DAS Blog

Riffing on something at Altercation -- why the fuss over the Fed. government snooping around financial records the fed. government has always had the power to snoop around, around which snooping is probably one of the key aspects of any sensible war on terrorism ("follow the money" would be Felt's advice in this war, nu? it certain has been Greg Palast's ... and many of our failures in fighting terrorism have been failures in following the money 'cause various people with power have good reason to fear where money trails may lead -- ooops ... answered my own question didn't I?) and for which snooping the feds properly obtained warrants anyway? Especially when compared with the media's rote repitition of the "if you're not guilty, you've nothing to hide" spin -- spin which the media, of all people, should know is factually wrong ... there are particular categories of not guilty people (except in the Christian sense of us all being guilty -- which depending on whether you are a Christian or a "Christian"(TM) would make you respectively feel very uncomfortable with the 'only guilty people have to fear X' line of argumentation as you realize we are all guilty of something or will make you perfectly comfortable with that reasoning "after all, we know that anyone targetted by any probe must be guilty of something ... we all are guitly of something ...") who have a lot to hide that if the media were doing their job would know a lot about, viz., whistleblowers -- on all the blatantly un-constitutional other 'spying' activities Bush & CO are perpetuating. It's almost as if some in the media have an interest in keeping financial records secret ... since when are reporters so rich that they have such records? Hmmm ... call me paranoid but maybe those who are not worried about the corporatization of the media (forgetting about the very basic issue of nationalized media often failing to adaquately provide coverage of local emergencies -- was this an issue in Katrina, btw? nobody seems to have brought this up ... of course, "they" may not have brought it up 'cause there was no story, but since when did not having a story stop "them" and since when did having one start them, so to speak?) should worry a little? Even more odd is how happily the media is criticizing themselves for even breaking the story ... as much as I think the government is right to look at, with appropriate warrants and/or subpeonas, financial data, news orgs are also right to investigate what the government is doing -- it's part of their job. Those who question news orgs on this are even more out on a limb than those thinking that the government shouldn't be looking at financials even if they don't care about the government spying on them ...

Of course, this isn't my only puzzlement as of late: I understand that in fighting a threat 'nurtured' in part by the information/internet-age (I cannot wait for the people on the wrong side of the net neutrality debate to invoke the war on terrorism for their cause -- ya know it's gonna happen ... unless maybe we invoke the GWOT first?), "information warfare" can be critical. But why (cf. Susskind -- who also reminds us of the "behavior modification theory" of going into Iraq -- "we're gonna teach tinpot dictators a lesson" ... of course, many of us predicted before hand we'd end up teaching tinpot dictators the wrong lesson, viz., get your nukes ready before we can invade ... in a just world those of us who called it right should all have lucrative pundit contracts while those who were wrong get the treatment accorded by the punditocracy to, e.g., Howard Dean, instead of it being the other way around -- but I guess among the Heathers of the media, wrong is the new right like pink is the new black? but can you where lime green -- I mean I can and do wear green with pink, but lime green -- to the extent anyone can wear that color in the first place -- with black? but I'm drifting off topic and to the previous 'two out of three' topic ... but hey, it's my blog and I can drift OT if I want to!) does Bush & CO feel the need to wage information warfare on the American people? Do they feel we're their enemies? That's a funny thing for a leadership of a "democratic" government to feel ... it makes a person wonder if Chomsky's right ...