The Brexit Referendum and the Nature of the British Constitution

As an American watching the controversy regarding the non-binding referendum calling for the UK to leave the EU, I have wondered how it is that such a dramatic and structural change could be called for with a simple referendum and a majority vote of the voting citizens. Surely, I thought, one would require some higher bar than a vote which might be a majority of one citizen?

Such a structural change to the constitution in this country would require a 2/3rds majority in both the House of Representatives and the Senate at which time the proposed amendment would be sent to the states and would require 3/4s of all states to ratify this amendment.

This is a fairly high bar to pass and well it should be. There are a lot of pretty crazy ideas out there that can get a majority vote at any one time, but getting a 2/3rds vote from both houses of Congress and 3/4s of all states is a lot of work and thus any amendment that passes really does have the people of the United States behind it.

For example, if a state could secede from "the Union", e.g. the United States of America, with simply a majority vote in a referendum that could be called for at any time, how many states do you think would still be in the so-called United States of America?  I am pretty sure that most of the Southern and many of the Western states would no longer be a part of our country if that was all it took.  

So I researched how the British Constitution could be changed and one more time discovered that I only think I know what is happening outside this country, the reality is far more interesting and complicated.

The United States of America has a single document which we call the Constitution, a central document that sets out the rights and responsibilities of the various branches of government, how those branches are elected or appointed, how they relate to each other, how the judicial system works, how laws are made, and so forth. This document of course is just the tip of the iceberg, and underneath it is a whole body of law and court judgments and opinions and so forth. We have our strict constitutionalists and our more liberal interpretations, etc.

But in the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland there is no one single written constitution. What there is a series of important Acts of Parliament, conventions and court judgments that make up how the UK rules itself. Among the written parts of this body of laws and whatnot are such famous items as the Magna Carta of 1215, the Bill of Rights of 1689, the Parliament Acts of 1911-1949, and so forth. There is also at least one famous image that shows how Parliament should sit, and a variety of historical conventions that guide behavior.

I am quite sure that I do not understand the full nature of what the UK Constitution is, and that at the very least several months could be spent productively just figuring out what the important elements are. The point is, things are not the same everywhere, and it is foolish to think that they are.

The British Library has a useful introduction to this process and the UK Constitution here.

This explains how one could have a non-binding referendum of such importance that just has a majority vote, but still be left with a lot of confusion about whether or not Parliament will actually implement it (e.g. the UK leaving the EU).  A clue to this is in the pithy phrase "the Supremacy of the Crown in Parliament" and I leave it to the interested reader to look that one up and be amazed.

House of Commons

To put a possibly useful spin on this, lets briefly review how the two different constitutions came about. The UK as a country came into existence over a period of more than a millennia. One of the benchmarks of this formation process was, of course, the famous Magna Carta of 1215. That document, and the events that precipitated it, is now 800 years old. Although there were certainly civil wars and revolutions in the region now called the United Kingdom, there was never a time when everything was brought together into a single document and put into writing. It was a much more organic process, incremental, and with a very long history.

This country, on the other hand, was formed from 13 colonies of Great Britain, each colony of which had one of three different colonial structures that governed them. In order to bring the 13 different structures into alignment, a series of conventions were held in order to form a single structure that could please everyone. There was not a lot of trust and everything had to be put into writing. The first attempt at this, the Articles of Confederation, served to be good enough to fight a Revolutionary War, but not so good at running a country. From the second attempt at it comes our current Constitution.

The Bill of Rights of 1689

So there was an opportunity, and a need, to get everything in writing in one place. Of course, things are not so simple in reality even here, as we also have legal precedent in the form of common law which we inherited from Great Britain and which affects our life pretty much all the time.

So the point is, there were no special procedures for a Brexit referendum because there is no formal, single constitution to amend.  The "Supremacy of the Crown is in Parliament", so whatever Parliament votes is the way it goes, unless I suppose the Queen vetoes it, but she doesn't.

These darn foreigners are always full of surprises.

_____________________________________________

A few useful links: 

The Articles of Confederation on Wikipedia

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

Parliamentary Sovereignty in the United Kingdom

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

FOIA FBI Background Check on Anna Rosenberg

In recent years there has been a variety of issues that involve security background checks and the questions people have about what information is kept on them. But the examples used of government files are not representative because they are usually of people who are very involved in a variety of non-trivial, non-subtle and controversial areas.

A classic example of that in today's news is the FOIA request by Laura Poitras who has been detained by Homeland Security whenever she has entered or left the country and received various “no fly” judgments on attempting to board an aircraft. I am sure that her file is quite interesting and I am also sure that when we see it, it will be the kind of unusual or controversial file that I am referring to above. Why? Because, as Ms. Poitras knows very well, she is under suspicion for and is certainly a collaborator in what is probably the single most damaging and extraordinary intelligence disaster in the history of this country, possibly any country. So of course she is being investigated, and of course the file will contain intelligence information as well as information that is part of various criminal investigations that have not yet completed (and for which charges have not (yet) been filed).

But what does a normal file look like, one that is of a serious and senior professional who has worked for the government, worked for private industry and knows many people, some of whom are or were presidents of the United States, and some of whom were certainly controversial in one way or another, in this case because they were heavily involved in the labor movement of the 1930s.

I happened to come across an online version of the FBI background check file on Anna Rosenberg who was a labor relations consultant before and after WW 2.  She was attacked by the House UnAmerican Activities Committee during the McCarthy period when she was nominated for a government post. She served on a variety of government committees that involved labor relations particularly as it involved the war effort. She worked directly for Pres. Roosevelt at various times.

I think that her FBI file is well worth glancing act to see what is involved, the kinds of questions they asked, the things they noted that caused them concern, etc.

True, this is about a person from another era, a post WW 2 era, but I suspect it has things in common with similar activities today (e.g. extended background checks on people nominated for government service or who require a security clearance). The Internet makes this process easier, but by no means does it do all the work that needs to be done.

