Glenn Greenwald on being targeted in an anti-Wikileaks dirty tricks campaign

Glenn Greenwald has responded to the revelation that a consortium of security firms pitched Bank of America on a proposal to attack him as part of an anti-Wikileaks dirty tricks campaign. Greenwald starts with the revelation that the amateurish, dumbass proposal was actually prepared by firms recommended by the highest levels of the US government, and they do this kind of wetwork for big companies and the feds all the time, and moves on from there:

But the real issue highlighted by this episode is just how lawless and unrestrained is the unified axis of government and corporate power. I've written many times about this issue -- the full-scale merger between public and private spheres -- because it's easily one of the most critical yet under-discussed political topics. Especially (though by no means only) in the worlds of the Surveillance and National Security State, the powers of the state have become largely privatized. There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former. The revolving door between the highest levels of government and corporate offices rotates so fast and continuously that it has basically flown off its track and no longer provides even the minimal barrier it once did. It's not merely that corporate power is unrestrained; it's worse than that: corporations actively exploit the power of the state to further entrench and enhance their power.

That's what this anti-WikiLeaks campaign is generally: it's a concerted, unified effort between government and the most powerful entities in the private sector (Bank of America is the largest bank in the nation). The firms the Bank has hired (such as Booz Allen) are suffused with the highest level former defense and intelligence officials, while these other outside firms (including Hunton & Williams and Palantir) are extremely well-connected to the U.S. Government. The U.S. Government's obsession with destroying WikiLeaks has been well-documented. And because the U.S. Government is free to break the law without any constraints, oversight or accountability, so, too, are its "private partners" able to act lawlessly. That was the lesson of the Congressional vesting of full retroactive immunity on lawbreaking telecoms, of the refusal to prosecute any of the important Wall Street criminals who caused the 2008 financial crisis, and of the instinctive efforts of the political class to protect defrauding mortgage banks.

The leaked campaign to attack WikiLeaks and its supporters

• [phisrow]

  Hmmm… Where have I heard the phrase “merger of state and corporate power” before?

• [Avram / Moderator]

  Does it ever seem to anyone else as if nobody’s familiar with any part of history except World War 2? Maybe that’s why everyone with an enemy tries to paint that enemy as Hitler, or Stalin, or a generic fascist.

  • [jetfx]

    This is exactly my point. Not every disagreeable political arrangement in fascist. Reserve the word for the real thing.

    • [Cowicide]

      Your point thus far has been raising trite semantic distractions instead of focusing on what truly matters in context of this story:

      1) Who is responsible for the problem.

      2) What to do about it.

      But, you’d rather play with dictionaries. You’re more obsessed with taunting people who are merely ranting and expressing their dismay at the situation. You state that you are on Greenwald’s side, so on that note:

      Do you have any actionable IDEAS?

      Let’s hear them. It’s healthy to rewire your brain on occasion. It might even feel good for you to escape this semantic trap you’ve put yourself in and free your mind to pursue more productive, exciting ventures like joining a revolution that starts with LESS squabbling.

      tl;dr — OK! OK! Call them whatever the fuck you want to, so what do we all DO about it?

      • [jetfx]

        Admittedly you are right, but I do enjoy playing with dictionaries.

        As for your first point, Greenwald gives a pretty clear idea of who is responsible. The second point is, as you noted, the difficult one. The simple answer is it should stop.

        But how? I’m not so sure. There seems to be little interest by those in power to reform the system. There’s too much money to be made the way things are, and it is so easy to ignore popular will. I’m interested in non-capitalist economics, something that provides a fairer distribution of wealth and power. Creating parallel institutions to opt-out of the system, and provide services that are not currently offered in the status quo. Something more responsive to the people who make it up.

      • [noen]

        “1) Who is responsible for the problem.”

        It was the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Here’s to hoping you don’t get all your news from BoingBoing.

        “2) What to do about it.”

        Looks like what can be done has been done. They’ve been exposed for the bastards they are.

        “Do you have any actionable IDEAS?”

        Spread peace love and understanding among all the peoples of the Earth.

        • [Cowicide]

          noen, I’m putting you on ignore. Don’t waste your breathe with me anymore, because that’s all it is anyway…. a waste.

