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Meet Telecomix, The Hackers Bent On Exposing Those Who Censor And Surveil
The Internet
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/12/26/meet-telecomix-the-hack
ers-bent-on-exposing-those-who-censor-and-surveil-the-internet/2/
Hack the planet: Once focused on Sweden, Telecomix's hacktivists have been
expanding their international membership-and their targets. (credit: Nicky
Bonne for Forbes.)
One morning in mid-August, seven months into the Arab Spring protests and
government crackdowns in which thousands have been killed, something strange
happened on Syria's Internet. As users aimed their Web browsers at Google
and Facebook, they instead saw a page of white Arabic script scrawled across
a black background.
"This is a deliberate, temporary Internet breakdown. Please read carefully
and spread the following message," it read. "Your Internet activity is
monitored."
Then the page switched to a white screen filled with instructions on using
free encryption and anonymity software like Tor and TrueCrypt to evade
surveillance and censorship. Emblazoned above the text was a round,
mysterious symbol: a star inside an omega, hovering over a pyramid
surrounded by lightning bolts. Below it were written the words: "This is
Telecomix. We come in peace."
Telecomix, a loose-knit team of international hacktivists, had been scanning
the Syrian Internet in a massive sweep, dividing 700,000 target connections
among its members in Germany, France and the U.S., probing for hackable
devices with software tools like Nmap and Shodan. They compromised
vulnerable Cisco Systems-produced network switches to find other devices'
passwords, snooped on open cameras revealing street scenes and even
officials' desks, and at one point retrieved the log-in credentials for
5,000 unsecured home routers, which they used to insert the surveillance
warning (shown below) into browsers across the country.
As the globally-distributed hackers combed Syria's networks and posted their
findings in a crowd-sourced document, one American member of the group, who
uses the handle Punkbob, spotted a Windows FTP server filled with data he
recognized: logs from a Proxy SG 9000 appliance built by the Sunnyvale,
Calif.-based company Blue Coat Systems. In Punkbob's day job at a Pentagon
contractor, he says, the same equipment had been used to intercept traffic
to filter and track staff behavior. The Syrian machine's logs showed the
Internet activity of thousands of users, connecting the sites they attempted
to visit and every word of their communications with the IP addresses that
pointed directly to their homes. In short, he had discovered American
technology being used to help a brutal dictatorship spy on its citizens.
"At first we were just poking around, but when I saw that, I had this
feeling of dread," says Punkbob, who requested that Forbes not use his real
name. "To see exactly what Syria was tracking and who was providing the
technology to do it..That was when it felt real."
Since Telecomix published 54 gigabytes of those logs, the resulting
attention has forced Blue Coat to admit that its gear had been used by
Syria, a potential violation of international sanctions against that
country. The company didn't respond to Forbes' request for an interview,
citing an ongoing internal review and a related Commerce Department probe.
(Note that the investigation didn't deter private equity firm Thoma Bravo
and the Ontario Teachers Pension Plan from a recent deal to take Blue Coat
private for $1.3 billion.) The disclosure of Blue Coat's gear in Syria has
touched off revelations that hardware from other U.S. firms, including
NetApp and HP, was also used by blacklisted regimes. The industry now faces
tough new questions about tech firms' responsibility for how their products
are deployed-and by whom.
Telecomix sees its Blue Coat discovery as a turning point in the group's
mission: Founded to fight for free speech, it now aims to also expose those
who fight against that ideal, including any Western tech firm aiding the
wrong side. "I hope that the Blue Coat thing was the start of something much
bigger," says Chris Kullenberg, a lean and lip-pierced Swedish political
science grad student at the University of Gothenburg and a Telecomix
founder. "The goal is to put political pressure on these companies. It
started with rage and frustration. What can we do? Well, we can hack a few
boxes and expose this to the world. That's the motivation that drives
hackers deeper and deeper into the networks."
Telecomix's hackers broke into 5,000 Syrian home routers and set them to
show users this warning Web page about government surveillance. (Click to
enlarge.)
Telecomix likely broke Syrian law. But some more traditional activists
appreciate their work. "It crosses a line we wouldn't be comfortable
crossing," says Brett Solomon, president of the digital human rights group
Access Now. "But sometimes it takes someone like Telecomix to put a spanner
in the works."
Actively hacking networks is a new game for Telecomix's Web revolutionaries.
But unlike the hacker group Anonymous, which began with juvenile pranks
before attacking Scientologists, opponents of WikiLeaks and defense
contractors, Telecomix was born political. The group was created at a
Gothenburg conference in 2009 to oppose the European Union's so-called
Telecoms Package, industry-influenced laws that would have cut Internet
access for anyone repeatedly downloading copyrighted files. "In a sense,
corporations have always been the enemy," says Kullenberg.
The hackers dug up and published the phone numbers of every EU Parliament
member, then convinced the copyright-flouting Swedish download site the
Pirate Bay to post a link on its home page. At the time, the site received
20 million monthly visitors. The Parliament's phones were jammed for days,
and the statute was eventually dropped.
After that initial victory, the group's pseudonymous chatrooms slowly filled
with likeminded hacktivists, and a strange, Internet meme-laden culture
developed around them: Telecomix members call each other "agents" or
"Internauts." Its symbols, like the one shown on the Syrian warning message,
integrate obscure socialist, technological and pirate icons. Ask them to
identify the group's leader, and they'll name Cameron, an interactive
artificial intelligence bot that they've designed to read and learn from
their chatroom conversations and respond to questions. ("His commands are
fuzzy," admits Icelandic Telecomix agent Smari McCarthy. When I type a
question to Cameron asking it to tell me Telecomix's mission, for instance,
it responds, "The mission is Christmas?")