So if you are interested in such things, take a fast look at this. It can be found at

https://archive.org/details/foia_Rosenberg_Anna_M.-HQ-1

More Procrastination Ideas: The Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

The Atlas of Historical Geography of the United States was written by Charles Paullin, a historian for the US Navy, between 1912 and 1932 and is considered a classic of the genre. The University of Richmond (yes, Richmond Virginia) has put it online for your enjoyment.

Presidential Election of 1892

You think you know American history?  You think you know where this country came from and how it has acted in the past?   Ha, I say.   Although this atlas will not reveal all the dirt, not by any means, many of the complications and contradictions that make America the great, misunderstood, and completely weird place that it is are present in this atlas, if sometimes between the lines.

There are several areas that are particularly valid for this self-study of your own nation, but lets examine two of them: the section on political elections showing who voted for whom in a presidential election, and the section on the American territories as it evolved.

These maps must be read with a nuanced eye.   Recall that we are a representative democracy, so they say, which means that we elect people to represent us in Washington indirectly, we do not elect the President directly, for example.  Although somewhat true this picture has changed over time and you may wish to review the rules by which the Senate and the POTUS (president of the United States, as it is abbreviated in certain circles) are elected.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Senate

Now, my fellow citizens, go to the Atlas and review the various presidential elections and who voted for whom.   Consider as you do so some of the following: the history of the so-called Blue and Red states, who or what was the Anti-Masonic party, why were there two Democratic candidates in 1860 who split the vote and elected that Republican Abraham Lincoln (yes, the man who "freed the slaves" quote end quote was a Republican, kindof hard to believe, isn't it), what was the Progressive Party and why was Roosevelt running under that Party label?

Notice how many elections the name "Roosevelt" appears.  So far as I know there were only two Roosevelt's in the history of the Presidency, yet between the two of them, Theodore and FDR, we get quite a few elections.   Bully !  Maybe what we need today is a third Roosevelt?

For your information, the "Anti Masonic" Party was our first third party in America and was devoted to exposing and removing the secret influence of "Freemasonry" on our government.  Ha. Obviously, they failed.

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Masonic_Party

On a more practical level, and for those who are interested in military history, the Atlas has such gems as the state of the transportation and postal routes right before the War of the American Revolution.  Its remarkably sparse, basically a single route from north to south.

Probably the subject with the most potential for nuance (e.g. hidden crimes) involves the territorial expansion of the United States and the issues of the Native Americans. Or is it the issue of our relations with Mexico?   There are so many to choose from, I don't where to begin.   

So be sure to check out this website and keep your favorite search engine handy for research.  Its for your own good.  Trust me.

States, Territories and Cities, long ago

Atlas of the Historical Geography of the United States

The University of Richmond

www.richmond.edu

The Digital Scholarship Lab at the University of Richmond

dsl.richmond.edu

Archaeology of the Cold War: The U2 and the History of Overhead Photography

draft

The following post is for those of my readers who are interested in the history of intelligence in this country, particularly during the cold war.   

For those of you participating in my occassional "good citizenship class on the Intelligence Community" and how it works, here are some things I think worthy of note:

1. Projects like this are approved by the President.  2. Congressional approval does not seem to be required back in the "good old days", beyond budget approval.  That is different now, but the details of that will not be apparent in this case, it was before such things. 3. People die.  4. Top scientists of the country devote their time, sometimes without compensation to help make it happen.  5. Some projects are reasonably priced and get done on or ahead of schedule.  6. The different agencies really are different and compete for money and really do want to do things differently.  7.  Projects like this are inherently interdepartmental and ultimately require the agencies to work together.  8. (most importantly) The project helped to deescalate tensions during the cold war on at least three occasions (the bomber gap, the missile gap, the china/taiwan issue).

When the CIA releases a report about a project or projects you can be quite sure that whatever project they are talking about is considered ancient history. In this case we have the release of a report written in 1991 about the origins, operations and results of the CIA ventures in overhead photography via the U2 and A-12 / SR-71 reconnaisance airplanes.

The report itself can be found here:

http://cryptome.org/2013/09/cia-u2-oxcart.pdf

For those of you who are not aware of how difficult the U2 is to fly (particularly to land) please take a look at the following 4 minute Youtube video. It is, among other things, very funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eamnTyfkUBY

The Table of Contents:

Here are some items that I found interesting and were (for the most part) new to me.

-- Later uses of the U2 included work for NASA and other agencies to map terrain in the continental US for a variety of land management purposes. This I think was before the LANDSAT satellites.

-- I knew the U2 was not pressurized and had a suit for the pilot that was basically a space suit to keep him pressurized.   What I had not realized is that this is one of the first times that this had been done, the U2 was happening in the mid 1950s and that was before the manned space program, so far as I know.

-- Initial testing of the U2 resulted in a greatly increased number of UFO sightings and lead to Project Bluebook, the famous US Air Force study of unidentified flying objects. At the time the U2 was flying higher than common belief thought we could fly, and was catching sunlight during sunset and appeared to be glowing dot of fire at very high altitude to lower transcontinental airplanes.

-- The U2 is really cheap. Less than $1M a pop in its initial configuration (not including extras like a camera, a crew, etc).

-- The U2 was normally flown out of overseas locations because of limited range. It was not refuelled in the air, apparently. This made its very small operational footprint a big advantage over later airplanes (e.g. it used standard aviation fuel, did not need that many people to maintain it, etc).

-- The U2 was really dangerous to fly. Particularly in the later days when we were collaborating with the Nationalist Chinese to photograph mainland China they were losing planes and pilots right and left.

-- The CIA did not want to run these airplanes or their operations, they wanted to focus on their core expertise which was more in the areas of human intelligence. But Eisenhower wanted a civilian agency to run this so that the overflights would be less provocative. In other words, when a plane was shot down over the Soviet Union, they wanted a civilian to climb out not a Colonel in the US Air Force.