  • [travtastic]

    Those damned Corrupt Bargainers are making quite a ruckus as of late!

• [Anonymous]

  wait, you mean maobamao and the rest of the far leftists now in power arent socialist marxist commies?!?!?!

  wait till i tell the teabaggers.

• [anansi133]

  When a criminal conspiracy becomes large enough, you might as well call it a nation.

  • [BB]

    anansi133

    “When a criminal conspiracy becomes large enough, you might as well call it a nation.”

    Brilliant (and depressing).

  • [Tdawwg]

    Nations can be combated, and can lose . . . so can empires. I’d say those wily colonials just pwned the Redcoats at what might be known as the Lexington and Concord of the digital age. Or was it the Battle of New Orleans, where “the pirate said he’d help us drive the British in the sea”?

    We’ll march back home but we’ll never be content

    till we make Anonymous the people’s President.

    And every time we think about Barr’s Twitter feed,

    we’ll think about the lulz we had way down in New Orleans.

• [alllie]

  There is very little separation between government power and corporate power. Those who wield the latter intrinsically wield the former.

  “Fascism should more appropriately be called Corporatism because it is a merger of State and corporate power.” Benito Mussolini – Fascist Dictator of Italy

  So we have become a fullout fascist state. Bush finished that transformation. In WWII the US was able to defeat this ideology. So they defeated us first this time.

  • [jetfx]

    For the sake of clarity, the Coroporatism Mussolini talks about is not the same as what Greenwald is talking about. It’s a kind of collectivism based on breaking society into large groups for each major social function (labour, business, religion, etc).

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism

    • [alllie]

      For the sake of clarity, the Coroporatism Mussolini talks about is not the same as what Greenwald is talking about. It’s a kind of collectivism based on breaking society into large groups for each major social function (labour, business, religion, etc).

      Oh, please, not that right wing misinformation (I’m being polite).

      “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to the point where it becomes stronger than the democratic state itself. That in its essence is fascism – ownership of government by an individual, by a group or any controlling private power.” President Franklin Delano Roosevelt – on the threat to democracy by corporate power

      “The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public. . .”– Former Vice President Henry A. Wallace, the New York Times, April 9, 1944

      In 1944, Henry A. Wallace, one of three Vice Presidents to serve under Franklin D. Roosevelt, assessed the threat of fascism in America and predicted that the time might come when the media was in collusion with the ruling power. “American fascism will not be really dangerous until there is a purposeful coalition among the cartelists, the deliberate poisoners of public information. . . ,” he wrote.
      “The American fascists are most easily recognized by their deliberate perversion of truth and fact,” Wallace wrote.

      Sounds like we are there.

      • [jetfx]

        It’s hardly right wing misinformation, because for one, I agree entirely with Greenwald’s assertion about the unparalleled power that business holds over the American government, and that that is a very bad thing, but it isn’t the same thing as what Mussolini was talking about.

        Corporatism is the economic idea that society is an organic whole, and that there is a sort of natural unity between all elements of it. Mussolini wanted to impose a sort of top down collectivism to get all these elements (labour, business, farmers, soldiers, intellectuals, etc) to work together for the greater glory of Italy. In practice it meant giving monopolies to large business in each economic sector, squashing organized labour, and general social repression.

        None of the quotes you supply quote meet the generally accepted definitions of fascism. Certainly there is a large amount of collusion between big business and government (with the accompanying lies) in a fascist state, but overweening corporate influence is not the defining element of fascism. That would be violent authoritarianism.

        We’re largely arguing over semantics here. I think we basically agree on the issues here, but I simply don’t like when the word fascist is bandied about so liberally. It politically neuters the world and robs it of its impact when calling out actual fascists.

        • [alllie]

          The generally accepted definition of fascism (before the right started rewriting its history):

          fas-cism (fbsh’iz’em) n. A system of government that exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically through the merging of state and business leadership,together with belligerent nationalism.” The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 1983)

        • [Nadreck]

          In a similar fashion Fascism’s identical twin, Communism, is the merging of the State and all economic activity together with belligerent nationalism.

        • [Anonymous]

          Now you are getting it!

