PM's staff edited Wikipedia

STAFF in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet have been editing Wikipedia to remove details that might be damaging to the Government.

A new website, WikiScanner - which traces the digital fingerprints of those who make changes to entries in the online encyclopedia - points to the department as the source of 126 edits on subjects ranging from the children overboard affair to the Treasurer, Peter Costello.

On June 28 an employee of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet modified Mr Costello's entry to remove a reference to the nickname "Captain Smirk".

WikiScanner also identifies employees of another department, Defence, as the most prolific Wikipedia contributors in Australia. After the Herald made inquiries yesterday, the department said it would ban Defence staff from accessing the encyclopedia, which is billed as the "free encyclopedia that anyone can edit".

Defence computers were found to have made more than 5000 edits to Wikipedia entries, including to articles on the "9/11 Truth Movement", the Australian Defence Force Academy and even the Vietnam War-era Pentagon Papers.

The only Australian organisations responsible for more edits than Defence were internet service providers. But their numbers are inflated because they include edits made by the providers' thousands of users, in addition to staff members.

In the Prime Minister's department on June 29 last year, an employee edited the entry on "Mandatory detention in Australia" to add the word "allegedly" to a sentence saying that immigration detainees were subject to inhumane conditions. Modifications were also made to blunt claims that mandatory detention of asylum seekers helped John Howard win the 2001 election.

Another edit was made to the children overboard affair entry on November 26, 2004. A government employee added a link to a Senate inquiry report which criticised charges by a former government adviser, Michael Scrafton, that Mr Howard misled the public before the 2001 election.

Other curious - though apparently non-political - edits by department employees include adding sentences on various sites, including the additions "Freemasonry is the work of Satan", "Mormonism is the work of Satan" and "Jesus is god".

Although most of the edits made by employees of Defence and Prime Minister and Cabinet were legitimate additions to articles that did not involve the Government, a Defence spokeswoman said action was needed because the edits could be interpreted as official comments.

"It was found that [Wikipedia use] was exceeding our guidelines, particularly those that prevent personal comment from being confused as Defence comment," she said. "Consequently, Defence has blocked the general ability to edit Wikipedia from within its systems. This action is expected to be completed shortly."

WikiScanner removes much of the anonymity Wikipedia contributors have long enjoyed by tracing the unique digital fingerprint left by everybody who uses Wikipedia. It has helped uncover self-serving contributions from hundreds of sources, including the CIA, the Vatican, the Republican Party, the United Nations, the US Senate and the US Democratic Party's congressional campaign committee.

"My intention was to create a massive fireworks display of public relations disasters for all the world to sit back and enjoy," WikiScanner's creator, Virgil Griffith, told the Herald.

While it cannot identify individuals, WikiScanner can pinpoint the organisation whose computer network was used to make an edit.

For instance, computers in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet use a network with IP addresses in the range of 210.193.176.0-159. Performing a search on a freely available online look-up tool traces the address to its source.

Wikipedia, the 10th most popular website in Australia according to the web traffic monitor Alexa, contains about 1.95 million English entries.

The site has come under fire lately due to the apparent ease with which anyone can add biased, erroneous and libellous information.

Climate change to strain China food supply by 2030

Climate change and a growing population mean China, which is already losing farmland to deserts and urban sprawl, could face a food shortfall of 100 million tonnes by 2030, a top weather official said.

"Global warming may cause the grain harvest to fall by 5 to 10 percent ... by 2030," the official China Daily quoted Zheng Guoguang, head of the State Meteorological Administration as saying.

Around the same time the country's population is expected to reach a peak of 1.5 billion, up from the current 1.3 billion.

To feed the extra mouths with lower yields of grain, Beijing would need an extra 10 million hectares of arable land, or around 8 percent of that currently under cultivation, Zheng told a conference in Inner Mongolia.

But China already struggles to provide food for one fifth of the world's population with just 7 percent -- and shrinking -- of global farmland. It became a net importer of food in 2004.

Zheng did not say how China could find extra cropland, as cities encroach on rural areas and deserts spread.

It has drawn a "red line" of 120 million hectares of arable land to be preserved for farming through 2010, a senior official said this summer, but it is already approaching that figure.

Arid northwestern Ningxia Autonomous Region plans to move more than 200,000 farmers from areas hit by severe drought, the South China Morning Post reported on Thursday.

Warmer weather will shorten the growing period of some crops, leaving their seeds without enough time to ripen, and even a 1 degree Celsius rise in temperatures will increase evaporation, making it harder to irrigate plants, Zheng said.

Crop-damaging insects will also find it easier to survive winters, and become active earlier in the spring, requiring pest control that could make farming more expensive, he added.

Let’s Face It: The Warfare State Is Part of Us

By Norman Solomon.

The USA’s military spending is now close to $2 billion a day. This fall, the country will begin its seventh year of continuous war, with no end in sight. On the horizon is the very real threat of a massive air assault on Iran. And few in Congress seem willing or able to articulate a rejection of the warfare state.

While the Bush-Cheney administration is the most dangerous of our lifetimes — and ousting Republicans from the White House is imperative — such truths are apt to smooth the way for progressive evasions. We hear that “the people must take back the government,” but how can “the people” take back what they never really had? And when rhetoric calls for “returning to a foreign policy based on human rights and democracy,” we’re encouraged to be nostalgic for good old days that never existed.

The warfare state didn’t suddenly arrive in 2001, and it won’t disappear when the current lunatic in the Oval Office moves on.

Born 50 years before George W. Bush became president, I have always lived in a warfare state. Each man in the Oval Office has presided over an arsenal of weapons designed to destroy human life en masse. In recent decades, our self-proclaimed protectors have been able — and willing — to destroy all of humanity.

We’ve accommodated ourselves to this insanity. And I do mean “we” — including those of us who fret aloud that the impact of our peace-loving wisdom is circumscribed because our voices don’t carry much farther than the choir. We may carry around an inflated sense of our own resistance to a system that is poised to incinerate and irradiate the planet.

Maybe it’s too unpleasant to acknowledge that we’ve been living in a warfare state for so long. And maybe it’s even more unpleasant to acknowledge that the warfare state is not just “out there.” It’s also internalized; at least to the extent that we pass up countless opportunities to resist it.

Like millions of other young Americans, I grew into awakening as the Vietnam War escalated. Slogans like “make love, not war” — and, a bit later, “the personal is political” — really spoke to us. But over the decades we generally learned, or relearned, to compartmentalize: as if personal and national histories weren’t interwoven in our pasts, presents and futures.

One day in 1969, a biologist named George Wald, who had won a Nobel Prize, visited the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — the biggest military contractor in academia — and gave a speech. “Our government has become preoccupied with death,” he said, “with the business of killing and being killed.”

That preoccupation has fluctuated, but in essence it has persisted. While speaking of a far-off war and a nuclear arsenal certain to remain in place after the war’s end, Wald pointed out: “We are under repeated pressure to accept things that are presented to us as settled — decisions that have been made.”

Today, in similar ways, our government is preoccupied and we are pressurized. The grisly commerce of killing — whether through carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan or through the deadly shredding of social safety-nets at home — thrives on aggressive war and on the perverse realpolitik of “national security” that brandishes the Pentagon’s weaponry against the world. At least tacitly, we accept so much that threatens to destroy anything and everything.

As it happened, for reasons both “personal” and “political” — more accurately, for reasons indistinguishable between the two — my own life fell apart and began to reassemble itself during the same season of 1969 when George Wald gave his speech, which he called “A Generation in Search of a Future.”

Political and personal histories are usually kept separate — in how we’re taught, how we speak and even how we think. But I’ve become very skeptical of the categories. They may not be much more than illusions we’ve been conned into going through the motions of believing.

We actually live in concentric spheres, and “politics” suffuses households as well as what Martin Luther King Jr. called “The World House.” Under that heading, he wrote in 1967: “When scientific power outruns moral power, we end up with guided missiles and misguided men. When we foolishly minimize the internal of our lives and maximize the external, we sign the warrant for our own day of doom. Our hope for creative living in this world house that we have inherited lies in our ability to re-establish the moral ends of our lives in personal character and social justice. Without this spiritual and moral reawakening we shall destroy ourselves in the misuse of our own instruments.”

While trying to understand the essence of what so many Americans have witnessed over the last half century, I worked on a book (titled “Made Love, Got War”) that sifts through the last 50 years of the warfare state… and, in the process, through my own life. I haven’t learned as much as I would have liked, but some patterns emerged — persistent and pervasive since the middle of the 20th century.

The warfare state doesn’t come and go. It can’t be defeated on Election Day. Like it or not, it’s at the core of the United States — and it has infiltrated our very being.

What we’ve tolerated has become part of us. What we accept, however reluctantly, seeps inward. In the long run, passivity can easily ratify even what we may condemn. And meanwhile, in the words of Thomas Merton, “It is the sane ones, the well-adapted ones, who can without qualms and without nausea aim the missiles and press the buttons that will initiate the great festival of destruction that they, the sane ones, have prepared.”