-- The Air Force wanted nothing to do with an airplane that could not be used as a military jet. The U2, fundamentally a powered glider, did not have the ability to take the kind of G forces that a military jet has to be able to withstand, so the Air Force rejected it.

-- The SR-71 project started soon after the U2 project because everyone knew that the U2 would not be immune to air defenses very shortly.

-- For a variety of reasons the A-12 / SR-71 was not used ultimately for strategic reconnaisance. It did have a limited role in tactical reconnaisance but was retired after only a few years.

-- The competition / issues between the CIA and the Air Force versions of the A-12 / SR-71 plane was much more complicated and weird than I had realized.

Regarding photography, we learn, among other things:

-- Kodak invented a new thin film for the U2. I presume this has to do with both the incredible weight limitations and also the need to fit a certain amount of film into a limited space.

-- Lots of cameras and lenses were designed for the U2. Several of them would not fit in the limited space available and had to be redesigned.

-- Apparently some of these cameras are still flying in U2s to this day.

Civics and Intelligence: Does the US Government have the Constitutional Right to Keep Secrets

It is commonly asserted that "the people have the right to know".

In other words, that if the government is keeping a secret is that by definition in violation of the law. Does the government have the right to keep certain types of secrets legally and constitutionally? What have the courts ruled on this matter? What are the precedents in American history. What did the writers of the constitution have in mind on this topic.

The following is a legal and historical analysis by John Warner. The article is reprinted from the CIA's Studies in Intelligence.

You should read this 20 page paper in order to understand the arguments that can be made for the government keeping secrets from its people and under what circumstances they may do so.

If you do not feel like reading the entire 20 pages, read the first 5 or so, which goes over some examples from American history in the very early days.

The document can be found online in several different forms at

http://research.archives.gov/description/7283238

Introduction to a Course on Civics and The Intelligence Community

My response to the Ed Snowden affair as it has played out so far is to be appalled at the level of knowledge of my friends and fellow citizens about how their government works.  So what I plan to do here is to create a very time efficient course in civics and intelligence based on documents publically available on the Internet.

Please read a few more paragraphs before you completely give up on this idea.

The course will be

    (a) select, it will be as short as possible to make as good use of your time as possible,

    (b) based on primary sources available on the Internet

    (c) focused on background, history and nuance intended to make your beliefs and arguments
    robust (see note 1)

What this course will NOT be

    (d) it is not intended to change your mind on fundamental issues, whether our government is
    moral or immoral, good or bad.  You already have your mind made up, I am pretty sure.

But it will try to help explain such things as

    (e) what do people mean when they say that Iran-Contra was illegal but what Snowden revealed

    was probably legal (even if it may merely prove to you that the laws need to be changed)?

    (f) even if what Snowden revealed was legal, in some technical sense of the word, what does it

    mean to say that we wish to challenge the constitutionality of those laws (which is one way to

    change the laws, but by no means the only way).

Furthermore, you may even understand certain nuances like the following:

    (g) whatever Snowden's motivation, he should not have had access to the wide breadth of
     information and there is something very wrong here, very wrong indeed, and people in the
     intelligence community, right or wrong, must be reeling.

Whether you like it or not, and I dont really care, (g) is going to affect our country at least as much as any of the others, so you may as well spend a few minutes trying to understand it.

Or not. Whatever you want.

Furthermore, I am going to try and explain to you some history that motivates their behavior. Now, I happen to think that if this behavior was exposed to a wider audience and not merely voted on by the elite (which is the very basis of our government, it is not a direct democracy, it is a so-called representative democracy for better or worse), then the American people might very well vote against this behavior.  I wouldn't vote against that behavior, mind you, I would support it wholeheartedly, but that is just me.

Finally I have one more important goal, and it is to try and convince you of the following:

    (h) although we may not know the details of what is happening in this world, in broad strokes
    there is quite a bit that you can know about what is going on, and this information can be
    used to inform your beliefs and what you tell your elected representatives, not that they
    care what you think because you are not rich, but that is another problem.

What I mean by that is this: you did not need Snowden to know most of this, at least the part I have read about. No shock or surprise should have been generated (except for maybe a few details, and even those I am told were already made public but I did not notice).

Thus one result of our little course is to help you not be surprised in the future.

Now that is a worthwhile goal, isnt it?

I promise to make this as concise as I can, but you will be expected to spend about 1/2 hour a week reading documents I point you to, for maybe about 10 weeks.  This course will begin, intermittently, after SIGGRAPH.  The course will last longer than 10 weeks because I will not be able to work on it every week.

Thank you, or maybe you should be thanking me.

____________________________________________

1. The classic example of this approach is the a pro-arms-control group called the Federation of American Scientists (www.fas.org) which has worked in support of treaties limiting or eliminating nuclear weapons for a very long time. Their approach is that in order to argue cogently for arms control, that you must be well-informed on the issues of nuclear and conventional arms, and thus they have (or had) one of the best web sites on the internet for researching these things. Unfortunately, the best parts of this database has been turned over for maintenance to www.globalsecurity.org, and the only problem with that is that they charge a fee to review that database for more than a few documents. If you were interested in that topic, I think it is worth their nominal fee. Those of us who are impoverished in America can not even consider it, and therefore can not participate in our democracy.  Which is intentional. 

The Pakistani Independent Commission Report on the Bin Laden Raid

[revised 7/15/2013]

When the US attacked the compound in Pakistan and killed Bin Laden, it of course set off a tsunami of shit inside Pakistan.   Apparently that one 90 minute action touched on every insecurity and annoyance that the people of Pakistan have about us, the United States, and their government with its ongoing controversies between civilian and military administration.  To address some of these issues, they set up a commission made up of a senior justice and a former military officer among others, and they went around talking to people and trying to answer in written form what could be concluded about what happened and to make recommendations to see that such things did not happen again.