Bizarre sense of humor aside, the group remains serious about its work; The
populist uprisings of the Arab Spring have only brought its goals-and its
enemies-into sharper focus. A few days into the January 25 protests in Egypt
Hosni Mubarak shut down all but one of his country's Internet service
providers. "Telecomix members consider themselves citizens of the Internet,"
says one American Telecomixhacker who goes by the nickname the Doctor. "So
we took that as a personal affront."
Agents arranged with the hacker-friendly Internet provider French Data
Network to fire up modem banks and give users free dial-up connections. Then
the group faxed thousands of leaflets to Egyptian universities, offices and
cybercafes, explaining how to skirt the blackout.
Hacktivist gear: a one-handed keyboard, mini-PC and Linux phone with a
Telecomix decal. (credit: Nicky Bonne for Forbes.)
Soon Telecomix' chatrooms became a kind of dissident IT support helpline,
with Middle Eastern activists appearing on its IRC channels to ask for
advice about securing their connections or avoiding surveillance.
Increasingly, they came from Syria, many bringing graphic videos and
pictures of police violence they wanted Telecomix's agents to help them
distribute.
Telecomix's scanning of the Syrian Net began as reconnaissance to prepare
for an Egypt-style Internet shutdown. Stumbling onto the Blue Coat logs was
a fateful fluke. When the hackers realized what they'd found, they
downloaded close to 100 gigabytes of data, using the Tor anonymization
network to cover their tracks, a process that took weeks over Syria's thin
bandwidth.
In October Telecomix released hundreds of millions of lines of text listing
hundreds of sites the Syrian government was blocking, from porn to Facebook
to Chatroulette, along with enough users' communication logs to show that
the regime was using their Blue Coat gear to not only filter but also
monitor dissidents' activities. Blue Coat's scandal demonstrates the
complexity of regulating surveillance technology. The firm claims it hadn't
known about its devices in Syria, arguing they must have found their way
into the country through a reseller in the United Arab Emirates.
"Blue Coat is mindful of the violence in Syria and is saddened by the human
suffering and loss of human life that may be the result of actions by a
repressive regime," it wrote in a statement. "We don't want our productsto
be used by the government of Syria or any other country embargoed by the
United States." But critics like cryptography guru Bruce Schneier and Tor
developer Jacob Appelbaum point out that Blue Coat devices link back to its
servers for licensing and updates, implying the company may have turned a
blind eye to its Syrian users.
Some Telecomix agents say they've also spotted equipment sold by Fortinet in
Syria. Fortinet responds that it "has in place a policy prohibiting shipping
its product to countries where shipment is embargoed." And what about
resellers who pass it on to those countries? "At that point it's out of our
hands," a spokesperson says.
In some cases, companies have argued that the line between ethical and
unethical use of their products is simply too blurry to distinguish. Cisco,
whose network switches Telecomix identified in Syria, was previously hauled
before Congress in 2008 after a leaked PowerPoint suggested it pitched
Chinese police on using its equipment to track members of the banned Falun
Gong regime."Cisco's routers and switches include basic features that are
essential to the fundamental operation of the Internet by blocking hackers
from interrupting Internet services and protecting users from viruses,"
Cisco's General Counsel told a Senate Subcommittee on human rights in 2008.
He denied the PowerPoint represented company policy, but conceded that
"those same basic features - without which the Internet could not function
effectively-can unfortunately be used by network administrators for
censorship purposes.
Hazy as the line may be, it's clear some companies have crossed it.
Marketing documents published by WikiLeaks show 160 firms advertising
surveillance gear, often in Arabic as well as English. British firm Gamma
International brags that it can spy on users of Gmail, Skype and iTunes; its
sales pitch was found in the files of the Egyptian government after Mubarak
fled.
Telecomix is determined to remain a watchdog against Western firms aiding
foreign Big Brothers. Two Swedish members, Chris Kullenberg and Jonatan
Walck, have registered a site called Internaut.cat where they plan to
publish future disclosures of the group's findings, using Sweden's strong
media laws to shield their sources." We're at a point now where Internet
users are becoming aware of what's being done to them," says the Doctor.
"Companies that sell gear designed to track people should expect to be
outed."
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Obama administration is planning a second-term-attack-on-gun-rights
Obama administration officials are deliberately keeping gun owners in the dark about the president's gun-control agenda as we head into next year's national election, because administration officials know that when NRA members and gun owners show up at the polls en masse, anti-gun candidates lose.
The Obama campaign's strategy goes like this:
- Neutralize gun owners and NRA members as a political force in the upcoming national election by pretending to be pro-gun or at least not focused on pushing a gun-control agenda;
- With gun owners neutralized, Obama will be able to win the election. After the president is re-elected, he won't have to answer to voters because he won't have to face another re-election battle;
- Launch a full-scale, all-out assault to rip the Second Amendment out of the Bill of Rights through legislation, litigation, regulation, executive orders and international treaties — in short, every lever of power at the administration's disposal.
Barack Obama spent his entire political career proudly and publicly pushing for the most radical anti-gun positions you can imagine. He endorsed a total ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of handguns. He opposed right-to-carry laws. He voted to ban nearly all commonly used hunting-rifle ammunition.
During the presidential primary debates, Obama even vowed to re-impose the discredited Clinton gun ban, which banned many commonly owned firearms used for hunting and self-defense.
Obama hasn't had a sudden change of heart; rather, he's making a purely political calculation by staying quiet on the gun issue until the time is right. In the meantime, he's gearing up for his second-term assault on the Second Amendment in a number of ways.
Just consider …
- Obama loaded his administration with anti-gun zealots bent on destroying our Second Amendment freedoms.