The triumph of the warfare state degrades and suppresses us all. Even before the weapons perform as guaranteed.

– Norman Solomon’s book “Made Love, Got War: Close Encounters with America’s Warfare State” will be published in early fall. The foreword is by Daniel Ellsberg. For more information, go to: www.MadeLoveGotWar.com

Climate change called security issue like Cold War

Alister Doyle, Environment Correspondent

NY ALESUND, Norway (Reuters) - Climate change is the biggest security challenge since the Cold War but people have not woken up to the risks nor to easy solutions such as saving energy at home, experts said on Tuesday.

"We're not yet collectively grasping the scale of what we need to do," British climate change ambassador John Ashton told a seminar of 40 scientists and officials from 13 nations in Ny Alesund, Norway, about 1,200 km (750 miles) from the North Pole.

He said global warming should be recast as a security issue, such as war or terrorism, to help mobilize support for tougher global action to cut emissions of greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels.

"The Cold War was the last big problem the world faced on so many fronts -- economic, political, industrial," he said.

Other experts at the talks, in an Arctic scientific research base, also said there was too much focus on costs of cutting emissions of greenhouse gases, rather than on risks of rising seas, droughts or floods projected by U.N. studies.

Global warming "should be looked at as a totally different type of challenge instead of asking 'what does it cost?'," said Joergen Randers, a leading Norwegian economist. Casting global warming as a security issue could make it easier to confront.

Most said that costs of fighting global warming were likely to be manageable. A report by the U.N. climate panel this year said that even the most stringent measures would mean a loss by 2030 of just three percent of global gross domestic product.

But the experts said it was hard to persuade millions of individuals to cut energy use or to get businesses to invest in new technologies to avert long-term damage from global warming.

Randers said that the cheapest way to cut greenhouse gas emissions in cooler climates would be to get everyone to turn down the temperature at home by a degree Celsius (2 Fahrenheit) and wear a sweater if needed to keep warm.

"This can be done with no loss of comfort," he said, adding jokingly that it might be have to be enforced by "sweater police". Another solution would be to charge higher prices for heating homes beyond about 18C (64F).

Researchers noted that people often act without weighing up long-term consequences -- many smoke cigarettes or eat too much without rationally reviewing risks of lung cancer or obesity.

In a similar way "most people don't see the benefit of switching to a more expensive bulb that will last longer," said Nebojsa Nakicenovic, of Vienna University of Technology.

Still, in some areas, behavior is changing.

Labeling of electricity appliances in Europe on a scale of A to G according to their energy efficiency meant that shops no longer sell machines less efficient than a C, said Christoper Rapley, director of the British Antarctic Survey.

He said the most effective way to get people to cut electricity use at home was probably be to give them a large dial showing their current electricity use -- rising, for instance, when the cooker was turned on.

Inside the Data Mine

By Onnesha Roychoudhuri

On April 20, 2007, former Qwest telecommunications CEO Joseph Nacchio was found guilty on 19 of 42 counts of insider trading. “For anyone who has ever made a call in Qwest territory, the term ‘convicted felon Joe Nacchio’ has a nice ring to it,” U.S. prosecutor Troy Eid told the press. The mood was fairly universal. One securities lawyer pitched in: “The government has another notch in their belt. They’ve had a tremendous winning streak in these corporate crime cases.”

But it would have been more accurate to qualify the statement by saying that the government has had a tremendous winning streak in the corporate crime cases it chooses to pursue. We now know that the Securities and Exchange Commission has chosen not to pursue charges of insider trading in the case of a Wall Street executive named John J. Mack because of his “political clout.” And while former U.S. Attorney William Leone led the case against Qwest, he was one of the unfortunate attorneys on the Department of Justice’s “purge list,” replaced by none other than Bush-nominated Troy Eid, a former co-worker of Jack Abramoff at the firm Greenberg Traurig.

In the wake of the Enron scandal, Nacchio’s verdict could be seen as the continuing triumph of an efficient and unbiased judicial system—one working to protect the people’s interests against unbridled business tycoons. But the insidious environment of purges and selective prosecution based on cronyism necessitates a more critical view. To celebrate Nacchio’s verdict in such a simplistic light would miss a far more interesting story about what telecommunications success and failure signify in a post-September 11th world.

Delving into Joseph Nacchio and Qwest’s story reveals a company with close ties to the White House—ties that appear to have been temporarily severed when, according to Nacchio and his legal team at Qwest, the company refused to participate in the government’s data-mining program—making it the only big telecommunications company that didn’t take part. Nacchio claims that secret government contracts he was expecting were never delivered after his refusal to participate in the National Security Agency program, resulting in skewed profit claims.

While currently under new leadership, wooing back government contracts, and finally turning a profit, Qwest will have to struggle to maintain a competitive edge in an industry of telecommunications giants. These giants have received favorable treatment from the Department of Justice and the Federal Communications Commission. Parallel to this success have come news reports that these ever-merging entities—notably AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon—are participating in domestic data-mining programs.

In an amoebic dance, SBC, AT&T, Bell South, Cingular, MCI and Verizon have all coupled and re-coupled, forming a terrain redolent of the days of Ma Bell. Comedian Stephen Colbert, with deadpan delivery, traced the acrobatics in his January 2007 TV primer explaining why Cingular changed its name to AT&T:

As you no doubt remember, Cingular was co-owned by BellSouth and SBC, which had been Southwestern Bell and Ameritech, which before that had been Illinois Bell, Wisconsin Bell, Michigan Bell, Ohio Bell, and Indiana Bell. … A couple of years ago Cingular bought AT&T Wireless and renamed it Cingular, but then SBC bought AT&T and changed its own name to AT&T. Then that new AT&T bought BellSouth, changing its name to AT&T, making it only logical to change Cingular into AT&T.

These mergers are even more conspicuous due to the number that have been approved in just the past three years. 2005 alone saw enough mergers to leave Americans with only two major telecommunications companies: Verizon and AT&T. Colbert cites the most recent and highly contested AT&T/BellSouth merger that combined the country’s two largest telecommunications companies. Despite the massive scope of the merger, when the Department of Justice conducted its regulatory analysis it concluded that there were no major antitrust issues.

In contrast to companies such as AT&T, BellSouth and Verizon, Qwest has encountered significant roadblocks in its expansion efforts, causing telecommunications experts to ask pointed questions about differing treatment from the Department of Justice, the FCC and the SEC. Specifically: Is there government retribution? The question gains clout in light of the recent U.S. attorney scandal and the selective prosecution that the Bush administration has been practicing.

The ties between the telecommunications industry and the White House have grown even deeper since the Sept. 11 attacks, making it impossible to understand data mining or the telecommunications industry without exploring this relationship.

A Tap Without a Wire

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the NSA was significantly downsized and defunded. Seeking a new raison d’être and a new way to remain financially relevant, the NSA decided to go commercial. Back in June of 2000, the agency released a statement announcing that it was pursuing a “government-industry partnership for information technology infrastructure services.” Or: outsourcing. On Sept. 1, 2001, just 10 days before the terrorist attacks, Government Executive magazine investigated the transformation in an online article:

Beginning in November, hundreds of National Security Agency technology specialists will walk out the doors … ending their careers as federal workers. But nearly all will return the next day to do the same jobs they did before, as contractors under the largest outsourcing ever conducted by an intelligence agency. … One of the largest IT outsourcing pacts in government, … NSA’s Project Groundbreaker contract reflects a growing recognition by agencies that private companies can provide better IT support at lower prices than federal workers can.

With the recent communications revolution and the downsizing of the NSA, former NSA Director (now Director of CIA) Michael Hayden made it his goal to “get the technology of the global telecommunications revolution inside this agency.” To do that, Hayden brought new executives into the NSA, including Harry Gatanas, a military and intelligence veteran turned business executive. Gatanas told the press: “Really, nothing is sacred. If it’s not a core competency, then we’ll look at the potential of outsourcing it.”

That sentiment echoes the NSA’s December 2000 “Transition Report”, unveiling “Groundbreaker,” which refers to “the decision to outsource routine information technology functions.” The NSA mission is said to require the agency to “live on the network.” Almost a year before Sept. 11, the report stated that “NSA will be a legal but also a powerful and permanent presence on a global telecommunications infrastructure where protected American communications and targeted adversary communications will coexist.”

Even back in 2000, the NSA recognized the possible conflicts with Fourth Amendment rights. “The Fourth Amendment is as applicable to eSIGINT [electronic signals intelligence] as it is to the SIGINT [signals intelligence] of yesterday and today. The Information Age will however cause us to rethink and reapply procedures, policies and authorities born in an earlier electronic surveillance environment. …”

By December 2000, the NSA had already claimed that its new mission was “well under way.” In a statement reminiscent of Vice President Cheney’s nostalgia for the days of broader executive power, the NSA proclaimed, “This new model for eSIGINT … in the Information Age may require a restatement and endorsement of the policies and authorities that empowered NSA in the Industrial Age.” After the 9/11 terrorist attacks, concerns about Fourth Amendment violations were swept aside with the “national security” argument, providing a broad-spectrum justification for any possible constitutional violations.