The last time such a commission had been formed was in the aftermath of the partition of East and West Pakistan (e.g. Bangladesh) which was understandably incredibly traumatic for Pakistan.  That this incident should even be seen in that light is itself remarkable, I think, from our point of view.  We wanted to kill Bin Laden, sure, and we had good reason to want to do so as secretly as possible given the situation, but I am sure there was no intent to spark an existential crisis, but apparently we did.

There was no time limit on their work.  They could request to talk to anyone in the country at any level of the government that they wanted to talk to.  The Commission recommended that the report be made public and issued in English and Urdu.

But when the report was finished, it was not made public nor did everyone who the Commission requested to meet for their research agree to meet with them.

But last week, Aljazeera leaked the full document in English, minus apparently one page.   It is quite long, it is somewhat comprehensive, yet it is an easy read.   By skipping around things of no interest to you, you could read it in a few hours.   It has moments of humor (I guess this depends on your point of view) and it certainly has a lot of interest to recommend it.

As part of a remedial or refresher course in modern civics for the responsible adult, this is an excellent primary source on how other people in the world, or at least one group of respected individuals acting in an official capacity of another country see us.

The document is available at www.cryptome.org, at the following link.
http://cryptome.org/2013/07/pk-obl-raid-dossier.pdf

Time Magazine has an article on the release of the report here:
http://world.time.com/2013/07/09/the-abbottabad-commission-what-pakistan-must-learn-after-the-bin-laden-raid/

Here are my notes having read most of the document but not yet the Appendices. 

1. The raid on Abbottabad seems to have been or perceived to be a humiliation for Pakistan which is far greater than it might have seemed to an American observing events.   To us, obviously, somehow Bin Laden managed to hide in plain sight in Pakistan, as we suspected all along, we found him, and we killed him.   But to them it raises issues of incompetence in civilian and military infrastructure at all sorts of levels, including their failure to find him, but also their failure to repel the Americans, the "betrayal of trust" between the two countries, and the presumption of vast penetration of the country by the CIA which is presumed to be hostile to Pakistani interests.  (1) 

2. The report seems to veer from intelligent and sober to emotional and paranoid.   At various times in the document phrases like "night of shame" serve to remind the American reader how powerfully this event shook their sense of pride.  The American raiders are referred to as "the murderers" for example, which seems a little off to me in the circumstances, and the question is asked why the army and the air force did not respond in time to kill the invaders.   Note, not stop the invaders, but kill them, outright, period.

3. Their is an implicit sense of a meltdown in Pakistan civilian administrative structure.  It is taken for granted that various elements of the local and federal civilian infrastructure failed in various ways, either through being understaffed, underfunded, insufficient training, corruption or incompetence. There is the sense that the military and intelligence arms of the government pushed the civilian law enforcement arm out of the way and that the civilian arm could not "carry out their responsibilities" and failed to respond to the event.  The report seems to indicate significant sensitivity to the issue of the competence of the civilian side of government, which makes sense in the context of what little I know about Pakistani history.

4. The report and the Commission seems to be obsessed with the assumption of "massive CIA penetration of Pakistan".    As Steven Coll's book on the history of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan refers to, there seems to have been a very clear sense of concern about outsiders in Pakistan operating legally or illegally.   What is odd about this from my obviously US point of view, is that Pakistan is porous to tribal and criminal elements.  But the idea that extra visas might have been issued and that there is an assumed "vast CIA penetration of Pakistan" seems to be of immense interest to the Commission.   One gets the impression that there is a behind the scenes and varying agreement about what the CIA is and is not allowed to do in Pakistan but that they do not tell their citizens about this agreement who quite probably would not tolerate it.

5. There is a lot of good anecdotal information about the attack that is fascinating if somewhat contradictory at times.   We get good reports from the wives of Bin Laden and the wives of one of the two brothers who were his bodyguards.   And we get an insight into the lives of Muslim women in Pakistan.   We get genuinely new and contradictory evidence about what crashed when, and whether we did put people on the roof or not, how many helicopters when, and whether we had people who cut the power to that part of town at just the right time or whether that was one of their normal blackouts.

6. The Commission report makes the strong statement, several times, that there is no basis for a strategic relationship between the United States and Pakistan, and pretending that there is just causes misunderstandings on both sides.  If this was acknowledged, and that instead it was recognized that we had limited mutual interests and made public and formal agreements to achieve those limited interests, then everyone would be much happier, they say.  

7. The Commission believes that there is no evidence that official elements of the Pakistan government were shielding Bin Laden, but they agree that they can not rule out that unofficial elements might have been.  They attribute his success at avoiding notice to an extremely low profile combined with the near total meltdown of Pakistani infrastructure (to do such things as verify identity cards, approve housing construction, etc).

8. The major theme of the report was on the relationship between the civilian and military sectors of the Pakistani government.   This is not something I would have predicted before I read the report, it seems to be of overwhelming importance to the commission.

Its definitely worth reading.


_______________________

1. In other words, even if they are correct about vast CIA presence in Pakistan, I would presume that they would be there as part of our joint Pakistan-US interests in that part of the world.   In other words, they should not apriori be assumed to be against Pakistan interests, at least not involving any of the issues we are discussing in this report or essay.  Are we not fighting a war together?  Are we not pouring in billions of dollars a year into Pakistan both directly and indirectly?  There is a whole other dynamic between the two countries and that involves Pakistan as a nuclear power.   This issue and the complicated relationship between the two countries because of this issue is never mentioned in the report.

Some Background on the History of the 4th of July

Its the 4th of July here in Rancho Rincon del Diablo, the Devil's Place. Hell. A white, right-wing Republican stronghold that complains bitterly of the influx of Hispanics and hates Obama even when he does their bidding, as Obama indeed does most of the time.

