What price whistleblowers?

First pub­lished on Con­sor­ti­um News.

For­give my “infam­ously flu­ent French”, but the phrase “pour encour­ager les autres” seems to have lost its fam­ously iron­ic qual­ity. Rather than mak­ing an example of people who dis­sent in order to pre­vent future dis­sid­ence, now it seems that the USA is glob­ally pay­ing bloody big bucks to people in order to encour­age them to expose the crimes of their employ­ers – well, at least if they are work­ing for banks and oth­er fin­an­cial institutions.

I have been aware for a few years that the USA insti­tuted a law in 2010 called the Dodd-Frank Act that is designed to encour­age people employed in the inter­na­tion­al fin­ance com­munity to report mal­feas­ance to the Secur­it­ies and Exchange Com­mis­sion (SEC), in return for a sub­stan­tial per­cent­age of any mon­ies recouped.

This law seems to have pro­duced a boom­ing busi­ness for such high-minded “whis­tleblowers” – if that could be the accur­ate term for such actions? They are cel­eb­rated and can receive multi-mil­lion dol­lar pay days, the most recent (unnamed) source receiv­ing $20 mil­lion.

Nor is this US ini­ti­at­ive just poten­tially bene­fit­ing US cit­izens – it you look at the small print at the bot­tom of this page, dis­clos­ures are being sent in from all over the world.

Which is all to the pub­lic good no doubt, espe­cially in the wake of the 2008 glob­al fin­an­cial crash and the ensu­ing fall-out that hit us all.  We need more clar­ity about arcane casino bank­ing prac­tices that have bank­rup­ted whole coun­tries, and we need justice.

But does rather send out a num­ber of con­tra­dict­ory mes­sages to those in oth­er areas of work who might also have con­cerns about the leg­al­ity of their organ­isa­tions, and which may have equal or even graver impacts on the lives of their fel­low human beings.

If you work in fin­ance and you see irreg­u­lar­it­ies it is appar­ently your leg­al duty to report them through appro­pri­ate chan­nels – and then count the $$$ as they flow in as reward – wheth­er you are a USA cit­izen or based else­where around the world. Such is the power of glob­al­isa­tion, or at least the USA’s self-appoin­ted role as the glob­al hegemon.

How­ever, if you hap­pen to work in the US gov­ern­ment, intel­li­gence agen­cies or mil­it­ary, under the terms of the Amer­ic­an Con­sti­tu­tion it would also appear to be your sol­emn duty under oath to report illeg­al­it­ies, go through the offi­cially des­ig­nated chan­nels, and hope reform is the result.

But, from all recent examples, it would appear that you get damn few thanks for such pat­ri­ot­ic actions.

Take the case of Thomas Drake, a former seni­or NSA exec­ut­ive, who in 2007 went pub­lic about waste and wan­ton expendit­ure with­in the agency, as I wrote way back in 2011. Tom went through all the pre­scribed routes for such dis­clos­ures, up to and includ­ing a Con­gres­sion­al Com­mit­tee hearing.

Des­pite all this, Tom was abruptly snatched by the FBI in a viol­ent dawn raid and threatened with 35 years in pris­on.  He (under the ter­ri­fy­ing Amer­ic­an plea bar­gain sys­tem) accep­ted a mis­dimean­our con­vic­tion to escape the hor­rors of fed­er­al charges, the res­ult­ing loss of all his civic rights and a poten­tial 35 years in pris­on.  He still, of course, lost his job, his impec­cable pro­fes­sion­al repu­ta­tion, and his whole way of life.

He was part of a NSA group which also included Bill Bin­ney, the former Tech­nic­al Dir­ect­or of the NSA, and his fel­low whis­tleblowers Kirk Wiebe, Ed Lou­mis and Diane Roark.

These brave people developed an elec­tron­ic mass-sur­veil­lance pro­gramme called Thin Thread that could win­now out those people who were genu­inely of secur­ity interest and worth tar­get­ing, a pro­gramme which would have cost the US $1.4 mil­lion, been con­sist­ent with the terms of the Amer­ic­an con­sti­tu­tion and, accord­ing to Bin­ney, could poten­tially have stopped 9/11 and all the attend­ant horrors..

