bnarchives | In May 2011, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered the State of California to release 30,000 to 40,000 of its 140,000 inmates.[2] California’s prisons have become so overcrowded that the Supreme Court declared the situation unconstitutional. The decision was imminent. For nearly two decades, California, along with many other states, was busy getting ‘tough on crime’. In the early 1990s, the state enacted the ‘Three-Strikes Law’, which mandates life sentences for third-time serious crime offenders, and it pursued the country’s ‘war on drugs’ and other law-enforcement campaigns with increasing zeal. Soon enough, its prisons were overflowing at nearly twice their capacity.
The United States is often portrayed as the archetypical liberal model. It is the world’s largest, most prosperous ‘free market’ and the greatest generator of profit on earth. And yet this very liberal haven is also the largest penal system in the world. There are now more than two million inmates in its prisons and jails and another five million on probation and on parole. If you add these two numbers together, you get a ‘correctional population’ of over seven million. This correctional population is the largest in the world – both absolutely and relative to the overall population – and it is also the largest the country has ever seen.
To some, this combination of market prosperity and intense punishment may seem puzzling. Many people intuitively expect crime and punishment to correlate with poverty, backwardness and deprivation; to be a feature of the Third World, not the First.
Knowingly or not, this expectation is grounded in the conventional separation of production from state and capital from power. According to the liberal version of this separation, accumulation breeds economic prosperity, and prosperity in the economic sphere reduces crime and calls for less punishment in the socio-political sphere. However, if we discard this separation and instead think of capital as power, and of capitalism as a mode of power, the puzzle disappears. The greater the capitalization of power, the greater the resistance to that capitalization and the larger the force needed to prevent this resistance from exploding. As profits increase to make distribution more unequal, the result is mounting resistance from below, and this resistance in turn leads to retaliation from above. The rising crime and intensifying punishment that we now see in the United States are key manifestations of this dialectic of capitalized resistance and retaliation.
guardian | Many bullying experts rightly focus on the plight of vulnerable
children targeted by bullies but, before now, I wonder how many of us
considered being intelligent or talented a vulnerability? More than 90%
of the 1,000 11-16 year-olds we recently surveyed said they had been
bullied or seen someone bullied for being too intelligent or talented.
Worryingly, this means our children and young people are shying away
from academic achievement for fear of victimisation.
Almost half
of children and young people (49.5%) have played down a talent for fear
of being bullied, rising to 53% among girls. One in 10 (12%) said they
had played down their ability in science and almost one in five girls
(18.8%) and more than one in 10 boys (11.4%) are deliberately
underachieving in maths – to evade bullying.
The government has
recently pledged funding to develop a new maths course for sixth-formers
based on the assumption that current maths courses are inaccessible to
youngsters who can't see the relevance of the subject to their lives.
What our findings are telling us though, is that there is more at play
here. And we want government to take note.
What used to be left in
the playground is now following children home, through social media.
And what may have been historically viewed as a short-term problem,
which many of us endured during our school days – but not necessarily
beyond – can have a dramatic impact on our young people's futures. Fist tap Dale.
usatoday | A fourth-grade teacher in southern Idaho is being criticized after
having her students use permanent markers to draw on the faces of
classmates who failed to meet reading goals.
Some parents and
administrators say the punishments given to nine students in Summer
Larsen's class were inappropriate and left the children feeling shamed.
Cindy
Hurst said recently her 10-year-old son came home from school Nov. 5
with his entire face — including his eyelids — scribbled on with green,
red and purple markers.
"He was humiliated, he hung his head and
wanted to go wash his face," Hurst told The Times-News of Twin Falls.
"He knows he's a slow reader. Now he thinks he should be punished for
it."
Larsen, who has taught at the school for six years, didn't
respond to requests for comment. But Cassia County School District
Superintendent Gaylen Smyer confirmed what took place in her classroom,
though he didn't name Larsen.
The students were allowed to choose
their own incentive to meet the reading goal, but instead of a reward,
the class chose a punishment: Students who failed to meet the goal could
either stay inside at recess until it was met, or have their faces
written on by classmates who met the goals.
Nine students didn't
meet the goals, the paper reported Friday. Three chose to forgo recess,
and the other six chose to have their faces marked on.
"Although
all the students in the class agreed to the incentive, once it occurred
it was not so well received. Nor should it have been," Smyer said.
lfb | Banking industry insiders are upset with Amex and Wal-Mart, that
also is offering prepaid cards, because these prepaid accounts would
amount to uninsured deposits, according to Andrew Kahr, who wrote a
scathing piece on the issue for American Banker.
