Surveillance: a US Game and Embarrassing Shift of Blame

Crooks and Clowns revert to their “Yellow Peril”

US Officials’ Indiscriminate Transcontinental Data Vacuuming

N

eighbors Close or Far, “Friends” or “Foe”

Global surveillance

Operating out of “diplomatic missions” Five Eyes—Australia, Britain, Canada, New Zealand, USA—conducts Stateroom, a “highly sensitive signals intelligence collection program involving interception of radio, telecommunications and internet traffic.”

At US diplomatic missions, the program is run jointly by US intelligence agencies NSA and CIA under the umbrella of “a joint venture group called ‘Special Collection Service’ (SCS). Its members, working undercover in shielded areas of US embassies and consulates, are officially credited as diplomats with special privileges of diplomats, and licensure to spy without hindrance. During the Obama administration the SCS “used the American Embassy near the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin to monitor communications in Germany’s government district with its parliament and the seat of the government.”

Over There Comes over Here

2011

In secret, the Obama Administration in 2011 “won permission from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to reverse restrictions on the National Security Agency’s use of intercepted phone calls and e-mails, permitting the agency to search deliberately for Americans’ communications in its massive databases.

The searches take place under a surveillance program Congress authorized in 2008 under Section 702 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA).

Under that law, the target must be a foreigner ‘reasonably believed’ to be outside the United States, and the court must approve the targeting procedures in an order good for one year.

But a warrant for each target would thus no longer be required, which means “that communications with Americans could be picked up without a court first determining that there is probable cause that the people they were talking to were terrorists, spies or ‘foreign powers.’”

Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court “extended the length of time that the NSA is allowed to retain intercepted US communications from five years to six years with an extension possible for foreign intelligence or counterintelligence purposes—both measures were done without public debate or any specific authority from Congress.”

2013

Though a US district court judge for the District of Columbia, in 2013, declared that the National Security Agency’s “mass collection of metadata of Americans’ telephone records” was “probably” in violation of the Fourth Amendment prohibition of unreasonable searches and seizures,” a  federal judge in New York City ruled that “the U.S. government’s global telephone data-gathering system is needed to thwart potential terrorist attacks, and that it can only work if everyone’s calls are swept in.”

2014

The US government-funded non-profit [contradiction in terms] non-governmental think tank Freedom House observed in 2014 that “[s]ome states are using the revelations of widespread surveillance by the US National Security Agency (NSA) as an excuse to augment their own monitoring capabilities, frequently with little or no oversight, and often aimed at the political opposition and human rights activists.”

“H

igh” Grounded in Quicksand

Actions in various technological fields (in agriculture and other fields) taken by US officials against other countries, leaders and businesses, technological, weapons, cyber spying  companies are not actions on moral principle, or principles of fundamental law or human rights conventions and protections. 

These actions—in the service to and the embodiment of lawlessness and impunity, rabid plunder, and greed preserving and protecting narrowly drawn and inordinate power—stand in violent, criminal opposition to fair principles and fair play, and, indeed, democracy at every level, everywhere. 

What the American officials accuse others of doing and against whom they repeatedly impose sanctions (i.e., societal, trade, economic, earnings, cultural, livelihood, innovations warfare)—they are doing, have done; and once they have destroyed other innovators, free thinkers, and market competitors, they will sharpen the spear and drive to the hilt their “humanitarian” viciousness, virulence and violence against the world.

July 9, 2020

US Accuses Chinese firms

Trump administration has accused Chinese firms “of gathering data from global users for the benefit of the Chinese government.” In its latest move, Washington falls back on a Bush mantra: you’re with us or against us— do business with the US, or the China, if the latter suffer US punishment.

Companies that are selling surveillance equipment will be required “to certify that their offerings do not use components from Dahua or Hikvision, despite the fact that both are among the world’s largest manufacturers of surveillance cameras.”