Instead, it appears that backs were scratched and favours called in with the incom­ing neo-con gov­ern­ment of George W Bush in 2000, and anoth­er pro­gramme called Trail Bla­izer was developed, to the tune of $1.2 bil­lion – and which spied on every­one across Amer­ica (as well as the rest of the world) and thereby broke, at the very least, the terms of the Amer­ic­an constitution.

Yet Bill Bin­ney was still sub­jec­ted to a FBI SWAT team raid – he was dragged out of the shower early one morn­ing at gun-point. All this is well doc­u­mented in an excel­lent film “A Good Amer­ic­an” and I recom­mend watch­ing it.

Rather a con­trast to the treat­ment of fin­an­cial whis­tleblowers – no retali­ation and big bucks. Under that law, Bill would have received a pay­out of mil­lions for pro­tect­ing the rights of his fel­low cit­izens as well as sav­ing the Amer­ic­an pub­lic purse to the tune of over a bil­lion dol­lars. But, of course, that is not exactly in the long-term busi­ness interests of our now-glob­al sur­veil­lance panopticon.

Pres­id­ent Dwight Eis­en­hower, in his vale­dict­ory speech in 1961, warned of the sub­vers­ive interests of the “mil­it­ary-indus­tri­al” com­plex.  That seems so quaint now.  What we are facing is a ster­oid-pumped, glob­al­ised mil­it­ary sur­veil­lance industry that will do any­thing to pro­tect its interests.  And that includes crush­ing prin­cipled whis­tleblowers “pour encour­ager les autres“.

Yet that mani­festly has not happened, as I need to move on to the even-more-egre­gious cases of Chelsea Man­ning and Edward Snowden.

The former, as you may remem­ber, was a former Amer­ic­an army private cur­rently serving 35 years in a US mil­it­ary pris­on for expos­ing the war crimes of the USA. She is the most obvi­ous vic­tim of out­go­ing-Pres­id­ent Obama’s war on whis­tleblowers, and surely deserving of his sup­posed out­go­ing clem­ency.

The lat­ter, cur­rently stran­ded in Rus­sia en route from Hong Kong to polit­ic­al asylum in Ecuador is, in my view and as I have said before, the most sig­ni­fic­ant whis­tleblower in mod­ern his­tory. But he gets few thanks – indeed incom­ing US Trump admin­is­tra­tion appointees have in the past called for the death pen­alty.

So all this is such a “won­der­fully out­stand­ing encour­age­ment” to those in pub­lic ser­vice in the USA to expose cor­rup­tion – not. Work for the banks and anonym­ously snitch – $$$kerch­ing! Work for the gov­ern­ment and blow the whistle – 30+ years in pris­on or worse. Hmmm.

If Pres­id­ent-Elect Don­ald Trump is ser­i­ous about “drain­ing the swamp” then per­haps he could put some ser­i­ous and mean­ing­ful pub­lic ser­vice whis­tleblower pro­tec­tion meas­ures in place, rather than pro­sec­ut­ing such patriots?

After all, such meas­ures would be a win-win situ­ation, as I have said many times before – a prop­er and truly account­able chan­nel for poten­tial whis­tleblowers to go to, in the expect­a­tion that their con­cerns will be prop­erly heard, invest­ig­ated and crim­in­al actions pro­sec­uted if necessary.

That way the intel­li­gence agen­cies can become truly account­able, sharpen their game, avoid a scan­dal and bet­ter pro­tect the pub­lic; and the whis­tleblower does not need ruin their life, los­ing their job, poten­tially their free­dom and worse.

After all, where are the most hein­ous crimes wit­nessed?  Sure, bank crimes impact the eco­nomy and the lives of work­ing people; but out-of-con­trol intel­li­gence agen­cies that kid­nap, tor­ture and assas­sin­ate count­less people around the world, all in secret, actu­ally end lives.

All that said, oth­er West­ern lib­er­al demo­cra­cies are surely less dra­coni­an than the USA, no?

Well, unfor­tu­nately not.  Take the UK, a coun­try still in thrall to the glam­or­ous myth of James Bond, and where there have been mul­tiple intel­li­gence whis­tleblowers from the agen­cies over the last few dec­ades – yet all of them have auto­mat­ic­ally faced pris­on.  In fact, the UK sup­pres­sion of intel­li­gence, gov­ern­ment, dip­lo­mat­ic, and mil­it­ary whis­tleblowers seems to have acted as an exem­plar to oth­er coun­tries in how you stifle eth­ic­al dis­sent from within.