- With the help of his secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, Obama made the U.S. an active partner to the U.N. gun-ban treaty. The U.N. will unveil this unmitigated attack on our sovereignty this summer and the Obama administration has vowed to implement it.
- Obama appointed two anti-Second Amendment Supreme Court justices and continues to flood our lower courts with dozens of anti-gun, activist judges.
- With the help of his attorney general, Eric Holder, Obama led a campaign to demonize law-abiding gun owners, claiming our Second Amendment rights were to blame for drug violence in Mexico. And in fact, emails recently released by the Justice Department prove that operation "Fast and Furious" was a deliberate attempt to build the case for a gun-control agenda.
- Obama unilaterally imposed gun registration in four border states — requiring gun dealers to register the sales of any law-abiding citizen who purchases more than one semi-automatic rifle within one week.
It isn't hard to see the writing on the wall. The actions that President Obama has taken so far in his presidency clearly show his disdain for the Second Amendment and hint at his plan to gut our firearm freedoms in his second term.
But the key to President Obama's strategy is keeping gun owners complacent for now.
After all, Obama knows what happened in 1994, when the politicians who voted for Clinton's gun ban were swept out of Congress. Even Clinton admitted the NRA was the reason Democrats lost their 40-year lock on control of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Obama saw what happened in 2000, when Al Gore built his campaign on a platform of gun control and then watched as the NRA and gun owners derailed Gore in the battleground states of Arkansas, West Virginia and even his home state of Tennessee — costing him the White House.
Obama administration officials know that it's good politics to avoid making gun control a public issue. They hope that they can lull gun owners into a false sense of security and then play us for fools in the 2012 election. NRA members, gun owners and liberty-minded Americans should not be fooled. Next year's presidential election will be a referendum on our freedom.
Wayne LaPierre is the executive vice president and chief executive officer of the National Rifle Association of America.
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" This is unconscionable and unscrupulous special interest legislation to benefit the cry baby Johnny-come-lately Republican presidential candidates. The Commonwealth of Virginia had ballot requirement qualifications clearly set in statutory law. Romney and Paul abided by this law and met those qualifications. These other cry baby presidential candidates did not. They should be made to suffer the consequences of poor planning and inept campaign organization. State ballot qualifications should not be based on whether a candidate has met qualifications for federal matching funds. Such funds are unconstitutional." -- Charles Burris
We'll all sing it tonight, but many of us don't know the words to:~ Auld Lang Syne ~As the clock strikes midnight and The Ball comes down tonight, many of us will be holding hands and belting out Auld Lang Syne. But very few of us actually know the words to this most popular New Year's Eve song. Nor do we know what the lyrics mean. Auld Lang Syne was written by Robert Burns and adapted, long ago, into an old Scots ballad where the words were set to a traditional folk tune. The title means "old long since," and the poem speaks of people and memories of times gone by. That is why we also sing it at farewell and birthday celebrations. Robert Burns is known to be quite sentimental. He had a frequent saying which was, 'I drink to the hope that the friends of youth may be companions in old age'. Thus, the elements of this New Year's song is friendship, memories and drink to celebrate it. Following are the original lyrics. Below that is a modern English translation: Burns Original Auld Lang Syne lyrics Chorus. Standard English Translation Old Long Past HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL! Nena Happy New Year - Auld Lang Syne by Sissel (Live).wmv - YouTube (Go full screen, full speakers)
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Get ready to shrink the drone war. The Army and Marine Corps' medium-sized spy drones may soon become killers, thanks to a successful flight test by a mini-drone strapped with a 12-pound bomb.
Raytheon, the defense giant, has been working since 2009 on what it calls a Small Tactical Munition — as the name suggests, it's a bomb tiny enough to attach onto the military's fleet of small to medium drones like the Shadow. Weighing 12 pounds and standing 22 inches, the guided munition has the potential to expand the drone war dramatically, giving battalion-sized units that fly small drones the ability to kill people, like the remote pilots who fly the iconic Predators and Reapers do.
Now Raytheon announces that on Sept. 16, a Cobra drone (the company's in-house equivalent of a Shadow) flew over the Yuma Proving Ground in Arizona carrying the latest, lightest, smallest model of the Small Tactical Munition for the first time. The flight lasted an hour. It didn't actually fire the munition at a target. (You'll notice there are no fins on the missile, pictured above, although the design includes fold-up fins.)
Even though the munition is still a ways away from actually being used by the Marines — whose request to weaponize the Shadow has prompted these tests — it's the latest milestone for the ongoing trend of miniaturizing killer drones. And there are many paths in development for micro-killers. A California company called Arcturus has built its own small, 17-foot drone that it claims can fire a 10-pound missile called the Saber. More recently, the industry leader in miniature drones, AeroVironment, rolled out an alternative model for small armed drones. Its diminutive hybrid of drone and missile, called the Switchblade, is designed to be carried in a soldier's backpack until it's launched into the sky on a kamikaze mission. Yet another design is to launch a deadly mini-drone from inside a larger drone, Russian-doll style.
The Small Tactical Munition keeps it simple. It's designed to be carried by AAI's Shadow — which means that it's not using a boutique or unfamiliar model for shrinking the drone war. It would instead put a tiny missile on proven drones that the Army already possesses. While a Predator is about 27 feet long, with a 55-foot wingspan, a Shadow is smaller than 12 feet long, with a 20-foot wingspan.
But it's about more than just shrinking the drone war. A battalion that uses a Shadow for aerial surveillance might not have to rely on higher headquarters — or its Air Force partners — for close air support if it can strap a bomb the size of a dumbbell to the wings of its drone. That could mean a big change in small-unit autonomy and tactics.
