Prairie Weather

Send in the guys in white coats

The caliphate gang?  They're crackpots. 

We have them, too.  They are a subset of all religions, just about any religion.  The more grounded among us see them as the best reason why religion deserves little if any respect, whether you're talking about Hobby Lobby or ISIS. 

Why put up with people who insist "the figment of my imagination will beat up the figment of your imagination"? 

NSA backs down

Chicken-little was running around with his head cut off not so long ago -- in response to the Snowden revelations.

... General Keith Alexander described the leak of tens of thousands of documents from the NSA and British counterpart GCHQ – as well as the surveillance agencies of Australia, New Zealand and Canada– as "the greatest damage to our combined nations' intelligence systems that we have ever suffered". British intelligence has spoken of areas of the world having "gone dark" and of disruption caused to intelligence-gathering. ...TheGuardian

Turns out much of that was bull. 

But there is a change, what looks like a pretty health change, even though it annoys NSA.

One of the biggest revelations in the Snowden documents was the relationship between the security agencies and private telecom and internet companies, which, as a result, have suffered from consumer backlashes. Rogers acknowledged that the relationship with the companies, previously kept largely from the public, had changed, probably forever.

The companies were saying they would now have to be compelled to hand over information, Rogers said, rather than hand it over voluntarily. He confirmed that the Obama administration had told the NSA to stop monitoring some foreign leaders including the German chancellor, Angela Merkel.

"There are some specific targets where we've been instructed, 'Hey, don't collect against them* anymore,' " he said. He declined to say how many beyond noting, "probably more than half a dozen, but not in the hundreds by any means". ...TheGuardian

The Guardian, the medium for the most compelling revelations from Snowden and Greenwald, is having its own moment of fun.

Intelligence agencies in both the US and UK have been inconsistent in their response to the Snowden revelations, variously describing him as being a Chinese spy, having had documents snatched by Beijing agents, working for the Russians or having done a deal with the Kremlin. ...TheGuardian

Snatched?  No.  Greenwald and Snowden did a nice job of giving all of us, rather than some Russian or Chinese intelligence agencies, the goods.  I suspect, though, that the Russian and Chinese governments are warming their hands over the fire that burns the British and American spooks who had turned against their own people.

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*"...Collecting against them," he says.  Reminds me of that old concept "guilty until proven innocent."  That's us, folks.  We are assumed by our intelligence overlords to be guilty until they decide we're okay, having done their best to collect "against" us.

The paid bullies are always there, the guys with real power, the face of American private enterprise

Just weeks before Blackwater guards fatally shot 17 civilians at Baghdad’s Nisour Square in 2007, the State Department began investigating the security contractor’s operations in Iraq. But the inquiry was abandoned after Blackwater’s top manager there issued a threat: “that he could kill” the government’s chief investigator and “no one could or would do anything about it as we were in Iraq,” according to department reports. ...JamesRisen,NYT

Seven years have passed.  The issue of private contractors in war zones has been pushed into the background, reviewed only intermittently now on our home turf.  We'll have to deal with our privatized prison system one of these days, and with all the other horrors visited upon us by the privatization craze of the right -- not just of our military overseas, but of our state governments, one after the other.

When it comes to government's use of private contractors, the corruption appears to be rampant.  Blackwater is among the worst of the private businesses, often owned, as Blackwater was, by right-wing zealots.  Its political sponsors in the Republican party continue to defend the lucrative system.  Indeed, Bush era American Embassy officials in Baghdad interceded on behalf of a deadly, out-of-control Blackwater.

American Embassy officials in Baghdad sided with Blackwater rather than the State Department investigators as a dispute over the probe escalated in August 2007, the previously undisclosed documents show. The officials told the investigators that they had disrupted the embassy’s relationship with the security contractor and ordered them to leave the country, according to the reports. ...NYT

Blackwater is on trial now, at a time when much of what they did has made it impossible for the US, still associated with right wing corruption, to have a healthy relationship with the government in Iraq. 

Risen, reporting for the Times, reminds us:

The shooting was a watershed moment in the American occupation of Iraq, and was a factor in Iraq’s refusal the next year to agree to a treaty allowing United States troops to stay in the country beyond 2011. Despite a series of investigations in the wake of Nisour Square, the back story of what happened with Blackwater and the embassy in Baghdad before the fateful shooting has never been fully told.

The State Department declined to comment on the aborted investigation. ...NYT

Blackwater has been sold.  It operates under another name and is back in the contracting business.  America flails its arms, complains about terrorism, looks for casus belli, and remains willfully blind to the connection between US corruption and the growing caliphate movement that now dominates Iraq -- a movement that is pushing for control of the entire Middle East including, ironically, what remains of Al Qaeda. 

Close down the clinics? No problem. Access to abortion is flourishing here in Texas.

Erica Hellerstein calls it "do-it-yourself" abortion, but don't flip out.  We're not talking coat hangers.  We're talking "miso."  We're talking open air markets around Texas and particularly here, in the south.