Sure, the pris­on sen­tences for such whis­tleblow­ing are not as dra­coni­an under the UK Offi­cial Secrets Act (1989) as the ana­chron­ist­ic US Espi­on­age Act (1917). How­ever, the clear bright line against *any* dis­clos­ure is just as stifling.

In the UK, a coun­try where the intel­li­gence agen­cies have for the last 17 years been illeg­ally pros­ti­tut­ing them­selves to advance the interests of a for­eign coun­try (the USA), this is simply unac­cept­able. Espe­cially as the UK has just made law the Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Act (2016), against all expert advice, which leg­al­ises all this pre­vi­ously-illeg­al activ­ity and indeed expan­ded the hack­ing powers of the state.

More wor­ry­ingly, the ultra-lib­er­al Nor­way, which blazed a calm and human­ist trail in its response to the mur­der­ous white-suprem­acist ter­ror­ist attacks of Anders Breivik only 5 years ago, has now pro­posed a dra­coni­an sur­veil­lance law.

And Ger­many – a coun­try hor­ri­fied by the Snowden rev­el­a­tions in 2013, with its memor­ies of the Gestapo and the Stasi – has also just expan­ded the sur­veil­lance remit of its spooks.

In the face of all this, it appears there has nev­er been a great­er need of intel­li­gence whis­tleblowers across the West­ern world. Yet it appears that, once again, there is one law for the bankers et al – they are cashed up, lauded and rewar­ded for report­ing legalities.

For the rest of the Poor Bloody Whis­tleblowers, it’s pro­sec­u­tion and per­se­cu­tion as usu­al, des­pite the fact that they may indeed be serving the most pro­found of pub­lic interests – free­dom, pri­vacy and the abil­ity to thereby have a func­tion­ing democracy.

As always – plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. So back to my flu­ent French, ref­er­enced at the start: we are, it seems, all still mired in the merde.

 

 

You say pro-NATO, I say pro-peace

First pub­lished on RT Op-Edge, and also Con­sor­ti­um News.

Dur­ing the seem­ingly end­less US elec­tion, a few months ago Don­ald Trump said at a con­ven­tion that NATO is not a gift that Amer­ica can keep giv­ing.  In his stated view — at the time —  the oth­er mem­ber states should be expec­ted to make a great­er fin­an­cial con­tri­bu­tion (the USA cur­rently con­trib­utes 70% of NATO’s budget) and if not they could not expect auto­mat­ic pro­tec­tion in the face of an attack.

On 13th Novem­ber in the UK’s Observ­er news­pa­per, the Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al of NATO, former Nor­we­gi­an Prime Min­is­ter Jens Stol­ten­berg, wrote a think piece in response and acknow­ledged the need for more wide­spread con­tri­bu­tions, while cry­ing up the his­tor­ic import­ance and future need for NATO by cit­ing grow­ing Rus­si­an “assert­ive­ness” (dip­lo-speak for aggres­sion) and the threat from inter­na­tion­al terrorism.

I was invited onto RT to ana­lyse this and am here expand­ing on some of the points I made in an always-all-too-brief interview.

Stol­ten­berg was right to acknow­ledge Trump’s con­cerns about the con­tri­bu­tions to NATO.  But I think that he was also address­ing anoth­er and already-serving pres­id­ent some­what closer to home — head of the European Com­mis­sion and totem­ic Euro­crat, Jean-Claude Jun­ck­er — who for a while now has been plot­ting an integ­rated EU army and who ramped up the rhet­or­ic last week after Trump’s vic­tory. The head of NATO is nat­ur­ally not going to be too happy that the EU is poach­ing on his territory.

It was also repor­ted in The Observ­er that France and Ger­many are plan­ning to announce the accel­er­a­tion towards a EU army over the com­ing weeks. So much for European-wide con­sensus. It would appear that Jun­ck­er also sees this as a bar­gain­ing pos­i­tion in future Brexit nego­ti­ations, if Bri­tain ever does get around to trig­ger­ing Art­icle 50.  Any EU army would need the UK’s con­tri­bu­tion — not just the armed forces, which are the second largest in the EU, but also con­tin­ued close coöper­a­tion with the intel­li­gence agencies.