          When all corporations are controlled by the state, that’s communism, and when all government is controlled by the corporations, that’s fascism.

          Or at least, that’s what my grandfather told me in the 1970s.

          Grand-dad was born in 1899 and fought in two world wars, so I think his anecdotes trump Wikipedia’s cites of academicians who never saw fascism in person by approximately infinity percent.

• [Teller]

  The business of America is business. When has that not been the case?

• [noen]

  The Koch brothers plan to spend 88 million on the 2012 election. If you value your freedom and don’t want to go through what Egypt is now you’ll reject the Libertarian nightmare they plan for the US.

  • [Scarecrow Repair]

    I suppose George Soros is all friendly and cuddly.

    Face it, buddy, the only difference between left and right is that the left wants Big Government to control Big Business, and the right wants Big Business to control Big Government. Neither trusts individuals to take care of themselves, which has always struck me as rather odd, this idea that people are only competent at making decisions when they are part of some huge bureaucracy, never when acting on their own behalf.

    As each side gets the reins of power, they expand the control of their particular Big Savior because the other party expanded the control of the previous Big Savior. Neither ever thinks of shrinking the control of the previous Big Savior. It’s a vicious circle full of vicious feedback.

    I pity the fools who think their particular Big Savior has any interest in helping them.

    • [zeh]

      “the only difference between left and right is that the left wants Big Government to control Big Business [...]”

      Your brand of “left” smells of what the right cooked and put up in its place.

      • [Cowicide]

        Your brand of “left” smells of what the right cooked and put up in its place.

        Amen.

    • [alllie]

      False equivalency.

      A good big government helps everyone or at least tries. Big business only helps themselves.

      • [zeh]

        “A good big government helps everyone or at least tries.”
        Governments help big business, whose pocket they reside in. The very few exceptions are vilified as dictatorships by big media business.

      • [Scarecrow Repair]

        I see you put the qualifier “good” in front of “government” but not “business”, typical of a lefty. The righties would do just the opposite. Again, neither side has any use for people as individuals in control of their own lives.

        As long as both sides attempt only to outdo each other in making their savior bigger rather than reducing each other’s savior, we will end up with nothing but big business and big government. The individual people lose.

        Big saviors generate one-size-fits-all policies, they have to, that is how majority rule works. Of course these policies don’t fit all, they don’t even fit most very well. They only fit those who made the policy.

        • [alllie]

          Governments are supposed to do good for their people but businesses, corporations, are only supposed to do good for their owners. While some governments are bad, all corporate governance is bad.

        • [travtastic]

          Not if you own stock and live somewhere else!

    • [BB]

      A big government, aided by big money, puts ‘big money’ first, in its concerns. If you have a big government that, for example, lets oil companies regulate themselves, then what is the point? If you have a big government that makes backdoor deals with big pharma for pricing, in a mandatory private health Insurance program (not health care program), then who wins? Big pharma and private insurance.

      It isn’t right or left anymore, because every single politician, on both sides, takes campaign money from corporations and subsequently leaves a welcome mat out for their associated lobbyists, when installed in public office.

      Government overseers and regulations CAN work, but not if the wolf is guarding the hen house.

      “I pity the fools who think their particular Big Savior has any interest in helping them.”

      I agree, there is NO savior, not in this type of environment.

• [perchecreek]

  “Never forget that everything Hitler did in Germany was legal.” Martin Luther King, Jr.

  To use an unfashionable metaphor: An empire’s juridical existence begins when emergency powers are granted permanently to the leader of the state, and the role of imperator is combined with those of tribune, augur, consul, magistrate, etc. Usually this happens at the moment when an attack on the interests of the elites, or the elites themselves, occurs (e.g., the bullseye on Cantor Fitzgerald, the bombing of the Murrah Federal Building, Hussein’s stab for Burgan).

  Such an attack takes place when the sphere of dominion is so great that elites become beholden to distant economic interests. Because of elite foreign entanglement, animosity builds amongst both the elites’ constituents and those they’ve conquered, and a state of permanent internal and external threat arises. If the plebian elective body protests, it too must be suppressed.