Kahr rips into the idea with this analogy:
“To provide even lower ‘discount prices,’ should Wal-Mart
rent decaying buildings that don’t satisfy local fire laws and building
codes — and offer still better deals to consumers? And why should
Walmart have to honor the national minimum wage law, any more than Amex
honors state banking statutes? With Bluebird, Amex can already violate
both the Bank Holding Company Act and many state banking statues.”
Kahr is implying that regulated fractionalized banking is safe and
sound, while prepaid cards provided by huge companies like Amex and
Wal-Mart is a shady scheme set up to rip off consumers. The fact is, in
the case of IndyMac, panicked customers forced regulators to close the
S&L by withdrawing only 7% of the huge S&L’s deposits. It was
about the same for WaMu and Wachovia when regulators engineered sales of
those banks being run on. Bitcoin supporters, unlike the general
public, are well aware of fractionalized banking’s fragility.
Maybe what the banking industry is really afraid of is the Amexes and
Wal-Marts of the world creating their own currencies and banking
systems. Wal-Mart has tried to get approval to open a bank for years,
and bankers have successfully stopped the retail giant for competing
with them.
However, prepaid credit cards might be just the first step toward
Wal-Mart issuing their own currency — Marts — that might initially be
used only for purchases in Wal-Mart stores. But over time, it’s not hard
to imagine Marts being traded all over town and easily converted to
dollars, pesos, Yuan, or other currencies traded where Wal-Mart has
stores. Fist tap Dale.
policymic | The first retail worker strike against Wal-Mart has spread from Los Angeles, where it began last week, to stores in a dozen cities, a union official said Tuesday. According to the Huffington Post, Wal-Mart workers walked off the job in Dallas, Seattle, the San Francisco Bay area, Miami, the Washington, D.C., area, Los Angeles, Sacramento, Chicago and Orlando, said Dan Schlademan, director of the United Food and Commercial Workers' Making Change At Wal-Mart campaign. Workers also went on strike in parts of Kentucky, Missouri and Minnesota, he said.
Tuesday's walkouts included 88 workers from 28 stores ... a fraction of the 1.4 million who work at Wal-Mart, the world's largest private employer. Until Friday, when about 60 Wal-Mart employees walked off the job for a day in LA, no Wal-Mart retail workers had ever gone on strike, the union said.
The workers are protesting company attempts to "silence and retaliate against workers for speaking out for improvements on the job," according to a United Food and Commercial Workers news release. Walmart workers, who are not unionized, have long complained of low pay and a lack of benefits.
These workers must be heard. Here are 9 reasons why:
cbsnews | This holiday season, the biggest discount chains in the U.S. will
tell the tale of two very different shoppers: Those that have and those
that have not.
Walmart (WMT),
the world's largest retailer, on Thursday acknowledged that its
low-income shoppers continue to struggle in the economy and issued an
outlook for the fourth quarter -- which encompasses the holiday shopping
period -- that falls below Wall Street estimates. On the same day, its
smaller rival Target (TGT), which caters to more affluent shoppers, said it expects results during the quarter to exceed the Street's projections.
The two discounters offer valuable insight into how Americans will
spend in November and December, a period that's traditionally the
busiest shopping period of the year. Some merchants depend on the
holiday shopping season for up to 40 percent of their annual sales, but
economists watch the period closely to get a temperature reading on the
overall mood of American consumers.
The forecasts seem
to confirm a trend that has taken shape during the economic downturn.
Well-heeled shoppers spend more freely as the economy begins to show new
signs of life, while consumers in the lower-income brackets continue to
hold tight to their purse strings even as the housing and stock markets
rebound.
Walmart and Target both are discounters, but
they cater to different customers. Walmart, which says its customers'
average household income ranges from $30,000 to $60,000, hammers its
low-price message and focuses on stocking basics like tee shirts and
underwear along with household goods. But Target, whose customers have a
median household income of $64,000 a year, is known for carrying
discounted designer clothes and home decor under the same roof as
detergent and dishwashing liquid.
NYTimes | On a clear morning in May, Ron Douglas left his home in exurban Denver, eased into his Toyota pickup truck and drove to a business meeting at a Starbucks. Douglas, a bearded bear of a man, ordered a venti double-chocolate-chip Frappuccino — “the girliest drink ever,” he called it — and then sat down to discuss the future of the growing survivalist industry.
Many so-called survivalists would take pride in keeping far away from places that sell espresso drinks. But Douglas, a 38-year-old entrepreneur and founder of one of the largest preparedness expos in the country, isn’t your typical prepper.