After all, if both the UK post-Brexit and the USA after the ascen­sion of Trump become increas­ingly isol­a­tion­ist and isol­ated, it would be nat­ur­al for the two coun­tries to pivot towards each oth­er to the increas­ing exclu­sion of Europe. The UK/US “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” has always been heav­ily pre­dic­ated on the uniquely close work­ing rela­tion­ship of their spies, and the EU will fear being left fur­ther out in the cold.

So, if Jun­ck­er car­ries on regard­less with his van­ity EU army pro­ject and Bri­tain agrees to con­trib­ute post-Brexit, there may be oth­er sweet deals on offer to the UK dur­ing the Brexit nego­ti­ations. At least, that seems to be the pos­i­tion Jun­ck­er seems to be oil­ing his way towards.

But the fun­da­ment­al ques­tion has to be asked: why, now, do we need either a New Mod­el EU army or the cava­lier NATO?  Stol­ten­berg tried to address this in his article:

In the last few years we have seen a dra­mat­ic deteri­or­a­tion of our secur­ity, with a more assert­ive Rus­sia and tur­moil across north Africa and the Middle East. Nato allies have respon­ded togeth­er. We have imple­men­ted the biggest rein­force­ment of our col­lect­ive defence since the cold war. [.…] This is deterrence, not aggres­sion. […] Nato also con­tin­ues to play a cru­cial role in the fight against ter­ror­ism. Every Nato ally is part of the US-led coali­tion against Islam­ic State…”

Let us unpick these comments.

Firstly, is Rus­sia indeed becom­ing more of a mil­it­ary threat, or is this just so much dip­lo­mat­ic grand­stand­ing? After all, is it Rus­sia or NATO that has been more, umm, assert­ive over the last 27 years?

In answer I refer you back to an art­icle I wrote two years ago after the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Ber­lin Wall. Ref­er­en­cing the work of former seni­or CIA officer and fel­low Sam Adams Asso­ci­ate, Ray McGov­ern, it made clear that a deal was made between the Soviet Uni­on of the time and the US and that, in return for the with­draw­al of 260,000 Soviet troops from the GDR and the reuni­fic­a­tion of Ger­many, NATO would not move one inch fur­ther east than the Ger­man border.

Well, today we can see the res­ult of these nego­ti­ations — anoth­er twelve coun­tries, most in East­ern Europe and right up to the Rus­si­an bor­der, have been assim­il­ated into NATO. Recently with­in most of these bor­der coun­tries large-scale mil­it­ary exer­cises have been pro­voc­at­ively and pub­licly staged, plus mis­sile “defence ” sys­tems have been planted in the fer­tile para­noi­ac soil of an increas­ingly aggress­ive and nation­al­ist­ic Poland.

Yes, Rus­sia has in retali­ation been con­duct­ing its own bor­der exer­cises. The lead­er­ship has to be seen to be doing some­thing, oth­er­wise it will appear weak and not pro­tect­ing its own people. That might be “assert­ive”, but it’s cer­tainly not “aggress­ive”.

Nor let us for­get the fact that in 2008 NATO was warm towards the idea of Ukraine and Geor­gia join­ing, provided they could meet a few con­di­tions. This would be tak­ing West­ern forces dir­ectly into Rus­si­a’s back yard. It would be encirc­ling Rus­si­a’s bor­der with the rest of Europe with a new “Iron Cur­tain”.  And I have to say that *is* an aggress­ively polit­ic­al move at the very least.

How did this play out? Well, first stop for the cam­paign of Rus­si­an demon­isa­tion was Geor­gia, under West­ern neo-con pup­pet pres­id­ent Mikhail Saakashvili , invad­ing a small and eth­nic­ally Rus­si­an seg­ment of Geor­gia, South Osse­tia.   Rus­sia respon­ded by pro­tect­ing the pop­u­la­tion, and then was excor­i­ated across the West­ern world as con­duct­ing an unpro­voked inva­sion of Geor­gia. This myth has long been exposed fac­tu­ally, but it is the hys­ter­ic­al head­lines of the time that resid­ually stick in most people’s minds.

Sim­il­arly in Ukraine. In 2014 a coup against the elec­ted head of state, Vikt­or Yanukovych, appar­ently partly orches­trated by the USA as we know from inter­cep­ted calls between the Assist­ant US Sec­ret­ary of State for Europe, Vic­tor­ia Nuland and US Ambas­sad­or to Ukraine, Geof­frey Pyatt.

