’t you think? (well, I do anyway, just a bit elitist… smug
I prefer to stick to what I see as meaningful criticisms of Obama…
Obama passed the bar; he is a lawyer, he has been a teacher/professor of Constitutional Law (and let me tell you… I took a semester of Constitutional Law at Baylor and realized quickly that I didn’t have the stuff it took)…
“… If it is, then the essential part of his fantasy will be that he can assume a professorial or teacherly role to white people, specifically, and ‘talk down’ to them, or condescend to them.” ~ Rowan
as for that comment, I’m speechless… very disappointed that it came from you.
I would and do often criticize President Obama, but not for being condescending ~ not even in his dreams. The man is as much white as he is of color, and his grandparents who pretty much reared him were white. (I know you know this)

Posted by: Crone | Aug 10 2013 19:44 utc | 13

Obama appoint another looney for the empire.
http://presstv.com/detail/2013/08/10/318096/us-pick-for-egytp-ran-iraq-death-squads/
Have he lost it completely?

Posted by: Anonymous | Aug 10 2013 19:52 utc | 14

For the President of the USA to publicly compare the President of the Russian Federation to a bored schoolboy slouching at the back of his classroom is surely the ultimate in condescension, is it not? And why should we be blind to the possibility of racial resentment? Are you arguing for classical Political Correctness?

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 10 2013 19:56 utc | 15

“For the President of the USA to publicly compare the President of the Russian Federation to a bored schoolboy slouching at the back of his classroom is surely the ultimate in condescension, is it not? And why should we be blind to the possibility of racial resentment? Are you arguing for classical Political Correctness?”
Stupid, stupid, stupid argument. There’s metric tonnes of vaild arguments to be made against Obama, and you had to go scrape the bottom of of some crazy barrel for some stupid new insane argument? I mean seriously. What a ridiculous thing to say. What a crazy ass thing to think.
Saying that sort of shit says more about _you_ than Obama. Get your brain straight, and stop with this lame ass psycoanalyzing you’re tried your hand at and miserably failed at. Criticize people for what they _do_, and not for what _you_ think their motivations are.

Posted by: Troy | Aug 10 2013 23:32 utc | 16

From b’s link to Forbes :

“If there were surveillance bugs in all products coming out of China, would you buy those products?” he [Ladar Levison] asks.

Well that’s Forbes trying to publicize Washington’s pre-emptive claim that Lenovo (IBM’s) stuff is rigged with trapdoors. As likely Intel’s are.
But still … sourcecode is opensource or not worth bothering with these days … and the opportunity is there to grab the USSA’s erstwhile dominant position on the internet. USSA is damaged goods. The ‘brand’ is worse than worthless.

Posted by: john francis lee | Aug 11 2013 0:42 utc | 17

What a ridiculous thing to say. What a crazy ass thing to think. Saying that sort of shit says more about _you_ than Obama. Get your brain straight, and stop with this lame ass psycoanalyzing

I seem to have scratched some sort of pseudo-Left conformist nerve here. I’m getting quite used to personal abuse, in fact.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 11 2013 5:34 utc | 18

Imo, Obama exposed himself as an unscrupulous guttersnipe when he dissed Putin (twice) and Berkeley is entitled, and correct, to make the observations he did, and to draw his own conclusions. I don’t buy the argument that Obama can, outside of academia, legitimately describe himself a professor if he is not a professor in the formal meaning of the term, merely because he became accustomed to being called ‘Professor’ by his students.
As far as dissing the leaders of other nations, lets not forget that Putin is not the first target of such childishly undisciplined bullshit. Gaddafi is dead as a direct consequence of a plot which began with Obama dissing him, and Libya was subsequently Iraq-ified (ie destroyed).
It’s important to remember this because Putin won’t forget and the day will come when Obama will regret having put his over-enthusiastic embrace of his own bullshit on public display. It’s all too easy to forget that ‘respect’ is a two-way street and cuts both ways. Obama has publicly declared that ‘respect’ for leaders is no longer fashionable – something else he’ll live to regret. And while we’re tripping down Memory Lane, lets acknowledge that when dumbass Yankees talk about ‘respect’ for the US, they mean ‘fear’ and it’s not the same thing (and those days are OVER).