At that morning’s meeting, a strategy session with two new colleagues, Douglas made it clear that he doesn’t even like the word “survivalist.” He believes the word is ruined, evoking “the nut job who lives out in the mountains by himself on the retreat.” Instead, he prefers “self-reliance.”
When prompted by his colleagues to define the term, Douglas leaned forward in his chair. “I’m glad you asked,” he replied. “Take notes. This is good.”
For the next several minutes, Douglas talked about emergency preparedness, sustainable living and financial security — what he called the three pillars of self-reliance. He detailed the importance of solar panels, gardens, water storage and food stockpiles. People shouldn’t just have 72-hour emergency kits for when the power grid goes down; they should learn how to live on their own. It’s a message that Douglas is trying to move from the fringe to the mainstream.
“Our main goal is to reach as many people and get the word out to as many people as we can, to get them thinking and moving in this direction,” he said. “Sound good?”
The preparedness industry, always prosperous during hard times, is thriving again now. In Douglas’s circles, people talk about “the end of the world as we know it” with such regularity that the acronym Teotwawki (tee-ought-wah-kee) has come into widespread use. The Vivos Group, which sells luxury bunkers, until recently had a clock on its Web site that was ticking down to Dec. 21, 2012 — a date that, thanks to the Mayan calendar, some believe will usher in the end times. But amid the alarmism, there is real concern that the world is indeed increasingly fragile — a concern highlighted most recently by Hurricane Sandy. The storm’s aftermath has shown just how unprepared most of us are to do without the staples of modern life: food, fuel, transportation and electric power.Fist tap Arnach.
wikipedia | The Society of Righteous and Harmonious Fists, known by foreigners as the Boxers, or "Yihe Magic Boxing", was a secret society founded in the northern coastal province of Shandong consisting largely of people who had lost their livelihoods due to imperialism and natural disasters.[6] The group originated from the Lí sect of the Ba gua religion group.[7] Foreigners came to call the well-trained, athletic young men "Boxers" due to the martial arts and calisthenics they practiced. The Boxers' primary feature was spirit possession, which involved "the whirling of swords, violent prostrations, and chanting incantations to Taoist and Buddhist spirits."[8]
The Boxers believed that through training, diet, martial arts, and
prayer they could perform extraordinary feats, such as flight. Further,
they popularly claimed that millions of spirit soldiers would
descend from the heavens and assist them in purifying China of foreign
influences. The Boxers consisted of local farmers/peasants and other
workers who were made desperate by disastrous floods and widespread
opium addiction and laid the blame on Christian missionaries, Chinese
Christians, and the Europeans colonizing their country. Missionaries
were protected under the policy of extraterritoriality. Chinese Christians were alleged also to have filed false lawsuits.[9] The Boxers called foreigners "Guizi" (鬼子, literally: demons),
a deprecatory term, and condemned Chinese Christian converts and
Chinese working for foreigners. The Boxers were only lightly armed with
rifles and swords, claiming supernatural invulnerability towards blows of cannon, rifle gunshots, and knife attacks. The Boxers were typical of millennarian movements, such as the American Indian Ghost Dance, often rising in societies under extreme stress.[10]
Several secret societies in Shandong predated the Boxers. In 1895,
Yuxian, a Manchu who was then prefect of Caozhou and would later become
provincial governor, acquired the help of the Big Sword Society
in fighting against bandits. Although the Big Swords had heterodox
practices, they were not seen as bandits by Chinese authorities. Their
efficiency in defeating banditry led to a flood of cases overwhelming
the magistrates' courts, to which the Big Swords responded by executing
the bandits that were apprehended.[11]
The Big Swords relentlessly hunted the bandits, but the bandits
converted to Catholic Christianity, gaining them legal immunity from
prosecution and also placed them under the protection of the foreigners.
The Big Swords responded by attacking bandit Catholic churches and
burning them.[12]
As a result, Yuxian executed several Big Sword leaders, but did not
punish anyone else. More secret societies started emerging after this.[13]
The early years saw a variety of village activities, not a broad
movement or a united purpose. Like the Red Boxing school or the Plum
Flower Boxers, the Boxers of Shandong were more concerned with
traditional social and moral values, such as filial piety, than with
foreign influences. One leader, for instance, Zhu Hongdeng (Red Lantern
Zhu), started as a wandering healer, specializing in skin ulcers, and
gained wide respect by refusing payment for his treatments.[14] Zhu claimed descent from Ming dynasty
Emperors, since his surname was the surname of the Ming Imperial
Family. He announced that his goal was to "Revive the Qing and destroy
the foreigners" ("Fu Qing mie yang").[15]
It starts with piracy in the Caribbean, which gives way to growing sugar
there - and forcing slaves from Africa to work them. Trade with India
brings wealth to men like Robert Clive who progress from trader to
governor. The empire grows piecemeal as chartered companies take over
large tracts of foreign territory - answering only to head office in the
City of London. Illegal opium sold to China makes a fortune for British
businessmen - but sparks a war with the Chinese emperor.