But the Army and the Marine Corps have been working to weaponize the Shadow since 2008, and nothing's gotten out of the testing stage so far. The Air Force has its own fleet of ever-tinier drones,some even shaped like insects. If Raytheon can sell the military on its mini-bomb — especially considering that the cash-strapped military is going to be hard up for major new weapons purchases — it may only be a matter of time before the makers of killer drones start thinking even smaller.
Photo: Raytheon
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| BruceMajors has shared a video with you on YouTube: "Reason Returns to Boston University" Liberty at Boston University hosted this presentation by Nick Gillespie, editor in chief of Reason.tv and Reason.com, on Nov. 15, 2011. Nick discussed themes from his new book, "The Declaration of Independents: How Libertarian Politics Can Fix What's Wrong With America," which he coauthored with Matt Welch, editor in chief of Reason magazine. BU student Lanny Friedlander founded Reason magazine in 1968. The magazine has since become an award-winning publication with a circulation of 40,000. Nick served as Reason's editor in chief from 2000 to 2008. | |
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Why Conservatives Should Support Ron Paul
Friday, 30 December 2011 11:33
Dennis Behreandt
As Ron Paul has surged over recent weeks becoming a front-runner for the Republican nomination despite mainstream attempts to derail his growing popularity, among some conservatives, concern is growing.
Specifically, among those conservatives most concerned with foreign policy, Ron Paul is viewed with skepticism, if not disdain. Support for the Texas congressman, they say, will mean weakening America's position in the world, leaving Israel weak and undefended, and giving Iran a free hand to go nuclear. On the basis of these concerns, Paul's conservative critics say, he would be bad, and possibly dangerous, for the country as president.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Not only would a Ron Paul presidency help the country become economically stronger and militarily more secure, it would reinvigorate the conservative cause.
To begin, it is necessary to put Ron Paul and the movement that supports him into context vis-a-vis the modern conservative movement at large. Much continues to be made of Ron Paul as a libertarian rather than a conservative. But while there may be some utility in considering Paul and his supporters as libertarian, for some certainly are, it is more useful to consider Paul an outgrowth, or an example of, American orthodoxy.
There is a subtle but important difference between an orthodox political movement and a conservative political movement. In a broad sense, those of a conservative mindset seek to save and preserve institutions because they view those institutions as having demonstrated some utilitarian value to culture and society simply by the virtue of their existence. This was a theme explored by historian Jerry Z. Muller of the Catholic University of America in the introduction to his book Conservatism: An Anthology of Social and Political Thought from David Hume to the Present.
According to Muller, "The conservative defends existing institutions because their very existence creates a presumption that they have served some useful function, because eliminating them may lead to harmful, unintended consequences, or because the veneration which attaches to institutions that have existed over time makes them potentially usable for new purposes."
Because existing institutions vary from nation to nation, conservatism likewise varies from nation to nation. As a result, conservatives have sought to save and preserve many things over the years in many countries. Soviet conservatives sought to preserve Soviet institutions, for example. An American conservative would look askance, for instance at an attempt to paint the Soviet planning agency GOSPLAN as a vital and important institution as it would violate the tenets of free enterprise most American conservatives hold dear. Yet it would not be surprising to find that a Soviet conservative might think that GOSPLAN should have been preserved.
In the United States, the institutions that tend to be of interest to conservatives are of broadly two types. The first are those explicitly created by the charter of government that brought the nation into being. Therefore, American conservatism tends to be supportive of the separation of powers among the branches of government. As a consequence of this, for example, American conservatives often lament the prospect of judicial tyranny or the tendency of modern presidents to rule by executive order, which many see as infringing upon and diminishing the Constitutional role of Congress. This also explains the seemingly contradictory position some conservatives take of actually supporting the idea of a powerful, unitary executive as they see the Hamiltonian ideas of a more powerful presidency as of central importance.
Second, American conservatives have generally been supportive of the cultural institutions that they see as existing prior to the state. Among these are defense of traditional values, defense of the family, and defense of the idea of the common law. In both areas among conservatives these things are valued primarily for their utility. Because they exist, they must therefor perform a useful function and we tamper with them at our own risk.
In contrast to the conservative point of view, the orthodox outlook says that a given institution exists because it is in alignment with a transcendental truth. Says Professor Muller: "...the orthodox defense of institutions depends on belief in their correspondence to some ultimate truth.... The orthodox theoretician defends existing institutions and practices because they are metaphysically true: the truth proclaimed may be based on particular revelation or on natural laws purportedly accessible to all rational men...."
It is from this latter point of view that we must understand the phenomenon of Ron Paul. In the introduction to his book Liberty Defined, Paul places himself firmly within the orthodox American tradition by acknowledging that he believes in natural rights that precede the foundations of government. He writes: "The definition of liberty I use is the same one that was accepted by Thomas Jefferson and his generation. It is the understanding derived from the great freedom tradition, for Jefferson himself took his understanding from John Locke (1632-1704)." Put succinctly by Jefferson, this is the idea "that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness." These are, to put it as Muller did, "natural and accessible by all rational men."
There is a substantial nexus between the orthodox American point of view represented by Ron Paul and the modern American conservative movement. The orthodox view holds that the rights enjoyed by individuals, including to live, to build a family, to own property, to speak one's mind, to associate with whom one wishes, etc., are inviolate and that governments lack any legitimate interest in legislating in these areas. Meanwhile, the conservative simply sees the outcomes of the exercise of these rights as the institutions (the family, for instance) as worth protecting because of its utility. But both the orthodox American and the conservative American can agree on the value of the family and other such institutions. Moreover, the explicit political institutions brought into being during the founding era were created largely by orthodox American thinkers. In defending these institutions because they now exist conservatives find themselves in agreement with orthodox Americanists who defend them because in their view it is morally right that they existed in their proper form in the first place.