Global publicly-traded company (2017 estimate Chinese Yuan 41.905 billion [$ 5.99133 billion], Hangzhou Hikvision Digital Technology Co., Ltd. a partially state-owned Chinese manufacturer and supplier of video surveillance equipment [CCTV and Network Surveillance Systems] for civilian and military purposes, headquarters Hangzhou, China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hikvision

Global publicly- traded company with 35 subsidiaries covering Asia, the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Oceania, Africa, and others, its products and services used in 180-plus countries and regions (founded in 2001, headquarters Hangzhou, Zhejiang, 2016 estimated revenue $2.1 billion), Zhejiang Dahua Technology Co., Ltd. is a Chinese company whose products include security cameras, network cameras, HDCVI analog-to-hd solutions, NVR/DVR, PTZ cameras, Fisheye cameras https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dahua_Technology

The Trump government “is reportedly finalizing a rule that would prevent any firm using products from five Chinese tech companies—including telecoms giants Huawei and ZTE—from winning government contracts.”

Years ago, US public officials with the corporate for profit and not for profit paymasters off- shored (offloaded, gave away) US invention, innovation, workmanship and labor for cheap products cheaply labored. A few, including the Trump-Pelosi types, garnered big returns. Now the US en masse suffers the consequences of bad policy. But the horse has long left the barn.   

P

elosi and Co Perform at Munich

Highhandedly Nancy Pelosi proclaims “National security, economy and values all come together on the Huawei issue….”

The choice between adopting or not adopting Huawei solutions is a choice between “autocracy [and] democracy on the information highway,” says the [dis]honorable speaker.

Playing to audience ignorance or deliberate forgetfulness, Pelosi omits in her lecture, as the writer points out, that she “helped renew the NSA’s [US National Security Agency’s] spying powers” two years earlier; and that it was US (not Chinese) mass surveillance that was “famously exposed by Edward Snowden and other whistleblowers.”

With contempt for the intelligence of her audience listeners (and the public more generally), Pelosi failed to explain “what makes America’s surveillance [or surveillance products] more democratic” [of course her policy project is patently anti-democratic] than China’s surveillance or surveillance products.

Tribal ‘R’ US

According to the Pentagon’s Esper and State’s Pompeo, Hauwei is China’s “‘… nefarious strategy” of undermining “Western infrastructure” with a China-made “‘Trojan horse’”

US officials have a habit of threatening other nations as it often does against the whole body of the United Nations. Pompeo threatens Europe over Chinese technological products—buy from us or else. When challenged, deny the threat.

The former CIA operative reportedly scolded “Europeans for not ditching China in favor of the US as a trading partner.” Pulling the “tribal” ([?]identity politics: race-creed-color-region) card, Trump’s smear man at State reportedly declares at a conference in Copenhagen that Europeans’ buying from Beijing is tantamount, echoing Pelosi, to

“…abandoning who we are,” and prizing “tyranny” over “freedom.” [Emphasis added]

Sounds like the desperate, dying cries of a dynasty. It’s embarrassing—as if the United States has nothing in its own right, on its own merit, that is strong enough, solid and sure enough to build on. I believe this is wrong. I believe America has its people; but a long line of officials, over at least forty years, have deserted the people of America.

Tyranny is homegrown—in the character and acts of opportunists, incompetents, and scoundrels such as Pompeo, Pelosi, Wray, Esper, Trump, and Co.

US

officials put themselves above the law but often entrap others in their nets

Case of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou: Deputy chair of the board and chief financial officer (CFO) of telecom giant and China’s largest privately held company, Huawei, founded by her father Ren Zhengfei, Meng Wanzhou

• In December 2018, the business executive was detained at Vancouver International Airport by Canadian officials and questioned for three hours then formally arrested by Royal Canadian Mounted Police “on a provisional US extradition request, in regard to breaches of US sanctions against Iran

• In early 2019, the US Department of Justice (DOJ) announced financial fraud charges against Meng

• In early 2020, the first stage of the extradition hearing began and the DOJ indicted Meng “on charges of trade secrets theft.”