Data Mining Begins

Upon reading an article in USA Today alleging government spying on American communications, Philadelphia resident Norman LeBoon wondered if communications on his Verizon land line were being shared with the government. After a string of e-mails, LeBoon says he finally reached “Ellen” in customer service, who had this to say: “I can tell you, Mr. LeBoon, that your records have been shared with the government, but that’s between you and me. … They [Verizon] are going to deny it because of national security. The government is denying it and we have to deny it, too. Around here we are saying that Verizon has ‘plausible deniability.’ ”

LeBoon is part of a class-action suit against the major telecommunications companies brought by lawyers Bruce Afran and Carl Mayer. Their case is remarkable not only in that it references such blatant admissions by Verizon employees, but also because the two lawyers claim to have evidence that AT&T was approached by the National Security Agency before 9/11 as part of the aforementioned Project Groundbreaker, which gave the government access to an unprecedented amount of the personal data of American citizens.

The data-mining program has been aided in no small part by the recent spree of telecommunications mergers that have gone through with little or no regulations thanks to cursory reviews by the Department of Justice.

Apart from the instances in which Verizon employees told customers of the program’s existence, the size of the program and the number of businesses involved make it impossible for it to be completely obscured from the public. The technology installed in cooperative telecommunications companies is designed to sift through massive quantities of consumer communications. One such provider of data-mining technology to the government is Narus. The company puts AT&T at the top of its list of customers, but Narus has also been publicly connected directly to the NSA. Whistle-blower Mark Klein, a retired AT&T employee, has provided documents showing that Narus’ technology was to be installed in a San Francisco facility at the behest of an NSA agent. The vice president of marketing for the company, Steven Bannerman, notes that the technology “enables network operators to spot viruses and identify human targets, such as spammers or potential terrorists.”

While the equipment includes law-enforcement features that prevent searches in any data apart from court-approved targets, the use of those features is optional, leaving no formalized regulation of targeting.

The point of data mining is that you don’t know exactly what you’re looking for, searching instead for relationships and patterns in data. Lee Tien, an attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, explains, “The idea is to take advantage of the fact that huge amounts of transactional data are produced every day in the course of our routine day-to-day lives and that each person is going to be leaving footprints.”

Despite the ominous scope of a program targeting the daily routines of everyday Americans, President Bush has assured the nation that the government is not “mining or trolling through the personal lives of millions of innocent Americans.”

In May 2006, former NSA analyst Ira Winkler wrote a heated rebuttal to Bush’s assurances in Computer World:

They claim that the NSA is not receiving any personally identifying information. Frankly, you have to be a complete moron to believe that. … By simply tying numbers together—and intelligence discipline of traffic analysis—I assure you I can put together a portrait of your life. I’ll know your friends, your hobbies, where your children go to school, if you’re having an affair, whether you plan to take a trip and even when you’re awake or asleep. Give me a list of whom you’re calling and I can tell most of the critical things I need to know about you.

When you start to understand the scope of the program, you realize why the Bush administration balked at the notion of obtaining a warrant for each individual whose information it intended to search. In order for data mining to be a thorough program, for the NSA to, as Hayden put it, “live on the network,” the government needs to have blanket access to telecommunication companies across the country. The problem for the program began when one company, Qwest, refused to comply.

On May 11, 2006, USA Today reported that Qwest CEO Nacchio and his lawyers asked the government to take its request to the FISA court, or to get a letter of authorization from the attorney general’s office. When the government refused, Qwest refused to grant access to its customers’ records, leaving the data-mining program with a Qwest-size hole in its database—including portions of 14 states in the West and Northwest. There were bound to be repercussions. As USA Today’s Leslie Cauley writes:

The NSA, which needed Qwest’s participation to completely cover the country, pushed back hard. Trying to put pressure on Qwest, NSA representatives pointedly told Qwest that it was the lone holdout among the big telecommunications companies. It also tried appealing to Qwest’s patriotic side: In one meeting, an NSA representative suggested that Qwest’s refusal to contribute to the database could compromise national security, one person recalled. In addition, the agency suggested that Qwest’s foot-dragging might affect its ability to get future classified work with the government. Like other big telecommunications companies, Qwest already had classified contracts and hoped to get more.

This was no minor threat. In the telecommunications world, companies cannot remain competitive without the government contracts that keep them afloat. Market analysts of government business at INPUT recently released a report stating that the Department of Defense is the “leading spender on telecommunications products and services in the federal government. This situation is contrary to the general rule that civilian agencies outspend the DoD on information technology.”

Tracking Qwest

The famed ego of Joe Nacchio, not a well-liked character, has made him something of a notorious Denver personality. The tough guy from New Jersey with oversize britches was finally ousted from Qwest and subjected to a three-year-long Department of Justice investigation that ended with Nacchio facing 42 counts of insider trading. A mini-Enron of sorts, but with one substantial difference: Nacchio claims that he was anticipating secret government contracts that were never delivered.

He had reason to believe something would be coming his way.

In early 2001, President Bush appointed him chairman of the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee—a group that works to keep the president up to date on national security issues that involve telecommunication infrastructure. A Denver telecommunications analyst, Donna Jaegers, recalls a meeting with Nacchio in which he was “gaga” over the possibility of certain government contracts. It was while he was serving on the committee that Nacchio allegedly inflated the value of Qwest. And it was also while he was on the committee, claims Nacchio lawyer Herbert Stern, that Nacchio was approached by the government with a request to access private telephone records of Qwest customers.

As the story goes, Nacchio refused. While the refusal may be due, in part, to an altruistic defense of consumer privacy, there also existed the very real threat of privacy lawsuits for handing over consumer information without appropriate warrants. To wit, AT&T, Verizon and a handful of other companies are currently facing some $5 billion in damage claims if found guilty of violating telecommunications laws.

After making the initial statement about his client’s refusal to participate in the data-mining program, Stern has remained mum, refusing all press inquiries.

In an interview, Cliff Stricklin, a prosecutor from Stern’s opposition, simply grins and urges me to look up a legal strategy called “graymail.”

Graymail: (n.) a maneuver used by the defense in a spy trial whereby the government is threatened with the revelation of national secrets unless the case against the defendant is dropped.

In other words: Take me to court and I’ll reveal state secrets. Nacchio’s defense team ended up making the secret contracts a minor part of his defense due to rulings from the judge in closed sessions regarding classified information. It is likely that this defense will resurface in his appeal or his upcoming defense against the SEC’s charges of accounting fraud.

Twenty-six years into a career at AT&T, Nacchio was thought to be next in line to former AT&T Chairman Robert Allen. When he was passed up, he went his own way, building Qwest into a competitor to his former employer. As former Denver prosecutor Craig Silverman told a local reporter, “Nacchio used to be part of George W. Bush’s team, but now the Justice Department is trying to take all of his money and freedom.” History repeats itself: Nacchio is once again a disgruntled former employee and he’s not going down without a fight. It’s a good old-fashioned grudge match with cocky foes threatening to air the others’ dirty laundry.

Graymail may not be a remarkably unique concept, but the sudden evaporation of this close, security-level relationship and the timing of the Justice Department’s investigation are suggestive of government retribution. Bruce Afran, one of the lawyers leading the class-action suit against AT&T and Verizon for their participation in the government’s data-mining program, has followed the Nacchio case closely. When pressed during an interview, Afran chooses his words carefully: “We can’t ignore that Nacchio has been the only one to refuse to participate in the program, and that he was then indicted.” Afran explains that, because chief executives are paid in shares or options, they’re always selling shares. “Whenever you want to take revenge on an uncooperative CEO, all you need to do is charge him with insider trading,” says Afran, referring to a strategy commonly known as “selective prosecution.” He pauses, sips from his coffee, leans in a bit, and says, “As a lawyer, I think this is clearly a pretext for punishing him for failing to go along with their [the government’s] program.”

Even if you don’t buy that Nacchio’s indictment for insider trading is payback for his refusal to participate in the president’s data-mining program, Nacchio’s former company, Qwest, has taken some hard knocks in the business world. Knocks that, given the soaring stocks and the unprecedented merger success of other companies implicated in data mining, become all the more salient.

When I tried to meet with a legal adviser of Qwest, I encountered Qwest spokesman Bob Toevs. Toevs thanked me for repeatedly “reaching out” in my requests for an interview regarding the harsh regulations the Justice Department has imposed on Qwest deals. When I tried to sidestep Toevs by sending direct e-mails to two Qwest employees, I got another e-mail from Toevs thanking me again for my attempt to reach out to his team, again refusing, and wishing me safe travel home.