Because there is a nexus of interests between the American orthodox outlook and the conservative outlook, there should be a natural affinity between the two. And while this has not necessarily been the case at least since the 1950s, with both sides tending to look askance at one another, the opportunity now exists for the two movements to work together for the same goals. Consider some of the outcomes that are possible:
Foreign Affairs: Conservatives want the United States to be the preeminent power in the world, both economically and militarily. The orthodox position cares nothing for this as a goal in and of itself. Nonetheless, the orthodox Americanist approach naturally creates conditions wherein the United States must be the preeminent military and economic power. The orthodox position is to call for the shrinkage of government down to Constitutionally authorized levels (thus Ron Paul's plan to eliminate five cabinet departments). The shrinkage of government means the government will need to tax less and inflate the money supply to a lesser degree, leaving vastly more money in the pockets of Americans, supercharging the free enterprise system by leaving property in the hands of its rightful owners. Under such conditions the U.S. will dominate the world economically because all other nations will have, by comparison, larger and more intrusive governments that disrupt their economies.
Military Strength: Counterintuitively, Ron Paul's desire to bring troops home would improve the U.S. military's capabilities. Currently, with large deployments abroad, both men and material tire and wear out. There are obvious costs involved with regard to the necessary health care and maintenance this requires. Less obviously, budgets for new and improved types of equipment come under fire as the maintenance cost of keeping expeditionary forces in the field grow. Over time this leads to a military with decreased war-making ability. It is easy to see this starting to play out in the U.S. military. Warships are increasingly old and are not being replaced. Frontline aircraft face similar pressures. We currently fight with F-15s, F-16s, and F-18s, all featuring designs dating to the 1960s. The B-52 bomber is older still, a remnant of the 1950s. Ending deployments abroad, or at least being much smarter about them, would free up money in the budget for badly needed equipment upgrades and replacements. The result would be a stronger and more effective U.S. military that is not stretched so thin by being deployed all over the world.
Israel: Where does a much less interventionist foreign policy leave Israel? Concern for the Jewish state is particularly prevalent among conservatives who view it as a bastion of Judeo-Christian civilization surrounded and threatened by aggressive theocratic and dictatorial neighbors. A Ron Paul presidency would mean the abandonment of Israel, according to some conservatives. And it would mean, according to most of the same conservatives, that Iran gets the bomb. Would this mean that Iran would then attack Israel with its new nuclear weapon? While no one can predict the future, this seems unlikely. Even under a Ron Paul presidency there is no reasonable likelihood that the United States would stop trading freely with Israel. That means that the Israeli government, already the most advanced and powerful in the region, would continue to hold military supremacy in the Middle East. Moreover, because meddling in other country's affairs is no part of the orthodox American program that would be instituted under a Paul presidency, Israel would be freed from constraints that currently hold it back from pursuing whatever national agenda it wishes. This would largely end the charade orchestrated from Washington that keeps the idea of a Palestinian state alive and would completely free Israel to act in its own defense. Under a Paul presidency the likelihood of an Israeli preemptive strike on Iranian nuclear installation becomes much greater. In the long-run, it is likely that the Mideast will be stabilized under a Paul presidency and Israel will find its position strengthened.
Domestic Affairs: What conservative wouldn't want to see the size of the American welfare state radically decreased? Only under Ron Paul would the Executive Branch bring pressure to bear on Congress to roll back our omnipresent government. Just ask, which among the other Republican candidates both has expressed a desire to cut the size of government and has a record of actually opposing federal expansion? There's only Ron Paul. The idea that a Gingrich or a Romney would do so is laughable.
Only Ron Paul can win: There is a lot of talk about who can beat Obama. Michael Savage thinks only Romney can do it, which is a patently ridiculous position for a conservative to take. Romney only claims a fraction of support from some conservatives. There is no way he is going to get additional support from independents who rightly will see that he is simply a Republican version of Obama. We already had a Republican version of Obama in the White House in the form of George Bush II. Romney will never have enough support to beat Obama. As for Gingrich, he's even less likable than Romney. There's no need to go into his downsides here, they have been adequately covered everywhere for the last two decades (currently there are 6,800,000 results in Google for the search " Newt Gingrich scandal". Simply put, he is far too polarizing to win. As for the other Republican candidates, they have failed to demonstrate an adequate command of the issues to win. They simply will never have a chance against Obama, who even conservatives must admit is a formidable campaigner who now also wields the advantage of being the incumbent.
But Ron Paul can win. He has all the advantages the others lack. He is, for instance, quite clearly an alternative to the present liberal democratic ascendency in both parties. His orthodox Americanism is a clear distinction. If Americans truly want a different approach, his is the only option. As for support, Paul has a core of supporters that are passionate, nationwide, intelligent, and vocal. This is a firm foundation for running a strong campaign. Now, consider if the mainstream conservative movement puts its considerable weight into supporting Paul -- this would build a coalition that would unite libertarians, mainstream Republicans, those defined here as orthodox Americans, and a large proportion of independents who are now disillusioned with President Obama who they once supported.
Such a coalition would put Paul in the White House, perhaps in a landslide. Afterwords, it would set America on the road to renewed economic strength and would advance most, if not all, the goals conservatives seek.
The truth is, come November, only Ron Paul can win. The question is, will conservatives have the courage and foresight to support him?
http://www.americandailyherald.com/201112301123/publisher-s-corner/why-conservatives-should-support-ron-paul
Saturday, Dec 31, 2011 11:15 AM Eastern Standard Time
Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies
By Glenn Greenwald
As I've written about before, America's election season degrades mainstream political discourse even beyond its usual lowly state. The worst attributes of our political culture obsession with trivialities, the dominance of horserace "reporting," and mindless partisan loyalties become more pronounced than ever. Meanwhile, the actually consequential acts of the U.S. Government and the permanent power factions that control it covert endless wars, consolidation of unchecked power, the rapid growth of the Surveillance State and the secrecy regime, massive inequalities in the legal system, continuous transfers of wealth from the disappearing middle class to large corporate conglomerates drone on with even less attention paid than usual.