Druglibrary | IN a vague way, we are familiar with the "opium evil" in China, and some of
us have hazy ideas as to how it came about. The China Year Book for 1916 has this to say
on the subject: "The poppy has been known in China for 12 centuries, and its
medicinal use for 9 centuries. . . . It was not until the middle of the 17th century that
the practice of mixing opium with tobacco for smoking purposes was introduced into China.
This habit was indulged in by the Dutch in Java, and by them taken to Formosa, whence it
spread to Amoy and the mainland generally. There is no record to show when opium was first
smoked by itself, but it is thought to have originated about the end of the 18th century.
Foreign opium was first introduced by the Portuguese from Goa at the beginning of the 18th
century. In 1729, when the foreign import was 200 chests, the Emperor Yung Ching issued
the first anti-opium edict, enacting severe penalties on the sale of opium and the opening
of opium-smoking divans. The importation, however, continued to increase, and by 1790 it
amounted to over 4,000 chests annually. In 1796 opium smoking was again prohibited, and in
1800 the importation of foreign opium was again declared illegal. Opium was now
contraband, but the fact had no effect on the quantity introduced into the country, which
rose to 5,000 chests in 1820; 16,000 chests in 1830; 20,000 chests in 1838, and 70,000
chests in 1858."
The China Year Book makes no mention of the traders who carried these chests of opium
into China. The opium came from India, however, and the increase in importation
corresponds with the British occupation of India, and the golden days of the East India
Company. "Opium was now contraband, but that fact had no effect on the quantity
introduced into the country," smuggled in wholesale by the enterprising British
traders.
China was powerless to protect herself from this menace, either by protests or
prohibition. And as more and more of the drug was smuggled in, and more and more of the
people became victims of the habit, the Chinese finally had a tea-party, very much like
our Boston Tea Party, but less successful in outcome. In 1839, in spite of the fact that
opium smoking is an easy habit to acquire and had been extensively encouraged, the British
traders found themselves with 20,000 chests of unsold opium on their store-ships, just
below Canton. The Chinese had repeatedly appealed to the British Government to stop these
imports, but the British Government had turned a persistently deaf ear. Therefore the
Emperor determined to deal with the matter on his own account. He sent a powerful official
named Lin to attend to it, and Lin had a sort of Boston Tea Party, as we have said, and
destroyed some twenty thousand chests of opium in a very drastic way. Mr. H. Wells
Williams describes it thus: "The opium was destroyed in the most thorough manner, by
mixing it in parcels Of 200 chests, in trenches, with lime and salt water, and then
drawing off the contents into an adjacent creek at low tide."
After this atrocity, followed the first Opium War, when British ships sailed up the
river, seized port after port, and bombarded and took Canton. Her ships sailed up the
Yangtsze, and captured the tribute junks going up the Grand Canal with revenue to Peking,
thus stopping a great part of China's income. Peace was concluded in 1843, and Great
Britain came out well. She recompensed herself by taking the island of Hongkong; an
indemnity Of 21 million dollars, and Canton, Amoy, Foochow, Ningpo and Shanghai were
opened up as "treaty ports"-for the importation of opium and the
"open-door" in general.
Mr. Wells, in his "Middle Kingdom" describes the origin of this first war
with England: "This war was extraordinary in its origin as growing chiefly out of a
commercial misunderstanding; remarkable in its course as being waged between strength and
weakness, conscious superiority and ignorant pride; melancholy in its end as forcing the
weaker to pay for opium within its borders against all its laws, thus paralyzing the
little moral power its feeble government could exert to protect its subjects. . . . It was
a turning point in the national life of the Chinese race, but the compulsory payment of
six million dollars for the opium destroyed has left a stigma upon the English name."
He also says, "The conflict was now fairly begun; its issue between the parties so
unequally matched --one having almost nothing but the right on its side, the other
assisted by every material and physical advantage-could easily be foreseen" and
again, after speaking of it as being unjust and immoral, he concludes "Great Britain,
the first Christian power, really waged this war against the pagan monarch who had only
endeavored to put down a vice harmful to his people. The war was looked upon in this light
by the Chinese; it will always be so looked upon by the candid historian, and known as the
Opium War."