At various times, I read in foreign journals, or hear from international friends, or read in books, that Americans can not truly relate to Europe, or understand foreign policy, or any number of things because they are too naive, their history has been too short, they are enthusiastic and youth oriented, this argument goes, but do not have the depth to really understand history and work on the world stage.   Now, it may be that Americans are so ignorant of their own history that this might be true.  In fact, I think so myself most of the time.  But I disagree that America, the United States of America, does not have enough historical depth to understand some of the complicated situations in the world.  I think that it is the case that we are merely lazy and ignorant of our own history.  And I cite as case in point some background here on the 4th of July to support my argument.  

I had believed for many years that the 4th of July was a day to remember and celebrate the American War of Independence from Great Britain. And of course, that famous artillery barrage immortalized in our national anthem: "The rockets red glare, the bombs were fucking bursting in air! Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there". In other words, communications were cut off, but we knew that the fort had not yet been destroyed or surrendered because the artillery bursts illuminated the flag flying over the fort.

Unfortunately, the battle the song commemorates did not take place during the American War of Independence, it took place during the War of 1812.

Nor does the 4th of July celebrate the Declaration of Independence per se.   The 4th of July is actually the date of something that happened before the Declaration of Independence as we know it was written, and before the war that followed it.

Here are some things to know about 4th of July with a spin from someone who grew up in Virginia.

1. The 4th of July celebrates the approval by the 2nd Continental Congress of the Resolution of Independence also known as the Lee Resolution.   This resolution was proposed by a delegate to the Continental Congress named  Richard Henry Lee from Virginia.  It was proposed on June 7, 1776.  The first clause was approved on July 2, 1776 and the other clauses approved in the following months.

Immediately after the approval of the first clause of the Lee resolution, the Continental Congress took up the matter of the text of a Declaration of Independence, which became the document we normally think of when we think of the Declaration of Independence and the 4th of July.

This is the text of the Lee Resolution.

Resolved, That these United Colonies are, and of right ought to be, free and independent States, that they are absolved from all allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain is, and ought to be, totally dissolved. That it is expedient forthwith to take the most effectual measures for forming foreign Alliances. That a plan of confederation be prepared and transmitted to the respective Colonies for their consideration and approbation.

Its quite concise isn't it?

There is debate among historians about when the text of the resolution that we think of as our Declaration of Independence was actually written. But those dates all lie within the July 4 - August range. What we actually celebrate on July 4th is the approval of the first third of the Lee Resolution.

2. As mentioned above, the Resolution of Independence had been proposed by Richard Henry Lee of Virginia. Lee was a member of one of the leading families of Virginia and many other Virginians were involved in the both the Declaration of Independence and the War of Independence.   It goes without saying, this being America, that the delegates to the Continental Congress were white, male, and generally well off which usually meant landowners.   There were others involved in the revolution who were less well off, and were, for example, craftsmen, but I am not sure if there were any of those who were members of the Continental Congress.   

3. Less than 70 years later, within the living memory of people who were alive when the Lee Resolution was approved, Virginia again tried to escape a government that they found oppressive, whether we like that or not, or whether we understand their reasons or not, or whether those reasons were just by our standards today or not.  The result was about what you would expect for a war that was lost, you know, the usual dead men (over 10 percent of men killed), raped women, starving children, and cities burned to the ground. (3)

4. But beyond this general destruction and misery, there was also a very specific desire to personally punish the losers in order to teach them a lesson and that is where our little story continues.  In retribution against one of the leading families of Virginia, Lincoln's Secretary of War seized without due process, in other words, illegally, the ancestral home of that family in an attempt to punish and impoverish this particular family that, in Stanton's opinion, was guilty of holding true to their values of freedom. Stanton could not abide that and went out of his way to destroy them.   He did this by seizing their land and then ordering the creation of a cemetery on that land, his reasoning being that when the courts or Congress reversed his illegal seizure of property that it would do no good because there would be thousands of bodies on it and those bodies would not be exhumed. His actions were vindictive, illegal, abusive, and he got away with it without any problems.  In America, the law is for the rich and powerful, otherwise the law does not exist.  (1) 

5. In case you had not figured out the punchline of our heartwarming story of patriotism and our devotion to the law in America, the cemetery became known as Arlington National Cemetery, as Arlington had been the ancestral home of the Lee family for generations.

6. Yes, that Lee family, the descendants and members of the family of Richard Henry Lee, whose resolution of independence we celebrate this day.  (2)

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The Facebook Page for Arlington House
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Arlington-House-The-Robert-E-Lee-Memorial-US-National-Park-Service/172540179425529?directed_target_id=0
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1. Congress later voted some compensation for the illegal seizure of the land.   Whether or not that compensation was in any way just compensation for the act is debatable.   If you ever visit Arlington National Cemetery, be sure to visit the Lee / Arlington House.

2. Richard Henry Lee was the great uncle of Robert E. Lee.

3. War is hell.   Generally speaking, when a victorious army enters a civilian area, women are raped. Some armies rape more than others, some make a point of it, some try to discourage the practice.  But I doubt that there has ever been a victorious army that didn't rape the women of the defeated as they entered the territory of the enemy.  As for burning churches and schools, the answer is that they do not burn churches and schools.  They burn buildings that happen to be in the line of fire when people are fighting.  As for starving children, well, you see, when you burn the fields that means there is no food around and any food needs to be brought in.  Generally food is made available to defeated populations, eventually, when they get around to it.  As for burning cities, when a retreating army leaves, one of the last things they do is to dispose of ammunition that for one reason or another they can not take with them.  In the case of Richmond, Va. the fire at the armory got out of control and burned the city down.   Whose fault was that?  Hard to say, really.  But the point is, when the war was over, the men were dead, the cities burned, the women raped and the children starving.  As I say, war is hell.