Because most of those policies are fully bipartisan in nature, the election season in which only issues that bestow partisan advantage receive attention places them even further outside the realm of mainstream debate and scrutiny. For that reason, America's elections ironically serve to obsfuscate political reality even more than it usually is.
This would all be bad enough if "election season" were confined to a few months the way it is in most civilized countries. But in America, the fixation on presidential elections takes hold at least eighteen months before the actual election occurs, which means that more than 1/3 of a President's term is conducted in the midst of (and is obscured by) the petty circus distractions of The Campaign. Thus, an unauthorized, potentially devastating covert war both hot and cold against Iran can be waged with virtually no debate, just as government control over the Internet can be inexorably advanced, because TV political shows are busy chattering away about Michele Bachmann's latest gaffe and minute changes in Rick Perry's polling numbers.
Then there's the full-scale sacrifice of intellectual honesty and political independence at the altar of tongue-wagging partisan loyalty. The very same people who in 2004 wildly cheered John Kerry husband of the billionaire heiress-widow Teresa Heinz Kerry spent all of 2008 mocking John McCain's wealthy life courtesy of his millionaire heiress wife and will spend 2012 depicting Mitt Romney's wealth as proof of his insularity; conversely, the same people who relentlessly mocked Kerry in 2004 as a kept girly-man and gigolo for living off his wife's wealth spent 2008 venerating McCain as the Paragon of Manly Honor.
That combat experience is an important presidential trait was insisted upon in 2004 by the very same people who vehemently denied it in 2008, and vice-versa. Long-time associations with controversial figures and inflammatory statements from decades ago either matter or they don't depending on whom it hurts, etc. etc. During election season, even the pretense of consistency is proudly dispensed with; listening to these empty electioneering screeching matches for any period of time can generate the desire to jump off the nearest bridge to escape it.
Then there's the inability and/or refusal to recognize that a political discussion might exist independent of the Red v. Blue Cage Match. Thus, any critique of the President's exercise of vast power (an adversarial check on which our political system depends) immediately prompts bafflement (I don't understand the point: would Rick Perry be any better?) or grievance (you're helping Mitt Romney by talking about this!!). The premise takes hold for a full 18 months increasing each day in intensity until Election Day that every discussion of the President's actions must be driven solely by one's preference for election outcomes (if you support the President's re-election, then why criticize him?).
Worse still is the embrace of George W. Bush's with-us-or-against-us mentality as the prism through which all political discussions are filtered. It's literally impossible to discuss any of the candidates' positions without having the simple-minded who see all political issues exclusively as a Manichean struggle between the Big Bad Democrats and Good Kind Republicans or vice-versa misapprehend "I agree with Candidate X's position on Y" as "I support Candidate X for President" or "I disagree with Candidate X's position on Y" as "I oppose Candidate X for President." Even worse are the lying partisan enforcers who, like the Inquisitor Generals searching for any inkling of heresy, purposely distort any discrete praise for the Enemy as a general endorsement.
So potent is this poison that no inoculation against it exists. No matter how expressly you repudiate the distortions in advance, they will freely flow. Hence: I'm about to discuss the candidacies of Barack Obama and Ron Paul, and no matter how many times I say that I am not "endorsing" or expressing supporting for anyone's candidacy, the simple-minded Manicheans and the lying partisan enforcers will claim the opposite. But since it's always inadvisable to refrain from expressing ideas in deference to the confusion and deceit of the lowest elements, I'm going to proceed to make a couple of important points about both candidacies even knowing in advance how wildly they will be distorted.
* * * * *
The Ron Paul candidacy, for so many reasons, spawns pervasive political confusion both unintended and deliberate. Yesterday, The Nation's long-time liberal publisher, Katrina vanden Heuvel, wrote this on Twitter:
![[]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cm9-zsT0Gvc/Tv7-CcDTGsI/AAAAAAAAAf8/8IoWnEk53Xs/s1600/paul.png)
That's fairly remarkable: here's the Publisher of The Nation praising Ron Paul not on ancillary political topics but central ones ("ending preemptive wars & challenging bipartisan elite consensus" on foreign policy), and going even further and expressing general happiness that he's in the presidential race. Despite this observation, Katrina vanden Heuvel needless to say does not support and will never vote for Ron Paul (indeed, in subsequent tweets, she condemned his newsletters as "despicable"). But the point that she's making is important, if not too subtle for the with-us-or-against-us ethos that dominates the protracted presidential campaign: even though I don't support him for President, Ron Paul is the only major candidate from either party advocating crucial views on vital issues that need to be heard, and so his candidacy generates important benefits.
Whatever else one wants to say, it is indisputably true that Ron Paul is the only political figure with any sort of a national platform certainly the only major presidential candidate in either party who advocates policy views on issues that liberals and progressives have long flamboyantly claimed are both compelling and crucial. The converse is equally true: the candidate supported by liberals and progressives and for whom most will vote Barack Obama advocates views on these issues (indeed, has taken action on these issues) that liberals and progressives have long claimed to find repellent, even evil.
As Matt Stoller argued in a genuinely brilliant essay on the history of progressivism and the Democratic Party which I cannot recommend highly enough: "the anger [Paul] inspires comes not from his positions, but from the tensions that modern American liberals bear within their own worldview." Ron Paul's candidacy is a mirror held up in front of the face of America's Democratic Party and its progressive wing, and the image that is reflected is an ugly one; more to the point, it's one they do not want to see because it so violently conflicts with their desired self-perception.