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 11 2013 5:37 utc | 19

I have a good article by Wayne Madsen about Obama’s parents and the CIA. I don’t like to tout my own blog here, but in this case I shall, because I have collected all three parts of Madsen’s article, which otherwise you would have to chase through three URLs:
http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/obamas-cia-parents-fairly-tight-by-madsen-standards/
And then he became prominent in Black community organisations in Chicago, which brought him to the attention of the Jewish elite there, notably the Pritzker family, which bankrolled his entry into national politics. Again, I shall offer you my own copy, because the original URL from 18 years ago is pretty obscure:
http://niqnaq.wordpress.com/2008/06/03/the-original-obama-depth-story-from-1995/
It doesn’t do to whitewash people like Obama. Marxism is about trying to be objective.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 11 2013 6:14 utc | 20

If you can’t get the ‘original Obama depth story’ on the link I give in my blog, try this link, which still seems to work:
http://www.chicagoreader.com/chicago/what-makes-obama-run/Content?oid=889221

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 11 2013 10:21 utc | 21

“Jewish elite”? The Pritzker family? They came into their fortune as tax lawyers to the Mob! And Penny is as corrupt as they come. The Lansky gang has so embedded itself into all levels of the U$ government that political science should be subordinated to criminology.

Posted by: Bob Jackson | Aug 11 2013 12:55 utc | 22

Ha.

Penny Pritzker, I’m sure, is a perfectly charming and very nice lady. I have no doubt she throws nice parties, and donates to very worthwhile charities, and is a pillar of her local community.

Yes indeed, and not only that, but she has chosen a very unusual and creative way to support Jewish culture (or maybe it was her lawyer):
http://www.sup.org/zohar/
I’ve got the first five volumes of this, and they are very substantial. I see they’re up to vol 7 now, out of a projected 12, priced at $55 per vol. I know someone (in the internet sense of ‘knowing’ him), who is a professional translator of hebrew texts and knows this translator, Daniel Matt. It’s a world of its own.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 11 2013 13:40 utc | 23

“… political science should be subordinated to criminology.”
Very true, and hardly surprising in that imperialism is clearly grand larceny and extreme violence practised on a global scale.
Regarding the US experience “Policing America’s Empire: the United States, the Phillipines and the rise of the Surveillance State” by Alfred McCoy is worth every penny of the price and is probably accessible through libraries.
I’ll bring a copy with me the next time in the bar but that could be some time in the distant future.

Posted by: bevin | Aug 11 2013 14:05 utc | 24

Obama’s ‘problem’ is that he is just a puppet with no power bloc in the Democratic party. if he’s handed a speech to read, he reads it. In a couple of years watch how quickly he disappears.

Posted by: heath | Aug 11 2013 14:57 utc | 25

Excellent stuff, Rowan.
There is no doubt in my mind, in which doubt is carefully cultivated, that the Indonesian holocaust in which Obama’s step father, Soetolo, played his part was one of the great crimes of the twentieth century: up to a million killed and tens of thousands rotted in Concentration Camps.
I have close relatives who were involved, in the British army in Singapore, in this filthy business. Obama’s childhood years in Indonesia were indelibly stained by not only the crime but the equally astonishing insouciance with which the “civilised” world viewed it. Even today, long afterwards the acknowlegement of what occurred and the instrumentality of the US and Britain (Australia et al) in these events, is long overdue. There is no doubt either that among those struck by the way in which the massacres, leaving, inter alia, Joseph Conrad’s rivers dammed with the corpses of “Communists”, were taken in stride must have been the leaders of the Khmer Rouge.
Finally, I note that Madsen refers to Soetolo as a “senior officer.” Is there any evidence that he was anything more than a reservist Captain in 1965?