Curiously, the three Denver reporters I spoke to told me how helpful Toevs had been. “Perhaps,” one reporter told me outside of Nacchio’s hearing, “they don’t want to talk about the bad luck they’ve had.” With a new CEO leading the company slowly out of debt, it’s likely Qwest is interested in leaving the past behind—and avoiding rehashing any unpleasantries that could hurt its chances of winning government contracts. One telecommunications expert who agreed to speak only without being identified summed up the past two years of mergers like this: “It’s as if AT&T and Verizon can’t lose.” It is widely acknowledged that Qwest has not been so lucky—becoming fodder in the D.C. rumor mill. Celebrated intellectual property and trade regulation lawyer Gary Reback heard a rumor from some D.C. lawyers and lobbyists that Qwest was being disadvantaged for not participating in the data-mining program.

In 2003, Qwest announced that it had reached an agreement to acquire most of the assets of a small, bankrupt company called Allegiance. The Department of Justice agreed to the deal, but only if stringent conditions were met—divestiture of every single piece of Allegiance’s network that was inside of Qwest’s territory. After a long period of bidding, Qwest ended up losing the deal to another company. In 2005, Qwest tried again to expand its holdings by merging with MCI. Qwest and Verizon were engaged in a bidding war—if you can call it that—for MCI, with Qwest consistently offering MCI a higher bid—in the end, $9.9 billion to Verizon’s $8.45 billion. Yet, Verizon somehow won out.

Qwest’s CEO Dick Notebaert was irate, releasing this press statement: “Qwest maintains that it would be better for the industry to have three major telecom companies—SBC-AT&T, Qwest-MCI and Verizon. … It’s a public policy issue, I don’t think we want a duopoly.” The loss of the deal was confusing to Notebaert, who referred to the bidding process as “permanently skewed against Qwest.” MCI, for its part, did not go into detail about why it chose Verizon over Qwest, telling the press only that they were “under pressure from some of its business customers to accept Verizon” and that, apparently, “Some had requested rights to end their contracts with MCI if it merged with Qwest.” Whatever the reason, it had to be more compelling than a billion and a half dollars.

When the Department of Justice reviewed the massive Verizon/MCI merger, and the earlier SBC/AT&T mergers, it did not require divestiture of any lines. A distinct contrast with the restrictions the Justice Department had leveled on the much smaller Qwest/Allegiance deal. Indeed, Comptel, which represents competitive telecommunications policy interests, argued against the mergers in part because of the Justice Department’s failure to follow its previous ruling in the Verizon/MCI and SBC/AT&T mergers.

Rebuilding the Telecommunications Empire

While other telecommunications companies have consolidated with a hefty push from the Justice Department, Qwest has fought an uphill battle to remain afloat. This is in direct contrast to the department signing off on the $86-billion merger of AT&T and BellSouth without so much as a single regulatory condition.

The merger created the largest company in America and one of the largest companies in the world, but when the Department of Justice conducted its regulatory analysis, it concluded that there were no real antitrust issues. This came as quite a shock to those in the FCC who were used to the Department of Justice at least paying lip service to modest regulations in order to keep the merger machinery running without undue questioning. The merger was opposed not only by consumer interest groups but other telecommunications companies that rely on the special-access circuits controlled by a vanishing number of telecom giants like AT&T. Companies like Broadwing and XO need access to shared circuits in order to support business customers and survive a situation in which they could effectively be muscled out by monopolistic control.

Larry Strickling, former chief of the FCC Common Carrier Bureau, and Broadwing executive says that the outcomes of the MCI/Verizon deal and the AT&T/SBC deal “struck people as very odd and counter to standard DoJ analysis and interpretation.” After those mergers went through, the floodgates were opened.

Says Strickling: “The company that I worked for at the time of those two mergers is Broadwing, and Broadwing was quite concerned about those mergers. We, along with a lot of other companies, were trying to push both the DoJ and FCC to perform traditional antitrust analysis and require certain divestitures as part of the deal and obviously we were not successful in convincing either agency to do its job.”

When asked about the DoJ’s differing standards for requiring divestiture of lines for Qwest but not Verizon, Strickling simply says, “It was an aberration, but we’re coming to expect more and more aberrations these days.”

Despite these concerns, the Department of Justice continues to assert that it sees absolutely no problem with the merger. While it’s no secret that there is a highly anti-regulatory administration in the White House, the fact that the DoJ has been so intractable in the face of such opposition signals that there may be more than free-market fundamentalism behind the push.

Both FCC officials (one Republican and one Democrat) I spoke with made it clear that the DoJ’s behavior in pushing through the merger had left them in a difficult position—not to mention a tense negotiation. Without a proper DoJ analysis, FCC officials have been left holding the bag.

The pressure only increases as the number of telecommunications companies has dwindled. 2005 saw the unions of SBC/AT&T and Verizon/MCI. With the BellSouth/AT&T merger, consumers are left with AT&T, Verizon and the comparatively tiny Qwest. Government contracts with telecommunication companies are a multibillion-dollar business with both telecoms and politicians eager to remain in each other’s good graces; it’s a tightknit old-boys network of governmental officials and telecom executives.

It comes as no surprise, then, that two of the companies implicated by the USA Today article for participation in data mining were AT&T and Verizon, headed by (recently retired) Ed Whitacre and Ivan Seidenberg, respectively. The two have close ties to the White House and contributed heavily to Bush’s re-election campaign. The timing of the contributions is important as both Whitacre and Seidenberg sought substantial mergers during Bush’s second term, for which Whitacre raised at least $200,000 and Seidenberg at least $100,000—far outstripping their year-2000 contributions.

Since Bush’s re-election, the telecommunications industry has experienced a scale of mergers and consolidation that hasn’t been seen since the days of Ma Bell. The Department of Justice (headed by longtime Bush ally Alberto Gonzales) has fallen into line, taking an increasingly hands-off position on antitrust reviews (except, of course, for Qwest). Indeed, more than hands-off, the DoJ antitrust division has been working to promote legislation that would make it easier for the newly merged AT&T to control various markets. In an April 30, 2007, letter, the DoJ antitrust division contacted Wisconsin state Sen. Jeffrey Plale (though it spelled his name incorrectly as “Pale”), expressing support for a bill that would make it easier for AT&T to enter the market with its new video service—effectively eliminating municipal cable franchises and putting the approval process in the hands of the state.

As mentioned before, government contracts provide critical telecommunications revenue. Barry Steinhardt, director of the ACLU’s technology and liberty program, says it is through government contracts that the White House is able to throw its weight around. “I presume that there’s some payment that’s being made for the construction of facilities providing connections between the offices and the NSA. But the more important money here are these huge contracts with the federal government.” It seems that, in addition to contracts, pushes for favorable litigation are also afforded.

Spy Consolidation

While it’s clear what telecoms get out of this cozy relationship, the real story is perhaps what the Bush administration is getting in return—apart from some campaign cash. With the president’s favored companies gobbling up the competition, the government’s spy program has access to a substantial amount of the telecommunications backbone—cable that is shared by multiple companies. As Steinhardt explains, “That means that the government can get access to the communications of customers from many different companies.” What Americans are facing is not only consolidation of telecommunications companies, but a consolidation of the government’s ability to spy on communication records.

In FCC Chairman Kevin Martin’s press release announcing the merger, he cited national security as one of the critical justifications for approval: “The merger … will enhance national security by creating a stronger and more efficient U.S. supplier of critical communications capabilities.” Martin peppered his release with references to national security, conspicuously avoiding details. Another excerpt from the document states that “Broadband deployment to all Americans remains one of the highest objectives for us at the Commission. This deployment is critical to our nation’s competitiveness in the global economy and to our national security.” Neither of the Democratic commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, mentioned national security in their press releases regarding the merger.

Despite public concern about the security of consumer information, Martin emphasized that the merger will enhance national security “through the creation of a unified … network capable of providing efficient and secure government communication.” It’s notable that in a public FCC press release, Chairman Martin all but put the seal of approval on the new AT&T serving as the government’s secure network.

National security has been a recurring theme throughout these mergers. Lawyer Bruce Afran has studied the merger documents that Verizon, AT&T and BellSouth have exchanged with the FCC. He says, “All used national security concerns as a basis for justifying these mergers. It looks like they [the telecommunications companies] are signaling that this is the quid pro quo—we’ve done what you need for security purpose. Now you do what we need.”

In a June 2006 Senate judiciary subcommittee meeting on the BellSouth/AT&T merger, Sen. Herb Kohl’s (D-Wis.) opening remarks got straight to the point: “As the market consolidates, Government eavesdropping is possible merely with the assent of fewer and fewer large phone companies than before.” The Department of Justice has been so eager to muscle the mergers through that they have garnered a fair amount of attention—and with good reason.

To explain how egregious the Department of Justice has been in selectively regulating telecommunications mergers, it’s helpful to go back to the Nixon years. In 1974, something called the Tunney Act was signed into law, a response to a backroom deal in which, in exchange for campaign contributions, Richard Nixon’s DoJ squelched antitrust investigations into a huge telecommunications company called ITT. The smoking gun came in the form of an internal ITT memo leaked to The Washington Post. It was a transgression serious enough to have been included among the articles of impeachment against Nixon.