She remains under house arrest in Vancouver, Canada, an Authority to Proceed has been issued regarding the extradition request by the United States. If convicted of charges against her, Meng could face up to ten years in a US prison.

H

owever, when other nations prefer charges against US allies, US officials feign outrage. Such is the case of the Chinese government’s espionage charges in June 2020 against two Canadians. 

US officials hopped on their high horse, and counter charged political motivation. Said the pompous Pompeo:

“These charges are politically motivated and completely groundless”

Tell me about it.

US officials’ actions are transparent, their responses embarrassingly duplicitous and disingenuous. China just won’t give us a break, they seem to say. The People’s Republic of China was recently castigated by one of Trump’s FBI men as

“…calculating …, persistent …, patient and …, not subject to the righteous constraints of an open, democratic society or the rule of law.”

Sound familiar? 

A finger of the accuser’s hand points back toward the accuser. These people wouldn’t know, or care, about the rule of law if it rose up and kissed them on the lips.

The US characteristically charges others with acts that US officials have virtually invented, patented, and carried out everywhere all the time with—bombs away—impunity.

G

od bless America with leaders who are not crooks and clowns.

Sources

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_surveillance_disclosures_(2013%E2%80%93present)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_House

RT “US will BAN government contractors from using Chinese tech, including Huawei – report” July 9, 2020 https://www.rt.com/usa/494283-huawei-government-equipment-ban/

RT “‘is the democratic system so fragile?’ Audience applauds as Pelosi’s Huawei scare session prompts rebuke from Chinese delegate” February 16, 2020 https://www.rt.com/news/480955-pelosi-huawei-rebuke-munich/

RT “Pompeo demands Europe ditch trade with China and choose FREEDOM over TYRANNY (in favor of US)” June 19, 2020 https://www.rt.com/news/492399-pompeo-china-europe-sovereignty-fail/

RT “Look who’s talking! Pompeo slams China’s ‘politically motivated’ charges against 2 Canadians nabbed after Huawei CFO Arrest” June 22, 2020 https://www.rt.com/news/492593-pompeo-political-prosecution-canadians-china/

RT “If China seeks world domination, should the US keep doing business with it? FBI chief Wray seems to want it both ways” Nebojsa Malic, July 7, 2020 https://www.rt.com/usa/494090-wray-fbi-china-threat/

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights Reserved

Deranged bent on World Denomination their Domestic Method Distraction their Foreign Method Demonization

Their Color Scares: Red, Black, Red, Yellow 

P

eople wishing to hide, even from themselves, their feelings of inadequacy, their intellectual laziness and character imperfections and who pass these weaknesses and paranoia on to  populations over generations are likely to demonize and ingrain demonization and irrational fear of others (of difference) on basis of superficialities.

Yellow Scare

The “‘Yellow Peril’ combines racist terror of alien cultures, sexual anxieties, and the belief that the West will be overpowered and enveloped by the irresistible, dark, occult forces of the East” [academic Gina Marchetti referencing “psycho-cultural fears of East Asians ‘rooted in medieval fears of Genghis Khan and the Mongol invasions of Europe (1236–1291)]. 

Westerners, facing “Japanese imperial militarism,” added Japanese people to their “Yellow Peril” portrait. In the late-19th and early-20th centuries, “literary” and political worlds took up the disparaging mantra.

 

Writers:

• French Orientalist and historian Ernest Renan [1870 meaning “the Russian Empire (1721–1917), a country and nation whom the West perceived as more Asiatic than European] warns “Europeans of ‘Eastern’ danger to the Western world.”