  For the US, the republic began slipping into the night with the Patriot Act, the advent of extraordinary rendition, and the legal mastications of John Yoo his ilk. To badly paraphrase MLK: “Everything Octavian did in Rome was legal.”

  • [Anonymous]

    Wow, great post!

    But you got this wrong; I’m guessing you are quite young:

    For the US, the republic began slipping into the night with the Patriot Act, the advent of extraordinary rendition, and the legal mastications of John Yoo his ilk.

    No, the republic began slipping into the night when the first two items on the proposed Bill of Rights were rejected, enshrining for all time the principle that US public servants should hold private greed as a higher principle than representation of the electorate.

    A few other major things have come in with every war (which is why we now have the Endless War, we have always been at war with Terrorism). Income tax (a way for the ultra-rich to avoid fair taxation, since they have no observable income) and passports, for example, were viewed (correctly) as an unbelievably tyrannical assault on the rights of the people, and were only justified as a “temporary measure” for the duration of the war.

    The Patriot Act is really a pretty minor thing, in context; but you are right to point out extraordinary rendition and formal acceptance of torture as a legitimate tool (although without the name torture, of course) as extremely major things.

    My grandfather thought passports were such an obvious evil, that nobody would ever take them for granted.

    • [travtastic]

      Income tax?

• [flink]

  Uhmm, Cory?

  Where I’ve worked and encountered the term wetwork, it always referred to killing, rather than screwing someone over.

• [jetfx]

  I’d recommend you check out Wikipedia’s page on definitions of fascism, as that is not the generally accepted one. Problematically, while there is agreement on the fundamentals, there is not on the particulars, like the role of business. Right wing definitions tend to focus on fascism as anti-capitalist, where as the Marxist conception is fascism as the ultimate kind of capitalism. It’s not really either, as Mussolini lays out in his own definition of fascism, “The Doctrine of Fascism”, that they don’t really care as long as everybody submits to the authority of the state. This is often achieved by colluding with big business, but corporate control of the government does not equal fascist rule.

  Certainly the right is attempting to redefine fascism to write out its own complicity in the whole affair, but I wish you’d stop insinuating that I am right wing.

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Some definitions of fascism focus on the bundle of sticks and some on the ax in the middle. I’m more of a sticks guy, so I would define it as one or more demographic groups banding together to the detriment of all others.

• [Ugly Canuck]

  Well this here is a link to the song that some above were referring to:

  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpWzbZGk3eA

  So…the question is what is left… right?
  Or is the question of what is right, the only one left?

  Would the answer change depending upon which direction you happen to be facing?
  And what does happen when you turn about?

• [noen]

  “Sounds like we are there.”

  Oh please, will you girls just stop with your “America is going fascist!” hysteria? American is not a fascist state, not even close, not even when Bush was president.

  You’re as nutty as Glenn Beck.

  • [travtastic]

    Sir or Ma’am, I would most appreciate it if we could discontinue the use of the term ‘girl’ as an insult.

    Sexism is something most people have a tendency to frown upon, especially in civil conversation. Your point would be better expressed if it were not served alongside a slighting of the personal constitution of roughly half of the population.

    Good day, and no personal insult intended.

    • [noen]

      “Sir or Ma’am, I would most appreciate it if we could discontinue the use of the term ‘girl’ as an insult.”

      I think it’s funny. I don’t think it’s sexist. All the drag queens I know prefer it, even out of drag. So I don’t really see it as a big deal. I like bringing guys down a notch. In our society and in all primate societies the males are dominant. Wassamatter, don’t you believe in evolution?

      I don’t worry as much as the far left, or right, does. I think the middle path is the way to go. Fools to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am stuck in the middle.

      America is a great nation, America has done terrible things. We are lucky to be free and in America, but there are those, the fascist Right and the Marxist Left, who would take those freedoms away.

      Capitalism has been the greatest liberating force in human history. More people enjoy a better quality of life than ever since… forever. So all this corporatist BS people talk about… what is this? Firedog boingboing?

      And I was serious about spreading peace and not hate. The Egyptians defeated a brutal dictator through non-violence. They all got together in a plaza and chanted. No violence, no breaking windows or throwing bombs. Just people getting together and demanding justice.