Within fifteen years after this first war, there was another one, and again Great
Britain came off victorious. China had to pay another indemnity, three million dollars,
and five more treaty ports were opened up. By the terms of the Treaty of Tientsin, the
sale of opium in China was legalized in 1858.
From a small pamphlet, "Opium: England's Coercive Policy and Its Disastrous
Results in China and India" by the Rev. John Liggins, we find the following: "As
a specimen of how both wars were carried on, we quote the following from an English writer
on the bombardment of Canton: 'Field pieces loaded with grape were planted at the end of
long, narrow streets crowded with innocent men, women and children, to mow them down like
grass till the gutters flowed with their blood.' In one scene of carnage, the Times
correspondent recorded that half an army of 10,ooo men were in ten minutes destroyed by
the sword, or forced into the broad river. " The Morning Herald " asserted that
"a more horrible or revolting crime than this bombardment of Canton has never been
committed in the worst ages of barbaric darkness."
Naturally, therefore, after the termination of these two wars, China gave up the
struggle. She had fought valiantly to protect her people from opium, but the resources of
a Christian nation were too much for her. Seeing therefore that the opium trade was to be
forced upon her, and that her people were doomed to degradation, she decided to plant
poppies herself. There should be competition at least, and the money should not all be
drained out of the country. Thus it came about that after 1858 extensive tracts of land
were given over to poppy production. Whole provinces or parts of provinces, ceased to grow
grain and other necessities, and diverted their rich river bottoms to the raising of
opium. Chinese opium, however, never supplanted Indian opium, being inferior to that
raised in the rich valley of the Ganges. The country merely had double quantities of the
drug, used straight or blended, to suit the purse or taste of the consumer.
Then, in 1906, the incredible happened. After over a hundred years of steady
demoralization, with half her population opium addicts, or worse still, making enormous
profits out of the trade, China determined to give up opium. In all history, no nation has
ever set itself such a gigantic task, with such a gigantic handicap. China, a country of
immense distances, with scant means of communication; with no common language, a land
where only the scholars can read and write, suddenly decided to free herself from this
vice. The Emperor issued an edict saying that in ten years' time all opium traffic must
cease, and an arrangement was made with Great Britain whereby this might be accomplished.
To the honor of America be it said that we assisted China in this resolution. We agreed to
see her through.
A bargain was then made between China and Great Britain, in 1907, China agreeing to
diminish poppy cultivation year by year for a period of ten years, and Great Britain
agreeing to a proportional decrease in the imports of Indian opium. A three years' test
was first agreed to, a trial of China's sincerity and ability, for Great Britain feared
that this was but a ruse to cut off Indian opium, while leaving China's opium alone in the
field. At the end of three years, however, China had proved her ability to cope with the
situation. Thus, for a period of ten years, both countries have lived up to their bargain,
the amount of native and foreign opium declining steadily in a decreasing scale. April 1,
1917, saw the end of the accomplishment.
China's part was most difficult. In the remote, interior provinces, poppies were grown
surreptitiously, connived at by corrupt officials who made money from the crops. However,
drastic laws were enacted and severe penalties imposed upon those who broke them. If poppy
cultivation could not be stopped, England would not hold to her end of the bargain. Not
only was there a nation of addicts to deal with, but these could obtain copious supplies
of opium from the foreign concessions, over which the Chinese had no control. We shall
show, in another article, to what extent this was carried on. Yet somehow, in some manner,
the impossible happened. Year by year, little by little, one province after another was
freed from poppy cultivation, until in 1917, China was practically free from the
native-grown drug, and foreign importation had practically ended.
In this manner, first by large smuggling, then by two opium wars, was China drugged
with opium. And in this manner, and to this extent, has she succeeded in freeing herself
from the curse. But in one way, she is not free. She has no control over the
extra-territorial holdings of European powers, for in each treaty port are the foreign
concessions already mentioned-German, Austrian, British, French, Russian. And in these
concessions, opium may be procured. Simply by crossing an imaginary line, in such cities
as Shanghai and Hongkong, can the Chinese buy as much opium as they choose. China will
never be rid of this menace till she is rid of these extraterritorial holdings. Opium
shops, licensed by foreign governments, are always ready to supply her people with the
forbidden drug.