The thing I loathe most about election season is reflected in the central fallacy that drives progressive discussion the minute "Ron Paul" is mentioned. As soon as his candidacy is discussed, progressives will reflexively point to a slew of positions he holds that are anathema to liberalism and odious in their own right and then say: how can you support someone who holds this awful, destructive position? The premise here the game that's being played is that if you can identify some heinous views that a certain candidate holds, then it means they are beyond the pale, that no Decent Person should even consider praising any part of their candidacy.
The fallacy in this reasoning is glaring. The candidate supported by progressives President Obama himself holds heinous views on a slew of critical issues and himself has done heinous things with the power he has been vested. He has slaughtered civilians Muslim children by the dozens not once or twice, but continuously in numerous nations with drones, cluster bombs and other forms of attack. He has sought to overturn a global ban on cluster bombs. He has institutionalized the power of Presidents in secret and with no checks to target American citizens for assassination-by-CIA, far from any battlefield. He has waged an unprecedented war against whistleblowers, the protection of which was once a liberal shibboleth. He rendered permanently irrelevant the War Powers Resolution, a crown jewel in the list of post-Vietnam liberal accomplishments, and thus enshrined the power of Presidents to wage war even in the face of a Congressional vote against it. His obsession with secrecy is so extreme that it has become darkly laughable in its manifestations, and he even worked to amend the Freedom of Information Act (another crown jewel of liberal legislative successes) when compliance became inconvenient.
He has entrenched for a generation the once-reviled, once-radical Bush/Cheney Terrorism powers of indefinite detention, military commissions, and the state secret privilege as a weapon to immunize political leaders from the rule of law. He has shielded Bush era criminals from every last form of accountability. He has vigorously prosecuted the cruel and supremely racist War on Drugs, including those parts he vowed during the campaign to relinquish a war which devastates minority communities and encages and converts into felons huge numbers of minority youth for no good reason. He has empowered thieving bankers through the Wall Street bailout, Fed secrecy, efforts to shield mortgage defrauders from prosecution, and the appointment of an endless roster of former Goldman, Sachs executives and lobbyists. He's brought the nation to a full-on Cold War and a covert hot war with Iran, on the brink of far greater hostilities. He has made the U.S. as subservient as ever to the destructive agenda of the right-wing Israeli government. His support for some of the Arab world's most repressive regimes is as strong as ever.
Most of all, America's National Security State, its Surveillance State, and its posture of endless war is more robust than ever before. The nation suffers from what National Journal's Michael Hirsh just christened "Obama's Romance with the CIA." He has created what The Washington Post just dubbed "a vast drone/killing operation," all behind an impenetrable wall of secrecy and without a shred of oversight. Obama's steadfast devotion to what Dana Priest and William Arkin called "Top Secret America" has severe domestic repercussions as well, building up vast debt and deficits in the name of militarism that create the pretext for the "austerity" measures which the Washington class ( including Obama) is plotting to impose on America's middle and lower classes.
The simple fact is that progressives are supporting a candidate for President who has done all of that things liberalism has long held to be pernicious. I know it's annoying and miserable to hear. Progressives like to think of themselves as the faction that stands for peace, opposes wars, believes in due process and civil liberties, distrusts the military-industrial complex, supports candidates who are devoted to individual rights, transparency and economic equality. All of these facts like the history laid out by Stoller in that essay negate that desired self-perception. These facts demonstrate that the leader progressives have empowered and will empower again has worked in direct opposition to those values and engaged in conduct that is nothing short of horrific. So there is an eagerness to avoid hearing about them, to pretend they don't exist. And there's a corresponding hostility toward those who point them out, who insist that they not be ignored.
The parallel reality the undeniable fact is that all of these listed heinous views and actions from Barack Obama have been vehemently opposed and condemned by Ron Paul: and among the major GOP candidates, only by Ron Paul. For that reason, Paul's candidacy forces progressives to face the hideous positions and actions of their candidate, of the person they want to empower for another four years. If Paul were not in the race or were not receiving attention, none of these issues would receive any attention because all the other major GOP candidates either agree with Obama on these matters or hold even worse views.
Progressives would feel much better about themselves, their Party and their candidate if they only had to oppose, say, Rick Perry or Michele Bachmann. That's because the standard GOP candidate agrees with Obama on many of these issues and is even worse on these others, so progressives can feel good about themselves for supporting Obama: his right-wing opponent is a warmonger, a servant to Wall Street, a neocon, a devotee of harsh and racist criminal justice policies, etc. etc. Paul scrambles the comfortable ideological and partisan categories and forces progressives to confront and account for the policies they are working to protect. His nomination would mean that it is the Republican candidate not the Democrat who would be the anti-war, pro-due-process, pro-transparency, anti-Fed, anti-Wall-Street-bailout, anti-Drug-War advocate (which is why some neocons are expressly arguing they'd vote for Obama over Paul). Is it really hard to see why Democrats hate his candidacy and anyone who touts its benefits?
It's perfectly rational and reasonable for progressives to decide that the evils of their candidate are outweighed by the evils of the GOP candidate, whether Ron Paul or anyone else. An honest line of reasoning in this regard would go as follows:
- Yes, I'm willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America's minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for "espionage," and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) in exchange for less severe cuts to Social Security, Medicare and other entitlement programs, the preservation of the Education and Energy Departments, more stringent environmental regulations, broader health care coverage, defense of reproductive rights for women, stronger enforcement of civil rights for America's minorities, a President with no associations with racist views in a newsletter, and a more progressive Supreme Court.
Paul's candidacy forces those truths about the Democratic Party to be confronted. More important way more important is that, as vanden Heuvel pointed out, he forces into the mainstream political discourse vital ideas that are otherwise completely excluded given that they are at odds with the bipartisan consensus.