      Go do likewise.

      • [zeh]

        “I don’t worry as much as the far left, or right, does. I think the middle path is the way to go. Fools to the left of me, jokers to the right. Here I am stuck in the middle.”

        The “middle” has as much chance of being correct as anything else, given that reality doesn’t give a crap about what any two large or small groups of people think about it. You need to read this: http://www.aaronsw.com/weblog/whycentrism.

      • [travtastic]

        Oh. Wow.

        • [Antinous / Moderator]

          Also, I have a straight razor in my fishnets, and I will cut you.

      • [Cowicide]

        Capitalism has been the greatest liberating force in human history. More people enjoy a better quality of life than ever since… forever.

        I think it’s sad you think capitalism is responsible for that, when in reality so many have suffered and died to fight corporatists in order to give you a better quality of life. It’s more than a little ungrateful, but I’m sure you don’t see it that way at all. Child labor wasn’t quelled in the USA by capitalism and corporatists like the Koch brothers have been and continue to be a very real threat to the literal health of the American populace. Don’t take my word on it, you seem to think capitalists/corporatist are the bastion of liberty, so take it from a top one that you’re wrong about that.

        You worship at the alter of capitalism and then throw out some snark about boing boing being like firedoglake. On that note, people like Jane Hamsher are out there trying to make a difference and make this a better world despite the constant attacks from corporatists (I’m sorry that words makes you uncomfortable). What would you have her do better? What have you done better, if you don’t mind me asking?

        Often complex problems have simple, easy to understand wrong answers.

        • [noen]

          “I think it’s sad you think capitalism is responsible for that, when in reality so many have suffered and died to fight corporatists in order to give you a better quality of life.”

          Well, I’ll just console myself with the knowledge that Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek is in complete agreement with me on this. In his books and lectures Zizek has repeatedly voiced his agreement with Francis Fukiyama (The End of History) that in capitalism “we have the formula”. Though he think there are other problems.

          I don’t know if you noticed this but the struggle to end odious labor laws, and the general struggle for civil rights and women’s suffrage, all took place all within the capitalist system. Social justice is not antithetical to capitalism, just to your strawman.

          You also seem to equate laissez faire capitalism with Capitalism per se. They’re not the same, not at all, but it’s funny that by doing so you put yourself in the same camp as the Right. This is why I find myself occupying the middle ground. You don’t seriously think that Europe is socialist do you? Yes, I agree that the Koch bros are a menace. I just don’t agree with you that the choice is between them and the Socialist Workers Party.

          “people like Jane Hamsher are out there trying to make a difference”

          Jane is on the extreme Left. She is not a liberal at all and she was more than happy to join with Grover Norquist to try to defeat Obamacare. You see, this is where the Left loses me when you pull crap like that. Had she succeeded it would have been utter disaster. Why? Because her political theory, Marxism, is wrong, provably wrong.

          I think that most on the Left are glib and superficial fools who just mouth platitudes like “corpratism!”, “banksters!” with no idea of what they’d replace them with.

          The LLC Corporation is the single greatest invention of the 20th century. That it can be abused is not the fault of the mechanism.

          “What would you have her do better?”

          I’d have her support the president of the party she ostensibly claims to belong to rather than seeking to undermine his political agenda because she didn’t get a pony.

        • [Cowicide]

          I don’t know if you noticed this but the struggle to end odious labor laws, and the general struggle for civil rights and women’s suffrage, all took place all within the capitalist system. … Social justice is not antithetical to capitalism, just to your strawman …

          You just ironically showed that you’re the strawman master and you are walking (no… sprinting) away from the context in which you brought all this up; I’ll get to more on this later…

          Meanwhile, if we are to apply your elementary way of thinking, then we can also say that slavery, segregation, war, murder, injustice, the great depression, athletes foot and dust bunnies also “all took place within the capitalist system”.

          You are now easily being struck with your very own (ill-conceived) double-edged sword. And it was easy because you are applying mental gymnastics in order to “be right” in your own mind instead of letting common sense rule your thoughts.

          Now, let’s force you (squirming, struggling and fighting) to get back in your very own context, please? You said:

          Capitalism has been the greatest liberating force in human history. More people enjoy a better quality of life than ever since… forever. So all this corporatist BS people talk about… what is this?