Posted by: bevin | Aug 11 2013 15:02 utc | 26

Madsen refers to Soetolo as a “senior officer.” Is there any evidence that he was anything more than a reservist Captain in 1965?

I’ve no idea, but when I headlined the article “fairly tight by Madsen standards” I was thinking of his customary tendency to crank his material up to a higher octane than the evidence warrants. I can understand it too; I suffer from continual temptations to do the same thing.

Posted by: Rowan Berkeley | Aug 11 2013 15:27 utc | 27

Its comical seeing an argument over what criticisms of Obama are legitimate. The man is a fraud, a glib and smooth-talking marketeer who has shown a remarkable lack of conviction, and an inability to actually walk his own talk. ANY criticism of the man is credible to the point of warranting consideration, because, after all, there is no way of telling who the man actually is. We the people elected a marketing sensation into office, and like any skillfully marketed product, it rarely meets the promises of the campaign. Obama? Racist? Why not? He has proven himself deficient in character in so many ways, why are we to exclude him from possessing bigotry? Do we really realize the extent of his character flaws? Criticize as you wish, in my humble opinion. Personally, I think we are barely scratching the surface when we attempt to define this man’s lack of integrity and character. He is every bit the devil as Bush and Cheney were. And in their cases, the evil dripped off them like thick mollasses, openly, for all with half a brain to perceive easily. But Obama? He hides behind an angel’s mask, making him all the more dangerous.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Aug 11 2013 18:38 utc | 28

@25 “if he’s handed a speech to read, he reads it.”
One of the most revealing moments during the 2008 campaign, and one that took the wind entirely out of my sails (I had been working at a labor union at the time, and I worked hard, professionally, for the Obama campaign) was a speech Bill Clinton gave on a stage with Obama. Clinton ambushed Obama with the following statement which made it clear that Obama had no policy of his own, and was nothing more than a marionette for the neo-liberal hardliners (the Clinton faction) of the Democratic Party:

“I haven’t cleared this with him and he may even be mad at me for saying this so close to the election, but I know what else he said to his economic advisers (during the crisis), He said, ‘Tell me what the right thing to do is. What’s the right thing for America? Don’t tell me what’s popular. You tell me what’s right — I’ll figure out how to sell it.’”

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 11 2013 23:05 utc | 29

@PO’dAmerican
“Obama? Racist? Why not?”
I don’t think he has conviction enough even for that, to be honest. Obama has shown zero-evidence of resenting white people. His outlook seems entirely class-based. I think it is more likely that, as a liberal “intellectual” (such as it is) he resents and fears Putin’s background in the security services. Schumer calling Putin a “bully” was revealing as well. He probably is to them. He is a serious person, and they are coddled clowns.
The embarrassing failure of the Kennedy-Khruschev Vienna summit is seared into the American diplomatic consciousness. From the NYT:

Kennedy’s aides convinced the press at the time that behind closed doors the president was performing well, but American diplomats in attendance, including the ambassador to the Soviet Union, later said they were shocked that Kennedy had taken so much abuse. Paul Nitze, the assistant secretary of defense, said the meeting was “just a disaster.” Khrushchev’s aide, after the first day, said the American president seemed “very inexperienced, even immature.” Khrushchev agreed, noting that the youthful Kennedy was “too intelligent and too weak.” The Soviet leader left Vienna elated — and with a very low opinion of the leader of the free world.
Kennedy’s assessment of his own performance was no less severe. Only a few minutes after parting with Khrushchev, Kennedy, a World War II veteran, told James Reston of The New York Times that the summit meeting had been the “roughest thing in my life.” Kennedy went on: “He just beat the hell out of me. I’ve got a terrible problem if he thinks I’m inexperienced and have no guts. Until we remove those ideas we won’t get anywhere with him.”