NSA, Surveillance, Secrets 5: Motivations, Congressional Approvals and Legal Remedies

[Revised 6/22/2013]

As we learn more about what is going on here, I have to feel that that there are some surprises, but nothing too exciting.  The UK and the USA is using massive metadata collections to do social network analysis and find people.   Many people are surprised by this, I am not.   I am surprised however by some of the vagueness in the approval process.     Whether what Snowden actually released will turn out to be a clear and present danger is unknown at this time.  

Here are some references to articles about how the NSA uses the metadata, a brief discussion of how congress and the judiciary approvals in the process and my own personal opinion that the foreign policy and intelligence uses of this kind of data are so important that we will never get them to stop.  The best we can do, I think, is to control what other uses the data is put to.   This is a somewhat cynical opinion on my part.

I am disappointed to read that the NSA can turn over material that they inadvertently quote end quote stumble upon to the domestic agencies.   I can not see why that would be a good idea; it would not be used directly in court as that surveillance was done without an explicit warrant, (if I understand the law correctly and I probably don't), but I suppose that information in that surveillance could be useful for other parts of an investigation which could be used in court.   The point is that since such surveillance is done under a blanket "warrantless" procedure on metadata, it seems like a very bad idea to use that information for any domestic criminal matter.  It seems to me like you are just asking to get people mad at you over their constitutional rights.

0. So far the best article I have read on the issues here is this one:
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/17/evil_in_a_haystack_nsa_metadata?page=0,0

1. The NSA could not care less about your pornography.

You should have concluded from the previous discussion of where the NSA came from that the NSA has bigger fish to fry. They dont read your email and then hand it over to the FBI. Now, on the other hand, the FBI may very well read your email so you should start encrypting it. I don't trust the FBI as far as I can throw them.

2. Approvals

Congressional approval of this cluster of conflicting intelligence agency actions is a work in progress and a subject of debate and acrimony.    The various agencies are under the control (nominally at least) of the executive branch.  The executive branch is supposed to inform Congress of any operation in progress in a timely fashion.   But what is timely and what happens if you have 24 hours to stop someone from doing something bad?   So there are a variety of compromises in place and I will inaccurately try to characterize them here:   (a) Not all of congress needs to be informed, just the select committees on intelligence of the house and the senate.    Between them, that is still quite a few people, about 40, and it is very difficult to keep secrets when 40 people know something.  Nevertheless, that is the basic procedure.  (b) A fallback from that is to brief what is known as the "Gang of Eight".  The Gang of Eight consists of the House and Senate Majority & Minority Leaders, and the ranking bi-partisan members of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees, for a total of 8 people, a much more manageable number.    (c) For many activities, particularly where surveillance is involved, a special court has been set up involving especially cleared justices to review whether a proposed surveillance can go ahead.   For this purpose, basically a special court/judge has to be on call 7/24.    There is considerable debate about whether this is a real process or whether these courts generally rubber stamp the requests.   This last item is under a body of law that has changed over the last 30 years known as FISA or the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act  of 1978.

What you want to do if you want to understand this is to read about FISA and how it is has changed and what the controversies are.

But in the case of the current matter, when Pres. Obama says that "Congress and the Judiciary were informed" he is probably referring to the briefing of either the Gang of 8 or the full intelligence committees (I am not sure which) and the special court set up by FISA.

I promise you that this is all complicated and you will spend time understanding how it is supposed to work, and then how it is alleged that it does work, or, depending on who you talk to, does not work.

https://www.fas.org/irp/agency/doj/fisa/
http://www.cfr.org/intelligence/crs-reauthorization-fisa-amendments-act/p30877

3. Future Direction

You will never be able to get the intelligence community to give up looking for the next Zimmerman Telegram.   But it might be possible to make the fruits of surveillance less useful to the state apparatus. The simplest way is to make information gained by surveillance inadmissable as evidence in criminal or civil court.  Furthermore, it would be useful to make the release of surveillance material for purposes other than national security a criminal act.   If they are just sneaking around for national security purposes, then there is no need for them to be able to use the data for anything else, like violations of the criminal code.   Furthermore it should be possible to sue for damages for the non-national security uses of their research.  These changes in law, which may or may not be possible, would certainly reduce the harm that came from surveillance, a surveillance which I should say is probably inevitable.

The jury is out about whether these recent events are net positive or net negative. 99% that has been revealed is the least bit of a surprise to me. (Note, ok there were some surprises when I read more details about FISA and how that works.)  Maybe it will activate people to outlaw even this kind of surveillance, and that might be good.

We will see.

NSA, Surveillance, Secrets 4: Four Case Studies

[Revised 6/20/2013]

The National Security Agency (formerly known as Never Say Anything or No Such Agency) came into being from a variety of other preexisting organizations doing similar work in the Department of Defense. They were combined and given new resources because of at least four events (and possibly more) that made it abundantly clear to the Truman administration that this was important work. Three of these happened before the NSA was created, and the fourth was in progress when the NSA was founded.

The four events/activities are (in chronological order) Zimmerman, Enigma, Midway and Venona. These four events all changed history and all of them involved intercepting and reading internal communications from one part of a foreign government to another part of that same government by way of electronic media, in this case cable/telegraph and radio.

1. Zimmerman

During World War 1, while the USA was still neutral, a variety of events occurred such that all translatlantic cables between Europe and the Americas ended up going through a single cable. Without telling anyone, the British listened in on that cable and made copies of everything. The German Foreign Secretary sent an encrypted message to his ambassador in Mexico City with the following instructions. Germany was about to begin unrestricted submarine warfare against the British in the Atlantic. They, the Germans, were concerned that this might cause the USA to enter the war on the side of Great Britain. Were that to happen, the Ambassador was instructed to open negotiations with Mexico to see if they would open a front against America, which Germany would support financially and materially. The British decrypted the telegram and found a way to give a copy to the Americans such that it would not compromise how the British got ahold of it, and also answer any questions about whether the telegram was authentic. In other words, prove that the British had not forged it as part of a scheme to get American into the war on their side. The Americans made the telegram public and it was a significant factor in the USA coming into World War 1 on the side of Britain and France.