          Ouch.. your own words come back to haunt you. In context, we see that you think aversion to corporatists is bullshit. So, what is this bullshit? This bullshit is why you can vote. This bullshit is why the disastrous and deadly Vietnam war was ended (instead of the “endless war” we have now because the corporatists are stronger than ever). This bullshit is why blacks don’t have to sit at the back of the bus.

          The greatest liberating force in human history has been the struggle of people against injustice and tyranny in the face of corporatists. You call that bullshit. I call bullshit on you. The Koch brothers and other corporatist would love nothing more than to enslave you, but you seem more concerned with me calling them “bad names” like corporatists and defending Jesus-capitalism than actually doing a damn thing about it.

          I just don’t agree with you that the choice is between them and the Socialist Workers Party.

          See, that just goes to show how you easily allow your preconceived “got to be right” visions in your head that aren’t based upon reality to move your mouth. If you allowed rational thinking and common sense to prevail you’d think before spewing such ignorance towards me. I have never in my life offered up such a black and white choice and if you bothered to read what I’ve said in the past instead of letting the screaming voices in your own head drown me out, you’d know that.

          Y rnclly thrw t mr strwmn (y’r th mstr) nd nsltng rd hrrngs nstd f gttng t th mt f th dscssn. thnk th nly thng tht trrfs y mr thn yr fr f lss f cntrl s yr fr f “bng ncrrct” nd yr dsprtn s rlly shwng whn y mk gnrnt cmmnts lk tht. ‘m srry yr rltnshp wth yr dd sckd, bt dn’t tk tht t n ppl n th cmmnt-brds n bng bng.

          Or, please… correct me. Show me where I’m a simpleton who believes the choice is merely between corporatists and some dreaded Socialist Workers Party? Or just admit you’re trying to paint me (someone you’ve never met before in your entire life) with you own distorted perceptions of all your “adversaries”? bt y ddn’t lk hw dscrbd yr rltnshp wth yr dd, s dn’t pll tht sm sht n thr ppl, m’ky sgr p, pny-lvng, lttl grl?

          This isn’t quite working out the way you’d hoped, is it?

          I think that most on the Left are glib and superficial fools who just mouth platitudes like “corpratism!”, “banksters!” with no idea of what they’d replace them with.

          Seeing that you never seem to allow the voices of angst screaming within your head to stop drowning out what other people are actually saying, this comes as no surprise to me.

          because she didn’t get a pony.

          Because she didn’t get a pony? h, sh’s jst dmb, nspd, lttl pny grl? Y hv s mch ngr nsd y twrds ppl y dn’t knw nd crtnly dn’t ndrstnd tht hp y dl wth t n dy bfr y rlz yr lf hs bn wstd. D yrslf fvr, sttl dwn th vcs n yr hd fr whl nd listen to what the woman actually says and does.

          t’s tllng tht y dflctd my qstn nd vcsly ttckd hr nstd. r y jls f hr, r wht? skd wht hv Y dn bttr n yr lf. Y. Nt hr. Y.

          … Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek is in complete agreement … You don’t seriously think that Europe is socialist do you? … The LLC Corporation is the single greatest invention of the 20th century. That it can be abused is not the fault of the mechanism. …

          Sigh… more strawmen and red herrings… I give up… You think calling attention to corporatists like the Koch brothers is bullshit. Well, destroying the Koch brothers is the only thing that’s going to save us.. and you. It’s sad you berate the very people that are on your side out of mere ignorance and a desire to show the boys you are a “big girl”. You can keep swatting at imaginary far-left demons floating in the air around you, or you can join the rest of us in fight the real corporatists threats like the Koch brothers and quit being such an inane distraction from really matters.

          Grw p.

        • [Anonymous]

          The LLC Corporation is the single greatest invention of the 20th century.

          It might have improved more lives than penicillin, but the rate of allergic rate and side effects are much higher.

        • [zeh]

          You, noen, had said that “Capitalism has been the greatest liberating force in human history. More people enjoy a better quality of life than ever since… forever.”. At #54.