• Russian sociologist Jacques Novikow coins the term “The Yellow Peril” (“Le Péril Jaune,” 1897);

• German Emperor, Kaiser Wilhelm II (r. 1888–1918) uses “‘Yellow Peril’ racism to encourage the European empires to invade, conquer, and colonize China” and… misrepresents ‘the Asian victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) as a racialist threat to the white citizens of Western Europe and (misrepresents) China and Japan in alliance to conquer, subjugate, and enslave the Western world.”

P

romulgating Cultural Hegemony, Hanging on for dear life

Germany’s Kaiser uses Hermann Knackfuss’ “allegorical lithograph ‘Peoples of Europe,’ ‘Guard Your Most Sacred Possessions’ (1895) to reinforce his delusion of an “imminent race war that would decide global hegemony in the 20th century”; and to communicate this delusion to other European monarchs.

Instead of hand of friendship, Demonizing

Yellow Peril (19th century-originating) “racist and cultural stereotypes” present (though not exclusively) in environments in which Chinese workers (people of different skin-color, physiognomy, language and culture) had immigrated legally into Australia, Canada, United States of America, and New Zealand displaying a “work ethic” (e.g., “agreeing to work for lower wages than did local white populations”) that “…inadvertently provoked a racist backlash against” the Chinese workers.

Rhine to the Pacific

Following the German Kaiser, U.S. popular press adopts “Yellow Peril” “… to refer not only to the military threat of Japan,” but also to “the growing tide of immigrants from Asia.”

• California (1870s): “native white working-class demand that the U.S government cease the immigration of ‘filthy yellow hordes’ of Chinese people who took jobs from native-born white-Americans, especially during an economic depression.

• New-York Tribune newspaper editor Horace Greeley: “‘The Chinese are uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.’”

• Los Angeles (California 1871) “Yellow Peril” racism provokes “‘Chinese Massacre”: 500 white men’s lynching of 20 Chinese men in a neighborhood of Chinatown.

• Ireland-native Denis Kearney “Yellow Peril” demagogic leader of California’s Workingmen’s Party (1870s-1880s) declares repeatedly “whatever happens, the Chinese must go!”

Chinese in the United States were blamed for everything from opium trafficking and Americans’ addiction to subverting America’s “republicanism from within.”

 

Crowning the 1800s’ rage in irrationality was “the Chinese Exclusion Act,” a federal immigration law that remained in force for more than 60 years (1882-1943).

Fear of Orient’s “non-white ‘other’”

A manufactured distraction, the “Yellow Peril” or “Yellow Terror” or “Yellow Spectre” presents “a color-metaphor that the peoples of East Asia are an existential danger to the Western world.”

More racial than national, this fear is said to derive “not from concern with a specific source of danger or from any one country or people” but rather “from a vaguely ominous, existential fear of the faceless, nameless horde of yellow people opposite the Western world.”

T

wentieth in Twenty-first

In his sixtieth film “The Coming War with China,” John Pilger documents

…a “‘century of humiliation’” in which the Chinese people were “depicted as the ‘yellow peril’ in the West” with these racial-stereotypes as the staple of the U.S. film industry;

…an era in which opium trade and colonization were perpetrated by the British and other imperial powers; and

…the U.S. industrial revolution was “funded by huge pools of illegal drug money … from in the biggest market in the world, China.’” 

Pilger describes the “Pivot to Asia”

“When the United States, the world’s biggest military power, decided that China, the second largest economic power, was a threat to its imperial dominance,” U.S. officials transferred “two-thirds of U.S. naval forces to Asia and the Pacific.

The People’s Republic of China had raised more than 500 million of its people out of poverty; and, suddenly, China was the “new enemy” of the United States of America. U.S. President Barack Obama in 2011 announced the United States’ “‘pivot to Asia.’”

Late in Obama’s tenure, “the U.S. Navy and its regional allies, including Australia, rehearsed a blockade that would cut China’s lifelines of oil, trade and raw materials.”

Obama’s successor, U.S. President Donald Trump cast the PRC a “bad guy”, blames the country for the U.S. trade deficit, and launched a “a trade war against China (home to major U.S. tech companies such as Apple).

