Magpie

Thursday, December 29, 2005

Sometimes being slow has its benefits.

For example, we've been sitting on this excellent NYT article by James Bamford, in which he describes the history of the National Security Agency and the abuse of that agency by the Dubya administration's extensive, illegal program of domestic spying. In that article, Bamford mentions the two locations from which NSA intercepts phone calls and emails, one at Sugar Grove, West Virginia and the other near Yakima, Washington. Because we procrastinated, we can not only point you to the article, we can also show you some pictures.

Courtesy of Cryptome, here's extensive photography and mapping of the Sugar Grove facility. If you're in the eastern part of the US — and, we suspect, Canada — this is the place that's spying on you.

The West Virginia spy shop

And, via Strix.org, here are photos of the Yakima operation, along with a Google Maps reference so you can look at maps and imagery yourself. If you're in the western part of North America, these folks are listening to you.

Ditto for Washington State

As extensive and complex as those facilities are, the true nerve center of the domestic surveillance operation is elsewhere. And, thanks again to Google Maps, we have this photo of the den where the creep responsible for all the spying can be found. [Here's the coordinates.]

A very white house in Washington, DC

We trust that this all makes you feel safer.

Thanks to Boing Boing for some of the pointers.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:30 AM | Get permalink

We yield the floor to the gentlewoman from Texas.

And, as usual, Molly Ivins nails it:

I don't like to play scary games where we all stay awake late at night, telling each other scary stories — but there's a reason we have never given our government this kind of power [to conduct wholesale warrantless spying on Americans]. As the late Sen. Frank Church said, "That capability could at any time be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capacity to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn't matter. There would be no place to hide."

And if a dictator took over, the NSA "could enable it to impose total tyranny." Then we always get that dreadful goody-two-shoes response, "Well, if you aren't doing anything wrong, you don't have anything to worry about, do you?"

Folks, we KNOW this program is being and will be misused. We know it from the past record and current reporting. The program has already targeted vegans and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals — and, boy, if those aren't outposts of al-Qaida, what is? Could this be more pathetic?

This could scarcely be clearer. Either the president of the United States is going to have to understand and admit he has done something very wrong, or he will have to be impeached. The first time this happened, the institutional response was magnificent. The courts, the press, the Congress all functioned superbly. Anyone think we're up to that again? Then whom do we blame when we lose the republic?

Who indeed?

Via AlterNet.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:13 AM | Get permalink

Who's watching who?

Political cartoonist Mike Luckovich modestly suggests the answer.

Who's watching who?

[Cartoon © 2005 Mike Luckovich]
Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:13 AM | Get permalink

Why spy on those durn furriners ...

When it's so much easier to spy on your own citizens?

Ted Rall knows why Dubya's adminstration likes domestic spying so much.

Why the US spies on its own citizens

[Cartoon: © 2005 Ted Rall]
You can see the rest of Rall's cartoon here. And if you want to see more of his work, check out Rall's website.

Via Association of American Editorial Cartoonists.

| | Posted by Magpie at 12:43 AM | Get permalink

Wednesday, December 28, 2005

What he said.

Jonathan Schell wrote what we still think may be the best book ever on the Nixon presidency, The Time of Illusion. [If you've never read it, get a copy from your library or order one here. You won't be sorry.] One of the things he said about Tricky Dick in that book has stuck in our mind for years: that Nixon couldn't distinguish between his enemies and the country's enemies. Sounds just a bit like Dubya, doesn't it?

Given Schell's dead-on analysis of the second-worst president we've had in this magpie's lifetime, we pay a lot of attention when he writes about the current occupant of the Oval Office. Like in the piece where we grabbed the folowing quote:

With Bush's defense of his wiretapping, the hidden state has stepped into the open. The deeper challenge Bush has thrown down, therefore, is whether the country wants to embrace the new form of government he is creating by executive fiat or to continue with the old constitutional form. He is now in effect saying, "Yes, I am above the law—I am the law, which is nothing more than what I and my hired lawyers say it is—and if you don't like it, I dare you to do something about it."

Members of Congress have no choice but to accept the challenge. They did so once before, when Richard Nixon, who said, "When the President does it, that means it's not illegal," posed a similar threat to the Constitution. The only possible answer is to inform Bush forthwith that if he continues in his defiance, he will be impeached.

If Congress accepts his usurpation of its legislative power, they will be no Congress and might as well stop meeting. Either the President must uphold the laws of the United States, which are Congress's laws, or he must leave office.