When the SBC/AT&T and MCI/Verizon deals were approved by the DoJ and FCC, with only minor conditions to address antitrust concerns, the independent judicial review mandated by the Tunney Act became important. A former employee of the American Antitrust Institute explains, “The DoJ was so sure that the judge would rubberstamp the deals that they gave the parties license to close the transaction before Tunney review was complete.” Indeed, AT&T and Verizon had already effectively merged with other corporations, whether or not the mergers were ultimately determined to be legal. In a November hearing, a testy federal judge named Emmet Sullivan challenged a confident Verizon lawyer who claimed that the Verizon merger was already closed and pleasing customers. “If the merger is closed,” said Sullivan, “why are we here then?”

The DoJ learned from its mistakes in heeding even the semblance of law, and when the proposed BellSouth/AT&T merger was announced, instead of a formal consent decree that requires Tunney review, the DoJ simply released a press statement claiming that it found no competitive issues in the largest merger in American history. It is, as antitrust experts have noted, a complete end run around the Tunney Act.

The Tunney Act, as a former employee of the American Antitrust Institute explains, is not important if the Justice Department is being vigorous in its enforcement of the laws. “When the DoJ starts being overly lax, the Tunney Act becomes more important. That’s the idea of the Tunney Act: to not let the Justice Department decide to give the store away. They’re getting pushbacks from the court because the court perceives that they’re not being tough enough on the parties.”

Where a concerned customer, or a journalist for that matter, can locate the status of the FCC negotiations over the AT&T/BellSouth merger is something of a mystery. Neither FCC official I met with in Washington would tell me whether the government data-mining programming was even being discussed. And while Democrats have since taken control of the House and Senate, there is currently no investigation into the relationship between telecommunications companies and the White House. Hard to imagine, considering how widely the relationship has been publicized. Bob Woodward made the direct relationship amply clear in his book “State of Denial”:

Over the years, [CIA Director George] Tenet had negotiated agreements with telecommunications and financial institutions to get access to certain telephone, Internet and financial. … Tenet personally made most of the arrangements with the various CEOs of the companies. They were very secret, among the most sensitive arrangements, and based largely on informal understandings. Tenet had been very good at this, playing the patriot card and asking CEOs to help on matters of national security.

Unchecked power

The FCC’s gridlock over the AT&T/BellSouth merger ended with approval. The so-called compromise was that AT&T vowed to support Net Neutrality, though FCC Chairman Martin made clear that he did not support the decision, releasing a statement stating that the order “does not mean that the commission has adopted an additional Net neutrality principle. We continue to believe such a requirement is not necessary … although AT&T may make a voluntary business decision, it cannot dictate or bind government policy. Nor does this order.” What rules AT&T follows are, it seems, up to the corporation. As per the FCC’s merger stipulation, AT&T has started selling a $10-per-month DSL service. The catch? AT&T hasn’t advertised it, preferring that consumers pay the higher price for the same service.

While the legality of previous mergers is under review in court, the Justice Department is pushing to further accelerate merger reviews of favored deals. A draft of a merger policy document reads: “The staff is encouraged to be as aggressive as possible during the initial 15- or 30-day waiting period in attempting to identify transactions that do not require further investigation.” That kind of brazenness is mirrored by telecommunications leadership.

FCC commissioners, for example, worked with AT&T and BellSouth to try to negotiate conditions for the merger, but AT&T was resistant to accepting any regulations. Ask why it’s being so obstinate and you’ll get a fairly straightforward response in Washington. As telecommunications analyst and Capitol Hill veteran Jessica Zufolo put it, “This is a company that is very accustomed to getting their way.”

So close have the large telecommunications companies grown with the White House that, in a recent legal filing in New Jersey, AT&T and Cingular (co-owned by AT&T and BellSouth) made reference to their right to maintain the state secrets privilege. “To which we answer very simply that the state secrets privilege can only be invoked by the federal government,” says Anne Milgram, recently sworn in as New Jersey’s attorney general.

When the New Jersey attorney general’s office subpoenaed telecommunications companies in the state in order to find out whether they were sharing consumer information with the federal government, rather than receiving responses from the telecommunications companies it received notice from the Department of Justice, which sued the New Jersey attorney general’s office for even posing the question. Milgram says she has never heard of this before. “Why is it OK for the phone companies to give that information to the NSA but not OK for the state to ask for the information?”

Milgram’s voice, though calm, rises in pitch during an interview: “The NSA trusts the phone companies to give them that information, but won’t trust a state attorney general to get that information.”

One of the more telling on-the-record exchanges occurred in a June 2006 Senate Judiciary Committee meeting on the BellSouth/AT&T merger. Sen. Arlen Specter asked AT&T’s Whitacre whether the company provides customer information to the government. To which Whitacre responded only with a parroted, “I will tell you that we follow the law, we don’t break the law.” When you read the transcript, you can almost hear Specter’s blood pressure rise as he pushes back.

Specter: Are you declining to answer my question, Mr. Whitacre?

Whitacre: We follow the law, Senator.

Specter: Does AT&T provide customer information to any law enforcement agency?

Whitacre: We follow the law, Senator.

Specter: That is not an answer, Mr. Whitacre. You know that.

The exchange continues for pages until Specter gets fed up, telling Whitacre, “You said that. I don’t care to hear it again,” ultimately stating for the record that the response is contemptuous of the committee. And while Whitacre insists that AT&T protects consumer information, he also has to field questions about a recent AT&T policy change whereby confidential consumer information is now deemed the property of AT&T and can be used to “safeguard others.” A former policy assured consumers that their information would be released only by subpoena or court order. Whitacre’s response: “We wanted to make our policies easier to read.” One telecommunications analyst present noted that “Specter had smoke coming out of his ears … nobody refuses to answer questions raised in that situation unless they’ve got some pretty powerful backup.”

William Rogers, former secretary of state to Nixon, once stated that “the public should view excessive secrecy among government officials as parents view sudden quiet where youngsters are playing. It is a sign of trouble.” It is arguably true that, in the digital age, certain telecommunications mergers do stand to benefit the consumer. It is also a true that it has become more important for those in national security to work closely with telecommunications companies. But to muscle through a telecommunications monopoly and eradicate the Fourth Amendment and consumer rights of Americans under the guise of “national security” is without justification. The incredible silence with which both the telecommunications companies and White House have met inquiries not just from Americans in general and journalists, but from state attorneys General and other government officials, is certainly a sign of trouble.

This past April, the White House went back to Congress to ask for a revision of FISA laws. Without addressing the ongoing data-mining scandal, President Bush requested that “unintentionally” obtained information be saved and used for intelligence purposes. The revision would also require telecommunications companies to cooperate with investigations and prevent companies from being sued by consumers for sharing information. Not surprisingly, Bush is requesting that this legal protection apply retroactively to companies that have already cooperated with the government.

Research made possible in part by a Nation Investigative Fund grant.

Onnesha Roychoudhuri is a San Francisco-based writer. A former assistant editor of AlterNet.org, she has written for AlterNet, The American Prospect, MotherJones.com, In These Times, Huffington Post, Truthdig, PopMatters, and Women’s eNews. She can be reached at onneshatao@gmail.com.

The Last Days of Democracy

By Truth Dig.

Truthdig speaks with Elliot Cohen, author of “The Last Days of Democracy,” who argues that the United States is in political and cultural decline, with media and telecommunications giants engaged in “a well-organized effort to hijack America.”

Illustration courtesy of Adbusters

Click here to listen to this interview.

James Harris: Welcome to another edition of Truthdig. This is James Harris sitting down with Josh Scheer. On the phone we are talking to Elliot Cohen, the author of “The Last Days of Democracy.” Elliot, let’s start with your theory. For the most part, you’re saying that our government in the United States is coming to an end. And that we are headed toward a dictatorship, toward authoritarian rule. The idea that we will one day be like Nazi Germany was … is hard for a lot of Americans to swallow. Why do you believe it to be true?

Elliot Cohen: We are not saying things off the top of our heads; we do have the operations and secret prison camps in Europe, we torture prisoners in Abu Ghraib and Gitmo. This regarding the Geneva Conventions and the NSA spying programs warrantlessly. Bush is issuing signing statements, which is tantamount to nullifying congressional lawmaking powers. Cancellation of habeas corpus, enabling individuals as enemy combatants just by virtue of whether the president deems that hostile to U.S. interests. I mean this goes on and on for individual facts as to why one might say that America is becoming a dictatorship. And as far as the issues of the media and how the media is being controlled, I think there’s many insiders who admit the same facts that I’ve stated, in fact, they come from such—, I mean, the issue here is not that the media is somehow an ideologue in cahoots with the government for ideological purposes. It’s rather that the media is a moneymaking machine and is being controlled by the purse-strings—through the government.

Josh Scheer: Now, aren’t there good people in the media who are trying to do something? Are they wimpy? Or are they not speaking loud enough? What do you think is the cause of the problem with the media?