          So yours at #61:
          “Well, I’ll just console myself with the knowledge that Marxist philosopher Slavoj Zizek is in complete agreement with me on this. In his books and lectures Zizek has repeatedly voiced his agreement with Francis Fukiyama (The End of History) that in capitalism “we have the formula”. Though he think there are other problems.”

          … must be one of the most complete knots of non-sequitor that I have ever seen. In fact, that looks like downright dishonest blabber posing for argumentation. If you don’t recognize this and pull another one like that, I’ll ignore you in the future.

          Re: capitalism as a major progressive improvement (over previous systems), we agree. But the same can be said of feudalism over slave societies, and the same will be said of the next productive system by our descendants, which will look at this with the same disgust we look to feudal or slave systems. If we survive capitalism to a next system of societal organization that is.

          The point, however, is that some are content to stay at this state of barbarism while others are looking forward and trying to think up and build what is next. Like Marxists, which will never be wrong in trying to do just that. Previous failures to build better societies occurred in specific contexts, with confrontation with other imperial blocs, with limited development of science and technology, and in which better systems of production did not exist. Some or all of those factors have changed and we may learn from previous errors. Isn’t this how progress is made?

          You seem to think we should stick to a known, albeit less oppressive paradigm, a local maximum, instead trying to leap over to a higher level. The risk is that the unrelenting search for profits, the permanent “growth” that capitalism relies on by exploiting finite resources, will destroy our planet.

        • [Anonymous]

          You also seem to equate laissez faire capitalism with Capitalism per se.

          Noen, your point would be better made if you used the phrase “well regulated capitalism” instead of Capitalism.

          Unregulated capitalism is by definition laissez faire capitalism. When you use Capital-C-Capitalism you imply a primacy at odds with external regulation, such as that supplied by good government in a functional political economy. That’s clearly not what you intend, but you are using the jargon of people who do have such views.

          The content of your posts makes me suspect you understand that Murder Inc. always, inevitably comes to dominate an unregulated capitalism, because the most cost-effective way to build and control a capitalist plutocracy is not by building a better mousetrap, it’s by eliminating competition. Only culturally approved, non-economic regulations that criminalize slavery, murder, monopolism, and other practices that are destructive to society can make capitalism into a viable part of a healthy polity.

          Socialism, as a political philosophy, is a good match for Capitalism, as an economic philosophy – they work to control each other’s weaknesses and excesses, as FDR demonstrated in the United States.

          True unregulated capitalism is a highway to technological and cultural stagnation, environmental destruction, and every other evil that men and women can visit upon each other. Even Ayn Rand approved of governments imposing contract law and restraining individual and collective violence; Ron Paul even more so. In the sort of laissez faire that the neo-cons and rabid tea partiers envision, corporations are the law, and profits trump all ethical concerns. The tea partiers don’t seem to realize this fact, although the wealthy neo-cons who support them most definitely do.

      • [travtastic]

        You seem to be confusing capitalists with organized labor here.

    • [Antinous / Moderator]

      Noen is a woman.

      • [travtastic]

        I still don’t exactly see how it’s in good taste.

    • [Cowicide]

      http://vimeo.com/2727908

  • [magneticwheels]

    noen- you offer no arguments, just an offhand rejection. do you have an argument or evidence to support your viewpoint?

    regardless of the technical definition of fascism, i think that we can all agree that the blurring and mingling of corporate and governmental power is a profoundly bad idea.

    what the corporate feudalists/colonialists/fascists/baddies/whatever want isn’t political power, but the total negation of any limits on their ability to profit off the society. no corporate chieftan will ever stand up and declare him/herself “presidente por vida” because that would give you something solid to fight against. (see mubarek for details). nor will they ever try to radically impinge on the people’s feeling of freedom. they might nibble away at the edges of society, marginalize, criminalize and terrorize certain groups and individuals. but they will never present a direct target. they try to be the invisible walls of our society, the backdrop, the furniture. they try to frame the debate in terms that are either falsely divisive (to create subsets that they can market lifestyles to) or to banish certain threatening thoughts from public discourse, or to hold out trinkets, idealized lifestyles and images of self that you can aspire to but never achieve or maintain (to keep people in a constant state of never satiated desire). they don’t want the responsibility that comes with power, because then they’d get the blame when things inevitably head south. they want the benefits of wealth and privilege without any of the costs. it’s the ultimate triumph of short term thinking when what we desperately need on this planet is long-range planning.