Inter­est­ingly, it was Yanukovych who blocked Ukraine’s acces­sion to NATO in after his elec­tion in 2010, per­haps an addi­tion­al motiv­a­tion for the 2014 coup.

All this laid bare the fact that the US had pumped $5 bil­lion in to sub­vert the Ukrain­i­an state over the pre­ced­ing few years and that, in the face of European oppos­i­tion to it, the US thought “fuck the EU”. And yet still the EU acqui­esced to US-led sanc­tions against Rus­sia that have hit the EU eco­nomy hard.

And the USA accused Rus­sia of med­dling in their demo­crat­ic pro­cesses this year? Pot and kettle springs to mind.

Add to this a prob­ably NATO-approved strike on a Rus­si­an jet involved in the Syr­i­an con­flict earli­er this year by NATO mem­ber Tur­key (at the time one of the closest trad­ing part­ners of Rus­sia and which, tem­por­ar­ily, caused bilat­er­al dam­age that has since been repaired) and the mil­it­ary wing of West­ern interests is not exactly com­ing up smelling of roses.

But per­haps NATO was just being “assert­ive”.

So to Stol­ten­ber­g’s second point of jus­ti­fic­a­tion for NATO: the suc­cess that it has had com­bat­ing the threat of inter­na­tion­al terrorism.

Where can I start with this? Since NATO invoked Art­icle 5 (when one state is attacked, all must respond) in the wake of the 9/11 attacks against Amer­ica, west­ern coun­tries have been dragged into war after illeg­al war across the Middle East, cent­ral Asia and North Africa.

Let us exam­ine the roll-call of suc­cesses: Afgh­anistan (now back in the hands of the Taliban war­lords and sup­ply­ing ever more heroin to the illeg­al drug trade that goes some way to fund­ing ter­ror­ist groups, includ­ing ISIS); Iraq, now a bas­ket case and the cradle of ISIS; Libya ditto plus the drugs; Yemeni com­munit­ies being vapor­ised with “pre­ci­sion” bombs by US proxy Saudi Ara­bia: and Syr­ia of course.

So the NATO Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al’s second jus­ti­fic­a­tion of the organ­isa­tion’s con­tin­ued exist­ence is not exactly what one would call com­pel­ling. But I sup­pose he had to try, when Jun­ck­er­’s threatened folie de grandeur that is the EU army is even less inspiring.

So, back to Pres­id­ent-elect Don­ald Trump.  What will he do, faced with this mess of com­pet­ing west­ern military/security interests and Euro-bur­eau­crat career­ists? Per­haps his US isol­a­tion­ist pos­i­tion is not so mad, bad and dan­ger­ous to know as the wail­ings of the west­ern lib­er­al press would have us believe?

Amer­ic­an “excep­tion­al­ism” and NATO inter­ven­tion­ism have not exactly benefited much of the world since the end of the Cold War. Per­haps the time has indeed come for an Amer­ic­an Com­mand­er-in-Chief who can cut deals, cut through the sabre-rat­tling rhet­or­ic and, even unin­ten­tion­ally, make a sig­ni­fic­ant con­tri­bu­tion to world peace.

Stranger things have happened.  After all, out­go­ing Pres­id­ent Obama won the Nobel Prize for Peace a mere eight months after his inauguration.…

Webstock, New Zealand, 2016

Now, I speak all over the world at con­fer­ences and uni­ver­sit­ies about a whole vari­ety of inter­con­nec­ted issues, but I do want to high­light this con­fer­ence from earli­er this year and give a shout out for next year’s. Plus I’ve finally got my hands on the video of my talk.

Web­stock cel­eb­rated its tenth anniversary in New Zea­l­and last Feb­ru­ary, and I was for­tu­nate enough to be asked to speak there.  The hosts prom­ised a unique exper­i­ence, and the event lived up to its reputation.

Webstock_2016They wanted a fairly clas­sic talk from me — the whis­tleblow­ing years, the les­sons learnt and cur­rent polit­ic­al implic­a­tions, but also what we can to do fight back, so I called my talk “The Pan­op­ticon: Res­ist­ance is Not Futile”, with a nod to my sci-fi fandom.