There are very few political priorities, if there are any, more imperative than having an actual debate on issues of America's imperialism; the suffocating secrecy of its government; the destruction of civil liberties which uniquely targets Muslims, including American Muslims; the corrupt role of the Fed; corporate control of government institutions by the nation's oligarchs; its destructive blind support for Israel, and its failed and sadistic Drug War. More than anything, it's crucial that choice be given to the electorate by subverting the two parties' full-scale embrace of these hideous programs.
I wish there were someone who did not have Ron Paul's substantial baggage to achieve this. Before Paul announced his candidacy, I expressed hope in an Out Magazine profile that Gary Johnson would run for President and be the standard-bearer for these views, in the process scrambling bipartisan stasis on these questions. I did that not because I was endorsing his candidacy (as some low-level Democratic Party operative dishonestly tried to claim), but because, as a popular two-term Governor of New Mexico free of Paul's disturbing history and associations, he seemed to me well-suited to force these debates to be had. But alas, Paul decided to run again, and Johnson for reasons still very unclear was forcibly excluded from media debates and rendered a non-person. Since then, Paul's handling of the very legitimate questions surrounding those rancid newsletters has been disappointing in the extreme, and that has only served to obscure these vital debates and severely dilute the discourse-enhancing benefits of his candidacy.
* * * * *
Still, for better or worse, Paul alone among the national figures in both parties is able and willing to advocate views that Americans urgently need to hear. That he is doing so within the Republican Party makes it all the more significant. This is why Paul has been the chosen ally of key liberal House members such as Alan Grayson (on Fed transparency and corruption), Barney Frank (to arrest the excesses of the Drug War) and Dennis Kucinich (on a wide array of foreign policy and civil liberties issues). Just judge for yourself: consider some of what Ron Paul is advocating on vital issues not secondary issues, but ones progressives have long insisted are paramount and ask how else these debates will be had and who else will advocate these views:
Endless War and Terrorism
This entire four-minute Cenk Uygur discussion from last week about Paul's candidacy is worthwhile, but if nothing else, watch the amazing ad about American wars and Terrorism from Ron Paul's campaign which Cenk features at the 2:50 mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=odlEuyDxAOk&feature=player_embedded
Due Process
Here's Paul condemning the due-process-free assassination of American citizens:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Md3-LaJfUL4&feature=player_embedded
The Drug War
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o8S8N2OG7sU&feature=player_embedded
Whistleblowers
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8pbSCT2SE6U
Drone assaults
![[]](http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XOsuWMzTvAU/Tv8bUAAaAyI/AAAAAAAAAgI/OZIXVwPOBjc/s1600/paul2.png)
Surveillance State: Opposing Patriot Act extension
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uAIqtwwUcBk&feature=player_embedded
U.S. policy toward Israel:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1t4O9CcZQ0&feature=player_embedded
Iran:
LA Times , yesterday:
![[]](http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-n5mCitoO_EM/Tv8dpvkwD9I/AAAAAAAAAgU/FM6mEpjT8O8/s1600/iran.png)
* * * * *
Can anyone deny that (a) those views desperately need to be heard and (b) they are not advocated or even supported by the Democratic Party and President Obama? There are, as I indicated, all sorts of legitimate reasons for progressives to oppose Ron Paul's candidacy on the whole. But if your only posture in the 2012 election is to demand lockstep marching behind Barack Obama and unqualified scorn for every other single candidate, then you are contributing to the continuation of these policies that liberalism has long claimed to detest, and bolstering the exclusion of these questions from mainstream debate.
If you're someone who is content with the Obama presidency and the numerous actions listed above; if you're someone who believes that things like Endless War, the Surveillance State, the Drug War, the sprawling secrecy regime, and the vast power of the Fed are merely minor, side issues that don't merit much concern (sure, like a stopped clock, Paul is right about a couple things); if you're someone who believes that the primary need for American politics is just to have some more Democrats in power, then lock-step marching behind Barack Obama for the next full year makes sense.
But if you don't believe those things, then you're going to be searching for ways to change mainstream political discourse and to disrupt the bipartisan consensus which shields these policies from all debate, let alone challenge. As imperfect a vehicle as it is, Ron Paul's candidacy his success within a Republican primary even as he unapologetically challenges these orthodoxies is one of the few games in town for achieving any of that (now that Johnson has left the GOP and will run as the Libertarian Party candidate, perhaps he can accomplish that as well). As Conor Friedersdorf put it in his excellent, and appropriately agonizing, analysis of the Paul candidacy and his newsletters:
- What I want Paul detractors to confront is that he alone, among viable candidates, favors reforming certain atrocious policies, including policies that explicitly target ethnic and religious minorities. And that, appalling as it is, every candidate in 2012 who has polled above 10 percent is complicit in some heinous policy or action or association. Paul's association with racist newsletters is a serious moral failing, and even so, it doesn't save us from making a fraught moral judgment about whether or not to support his candidacy, even if we're judging by the single metric of protecting racial or ethnic minority groups, because when it comes to America's most racist or racially fraught policies, Paul is arguably on the right side of all of them.
- His opponents are often on the wrong side, at least if you're someone who thinks that it's wrong to lock people up without due process or kill them in drone strikes or destabilize their countries by forcing a war on drug cartels even as American consumers ensure the strength of those cartels.
- His opponents are often on the wrong side, at least if you're someone who thinks that it's wrong to lock people up without due process or kill them in drone strikes or destabilize their countries by forcing a war on drug cartels even as American consumers ensure the strength of those cartels.
http://www.salon.com/2011/12/31/progressives_and_the_ron_paul_fallacies/singleton/
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