The rest of Schell's piece is here.

Via The Nation.

| | Posted by Magpie at 9:35 PM | Get permalink

Tuesday, December 27, 2005

It's 'list time' again.

You know what we're talking about: those end-of-year lists compiled by the media, which distill the complexity of the preceding 12 months into [usually] a roster of 10 irrelevancies or oversimplifictions. December is always full of these lists, and the last week of the month is a positive deluge of them.

Amidst that deluge of crap, however, are a few lists that reveal things that were overlooked or deliberately hidden since the previous January, and Juan Cole's Top Ten Myths about Iraq in 2005:

1. The guerrilla war is being waged only in four provinces. This canard is trotted out by everyone from think tank flacks to US generals, and it is shameful. Iraq has 18 provinces, but some of them are lightly populated. The most populous province is Baghdad, which has some 6 million residents, or nearly one-fourth of the entire population of the country. It also contains the capital. It is one of the four being mentioned!. Another of the four, Ninevah province, has a population of some 1.8 million and contains Mosul, a city of over a million and the country's third largest! It is not clear what other two provinces are being referred to, but they are probably Salahuddin and Anbar provinces, other big centers of guerrilla activity, bring the total for the "only four provinces" to something like 10 million of Iraq's 26 million people.

But the "four provinces" allegation is misleading on another level. It is simply false. Guerrilla attacks occur routinely beyong the confines of Anbar, Salahuddin, Ninevah and Baghdad. Diyala province is a big center of the guerrilla movement and has witnessed thousands of deaths in the ongoing unconventional war. Babil province just south of Baghdad is a major center of back alley warfare between Sunnis and Shiites and attacks on Coalition troops. Attacks, assassinations and bombings are routine in Kirkuk province in the north, a volatile mixture of Kurds, Turkmen and Arabs engaged in a subterranean battle for dominance of the area's oil fields. So that is 7 provinces, and certainly half the population of the country lives in these 7, which are daily affected by the ongoing violence. It is true that violence is rare in the 3 northern provinces of the Kurdistan confederacy. And the Shiite south is much less violent than the 7 provinces of the center-north, on a good day. But some of this calm in the south is an illusion deriving from poor on the ground reporting. It appears to be the case that British troops are engaged in an ongoing struggle with guerrilla forces of the Marsh Arabs in Maysan Province. Even calm is not always a good sign. The southern port city of Basra appears to come by its via a reign of terror by Shiite religious militias. [...]

3. The guerrillas are winning the war against US forces. The guerrillas are really no more than mosquitos to US forces. The casualties they have inflicted on the US military, of over 2000 dead and some 15,000 wounded, are deeply regrettable and no one should make light of them. But this level of insurgency could never defeat the US military in the field.

We're not sure we agree with all 10 items on Cole's list, but any compilation by such an astute observer of Iraq is worth our close attention.

Via Informed Comment.

| | Posted by Magpie at 2:14 AM | Get permalink

Monday, December 26, 2005

Who's winning Dubya's 'war on terror'?

Columnist Robert Steinbach of the Miami Herald thinks that the winner may well be fear. And, says Steinbach, the fear of terrorism whipped up by Dubya's administration is enabling the prez and his minions to destroy the US that existed before 9/11.

Bush would have us excuse his administration's excesses in deference to the "war on terror" — a war, it should be pointed out, that can never end. Terrorism is a tactic, an eventuality, not an opposition army or rogue nation. If we caught every person guilty of a terrorist act, we still wouldn't know where tomorrow's first-time terrorist will strike. Fighting terrorism is a bit like fighting infection — even when it's beaten, you must continue the fight or it will strike again.

Are we agreeing, then, to give the king unfettered privilege to defy the law forever? It's time for every member of Congress to weigh in: Do they believe the president is above the law, or bound by it?

Bush stokes our fears, implying that the only alternative to doing things his extralegal way is to sit by fitfully waiting for terrorists to harm us. We are neither weak nor helpless. A proud, confident republic can hunt down its enemies without trampling legitimate human and constitutional rights.

Ultimately, our best defense against attack — any attack, of any sort — is holding fast and fearlessly to the ideals upon which this nation was built. Bush clearly doesn't understand or respect that. Do we?

The full column is here. It's well worth your time.

Via Follow Me Here.

| | Posted by Magpie at 10:19 PM | Get permalink