So why does this par­tic­u­lar event glow like a jew­el in my memory? After expun­ging from my mind, with a shud­der of hor­ror, the 39 hour travel time each way, it was the whole exper­i­ence. New Zea­l­and com­bines the friend­li­ness of the Amer­ic­ans — without the polit­ic­al mad­ness and the guns, and the egal­it­ari­an­ism of the Nor­we­gi­ans — with almost equi­val­ent scenery. Add to that the warmth of the audi­ence, the eclecticism of the speak­ers, and the pre­ci­sion plan­ning and aes­thet­ics of the con­fer­ence organ­isers and you have a win­ning combination.

Our hosts organ­ised ver­tigo-indu­cing events for the speak­ers on the top of mile-high cliffs, as well as a sur­pris­ingly fun vis­it to a tra­di­tion­al Brit­ish bowl­ing green. Plus I had the excite­ment of exper­i­en­cing my very first earth­quake — 5.9 on the Richter scale appar­ently. I shall make no cheap jokes about the earth mov­ing, espe­cially in light of the latest quakes to hit NZ this week, but the hotel did indeed sway around me and it was­n’t the loc­al wine, excel­lent as it is.

I men­tioned eclecticism — the qual­ity of the speak­ers was fero­ciously high, and I would like to give a shout out to Debbie Mill­man and her “joy of fail­ure” talk, Harry Roberts, a ser­i­ous geek who crowd-sourced his talk and ended up talk­ing ser­i­ously about cock­tails, moths, Chum­bawamba and more, advert­ising guru Cindy Gal­lop who is inspir­ing women around the world and pro­mot­ing Make Love Not Porn, and Casey Ger­ald, with his evan­gel­ic­ally-inspired but won­der­fully human­ist­ic talk to end the event.

All the talks can be found here.

It was a fab­ulous week.  All I can say is thank you to Tash, Mike, and the oth­er organisers.

If you ever have the chance to attend or speak at the event in the future, I ser­i­ously recom­mend it.

And here’s the video of my talk:

Donald Trump and implications for NATO

Pres­id­ent-elect of the USA, Don­ald Trump, said dur­ing his cam­paign that oth­er NATO mem­bers should pay a fair con­tri­bu­tion and not rely on the USA to always bail them out.

On 13th Novem­ber the Sec­ret­ary Gen­er­al of NATO, Jens Stol­ten­berg, defen­ded his organ­isa­tion in UK news­pa­per The Observ­er.

Here is a short inter­view I gave to RT on these developments:

Don­ald Trump and NATO from Annie Machon on Vimeo.

The US Election

No doubt you, as well as I, have been watch­ing the 2016 USA pres­id­en­tial elec­tion with a sense of appalled fas­cin­a­tion — has ever a cam­paign been fought so viciously in mod­ern West­ern politics?

But the Amer­ic­ans have made their choice (between the dev­il and the deep blue sea), and will have to live with it. I hope it works out well for them.

How­ever, my focus is more on the implic­a­tions for the rest of the world. As a post-Brexit Brit based in Brus­sels, these are many-layered.

From the Brexit per­spect­ive the Trump vic­tory could be good for the UK — he appears to be more sym­path­et­ic to the so-called “spe­cial rela­tion­ship” than Obama.  He is also prob­ably more likely to try to cut deals with Rus­sia over Ukraine and the ongo­ing war in Syr­ia than the ultra-hawk­ish Hil­lary Clin­ton could ever bring her­self to do.

This can only be good for Europe, as the sanc­tions put in place after the US-backed Ukraine coup in 2014 are hurt­ing European trade.  Yet again, Europe has been caught between Rus­sia and the USA.

Also, let us not for­get the infam­ous quote from Assist­ant Sec­ret­ary of State, Vic­tor­ia Nuland, who said in 2014 “fuck the EU”, when it came to decision mak­ing in plan­ning the Ukrain­i­an coup.

But my main point is the European estab­lish­ment’s response to the Trump pres­id­en­tial vic­tory. And let us not deceive ourselves here — this was an emphat­ic vic­tory. The Amer­ic­an people wanted a can­did­ate for change, for a push-back against the per­ceived Wash­ing­ton polit­ic­al élite.

Per­haps the elec­tion could have swung in anoth­er dir­ec­tion towards anoth­er can­did­ate for change — if Bernie Sanders had been the Demo­crat nom­in­ee.  Alas, as we know from the DNC files leaked to and pub­lished by Wikileaks, his cam­paign was under­mined by his own party in favour of Hil­lary Clin­ton, while pro­mot­ing Trump as the Repub­lic­an can­did­ate that Clin­ton could beat.