We say that the China market is closed. So it is, in one way. But the British Opium
Monopoly is not ended. The year 1917 saw a tremendous blow dealt to the British opium
dealers, but other markets will be found. There are other countries than China whose
inhabitants can be taught this vice. The object of this discussion is to consider these
other countries, and to see to what extent the world is menaced by this possibility.
theatlantic | The white working class depends on government assistance more than
the population as a whole, yet its members heavily favor smaller
government and lower taxes -- and they strongly believe that the poor
are too dependent on government programs.
Nearly half of the white working class (46 percent) reported receiving
Social Security or disability benefits in the poll, versus 38 percent of
the overall population; they were also slightly more likely to receive
food stamps and unemployment benefits than the general population. Six
in 10 white working-class voters said the federal government should cut
back on services and reduce taxes. And three-fourths agreed with the
idea that "poor people have become too dependent on government
assistance programs." If Romney is able to get past his "47 percent"
comments, this may be why: Even those who frequently depend on
government strongly dislike the idea of dependency and entitlement.
The white working class has often been depicted as the backbone of the
Tea Party, angered by what they perceive as Obama's socialistic policies
and, in the president's own memorable phrase, "clinging to guns or religion." But the poll knocks down some of these myths:
* They're not the Tea Party: Only about 13 percent of
white working-class voters consider themselves part of the Tea Party,
and 34 percent say they share its values. Among college-educated whites,
the numbers are about the same -- 10 percent and 31 percent,
respectively.
* They're not unusually religious: About half (48
percent) go to church at least once a month, and 60 percent say religion
is important to them. That's about the same as the general population.
The white working class is more heavily evangelical, however -- 36
percent describe themselves as evangelicals, versus 21 percent of the
overall population.
* They're not culture warriors: On the wedge issues of
abortion and same-sex marriage, white working-class voters are pretty
evenly divided. They favor abortion being legal in all or most cases, 50
percent to 45 percent, and oppose allowing gays to marry, 50 percent to
43 percent. Less than 5 percent of these voters said abortion or gay
marriage was the most important issue, as opposed to 53 percent who
cited the economy.
* They want to tax the rich: Contra Joe the Plumber,
these voters aren't opposed to spreading the wealth around. "In fact,
white working-class Americans display a strong strain of economic
populism," the report states: 70 percent of them believe the economic
system unfairly favors the wealthy, and 62 percent want to raise taxes
on incomes over $1 million. And there's a clear reason both candidates
have accused each other of favoring outsourcing: 78 percent of white
working-class voters blame corporations moving jobs overseas for
America's economic woes.
yahoo | After two days of meetings at the
Republican Governors Association conference this week, New Mexico Gov.
Susana Martinez heard a lot about the party's need to reach new
constituencies--particularly women and ethnic minorities--but few
specifics about how.
As a Republican governor of
Mexican descent who won all but four counties in a Democratic state,
Martinez has ideas for how the party can reach voters who traditionally
support Democrats. But it's going to take some work--and a touch of
humility--from her colleagues.
"Republicans need to stop making
assumptions, and they need to start talking to younger people, people
of color, and ask them--not talk to them--ask
them, What is it that we can do better? How do we earn your vote? How
do we earn the ability for you to see that we can be the party that
will make your life better and that of your children?" Martinez said in
an interview after the conference here. "But we can't be the ones that
come and tell them how things are going to be and how we have all the
solutions."
President Barack Obama in 2012
expanded his lead among Hispanics, black voters, Asians and women,
according to exit polling, leaving many Republicans wondering what they
need do to adapt to the nation's rapidly shifting demographics.
The topic has dominated much of
the party's post-election soul searching. Some have placed part of the
blame on the Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, who wrote off nearly half
the electorate as inevitable Obama voters when he told donors at a
closed-door fundraiser last spring that 47 percent of the population
would support Obama "no matter what." Martinez criticized Romney's
comments when they were reported in September, and on Wednesday
reiterated that she found them "ridiculous."
"It's a ridiculous statement to
make. You want to earn the vote of every single person you can earn,
whether they be someone who relies on," she said. "Why would you ever
write off 47 percent?"
Romney quotes Cleon Skausen
, boasts passionately about being a bishop and state leader in his church, the second coming in Jerusalem and Missouri, jes dayyum...., is it any wonder this cat couldn't run as himself?!?
NYTimes | Mr. Humphries, who was identified on Wednesday by law enforcement
colleagues, took the initial complaint from Jill Kelley, a Tampa woman
active in local military circles and a personal friend, about anonymous
e-mails that accused her of inappropriately flirtatious behavior toward
Mr. Petraeus.