Repeating Horrid History

Demonize, Blame, Distract

News 2020

In his campaign speeches U.S. President Trump has raised the idea “that immigrants ‘steal’ the jobs of Americans” and ‘illegal immigration hurts American workers’ causing fewer jobs and lower wages. But what is observed in Michigan factories is not ‘wall-to-wall immigrants’ but ‘wall-to-wall robots and machines.’

“Immigrants” are being scapegoated,” says one of the 2020 U.S. presidency hopefuls, “for issues they have nothing to do with in our economy.” Andrew Yang, a former Silicon Valley executive, said “the real ‘enemies’ of jobs are machines; not immigrants.”

Catch and Contain

December 16, 2019 - January 2020 Palm Beach, Florida, a Chinese immigrant is arrested “for loitering and prowling after she trespassed onto (U.S. President Donald Trump’s castle away from the White House) Mar-a-Lago grounds and refused to leave.”

March 30, 2019- January 2020, A Chinese immigrant “a Chinese immigrant was handed an 8-month jail sentence and is being held at the Glades County Detention Center awaiting deportation “for lying her way into Mar-a-Lago” (U.S. President Donald Trump’s castle away from the White House) on March 30, 2019.

The Moore Haven, FL, Glades County Detention Center (a medium-security adult detention center) of the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is operated under the local authority of the Glades County Sheriff.

Alternative framing of news unacceptable to U.S. leadership 

The Trump government announces “Chinese media outlets based in the United States will no longer be treated as press outlets” but as “foreign entities operating as propagandists for China’s communist party.” The government later imposed further “restrictions’ on press originating in the People’s Republic of China.

Ban voices with whom you disagree. Welcome to the world of the delusional who believe they are the world’s leader in upholding universal and domestic basic rights and freedoms. I guess that means the U.S. “Voice of America” (and all those foreign bureaus of U.S. MSM) propaganda machines will also be outlawed around the world.

O

nly the dangerously deluded believe everybody else (every other person, place or thing) is the problem, the cause and consequence of theirs and the world’s ills. Only the seriously deranged believe others are going to stand idly by as the dangerously deluded demonize, slander and plunder, threaten, and commit unspeakable acts of aggression.

Only the dangerously deluded expect everybody else to believe and accept the ravings of the unselfconscious, unrepentant yet certifiably demented, divorced from reality.

Did someone say “lock them up?”

Sources

Wikipedia

Yellow Peril https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril

John Pilger “The Coming War on China” (video) http://johnpilger.com/videos/the-coming-war-on-china

Univision “China, immigrants or robots: who is ‘stealing’ jobs in the US?” “President Trump says immigrants ‘steal’ jobs from Americans. But the data suggests robots are a bigger threat.” Mariana Rambaldi https://www.univision.com/univision-news/united-states/china-immigrants-or-robots-who-is-stealing-jobs-in-the-us

The Hill “Trump administration announces new restrictions on Chinese journalists” Justine Coleman March 2, 2020 https://thehill.com/policy/international/china/485496-trump-admin-announces-new-restrictions-on-chinese-journalists

Townhall “Trump Administration to China: We’re Limiting the Number of Chinese Propagandists You Can Employ” Katie Pavlich March 2, 2020 https://townhall.com/tipsheet/katiepavlich/2020/03/02/trump-administration-to-china-were-limiting-the-number-of-chinese-propagandists-you-can-employ-n2562728

ABC “Asian immigrants detained after coming ashore on Palm Beach ahead of Trump visit, police say” WPTV Staff January 17, 2020 https://www.abc15.com/news/national/asian-immigrants-detained-after-coming-ashore-on-palm-beach-ahead-of-trump-visit-police-say

Glades County Detention Center-ICE https://www.inmateaid.com/prisons/glades-county-detention-center-ice

Insight Beyond Today’s News, CLB - © All Rights Reserved