Cohen: Well, the cause of the problem isn’t the good journalists who are in the trenches and risking their lives to get out stories. They’re still there. What happens is when the news is edited, what facts that are damaging to government, the censorship kicks in. And the stories just don’t get out there from the mainstream. And, so, it’s not that it is a sense of wimpiness of individuals who are risking their lives. I think there needs to be a realization, however, that is it really worth risking your life when the story is going to be cut, edited, censored, in a way that the news isn’t going to get out. And so it’s not at the lower levels of journalists in the trenches; it’s the higher levels of editorship and ownership where—I mean there’s a lot of reasons for this. First of all, when you look at the media and its interests, its bottom line is its major interests. And how does it attain its bottom line? Well, it does it through military contracts, for instance. Because these companies are not just newsrooms, they are giant conglomerates. Take, for interest, General Electric. General Electric has interests in producing jet engines for military contracts with Lockheed Martin. And the war in Iraq is something that builds up these revenues, and when it comes to advancing the media ownership, how many cross-ownership markets and how far can you advance your national market? Well the FCC is the one that grants those wishes and … so there’s lots of reasons why, not withstanding tax incentives and other little government perks, why the media would be beholden, you know, to the politicians who hold the reins of government. And when you have such an aggressive government as we do, which is ideological and has this desire to control and amass great power, then you have really a recipe for dictatorship. And that’s what we have: We don’t have an independent Fourth Estate doing its job. And we have problems there.

Scheer: That’s what I’m talking about. When I say wimpy, I don’t mean obviously the person in Iraq trying to cover for Indymedia. I’m talking about those people in power who are editors, who are publishers, who are the owners, shouldn’t they have some kind of standard, because they are the Fourth Estate, speaking truth to power … ?

Cohen: The way things are going is they’re thinking as corporate executives and not journalists. They’re thinking about their obligations to their shareholders; they’re thinking about their bottom line. And that kind of thinking is incompatible with the Fourth Estate that’s independent of government—not when you’re in business with the government. One of the major problems as far as the media is concerned is media consolidation and these large corporations that control the media being not these good journalists of the Fourth Estate, but rather simply businessmen trying to make a profit.

Harris: I was reading something you said about the Internet and of course it’s at least in one respect the ability of alternative press to be heard and seen by others who wouldn’t normally see it. You say the regulations we’re seeing right now are just one example of the way we are being stripped of our democracy, our, at least an access to continuing democracy. Explain that.

Cohen: The Internet is really a great bastion of democracy. If we didn’t have the Internet we wouldn’t even know about the Downing Street Memos, for example. Because the mainstream didn’t cover it. And so what we’re up against is, if we can hold on to the Internet, then we still have a source of a democratic press. But the problem is, it’s being encroached upon just like mainstream media and it’s in danger of becoming really an arm of these large corporations who are now dominating the Internet. And this started in 2000, well, well before. But in 2005 there was the landmark decision by the Supreme Court, which was the Brand X decision, where the court essentially turned over the pipes that send the information down the Internet to these large corporations. It basically said that they own the conduit for the Internet. The Supreme Court ruled that the Internet is like a cable TV station and can be owned and can be operated like such. For instance, Fox broadcasts its program and you have no control—we have no control over what it broadcasts. Well, essentially, this is the way the Internet is now conceived, legally. They can send and control, you know, send things down and control the content. And if they can control the conduit, they can control the content of the Internet pipes. And even wireless there are these fights to try to hold on to control of the Internet, and that’s the first stage to do away with what’s common carriage, which means that just like on a phone conversation, anybody can enter a phone conversation and use the phones. Well, the Supreme Court said that that is no longer the case with the Internet. The Internet is now—. The Net’s not going to be seen as a telecommunications system but rather it’s going to be conceived as an information system just like CNN or Fox cable. And what that does is open up the door effectively for various modes of control, and one of the ways in which these large corporations like Comcast are trying to control the Internet right now is through setting up these tollbooths where they are instituting, or want to institute—and there’s a lot of powerful lobbies in Congress to try to do this—they are trying to set up these tollbooths which will regulate how much, what kind of bandwidth different Internet sites can have, depending upon how much they are wiling to pay. So we have a pay-for-play system where the bandwidth will determine how quickly you connect then, and whether or not you end up spinning out in cyberspace versus reaching lots of people. And obviously those corporations with the deepest pockets are going to be able to have the best connectivity. What that means is money is going to control truth.

Harris: Why don’t we hear about this legislation? Why don’t we hear about these efforts to control the Internet, to control wireless? Is this part of the systematic effort you are talking about?

Cohen: Yes, I believe that that’s the case. Just to preface this in 2007, I won the Project Censored award for my article on the corporate takeover of the Internet. And the reason why I did was because Project Censored thought that it was the most censored story of—it actually goes back to 2005 when the decision I mentioned, the Supreme Court decision, was made. It wasn’t heard at all on the mainstream. And why not? Well, part of the main reason, one of the main reasons, is that these companies really don’t want to blow their cover. I mean, you have all these large corporations having interconnected board members. I mean, they have contracts with each other, they have relationships with each other. And if they don’t want this news covered because it’s dangerous to their prosperity, it won’t be covered. That’s part of it, but the other part of it is even more unsettling. And that’s where we find the government really having an interest in this, and much has been said in the progressive media about the Project for the New American Century, PNAC, but one of the issues of PNAC that hasn’t been broached that much is the problem of the Internet and how that keys into the ideology of PNAC. Basically, what PNAC wants to do is to control the Internet. And they have been very explicit about this and a report called “Rebuilding America’s Defenses” in 2000—they specifically address this, so I think something about the Project for the New American Century, what its genesis is, before I say something about—.

Harris: I think a lot of people aren’t aware of it, but are becoming, so please help them. …

Cohen: Right, the Project for the New American Century was begun around ’97 or ’98 by a bunch of individuals who ultimately showed up as the officials of the Bush administration. These people like Dick Cheney and even Scooter Libby and [Paul] Wolfowitz and [Richard] Perle and so many others who are controlling the government right now [or were controlling the government]. It even included [Donald] Rumsfeld.

Scheer: Some of them should be in prison, or are in prison.

Cohen: These individuals are now calling the shots for the Bush administration. So we can understand, we can assume that the ideologies espoused by the Project for the New American Century are really the perspectives of the Bush administration. Because they control the Bush administration, including the vice president. And, one of the things, the main interest of the Project for the New American Century, was really to control, to use military might, to corporatize and control the world. I mean, in just plain English. They entertained the idea of taking over Iraq, whether or not Saddam Hussein presented a threat; they were very specific. It didn’t really matter as long as they can get that area and establish a permanent base there, that’s what they wanted. One of the things regarding the Internet that they talked about was the Internet has elements in a global commerce politics and power play. And they said that “any nation,” and this is a quote, “wishing to assert itself globally must take account of this other new global commerce.” And then they went on and said it’s an invaluable tool, they said, “that could provide,” and this is a quote, “America’s military and political leaders,” let me emphasize political leaders, “an offensive,” not just a defensive, “for disabling an adversary in a decisive manner.” And then when they were talking about cyberspace that it maintains that the Defense Department must establish control and provide for the security for the Internet. Now, when you bring in the Defense Department controlling the Internet—tell me if I’m speculating here—is that a recipe for controlling the Internet?

Scheer: Is this a new phenomenon with the government trying to control people? Because it seems that governments have always tried to do that, or is this Bush administration, and this time that we are in, something unique and even further than the Nazis or the communists or the Americans in the ’20s, the ’30s, the ’40s and the ’50s. Is this something that we are seeing right now that is different than the typical government control of its people?

Cohen: Well, if you’re talking about, let’s say, how much control did the Clinton administration exert over the government versus the Bush administration; or if you’re comparing it with the Nazis, that’s a different story. I think there’s a strong parallel between the ways the Nazis proceeded and the way Bush is proceeding. If you look at the distinction between, say, the Clinton administration and the Bush administration, there’s also a difference. It’s to some extent a difference in degree, and in some extent, to some extent, it is a difference in kind. The different in degree is the interest in dealing with the media and engaging in quid pro quo. Certainly, the Clinton administration, which in 1996 signed into law the Telecommunications Act , which gave more control over larger markets to the media, the mainstream—these large corporations—and helped to move along this corporate consolidation. You know, these large corporations gaining, getting larger and larger and controlling more and more of the media. So, I mean, when you have this small group of individual corporations controlling the media, there’s less competition. Even though there are more stations, but, in that case, you know, I know you want to get away from the media, it’s hard to do that here.

Scheer: Well, I didn’t mean to get away from the media, but I meant that in terms of having a conversation about the New American Century and things like that, I know they go hand in hand. I was talking more about Nazis, not about their brutality but their control of the media, or in this country we had the Red Scare in the ’20s and we had McCarthyism, we had the Cold War, where we used fear, we used the media, to kind of control the message.