The subsequent cyberstalking investigation uncovered an extramarital
affair between Mr. Petraeus and Paula Broadwell, his biographer, who
agents determined had sent the anonymous e-mails. It also ensnared Gen.
John R. Allen, the commander of NATO forces in Afghanistan, after F.B.I.
agents discovered what a law enforcement official said on Wednesday
were sexually explicit e-mail exchanges between him and Ms. Kelley.
A spokesman for Ms. Kelley provided her version of events in two
conference calls with reporters on Wednesday. Ms. Kelley’s concern when
she took the e-mails to Mr. Humphries was that she feared the sender was
“stalking” Mr. Petraeus and General Allen, said the spokesman, who
asked not to be identified.
“She asks the agent, ‘What do you make of this?’ ” the spokesman said.
“The agent said: ‘This is serious. They seem to know the comings and
goings of a couple of generals.’ ”
General Allen himself had received a similar anonymous e-mail message,
sent by someone identified as “kelleypatrol,” advising him to stay away
from Ms. Kelley. The general forwarded it to Ms. Kelley, and they
discussed a concern that someone was cyberstalking them.
On Tuesday, Defense Secretary Leon E. Panetta said he had asked the
Senate to postpone a confirmation hearing for General Allen’s next
assignment while the department’s inspector general reviewed his e-mail
correspondence with Ms. Kelley, which was discovered by F.B.I. agents
investigating her initial complaint.
Pentagon officials said the review covered more than 10,000 pages of
documents that included “inappropriate” messages. But associates of
General Allen have said that the two exchanged about a dozen e-mails a
week since meeting two years ago and that his messages were affectionate
but platonic.
A law enforcement official, speaking on the condition of anonymity,
disputed that assertion on Wednesday, saying some messages were clearly
sexual. Investigators were confident “the nature of the content
warranted passing them on” to the inspector general, the official said.
National Journal | They were said to be generals cut from the same cloth, David Petraeus and John Allen: whip-smart, adaptable, erudite and above reproach.
Indeed Allen was Petraeus’s hand-picked successor in Afghanistan, having
served as deputy commander at Centcom in Tampa, Fla., first under
Petraeus, then under Marine Gen. James Mattis. Petraeus and Allen, the
soldier and the Marine, represented, in other words, the very best that
the U.S. military has to offer.
And yet, in less than a week, the careers of two very different men
may be ruined as a result of alleged inappropriate behavior with women.
It was scandalous enough when Petraeus stepped down as CIA director
after an FBI investigation uncovered his extramarital affair with his
biographer, Paula Broadwell. The latest hairpin plot twist came early
Tuesday when the Defense Department abruptly announced that the
nomination of Allen, the outgoing commander in Afghanistan, to be
commander of NATO forces was “on hold” pending an investigation by the
FBI and the Pentagon inspector general related to his relationship with
Jill Kelley – the woman who kicked off the FBI probe by reporting
threatening emails she had received from Broadwell, and who has denied
having any relationship with Petraeus beyond family friend.
A senior U.S. defense official told National Journal on
Tuesday that investigators are now looking into “potentially
inappropriate communications” between Allen and Kelley, 37, a doctor’s
wife who worked at Centcom in Florida. According to The Washington Post,
in the course of the Petraeus-Broadwell probe, the FBI uncovered
between 20,000 and 30,000 documents — most of them e-mails —shared
between Kelley and Allen.
In the end, Petraeus’ downfall marks the formal finish to a career
that had in some ways passed its peak. The influence of his signature
contribution to U.S. military doctrine—expensive counterinsurgency
programs that take years to implement, with little to show in the way of
results, as in Afghanistan —has been fading.
As for Allen, his tenure in Afghanistan is proving at least as
troubled as Petraeus’, beset by “green-on-blue” attacks by Afghan
soldiers and officials on allied troops, and a stubborn Taliban
supported by Pakistani elements across the border.
During a visit to Afghanistan I made last May, he came across as
sober and largely humorless in manner as he described in intellectual
terms his strategic plans in Afghanistan. “There is this sense, and it’s
a very Western sense I think, that there is a Napoleonic decisive
battle that tends to end wars. In counterinsurgency, it’s much less
about that than about creating an enduring capacity that grows and
compounds on itself over time," Allen said. "And that’s what’s
happened.”
He was far less of a glamorous or show-boating figure than Petraeus.
Nevertheless, he’s now one of the leading men in a national soap opera.
slate | Using the dead-drop tactic can
certainly reduce the chances that sweeping surveillance dragnets will
gobble up your communications—but it is not exactly secure. The method was used by the planners of the Madrid train bombings
in 2004, which killed 191 people, helping them to operate below the
radar of Big Brother. However, law enforcement agencies over the years
have grown accustomed to terrorists using the dead drop, and
technologies have been developed to help counter it.
