Despite consumer confidence at a six-year high, the latest AP survey of the real America shows a stunning four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, are near poverty, or rely on welfare for at least parts of their lives amid signs of deteriorating economic security and an elusive American dream. Hardship is particularly on the rise among whites, based on several measures. Pessimism among whites about their families' economic futures has climbed to the highest point since at least 1987.
“Poverty is no longer an issue of ‘them', it's an issue of ‘us',” as ‘the invisible poor' – lower income whites – are generally dispersed in suburbs (Appalachia, the industrial Midwest, and across America's heartland, from Missouri, Arkansas and Oklahoma up through the Great Plains) where more than 60% of the poor are white.
More than 19 million whites fall below the poverty line of $23,021 for a family of four – accounting for more than 41% of the nation's destitute – nearly double the number of poor blacks and as one survey respondent noted “I think it's going to get worse.”
Note how the information in this NYT report is consistent with a need for even greater surveillance of John Q Average American. This helps to prop up the establishment’s panicky pushback against the growing populist threat to rein in NSA’s snooping that became so evident in the surprisingly narrow defeat of the Amash Amendment — a panic which Blumenthal noted was also on display in the Snowden angst pervading Aspen.
Now think of the unstated elegance implicit in the closed loop of the snooping mentality on display in these two reports: The US and its European establishments (and the Sunni Gulf Monarchies) stoke up a sectarian revolt against Syrian President Assad. Predictably, the best fighters in the revolt are radical Sunni Jihadis, many of whom were trained by our wars in Iraq and Libya and perhaps Afghanistan. Also predictably, given Jihadi spillover from Libya, the radical Jihadis take over the Syrian revolt. The US and Europeans now claim these Syrian Jihadis are attracting Jihadi wannabees from the West (also predictable), who may return to the Europe and US, where they can use their enhanced terrorist skills and Al Qaida connections to wreak havoc at home. Therefore, given the new domestic threat created by the Establishment's policies of perpetual war, we need to increase NSA surveillance (really data mining) capabilities to sniff out indicators of prospective terrorist behaviour at home. Naturally, to do this, we must accept the greatly increased risks of false positives* implicit in all data mining schemes, because they all rely on the mechanistic assumption that the targets of the mining action will not bother to modify their behaviour sufficiently to neutralize their identification by the data mining algorithm or template. (A rather peculiar assumption given the proactive conspiratorial confrontation dynamics so pervasive throughout the Middle East.)
Of course, these legal niceties of avoiding false positives are irrelevant, because thanks to the Patriot (Enabling?) Act, we can detain targets without charging them, and besides, the real threats to be neutralized are the outliers at home who are trying to defend and anachronistic Fourth Amendment like Congressmen Amash and Conyers. So, a few more false positives of innocent John Q. Average Americans are merely collateral damage that must be accepted in the defense of ‘freedom' in the perpetual wars of American Empire.
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* A false positive occurs when a statistical deduction tells you something is true when it is in reality not true. Finding an innocent man guilty of a crime is a false positive, and it is no accident that most legal systems in democracies are premised, at least in theory, on a value system that it is more important to avoid false positives and than false negatives (i.e. it is more important not to convict and innocent person than to fail to convict a guilty person)
WASHINGTON — A rising number of radicalized young Muslims with Western passports are traveling to Syria to fight with the rebels against the government of Bashar al-Assad, raising fears among American and European intelligence officials of a new terrorist threat when the fighters return home.
Jailbreaks in Iraq. A surge in Syria. A growing presence in Lebanon. The terrorist group’s influence is on the rise, says Bruce Riedel.
TheDailyBeast.com, July 26, 2013
Two spectacular al Qaeda prison breaks in Iraq, freeing over 500 of its members in two separate prisons simultaneously this week, demonstrate the group is back with a vengeance. Al Qaeda’s Iraq branch is also the moving force behind the jihadist success in Syria. The resurgence of al Qaeda in Iraq has sobering implications for what is likely to follow the drawdown of NATO forces in Afghanistan for the al Qaeda mother ship in Pakistan.
Th e speed of change throughout the Middle East and North Africa since 2011 has demonstrated that a policy of Soviet-era containment manifested since the Cold War by support for repressive dictatorships that suppressed, rather than emancipated their populations, catalysed the appeal of Al-Qaeda. Instead, as the Arab Spring has shown, populations desire economic growth, employment and good governance in the place of the defi cient development outcomes, conflict and militancy that characterise life in so much of this region. As the recently released US National Strategy for Counterterrorism elucidates, a comprehensive approach to tackling Al-Qaeda must include “objectives such as promoting responsive governance and respect for the rights of citizens, which will reduce Al-Qaeda’s resonance and relevancy.”149
Just to show us that the national security state doesn't lack for a wicked sense of ironic humor, I see this DARPA topic in the new SBIR solicitation out today:
“Investigate the national security threat posed by public data available either for purchase or through open sources. Based on principles of data science, develop tools to characterize and assess the nature, persistence, and quality of the data. Develop tools for the rapid anonymization and de-anonymization of data sources. Develop framework and tools to measure the national security impact of public data and to defend against the malicious use of public data against national interests.”
(Personally, I'd recommend (1) re-engineering government to see openness as less of a threat, and to focus on making vulnerable systems, where the government has a responsibility, less so, e.g., ratchet back stock trading so it's not the province of millisecond traders and flash crashes, but actually first serves the need for capital investment; and (2) giving *everyone*, and not just the state, more privacy in their transactions on what are essentially common carriers… this “metadata” being snarfed up by the NSA is data about*me*, and I want to pay Verizon to complete my phone calls, not to be in the “information about me” business.)
Seated on a stool before an audience packed with spooks, lawmakers, lawyers and mercenaries, CNN’s Wolf Blitzer introduced recently retired CENTCOM chief General James Mattis. “I’ve worked with him and I’ve worked with his predecessors,” Blitzer said of Mattis. “I know how hard it is to run an operation like this.”
Reminding the crowd that CENTCOM is “really, really important,” Blitzer urged them to celebrate Mattis: “Let’s give the general a round of applause.”
Following the gales of cheering that resounded from the room, Mattis, the gruff 40-year Marine veteran who once volunteered his opinion that “it’s fun to shoot some people,” outlined the challenge ahead. The “war on terror” that began on 9/11 has no discernable end, he said, likening it to the “the constant skirmishing between [the US cavalry] and the Indians” during the genocidal Indian Wars of the 19th century.
“The skirmishing will go on likely for a generation,” Mattis declared.
Mattis’ remarks, made beside a cable news personality who acted more like a sidekick than a journalist, set the tone for the entire 2013 Aspen Security Forum this July. A project of the Aspen Institute, the Security Forum brought together the key figures behind America’s vast national security state, from military chieftains like Mattis to embattled National Security Agency Chief General Keith Alexander to top FBI and CIA officials, along with the bookish functionaries attempting to establish legal groundwork for expanding the war on terror.
Partisan lines and ideological disagreements faded away inside the darkened conference hall, as a parade of American securitocrats from administrations both past and present appeared on stage to defend endless global warfare and total information awareness while uniting in a single voice of condemnation against a single whistleblower bunkered inside the waiting room of Moscow International Airport: Edward Snowden.
This has happened once before, and appears to be a rather sad attempt to discredit activists not realizing that all this exposure is discreting any future attempt to prosecute real child pornography violators — and the elite pedophiles that appear to be “untouchable” by the FBI. There is no evidence this is being done by the US Government, only by those who believe that activists are fair targets for unethical, invasive, and criminal attack.
BREAKING: Attempted Set-Up of Stewart Rhodes & Dan Johnson With Child Porn