In other words, the British were spying on all communications sent by cable (e.g. telegram) between Europe and N. America and decrypted and cherry picked one of those communications to change the course of the war.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmermann_Telegram

2. Enigma

In World War 2, short messages between various parts of the German command were sent encrypted using a very famous device called Enigma. Longer messages were sent another way. The British (and later the Americans) attempted to intercept as many Enigma encoded messages as they could. These messages were sent by radio. The British, with Polish help, were able to break Enigma and read a certain number of these messages on a daily basis within a few hours of their changing the code (which the Germans did daily). This information, a closely guarded secret, allowed the allies to read internal German communications for a large part of the war. Enigma was unbelievably useful.

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enigma_machine

3. Midway

This is one of the many great stories of World War Two and it is amazing the number of people who do not know it. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese navy planned an operation to complete the destruction of the American fleet. The United States had a variety of radio intercept stations where they tried to intercept messages from various parts of the Japanese Fleet to/from Tokyo. There were several different codes in use at different levels of security. Station Hypo in Hawaii was able to decrypt enough information to know about the Japanese plan to attack Port Moresby which led to the Battle of Coral Sea. The Doolittle Raid of Tokyo took place which caused the final approval of the Japanese attack on Midway. Station Hypo was able to decrypt enough of the plan, the order of battle, etc, to cause Nimitz to plan an ambush, possibly the single greatest ambush in naval history. Most historians of that war believe that this was the turning point of the war in the Pacific.

See http://www.ibiblio.org/hyperwar/PTO/Magic/COMINT-Midway.html

4. Venona

Trying to condense Venona down to a single paragraph is nearly impossible. During World War Two, the Russians had many offices in our country to help coordinate the various activities that we were doing together, such as Lend Lease. These offices sent thousands of messages to / from Moscow as part of their trade activities in encrypted form. We collected 10% or so of those messages and did nothing with them. They began trying to decode/decypher these messsages during the war, but most progress was made after the war was over.   A stack of these encrypted messages was given to a three person group to see what they could get from them. They weren't looking for anything in particular, and they did not particularly think that the Russians were doing anything bad. It was more of an exercise, I think, than anything else. The details of this are fascinating but besides the point, it turns out that the Russians had a mistake in one of their five encryption systems and that we could read parts of a few hundred of these messages. And what we discovered is that the Russians had been conducting massive espionage against the United States the entire time, and that they not only knew about the Manhattan project, but had completely penetrated it from nearly the beginning and that the FBI and other counterintelligence groups had been completely unaware.

The best discussion / introduction to Venona that I have found is the following preface on the CIA website.   It is odd that it is on the CIA website but that is a nuance to be discussed only if you believe other parts of my post.

See  https://www.cia.gov/library/center-for-the-study-of-intelligence/csi-publications/books-and-monographs/venona-soviet-espionage-and-the-american-response-1939-1957/preface.htm

Why this matters.

History has proven that intercepting the enemy's internal communications as sent over cable or radio and reading it can change the course of a war. At the same time, it proves that protecting your communications from the other side doing the same thing to you is critical.

What does this have to do with reading your email? The answer is, they are not reading your email. They are looking for communications signals between members of foreign governments and non-government organizations (e.g. terrorist groups) and technology has changed such that they have to collect a great big bag of shit and then sift through it.

They could not care less about your pornography, your cheating on your taxes, or your infidelity.

Part 5:
http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2013/06/nsa-surveillance-secrets-5-approvals.html

NSA, Surveillance, Secrets 3: General Background

Here is some necessary background to understand the context of the NSA brouhaha currently ongoing.

Everything here is based on public sources and everything here is, I think, somewhat necessary to understand what people are talking about. To the best of my knowledge, nothing I am saying is or should be the least bit controversial.

1. The following issues have always been subject to debate and controversy in this country, since the very beginning (1789 and before):

What can be held secret from the people of the United States and under what circumstances? How can the citizens of the country know what their government is doing? When can the government of the United States of America violate the laws of other countries? What controls need to be in place so that American's rights are not violated?

2. The answers to these questions are changing constantly as are the procedures put in place to manage them and to see that there are no abuses. But the system changes, the system is complex, there certainly are abuses, and so forth. Furthermore, while there may be a working concensus in Washington, that does not mean that the American people would necessarily approve of the result if it were in some way brought to a direct vote. But, like everything else in America, there is rarely a direct vote on issues. You vote for representatives, and they vote on issues.

3. We may not know the details and the specific programs but a lot of this is discussed in public and what is generally going on is available to you if you wish to know about it. This is because people are always arguing over who gets what resources, who is in charge of whom, and so forth. But they do not take ads out in the newspaper, there is a certain skill involved in knowing what is happening, and you have to pay attention.   I list various sources here.   (1) 

4. You also have to realize that different parts of the US Government are very different from each other. They are not a "communal" group mind, they do not necessarily cooperate, and they do compete. For example, the FBI, the CIA and the NSA are not interchangable. They are very different, and most of the time, historically speaking, they do not talk or cooperate with each other. There are some notable exceptions to this, when they did work together, but they are notable exceptions and we will mention a few later.

5. One of the essential contradictions of the activities we call "intelligence" is that it often involves breaking someone's law, if not exactly ours. And the question is what is the legal procedure when we do this? When we spy on the military secrets of Russia, we are clearly violating their law. When can we legally violate their law?

6. For all the attention given to the CIA and the NSA, the agency that seems to have violated the rights of American citizens the most egregiously seems to have been the FBI and perhaps the IRS. I am referring in particular to J. Edgar Hoover activities and the various activities associated with COINTELPRO.