An interception tool developed by the networking company Zimbra, for
instance, was specifically designed to help combat email dead drops. Zimbra’s “legal Intercept” technology allows law enforcement agencies to obtain “copies of email messages
that are sent, received, or saved as drafts from targeted accounts.” An
account that is under surveillance, with the help of Zimbra’s
technology, will secretly forward all of its messages, including drafts,
to a “shadow account” used by law enforcement. This may have been how
the FBI was able to keep track of all correspondence being exchanged
between Petraeus and Broadwell.
(It’s also worth noting that archived draft emails stored alongside
sent and received messages on Google’s servers can actually be obtained
by law enforcement with very little effort. Due to the outdated Electronic and Communications and Privacy Act, any content stored in the cloud can be obtained by the government without a warrant if it’s older than six months, as Wiredreported last year.)
What this means is that if Petraeus and Broadwell had been savvy
enough to use encryption and anonymity tools, their affair would
probably never have been exposed. If they had taken advantage of PGP encryption,
the FBI would have been able to decipher their randy interactions only
after deploying Trojan-style spyware onto Broadwell’s computer. Further
still, if the lovers had only ever logged into their pseudonymous Gmail
accounts using anonymity tools like Tor, their real IP addresses would have been masked and their identities extremely difficult to uncover.
But then it is unlikely that they ever expected to come under FBI
surveillance. Their crime was a moral one, not a felony, so there was no
real reason to take extra precautions. In any other adulterous
relationship a pseudonym and a dead drop would be more than enough to
keep it clandestine, as my Slate colleague Farhad Manjoo noted in an email.
Broadwell slipped up when she sent the harassing emails—as that, as
far as we know, is what ended up exposing her and Petraeus to
surveillance. Whether the harassment was serious enough to merit email
monitoring is still to be established, as Emily Bazelon writes on “XX Factor.” It goes without saying, however, that the real error
here was ultimately made by Petraeus. If he had stayed faithful to his
wife of 38 years in the first place, he’d still be in charge at the
CIA—and I wouldn’t be writing about how he could have kept his adultery
secret more effectively by using encryption.
guardian | So not only did the FBI - again, all without any real evidence of a
crime - trace the locations and identity of Broadwell and Petreaus, and
read through Broadwell's emails (and possibly Petraeus'), but they also
got their hands on and read through 20,000-30,000 pages of emails
between Gen. Allen and Kelley.
This is a surveillance state run
amok. It also highlights how any remnants of internet anonymity have
been all but obliterated by the union between the state and technology
companies.
But, as unwarranted and invasive as this all is, there
is some sweet justice in having the stars of America's national security
state destroyed by the very surveillance system which they implemented
and over which they preside. As Trevor Timm of the Electronic Frontier
Foundation put it this morning: "Who knew the key to stopping the Surveillance State was to just wait until it got so big that it ate itself?"
It
is usually the case that abuses of state power become a source for
concern and opposition only when they begin to subsume the elites who
are responsible for those abuses. Recall how former Democratic Rep. Jane
Harman - one of the most outspoken defenders of the illegal Bush
National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless eavesdropping program - suddenly began sounding like an irate, life-long ACLU privacy activist when it was revealed that the NSA had eavesdropped on her private communications
with a suspected Israeli agent over alleged attempts to intervene on
behalf of AIPAC officials accused of espionage. Overnight, one of the
Surveillance State's chief assets, the former ranking member of the
House Intelligence Committee, transformed into a vocal privacy proponent
because now it was her activities, rather than those of powerless
citizens, which were invaded.
With the private, intimate
activities of America's most revered military and intelligence officials
being smeared all over newspapers and televisions for no good reason,
perhaps similar conversions are possible. Put another way, having the
career of the beloved
CIA Director and the commanding general in Afghanistan instantly
destroyed due to highly invasive and unwarranted electronic surveillance
is almost enough to make one believe not only that there is a god, but
that he is an ardent civil libertarian.
The US operates a sprawling, unaccountable Surveillance State
that - in violent breach of the core guarantees of the Fourth Amendment
- monitors and records virtually everything even the most law-abiding
citizens do. Just to get a flavor for how pervasive it is, recall that
the Washington Post, in its 2010 three-part "Top Secret America" series,
reported:
"Every day, collection systems at the National Security Agency
intercept and store 1.7 billion e-mails, phone calls and other types of
communications."
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