Customers browse simple items—miracle-diet teas, Barbie dolls or turquoise jeans stretched over curvy mannequins—but there are also shoppers scanning the market for goods that aren't displayed in the stalls. Tables lined with bottles of medicine like Tylenol and NyQuil have double-meanings to those in the know: The over-the-counter drugs on top provide cover for the prescription drugs smuggled over the border from nearby cities in Mexico. Those, the dealer keeps out of sight.

I’m here to look for a small, white, hexagonal pill called misoprostol. Also known as miso or Cytotec, the drug induces an abortion that appears like a miscarriage during the early stages of a woman’s pregnancy. For women living in Latin America and other countries that have traditionally outlawed abortion, miso has been a lifeline—it’s been called “a noble medication,” “world-shaking” and “revolutionary.” But now, it’s not just an asset of the developing world.

Brazilian pharmacies distributed misoprostol over the counter as an ulcer medication. Its use as an abortion-inducing drug slipped below the radar—but spread rapidly.

As policies restricting access to abortion roll out in Texas and elsewhere, the use of miso is quickly becoming a part of this country’s story. It has already made its way into the black market here in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley, where abortion restrictions are tightening, and it is likely to continue its trajectory if anti-abortion legislation does not ease up and clinics continue to be closed. ...Hellerstein,TheAtlantic

It's impossible to predict what the Supreme Court will decide in any case, let alone the Hobby Lobby decision -- due very soon.  Jeffrey Toobin, though, dares to predict that Hobby Lobby will be allowed to deny reproductive health coverage to their employees.  Which means we're back where we were years ago, when it was "always" possible to have an abortion, just not this Supreme Court's sanction of women's rights to full dignity and equality.

If you're the right sort of person, you could get $500 million

All you have to do, Andy Borowitz writes in the New Yorker, is answer a few questions truthfully and you could qualify as member of the moderate Syrian armed opposition. 

Here are a couple of questions from the Moderate Syrian Rebel Application Form.

If I were given a highly lethal automatic weapon by the United States, I would:
A) Only kill exactly the people that the United States wanted me to kill
B) Try to kill the right people, with the caveat that I have never used an automatic weapon before
C) Kill people only after submitting them to a rigorous vetting process
D) Immediately let the weapon fall into the wrong hands

I have previously received weapons from:
A) Al Qaeda
B) The Taliban
C) North Korea
D) I did not receive weapons from any of them because after they vetted me I was deemed way too moderate

Oh, and...

Complete the following sentence. “American weapons are…”
A) Always a good thing to randomly add to any international hot spot
B) Exactly what this raging civil war has been missing for the past three years
C) Best when used moderately
D) Super easy to resell online

Oh say can you see?

A coalition of pro-privacy organizations -- including Reddit and the Electronic Frontier Foundation -- are issuing grades to members of Congress on their votes about NSA and surveillance. 

Some of the high scorers include surveillance critics Reps. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.), Justin Amash (R-Mich.) and Suzan DelBene (D-Wash.), as well as Sens. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.), Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

The leadership of the Intelligence Committees — Senate committee Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), House committee Chairman Mike Rogers (R-Mich.) and ranking member Rep. Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Md.), who have defended the surveillance programs — received failing grades.

“We believe that people have a right to know whether their members of Congress are doing their jobs and helping to end mass spying,” the groups said on the new site housing the scorecard.

“Our scorecard shines a light on all members of Congress, allowing citizens of the Internet to see whether their elected representatives stand as champions or roadblocks to real surveillance reform.”

Of the included lawmakers, 241 received an “A,” 188 received an “F” and 77 received a question mark, indicating a lack of significant involvement in the debate.  ...TheHill

Call me old-fashioned, but I think there is something deeply frightening about whole generations of Americans who apparently prize security over freedom.  Security is nice.  But it doesn't compare to having a life and a fair amount of self-respect.

There's something very, very wrong going on here.  It brings to mind our gooey sentimentalism about "our boys fighting for freedoms overseas," and the  people who spend much of their lives bundling up packages of goodies to send those nice boys in Afghanistan who "defend our freedom." 

The very same people -- and that includes you and me, pal, after we finish packing the boxes with shampoo, hand cream, and magazines -- welcome home our surviving defenders by dumping them into very iffy medical care if they actually manage to get home alive.  For over a decade, according to one senator, the VA has been getting away with murder.

More than 1,000 veterans may have died in the last decade because of malpractice or lack of care from Department of Veterans Affairs medical centers, a new report issued by the office of Sen. Tom Coburn finds.

The report aggregates government investigations and media reports to trace a history of fraudulent scheduling practices, budget mismanagement, insufficient oversight and lack of accountability that have led to the current controversy plaguing the VA.

The VA has admitted that 23 patients have died because of delayed care in recent years, but the report, titled "Friendly Fire: Death, Delay, and Dismay at the VA," shows many more patient deaths have been linked to systemic issues affecting VA hospitals and clinics throughout the U.S.

Coburn, an Oklahoma Republican and physician, says that if the VA's budget had been properly handled and the right management had been in place, many of these deaths could have been avoided. ...CNN

CNN goes on to show that medical records were tinkered with to avoid showing any blame on the part of the Veterans Administration.