Cohen: And that’s where it comes in now, the difference, it certainly, as I mentioned, the Clinton administration wanted to control the media, as I mentioned. It was involved in that. It engaged in quid pro quo and so forth, but the difference here, and this is the difference in kind, I believe, is the ideology that the Bush administration has and that’s this amassing of power and control, this global domination theme, and this is what it lives and breathes for. Control. And, so, when you have this voracious appetite for control and then you have the media set up to accommodate it, there is a difference here that’s going on between what we’ve seen in America before. And it’s the kind of control and desire for control that’s analogous to what we saw in Nazi Germany. … What’s different about this case is that we have technology that we never had before. If Nixon had more than his little tape recorders, he could do a lot more than he did as well. But you see—.

Scheer: Yeah, I understand. It’s just interesting to look at, say, watch a movie, or read the book, “All the President’s Men,” and go “Nixon’s pretty bad with wiretapping and in terms of election fraud, and corruption, and those types of things”; it seems that it kind of goes in a revolutionary cycle. I want to talk about hope because we had a conversation with somebody the other day and it was talking about how some people don’t hope, and that even [I] have been a little cynical. And I want to talk about your book because at the end you have something called “What’s Now, Compatriots,” and you talk about what you can do as an average citizen, and you put in a selected media guide, even though Truthdig’s not in there yet. …

Harris: We need to talk to you about that.

Scheer: But, I want to know, does that mean you have hope? Do you have hope that this system can be changed or do you think that it’s hopeless and we should just kind of cower and go away?

Cohen: Never cower. Never cower. It’s not over until it’s over, and right now we need to understand that that’s where we’re heading. And it’s easy enough to say, “Well, you know it happened in [Nazi] Germany, but we’re different.” That’s a very pompous attitude. As though Americans are somehow different than Germans. They’re not. They’re people. And if we don’t watch it, this is where we’re heading. Well, what do we do about it? There’s thing we can do. Well, one thing is for the average person to make sure that they’re informed: To stop relying on mainstream media as much as they do, and to get their information from independent media. Then really when you look at the survival of dictatorships, and whether they thrive or not. They thrive on keeping people ignorant. And if the masses of people are just ignorant and they don’t take responsibility for their failure to know, then we aren’t looking in the face of hopeless dictatorship; people need to wake up. They need to start learning about what’s going on and they need to say, “We’re as mad as hell and we’re not going to take it.” They need to join activist movements like, for instance, Free Press , which is an organization that’s been really doing a lot to try to counteract the taking-over of the free Internet and the destruction of Internet neutrality. And a lot of other causes about media … [like] organizing massive letter-writings to Congress. People need to start thinking in terms of doing these sorts of things. Peaceful assemblies. And demonstrations. These are constitutional rights, and as long as we have these rights in our Constitution we should make sure that we see that through. These are things that we need to do. Educators should stop placating and looking for fair and balanced and start speaking out because there’s danger here and every educator has an obligation to step up onto the plate as a vanguard of democracy. The lawyers of this nation, including the American Bar Association, need to present a unified front against violations of the rule of law. They did that at one point where they denounced Bush’s instituting signing statements to do away with the congressional lawmaking authority and they made it clear that it was illegal and unconstitutional. But we need to be more unified as educators as citizens. As journalists too. I think the journalists associations and the schools of journalism need to start making a unified stand that, you know, journalists need to be vanguards of democracy. We need to get back the Fourth Estate, and we can’t simply support these large corporations allowing this go down the tubes and that’s exactly what’s going on. I think we need to take the unified stand. Is it going to happen? Well, you know, people like us, you and your site and the things that I’m trying to do with the book and doing these kinds of interview are the things that more of us need to take seriously. And listen and learn. Is that going to work? Well, I think that we better do that. It’s better than laying down and playing dead.

Scheer: Well, thank you. I just want to talk about Free Press because we have interviewed people from Free Press and it’s not just a liberal-Democrat issue; it’s not just a conservative issue. Because with Net neutrality the Christian Coalition, that’s their new issue they’ve set for this next election for the next many years, so it’s not just a one-sided issue; it’s keeping a free press. Keeping the Internet free, we can all agree, is the thing for the citizen.

Harris: … [H]ere’s a question, and Josh speaks to this as well. Elliot, you were talking about PNAC, the Project for the New American Century, and you’re also talking about media and how it’s been manipulated severely in the last seven years. We’ve seen the government exposed; we’ve see the government abuse, that power can be misused. Does this reveal a problem perhaps, a more insoluble one that our government is flawed? That the system that we abide by, the Republic, is flawed? And if so, what do we do about that fact?

Cohen: I think that after they’ve ransacked the Constitution and the balance of powers and the like as they’ve done, it really is flawed. They’ve set some dangerous precedents. Was the system intact when they came in? I think it was. But any system, any system has vulnerabilities. There’s no system of government and no system of any activity or operation that’s entirely invulnerable. I think we have a good system and if we can only get it back and start recognizing the rule of law in implementing it. I think what’s happening is that they are getting away with so many things. I mean, they refused to recognize subpoenas, they evoke executive privilege even with the Tillman case; I mean, this is absurd. They’ve gone to such absurd lengths of just disregarding the rule of law that anybody, no matter how perfect your system was, if they weren’t going to follow the rules then the system wouldn’t work. So I think what Congress needs to realize is just that. They have to take the powers that they do have, they have some powers that they can exercise, but they’re not doing it. I think this is human error. I think it’s with people who are in power right now and the people are trying to do something about it. There’s where the wimpishness comes in. They’re being … the Congress is being wimpish. They need to impeach Bush. They can do that. But they’re not. And it’s not the system’s fault; it’s their fault.

Harris: And isn’t that a sad fact, though? You see [House Speaker Nancy] Pelosi there; you see Sen. [Harry] Reid there. They all seem to be talking the talk but nobody is actually getting anything done. And I think that’s the most upsetting part, as Dr. Cohen just said.

Scheer: Well, I just think that no one is—. As Dr. Cohen said, and previous with people writing letters to Congress, I think that as a citizenry, and I need to do more. I’m sure everyone could do a little more … to let them know that we’re pissed off. And I think that’s why the election [outcome of 2006] happened. The Democrats should learn from that and, you know, any time you get a system that large obviously things are going to fall through the cracks, but they can certainly, they should be responsible with the election and how much the Democrats have raised more than the Republicans. They should learn that the citizenry is upset. …

Harris: Well, here’s one place to start. “The Last Days of Democracy: How Big Media and Power-Hungry Governments Are Turning America Into a Dictatorship.” For Josh Scheer, for Dr. Elliot Cohen, this is James Harris and this is Truthdig.

CIA and FBI Computers Used for Wikipedia Edits

WASHINGTON (Reuters)—People using CIA and FBI computers have edited entries in the online encyclopedia Wikipedia on topics including the Iraq war and the Guantanamo prison, according to a new tracing program.

The changes may violate Wikipedia’s conflict-of-interest guidelines, a spokeswoman for the site said on Thursday.

The program, WikiScanner, was developed by Virgil Griffith of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico and posted this month on a Web site that was quickly overwhelmed with searches.

The program allows users to track the source of computers used to make changes to the popular Internet encyclopedia where anyone can submit and edit entries.

WikiScanner revealed that CIA computers were used to edit an entry on the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003. A graphic on casualties was edited to add that many figures were estimated and were not broken down by class.

Another entry on former CIA chief William Colby was edited by CIA computers to expand his career history and discuss the merits of a Vietnam War rural pacification program that he headed.

Aerial and satellite images of the U.S. prison for terrorism suspects at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were removed using a computer traced to the FBI, WikiScanner showed.

CIA spokesman George Little said he could not confirm whether CIA computers were used in the changes, adding that “the agency always expects its computer systems to be used responsibly.”

The FBI did not have an immediate response.

Computers at numerous other organizations and companies were found to have been involved in editing articles related to them.

Griffith said he developed WikiScanner “to create minor public relations disasters for companies and organizations I dislike (and) to see what ‘interesting organizations’ (which I am neutral towards) are up to.”

It was not known whether changes were made by an official representative of an agency or company, Griffith said, but it was certain the change was made by someone with access to the organization’s network.

It violates Wikipedia’s neutrality guidelines for a person with close ties to an issue to contribute to an entry about it, said spokeswoman Sandy Ordonez of the Wikimedia Foundation, Wikipedia’s parent organization.

However, she said, “Wikipedia is self-correcting,” meaning misleading entries can be quickly revised by another editor. She said Wikimedia welcomed the WikiScanner.

WikiScanner can be found at wikiscanner.virgil.gr/

– By Randall Mikkelsen

An Entity We Can’t Even See

Mythifying Markets and Mystifying The Public About The Financial Crisis

“Dig We Must” was once the slogan of the repair crews of CON-ED, New York’s bumbling Electric utility. It is also now a metaphor for what is happening on Wall Street as all the financial heavy-hitters fled their summer mansions in the Hamptons to return to the trading desks to try to help dig their industry out of the hole it has fallen in since the meltdown of the subprime real estate market sparked so much volatility and vulnerability for the global economy. (Asian markets slumped this week as well.)

