BillMoyers.com — Morning Reads: Blackwater Threatened US Investigator; Obama to Escalate on Southern Border

James Risen reports for the NYT that before a group of Blackwater (now known as Academi) security contractors slaughtered 17 Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, the State Department launched an investigation into the firm’s activities in Iraq, but the probe hit a dead end when Blackwater’s top manager in Iraq said “‘he could kill’ the government’s chief investigator and ‘no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq.’”

What does the United States have a military for, on which it spends more than the world combined when paramilitary and intelligence (black ops) is thrown in. This is really over the top.

BillMoyers.com
Morning Reads: Blackwater Threatened US Investigator
BillMoyers.com Staff

Kevin Zeese — Breaking News: Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan's Trial For Police Assault Postponed Again

I can't believe that this trumped-up charge is being taken seriously by the prosecutor. Apparently, the court may agree. Hopefully, this will eventually result in dismissal, followed by a successful suit against the city for damages. It's too bad that the buck doesn't stop at the top so that the major and police commissar at the time could be sued personally. 

By the way, is fascism even a crime in the US or the state of New York?

AlterNet
Breaking News: Occupy Activist Cecily McMillan's Trial For Police Assault Postponed Again
Kevin Zeese

Mark Karlin — When J. Edgar Hoover Lost and Freedom Won

Hoover's FBI the precursor of NSA and DHS? J. Edgar Hoover was no Lavrentiy Beria but presidents were still afraid of him. He is largely forgotten now, but he was a major political force in his day as a "grey eminence." "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" — George Santayana. This is definitely such a warning that is appropriate to remember today.

Truthout
When J. Edgar Hoover Lost and Freedom Won
Mark Karlin

Eric W. Dolan — Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at U.K. airport under terrorism law

David Miranda, the partner of Guardian columnist Glenn Greenwald, was detained Sunday morning by U.K. authorities in London’s Heathrow airport under the Terrorism Act, according to The Guardian.

The 28-year-old was released nine hours later without being charged, but some of his electronics were confiscated. Miranda was traveling from Berlin to Rio de Janeiro, his home.“This is a profound attack on press freedoms and the news gathering process,” said Greenwald. “To detain my partner for a full nine hours while denying him a lawyer, and then seize large amounts of his possessions, is clearly intended to send a message of intimidation to those of us who have been reporting on the NSA and GCHQ. The actions of the UK pose a serious threat to journalists everywhere.”

The Raw Story

Glenn Greenwald’s partner detained at U.K. airport under terrorism law

Eric W. Dolan

Feel safer?

The Guardian (UK)
Detaining my partner: a failed attempt at intimidation
Glenn Greenwald

The detention of my partner, David Miranda, by UK authorities will have the opposite effect of the one intended...

But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.

Worse, they kept David detained right up until the last minute: for the full 9 hours, something they very rarely do. Only at the last minute did they finally release him. We spent all day - as every hour passed - worried that he would be arrested and charged under a terrorism statute. This was obviously designed to send a message of intimidation to those of us working journalistically on reporting on the NSA and its British counterpart, the GCHQ.

The Guardian (UK)
Glenn Greenwald's partner detained at Heathrow airport for nine hours
Guardian staff

David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act

Tom Engelhardt — How to Be a Rogue Superpower

If Edward Snowden is proving one thing, it’s this: in 2013, Planet Earth isn’t big enough to protect the American version of “dissidents.” Instead, it looks ever more like a giant prison with a single implacable policeman, judge, jury, and jailer.

Truthout — | News Analysis
How to Be a Rogue Superpower
Tom Engelhardt | TomDispatch

Global totalitarianism is only possible for an empire. When is the president going to stop the pretense and start using his real title.

What Englehardt calls "deterence" is, of course, intimidation. Is the next step public execution.

John Pilger — Forcing down Evo Morales's plane was an act of air piracy

Denying the Bolivian president air space was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world

Imagine the aircraft of the president of France being forced down in Latin America on "suspicion" that it was carrying a political refugee to safety – and not just any refugee but someone who has provided the people of the world with proof of criminal activity on an epic scale. 

Imagine the response from Paris, let alone the "international community", as the governments of the west call themselves. To a chorus of baying indignation from Whitehall to Washington, Brussels to Madrid, heroic special forces would be dispatched to rescue their leader and, as sport, smash up the source of such flagrant international gangsterism. Editorials would cheer them on, perhaps reminding readers that this kind of piracy was exhibited by the German Reich in the 1930s.

The forcing down of Bolivian President Evo Morales's plane – denied airspace by France, Spain and Portugal, followed by his 14-hour confinement while Austrian officials demanded to "inspect" his aircraft for the "fugitive" Edward Snowden – was an act of air piracy and state terrorism. It was a metaphor for the gangsterism that now rules the world and the cowardice and hypocrisy of bystanders who dare not speak its name.

In Moscow, Morales had been asked about Snowden – who remains trapped in the city's airport. "If there were a request [for political asylum]," he said, "of course, we would be willing to debate and consider the idea." That was clearly enough provocation for the Godfather. "We have been in touch with a range of countries that had a chance of having Snowden land or travel through their country," said a US state department official....

Snowden's revelations are not merely about privacy, or civil liberty, or even mass spying. They are about the unmentionable: that the democratic facades of the US now barely conceal a systematic gangsterism historically identified with, if not necessarily the same as, fascism.

The "F" word.

In revealing a vast Orwellian police state apparatus servicing history's greatest war-making machine, they illuminate the true extremism of the 21st century. Unprecedented, Germany's Der Spiegel has described the Obama administration as "soft totalitarianism".

The Guardian
Forcing down Evo Morales's plane was an act of air piracy
John Pilger

Strong stuff. Feeling the boot on your neck.

John Quiggin on the cases of Aaron Swartz and Steve Keen

Elite intimidation using the coercive power of government and law wrt to the cases of Aaron Swartz and Steve Keen.

John Quiggin
Swartz and Keen

There may be some disproportionality in the cases of Swartz and Keen, but the principle is the same — a double standard of justice that is used by the elite to maintain and increase power to exploit privilege.