    • [noen]

      “do you have an argument or evidence to support your viewpoint?”

      What? That America is not in fact careening towards becoming a fascist state? I don’t need to prove a negative. I think it is horrible that Glenn Greenwald is being targeted like that but guess what? It’s now public knowledge. Signs of a good healthy democracy. In a really existing authoritarian state that doesn’t happen. Yay Democracy!

      “what the corporate feudalists/colonialists/fascists/baddies/whatever want”

      I am intrigued at your apparent ability to read minds and divine the secret intentions of powerful shadowy figures. Nice trick, how do you do it? Oh, I see, you just make it up, okaaay.

      Listen to yourself: “corporate feudalists … they will never present a direct target … try to be the invisible .. banish certain thoughts … hold out trinkets … keep people in a constant state of never satiated desire” (I think you pay extra for that).

      Yes, you sound just like Glen Beck. Same paranoia, same conspiracy theory, same projecting of modern anxiety onto imagined powerful figures. The only difference is the targets of your paranoia.

      Just. Chill. Everything is going to be ok.

• [Antinous / Moderator]

  Stop squabbling. Now.

• [Quothz]

  “You’re as nutty as Glenn Beck.”

  Ah, the insult, the first argument of fools and demagogues and the last resort of the desperate. I can also tell you this: Trying to use “girls” as an insult won’t win you many points around here.

• [thebelgianpanda]

  personally i feel really, really bad for the individuals who broke into hbgary. from the looks of it like they used a socially engineered attack along with a sql injection attack, then moved laterally among systems. unless they were very, very, very good there are going to be traces (even say network log files from respective ISP’s for example, even if they trashed all the compromised servers) of their activity. they are gonna get caught, and they are going to be made an example.

  • [bersl2]

    7 proxies

    • [thebelgianpanda]

      considering that even Tor has had subtle vulnerabilities over the years that could potentially allow a user to be discovered (from what i recall from a defcon a couple years back), seven proxies aren’t enough. all i’m getting at is actually being anonymous on the internet is really hard, and if Stuxnet showed one thing it’s that there are some very smart, very good security people working with our government.

• [travtastic]

  So is the server hiccuping, or are we deleting comments now?

  • [Antinous / Moderator]

    Did you not read my comment at #37?

    • [travtastic]

      But anyway. I don’t like using names for groups of people to debase others. I don’t really care about the exact definition of fascism, or arguments over which slightly-modified definition is the correct one.

      But I do think Glenn’s story is important here. People need to know what to expect when dealing with powerful interests. Fair play is not going to be involved, and we probably shouldn’t treat every comment or opinion as an honest one. Not when powerful people are on the defensive.

    • [travtastic]

      No, not while I was busy commenting as you were posting it. I wouldn’t really consider myself a squabbler, consider that was the first thing I’ve said, and I wasn’t injecting any angst or personal grievances into the matter.

• [UncaScrooge]

  The word Fascism has now no meaning except in so far as it signifies “something not desirable.”

  – George Orwell

• [BB]

  I couldn’t agree more with him more. If I had religion, I’d say “Amen, brother”.

  • [BB]

    I couldn’t agree more with him. That almost sounds like English now, yeesh.

• [alllie]

  What to do?

  With the Republicans in control, forget changing the law to punish this kind of thing. But some years ago a Republican pulled something similar on a writer. It was described in The Greatest Vendetta on Earth on salon. The writer was informed when some of the conspirators fell out with each other. She sued and got a settlement.

  At the very least Greenwald should sue.

  • [travtastic]

    “What to do?” is right.

    The real problem is that the old dinosaurs of the world are finally waking up to the idea of using asymmetric warfare in the PR realm, something we’re used to just seeing the little people do.

    It’s ridiculous and ham-handed now, for sure. But it’s only going to get harder and harder to distill some truth from news and opinion as time goes on.

  • [travtastic]

    BBC News: China’s internet ‘spin doctors’