Those who don’t travel by helicopter have been burning up the Long Island Express to join bankers burrowing into their bunkers. This scary crisis is shaking up the worlds of the high finance boys who were raking it in until they weren’t, as economist Max Wolff writes:

“That is the heady road we traveled. It felt great to insiders speeding down the yield superhighway. That was until the sub-prime tire blew-out. Forced to stop and unable to re-inflate the tire with the usual hot air, folks began to look under the hood. That is where we are now. Peek under the hood and you see a lot of shiny borrowed chrome, a debt fueled engine and a lot of rot!”

There’s suddenly been a wake up call for executives and media pundits who seemed so “clueless” in seeing the “rot” or anticipating and trying to defuse a meltdown that has now cost billions with no end in sight.

It’s not a situation to joke about, although folk singer Ethan Miller has been singing about it for years in “The Market Song” (Written with Kate Boverman) which is now part of an IN DEBT WE TRUST CD of the songs on credit and debt that helped inspire the documentary film I directed. (InDebtWeTrust.Com).

Here’s some of the lyric:

Well the first rule of the market is don’t panic
And the second rule is you should panic first
‘Cause if everybody panics at the same time
Then the whole damn stock exchange is gonna burst

This is the game of the market
Where everybody’s maximizing profit
Money changes hands by the dictates of demand
Well it’s stupid, yes, but no… body can stop it

Suddenly, as mortgage companies implode and banks withdraw financing deals based on worthless debt, our vaunted “market system” that the GOP candidates and their rightwing ideologues have been gloating about doesn’t look so flawless.

Comments London-based journalist William Bowles:

It should be obvious to all and sundry by now that capitalism is in dire straights. Last week’s meltdown of the world’s major capital markets was only ‘rescued’ by the injection of literally hundreds of billions of dollars from by the European Central Bank, the Bank of Japan and the US Federal Reserve.

So much for the magic of the ‘market’ which we are continuously told, solves all problems. And in fact, last week’s injection by the European Central bank of something like $100 billion dollars didn’t do the trick! More had to be ‘injected’ in order to stave off a total collapse of the world’s stock markets. The ‘injection’ is in reality a bail-out of the commercial banks.”

Well now how can you hold me to commitment?
I must be flexible and ready for surprise
I’m really sorry that your job’s been terminated,
But the Market told us that we must downsize

Bowles Continues:

“[A]dded to the sense of dread as investors have no idea which institutions own what debt, leaving the markets to be driven by rumor and counter-rumor. ‘There is great uncertainty as to how far risks are spread within the financial system and exactly where the losses reside,’ said Paul Niven, at F&C Asset Management. ‘The market is trading on fear.’ — (‘Central banks pour in billions - but global slide goes on’ — The Guardian, Saturday, 10 August 2007) Thus the real cause of the current panic is financial speculation caused by unrealistically cheap credit and almost no regulation of speculative markets…”

Does it seem like we’ve given up our power
To an entity that we can’t even see?
Oh, this is not the first time that it’s happened
You can learn about the others on TV

That “entity we can’t even see,” in Miller’s words, has hit a big bump in the road and the “free enterprise for us” gang has turned, where else, but to the government to bail them out by lowering interest rates and pumping massive amounts of money into the system. The people who created the downturn are now lining up for subsidies so they can go out and buy “distressed properties” and restart the greed machine. Naturally, the Hedge Funds now want to profit on the misery they helped fund. Deals R’Us is still their mantra.

Feeding our ignorance on the origins of this rollercoaster, which some fear could lead to other bubbles bursting and a global recession, or something worse, is a media that mythologizes markets and presents them as neutral self-correcting mechanisms that fairly regulate supply and demand and deserve confidence. There is nary a word on how they can be dominated, monopolized and oligopolized. (Is that a word?) Last week we were warned about “contagion.” This week, the calming buzzword is “correction.”

Left out in all this is any discussion of the shadowy forces that we don’t see who are calling the shots and the many ways in which the game is damaging our society and is even self-destructive to business. (Remember Lenin’s warning: “Sell them enough rope and capitalists will hang themselves.”) Who is investigating the profiteers and the tactics they use? What politicians are speaking out? Isn’t the handwriting on the wall?

Steven Lendman writes, “Some astute financial observers now believe current excesses and resulting turmoil were caused by the intentional engineering of the US housing bubble with the Fed in on the scheme.” The Federal Reserve Bank) by the way, contrary to appearances, is NOT a government agency but a private body run by big banks.

Lendman continues, “Insiders made loads of easy money in the process and now stand to cash in big troubled assets for a fraction of their value the way they always do in the wake of market meltdowns. It’s called ‘vulture’ investing with shrewd buyers profiting hugely in good and bad times that are all good for them.”

He concludes, “The problem is deep, structural and aided by stripped away regulatory protections giving predatory lenders and Wall Street schemers free reign to target unsuspecting victims.” In other words, see who benefits.

Enough of all the uncritical market hyping in the media! Lets get at truths that are obscured with vague references to faith-based market “psychology” which has actually been described as motivated by “animal spirits,” as if that’s a good thing. They make it sound like fun time—when it’s a crime.

To keep informed about what’s really happening, tune out CNBC and check in on websites like Ml-implode.com, iTulip.com and stopthesqueeze.org, among many others.

As we remember the children’s story of the Emperor who had no clothes, we have to try to get a deeper fix on, and control over, that “entity that we can’t see.”

– News Dissector Danny Schechter edits Mediachannel.org and directed the investigative documentary IN DEBT WE TRUST (Indebtwetrust.com) Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org

Ecological restoration -- a global strategy for mitigating climate change

The Society for Ecological Restoration International (SER) issued a position statement on global climate change during its joint conference with the Ecological Society of America (ESA) “Ecological Restoration in a Changing World” held this week in San Jose, CA. The SER position statement has been endorsed by the ESA governing board. An estimated 4,500 people are participating in the meeting.

The position statement calls attention to the vital role played by terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems in supporting humanity, and the need to protect and restore these habitats in order to mitigate global climate change and its effects. The overwhelming scientific consensus is that climate change is a real threat that requires immediate action. Changes in land use and the subsequent loss of biodiversity are a significant contributing factor to global climate change.

“The loss of vital ecosystem functions and services reduces biological resilience and adaptability, further increasing our vulnerability to the adverse impacts of global climate change,” said Keith Bowers, outgoing Chair of SER. “Ecological restoration is a critical tool in addressing global climate change, enhancing the extent and functioning of carbon sinks as well as reducing greenhouse gas emissions.”

“SER strongly urges local, regional, and national governments, international development banks and non-governmental organizations as well as private institutions to plan, finance, and coordinate ecological restoration projects and programs as part of a comprehensive global strategy for mitigating climate change and its effects,” said the SER statement. Accordingly, “”¦developed nations should actively support restoration programs throughout the world by providing financial support, sharing technology and committing expertise.”

"Unless checked, global climate change will destroy people, places, and life as we know it. Ecological restoration offers hope in two key areas: by reconnecting fragmented ecosystems allowing animals and plants to migrate in response to such change; and, by capturing carbon through the restoration of forests, peat-forming wetlands, and other ecosystems that act as carbon sinks," said George Gann, incoming Chair of SER. “Protecting what we have is still important, but no longer sufficient,” added Jim Harris, SER’s Science and Policy Working Group Chair.

SER Position Statement

The overwhelming scientific consensus is that global climate change is a real and immediate threat that requires action. Defined as an intentional activity that initiates or accelerates the recovery of an ecosystem with respect to its functions, integrity, and sustainability, ecological restoration is one of many tools that can help mitigate climate change.

Humanity depends upon the services provided by ecosystems. These services include products such as food and timber, regulating services such as carbon sequestration, disease control, and flood protection, and cultural benefits, such as places to recreate. As an example of a regulating service, forests remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and sequester it in their biomass, thereby capturing a gas that contributes to global climate change. In order to continue to obtain ecosystem services, terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems need to be protected and, where possible, restored.

SER strongly urges local, regional, and national governments, international development banks and non-governmental organizations, as well as private institutions to work to maintain ecosystems and to plan, finance and coordinate ecological restoration projects and programs as part of a comprehensive global strategy for mitigating climate change and its effects.

Developed nations should actively support restoration programs throughout the world by providing financial support, sharing technology and committing expertise.

The Society for Ecological Restoration International (SER) is a non-profit organization of about 2,000 members - individuals and organizations who are actively engaged in ecologically-sensitive repair and management of ecosystems through an unusually broad array of experience, knowledge sets and cultural perspectives. The mission of SER is to promote ecological restoration as a means of sustaining the diversity of life on Earth and reestablishing an ecologically healthy relationship between nature and culture. www.ser.org. The Ecological Society of America (ESA) is a scientific, non-profit, 9,700-member organization founded in 1915.