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 11 2013 23:28 utc | 30

Well…Netanyahu has certainly made a bigger ass of Obama then Khruschev made of Kennedy. And he continues to do so while flaunting Israeli settlement activity even as Kerry is sputtering his pathetic nonsense about renewing the farce known as “the peace process”.

Posted by: PissedOffAmerican | Aug 12 2013 0:02 utc | 31

@31 So true. Truly, how much embarrassment can the US take? The US is like a cuckold whose continues to buy his cheating wife ($3 Billion) diamond rings.
Pathetic.

Posted by: guest77 | Aug 12 2013 2:11 utc | 32

john francis lee (4)

This is a wonderful opportunity for Germany, or Russia, but certainly Germany to just offer a straight-up inter-network of their own … implement ipv6 with ipsec … and eat Googles’ and Facebook’s and the USSA’s lunch.

No way. As OhLordy (5) correctly remarked, Germany isn’t but an american colony.
Furthermore, Germany, as excellent as its engineers are in many fields, has long been sleeping through the digital times, and is definitely not a major power in digital technology. Neither is Russia, unfortunately although Russia has a considerably stronger base for a bright future in it’s academia and intelligentsia.
Crone (13) and Troy (16)
What’s your problem with Rowan Berkeley’s statements? He simply is right there.
As for the level I can feel with you, yes, that’s low level. It shouldn’t been conveniently forgotten though who sent the lift downward; it was obama and his “schoolboy” remark.
Should we care? I don’t think so. After all, who cares sh*t about what obama says, other than zameritards?
Oh and btw., ad “obama having been professor”: I personally would take that to be a joke because actually obama seems to have a hard time to prove that he even studied at all. Until now there are way more indicators against him; “college mates” and even a rather well known and respected professor – they all say that if he really was there then it must have been in secrecy” or invisibly.
Of course Putin, a man who provably did studies at a (well respected) university and then made an excellent career, all of which is easily provable, doesn’t consider vulgar but failing attempts to insult him by an uneducated, evidently incompetent zusan clown to seriously. But maybe, so I hope, he takes it as an invitation to show the joking negro (even that being doubted by many) whose last known educational stay was in an indonesian basic school (and that with yet another name), how killing is done properly.
Polite as Putin is he would, of course wait for a point in time when obama has enough secret service agents who are not suiciding, fucking around in brothels or hotels and the like.
Being honest one hardly can but see zusas and their doubted leaders attempts as what they are: Symptoms of decay, desperation, vulgarity and complete lack of professionality.

Posted by: Mr. Pragma | Aug 12 2013 9:22 utc | 33

@31, Pragma, do you have links to source(s) for that bit about Obama not actually attending university? First I’ve read of this.

Posted by: Pyrrho | Aug 12 2013 9:57 utc | 34

Xymphora…
A failed Presidency
I knew that Obama wasn’t going to reduce the NSA spying in any way shape or form – it is now too bound up with the entire American political and economic system, not to mention the wealth and position of the 1% – but what surprises me is the sheer artlessness in his attempt to disguise the fact he is not doing anything. The 1% can usually count on a certain quality of bullshit from Barry, but on this file it appears to be all he can do from screaming at anyone who even slightly questions what is going on (and Snowden obviously drives him completely out of his mind). The condescension, always near the surface when he deigns to speak on any subject, fairly bubbles over. What happened to that silver-tongued devil?
If you wade through the crap, you will see that his big solution to the problem is to add, ‘in appropriate cases’, some sort of ‘civil liberties advocate’ to present the opposing case to the rubber stamp to the FISA court, just before the rubber stamp comes down (and remember this is a ‘court’ which the NSA doesn’t even feel compelled to visit for a rubber stamp most of the time). It is ludicrous, and insulting to the American people. Even more insulting is his assertion that he was working on this before anyone had heard of Snowden (in secret, naturally, and his statement that he was working on it is obviously a bare-faced lie), and Snowden’s revelations just buggered up what would have been his most excellent solution.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 12 2013 21:48 utc | 35

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