Hillary_Clinton_Pant_Suits_2016Hubris is nev­er a good look, just like “pant” suits.

What pains me most is the European main­stream medi­a’s report­ing of Trump’s vic­tory: “lib­er­al demo­cracy” is under threat no less, and pop­u­lism is on the rise.

How­ever, those most wor­ried about “lib­er­al demo­cracy” tend to be the tech­no­crat­ic Euro­crats such as European Coun­cil Pres­id­ent Don­ald Tusk and European Com­mis­sion Pres­id­ent Jean-Claude Jun­ck­er.  And they are the very people try­ing to ram through the thor­oughly *neo*-liberal agen­das of CETA and  the Trans-Atlantic Trade Invest­ment Part­ner­ship — oth­er­wise known as TTIP, widely res­isted across Europe as a rape of our democracies.

TTIP, if passed, would elim­in­ate any mean­ing­ful nation­al sov­er­eignty, repla­cing it with a glob­al cor­por­at­ist hege­mony that could sue our nation­al gov­ern­ments if they passed laws that could con­ceiv­ably — some­time in the future — pass laws that could — con­ceiv­ably in the future — inhib­it the profit-mak­ing cap­ab­il­it­ies of the corporations.

That, and nation­al asset-strip­ping, is the pure defin­i­tion of neo-lib­er­al­ism, and that is what our European over­lords want to enact.  Yet, at the same time, they are inveigh­ing against the death of “lib­er­al demo­cracy” after the elec­tion of Don­ald Trump.

Am I miss­ing some­thing here?

Head of MI5 goes public

Andrew_ParkerFor the first time a serving head of a major intel­li­gence ser­vice in the UK, Andrew Park­er the Dir­ect­or Gen­er­al of the UK domest­ic Secur­ity Ser­vice, has giv­en an inter­view to a nation­al newspaper.

Inter­est­ingly, he gave this inter­view to The Guard­i­an, the paper that has won awards for pub­lish­ing a num­ber of the Edward Snowden dis­clos­ures about endem­ic illeg­al spy­ing and, for its pains, had its com­puters ritu­ally smashed up by the powers that be.

The tim­ing was also inter­est­ing — only two weeks ago the Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Tribunal (the only leg­al body that can actu­ally invest­ig­ate alleg­a­tions of spy crime in the UK and which has so far been an unex­cep­tion­al cham­pi­on of their prob­ity) broke ranks to assert that the UK spies have been illeg­ally con­duct­ing mass sur­veil­lance for 17 years — from 1998 to 2015.

This we could all deduce from the dis­clos­ures of a cer­tain Edward Snowden in 2013, but it’s good to have it offi­cially confirmed.

Yet at the same time the much-derided Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Bill has been oil­ing its way through the Par­lia­ment­ary sys­tem, with the cul­min­a­tion this week.

This “Snoop­ers’ Charter”, as it is known, has been repeatedly and fer­vently rejec­ted for years.

It has been ques­tioned in Par­lia­ment, chal­lenged in courts, and soundly con­demned by former intel­li­gence insiders, tech­nic­al experts, and civil liber­ties groups, yet it is the walk­ing dead of UK legis­la­tion — noth­ing will kill it. The Zom­bie keeps walking.

It will kill all notion of pri­vacy — and without pri­vacy we can­not freely write, speak, watch, read, activ­ate, or res­ist any­thing future gov­ern­ments choose to throw at us. Only recently I read an art­icle about the pos­sib­il­ity of Face­book assess­ing someone’s phys­ic­al or men­tal health — poten­tially lead­ing to all sorts of out­comes includ­ing get­ting a job or rent­ing a flat.

And this dove­tails into the early Snowden dis­clos­ure of the pro­gramme PRISM — the com­pli­city of the inter­net mega­corps — as well as the secret back doors what were built into them.

It will be the end of demo­cracy as we (sort of ) know it today. And, as we know from the Snowden dis­clos­ures, what hap­pens in the UK will impact not just Europe but the rest of the world.

So how does this all link into the MI5 head honcho’s first live inter­view?  Well, the tim­ing was inter­est­ing — ahead of the Invest­ig­at­ory Powers Bill passing oleagin­ously into law and with the ongo­ing demon­isa­tion of Russia.

Here is an inter­view I gave to RT about some of these issues:

Com­ment­ary on MI5’s first nwspa­per inter­view from Annie Machon on Vimeo.