Thursday, June 27, 2013

Growing divide between the North and the South, the Congress and the Supreme Court, and the Popular Press and the Public




All the finger wagging that Secretary John Kerry was doing at the Chinese and Russians, for not returning Edward Snowden, the intelligence analyst with Booz-Allen Hamilton who has revealed information about the American domestic surveillance program, that includes full cooperation from high tech companies like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, etc., might backfire. The tough, and at times intimidating, talk from American public officials has annoyed China and Russia...that are actually, smartly or shrewdly, acting within their law and according to international treaties that they are expected to abide by.

There were Russian dissidents and fugitives, considered criminals by the Russian State, that America actually supported, invited, harbored and provided open asylum to once.  For the US to be talking tough to Russians who did not court or invite Snowden,  while he is merely in transit at their airport, waiting asylum clearance from another country, is a bit "over the top". And for US to be demanding China hand over Snowden when he resided in Hong Kong, which has its own jurisdiction and laws of repatriation. is a bit ridiculous.

What the US might have to worry about is Russia and China filing a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice at The Hague for American oversight of international, or country-to-country, treaties concerning foreign travelers, visitors, residency permits, extradition protocols and asylum laws, and for "intimidating sovereign nations".  These are pretty serious charges.

What was the Secretary and other members of Congress thinking when they made macho demanding, threatening and intimidating remarks and speeches to two countries that are already quite peeved at America's hacking into their computer networks and spying, and committing surveillance on their leaders like Putin?

We hear that there are more revelations to come on what Snowden knows and owns.

But the most shocking part of all this Snowden versus NSA is the way American popular press has handled this issue. It is an American Brazilian, Glen Greenwald, a Constitutional lawyer who writes for the British newspaper "The Guardian", who interviewed Snowden in Hong Kong, and with his permission revealed information on domestic surveillance that he felt the American public needed to know.  The American press, including well established political talk shows, now acting like CIA interrogators, wanted to know if Glen Greenwald needs to be tired for treason. They not only discuss how to capture Snowden and try him...without much knowledge of extradition issues and domestic judicial process, but they want to try journalists, who are courageous, professional and principled enough to investigate and analyze critical or unusual information that comes their way, and share it with the public for education, information and empowerment.

The tired old American press who could not investigate what was going on right under their noses during the time of Iraq invasion and occupation, are now calling for treason trial of a colleague who had more intelligence, courage and conviction than these privileged cowards. The public is shocked, disgusted and wants to know how many in the American press, pretending to be Right, Center or Left, work for the National Security Agency themselves. One would not be surprised if some of these anchormen and anchorwomen, and so called senior journalists, in the American popular TV, radio and press turn out to be spies.

It was revealed that one Mr. Murphy, a journalist with Meet the Press, has personal investments with a private company that contracts with the NSA on surveillance. What kind of daring investigative work and objective analysis are these press, not surprisingly referred to as presstitude  (like prostitutes, the press embedded to corporations and the people who pay their fat paychecks), going to do?

MSNBC Online has stopped reporting on Snowden and provides headlines on issues that are so ridiculous and inane that it is almost sickeningly funny. It had a report on Mad Men (a television series of advertising men in the 1950s), a football player in trouble and a story about a CEO giving his plane seat to a distressed mother (while social workers sacrifice everyday to save lives...one rich dude gets attention for giving up his plane seat for a few hours).

Of course the new distraction, carried out by the corporate American media, to avoid any coverage on domestic surveillance, is to focus on "gay issues, gun issues and girl issues" that are the wedge issues between Democrats and Republicans these days. Nothing gets resolved on these wedge...but they make for great passionate drama, theater and entertainment. Like the filibuster carried out in the Texas State legislature by an attractive blond woman on abortion...technically known as "medical termination of pregnancy" (mtp).

For most countries reproductive rights of women, including mtp, is a public health issue, personal issue, population control issue and a female rights' issue. In the US of A, especially in the South (that includes Texas), it is a moral issue...while high numbers of gun ownership (that kills 60,000 Americans every year) and high numbers of execution of inmates (mostly poor, disenfranchised and colored) is perfectly tolerated, accepted and encouraged. With this level of open contradiction, inconsistency and hypocrisy will the South ever appear normal...let alone progressive?

The South appears so backward that it is almost difficult to talk about its history, culture, attitudes, policies and laws without rolling one's eyes, smirking, feeling disgust and feeling frightened for the women in the Southern States.

What these pretentious debates, or talks on the State Senate floor, does is to make women look dysfunctional, crazy, perverted and dumb...which is the way Southern macho patriarchal men like to see their women. These are places where the talk of abortion is always only about teen pregnancy, rape and incest...because that is what occurs often in these Southern States. What men and women in these States forget is that 85% of those who seek mtp in the North, and in other countries, are adult women, intelligent, educated, independent, thoughtful and careful,  who are not teenagers, they are not promiscuous and they are not victims of rape, molestation or incest. But in the South, where the mind and behaviors are medieval, dysfunctional and backward, the view of mtp is always associated with violence, irresponsibility and female perversion.

And Democracy Now!, with its own small set of dysfunctional women coming on the show, indulge in this kind of perverted "self victimization" and "pretentious feminism". In America some groups can gang up pretty good to create collective lies and punish those they disagree with unfairly. No wonder there is so much compliance to spying and betrayal by one's own government, security agencies and tech companies, while few question and rebel against these terrible constitutional violations. And those who do question, challenge and confront are attacked mercilessly and unfairly for it.

These are the Northeastern media women, like on Democracy Now!, who seem to connect with Southern women and Saudi Arabian women well...where status of women is very behind the times. Saudi Arabia may come across as more civilized than these women on Democracy Now!, ranting and raving about personal issues, while John Kerry waves his fingers.

You can hit out at these lies and media gutter people...but it takes you to their gutter.

Another addition to this North-South divide is the recent attack on Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965 by the Supreme Court (SC). What was SC thinking, and why did they make the Section 5, that specifically redresses the elaborate ways by which some States, mostly in the South, attempted to oppress voting rights, voting abilities, and voter access by creating all kinds of convoluted and complicated State laws that targeted mostly minorities, people of color and Blacks, moot? Either the Supreme Court was not thinking, it was contradicting itself or it was doing Right wing activism. Now the VRA must go back to the Congress for full vote to reinstate Section 4 and the bite it gives to Section 5. This attack on VRA has now made the White House and some members of Congress shocked and outraged. They see this as one more Supreme Court snub...with little judicial relevance but more Right-wing political activism. Yes, officially the Roberts' court is a Conservative activist court: that does not just interpret the law and provide some application guidelines. Did people think it was going to be different?  Some predict it is going to get worst!

So here we go folks...:

The Northern and the Southern States are growing culturally, socially and politically further apart, and this might lead to further divisions, disagreements and daring call for secession or combat - legal, militia or military.

The Supreme Court, with what is seen by many as an attack on Voting Rights Act,  has now provoked the White House, the Obama administration and many members of the Congress. Some see the modifications to the VRA as "a Supreme Court snub and a provocative activist attack". But how do political people provide a good rebuttal to the Supreme Court? Will there be more protests, lawsuits and constitutional challenges?

And will the traditional popular propagandist press (PPP) report on these emerging and growing issues - fairly, relevantly and intelligently? The PPP is now in direct collision with many Americans, Right, Center and Left, who are feeling betrayed by the NSA, the Congress and the Press itself.

The volcanoes up in Alaska are about to erupt!

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