7. If you want to understand the NSA and their culture, there are four events/projects that you need to be aware of. They are: Enigma, Midway, Zimmerman, and Venona.   There are certainly many other projects, but these four are public and these four have been acknowledged as being foundations of the NSA and its mission.

Part 4:
http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2013/06/nsa-surveillance-secrets-4-four-case.html


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1. Here is an example of what I mean by being able to know what is going on in general, without knowing the specifics.  There is ample evidence that our various submarines are regularly used for covert missions of various types, including listening to and measuring signals from up close to various nations, inserting and extracting people from foreign nations, and other highly secret intelligence collection methods including tapping underwater cables and tracking Russian submarines.   I do not know what they are up to today, but I know that the Navy has increased the latest submarine, the Virginia Class, ability to do these things.   Therefore when some underwater project of this type is discussed and announced breathlessly by the sensationalist press in the future, I will not be the least surprised unless it is truly audacious and original.   Otherwise, I will say, what else is new?

NSA, Surveillance, Secrets 2. Open Sources

A tremendous amount of information is in the public domain about the NSA and other intelligence agencies. It is true that you will not be told the details of specific programs, but you can get the general direction of most of what is going on, and rarely be completely surprised when the truth comes out. There are several reasons why this is true, e.g. that the information is public, but the major ones are: policy debate inside the government, competition for scarce resources, and various interested outside organizations that maintain archives of information and analysis in order to influence policy.

Here is a short list of my favorite sources in the areas of intelligence and national defense policy. There are many others.

1. George Washington University's National Security Archive http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/

2. The Federation of American Sciences (www.fas.org)

This pro-arms control group maintains an excellent collection of background material on matters related to defense and intelligence, in conjunction with www.globalsecurity.org.

3. The CIA Online Library  https://www.cia.gov/library/index.html

4. The NSA Web Site  www.nsa.gov

5. The Washington Post and the NY Times

Pretty much everything involving defense and intelligence is discussed in the Washington Post and the NY Times. The Post is better for details of Washington push and shove, both are good for broad strategy and policy issues. Any given article in the Washington Post is likely to have 100s if not 1000s of comments by crazed, angry partisans of one side of an issue or another.

www.washingtonpost.com

www.nytimes.com

6. Congressional Research Service

The CRS is a branch of Congress that prepares reports on various topics for the House and Senate.  I use the Open CRS archive and the FAS archive for the most part which can be found at:

http://www.fas.org/sgp/crs/
http://www.opencrs.com

For example, here is a report on "Covert Action: Legislative Background and Possible Policy Questions".

https://opencrs.com/document/RL33715/2013-04-10/

Part 3:
http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2013/06/nsa-surveillance-secrets-3-general.html

NSA, Surveillance, Secrets 1: Why Should We Trust the Government?

My theory is that the brouhaha about the NSA and surveillance is only partially about the NSA and surveillance.    It is about two other things as well: (a) Americans do not know anything about how their government works and (b) Americans do not trust their government.  I think that the former is regrettable and that latter is a fair judgment, the government has proven to not be trustworthy on many occasions.

There have been many occasions in the last 40 years when the US Government explained events or actions in ways that have not held up to scrutiny.     Exactly why certain things happened may or may not point to conspiracy to defraud the American people, I very much doubt that it is any one conspiracy given the wide range of actors and policies.   These are not subtle matters at the fringe of American life, these are matters of central importance.   It may be that there are explanations for each of them, but I have looked, and for the most part, they are not obvious.   Some like the Gulf of Tonkin may indeed have a degree of screw up to them instead of malicious intent.   But the fact is that most people in America do not believe the Warren Commission, whatever the truth may be.  Whatever happened with COINTELPRO, gross violations of American law by the FBI and their paid informers were never brought to justice.   Leonard Peltier is still in jail and he will die in jail for a crime we all know he did not commit.   The supreme court pissed on the constitution in public when they put G. W. Bush in power in 2000.    There were no WMD's in Iraq.    Each of these are different events with different causes and different factions and the only generalization that I am drawing from them is this: the American people have been given ample reasons to be skeptical about what their government tells them about any given matter.   Any given explanation should probably not be taken at face value if the issue is of importance to you, and further study is warranted.  That is certainly the case with the recent NSA brouhaha which I personally think is not even close to what most people think it is.

Nevertheless, I think that people are right to look closer and try to understand it and not take the government at their word.

Think of these recent disclosures as part of a giant civics lesson: you now have an opportunity to learn how your government works.   I don't think you are going to like it.

How do I know this stuff, you may ask.  Years of dedicated study, wasted years that will do me no good and only alienate me from my fellow biped who does not know this stuff and does not want to know.    A tremendous amount of this information is public even when the details of specific operations aren't.

So I am going to outline a basic introduction on how and why certain types of Intelligence matters are handled in this country, specifically NSA.   Using public sources, of course, what else?  But at the end of the day, if you do not trust the government, and if you do not believe that I know anything about this, then it won't make any difference.

I also realize that I am held in complete contempt by my friends who do not believe that I could possibly know anything about this stuff.   This has been made extremely clear to me in the last few days.   Be that way, see if I care.

Part 2:
http://globalwahrman.blogspot.com/2013/06/nsa-surveillance-and-civics-sources.html

Eric Cantor, the One Ring of Power, and my Virginian High School

Part One

Once upon a time, I attended the The Collegiate Schools in Richmond, Virginia, a somewhat prestigious private high school in the region. We had a number of people from Virginia society in our school, or their children at least, as well as some well-established outsiders. I propose to describe something about this High School because it affects all of us as citizens of this country.

You may ask, why would Michael's High School be important to all of us as citizens?

Because Eric Cantor is now the Majority Leader of the House of Representatives in Congress and Eric went to Collegiate. 

And Collegiate is a somewhat amusing, somewhat peculiar place. It definitely has a culture all its own, and its place in Virginia society.

But first I want to review with you how our imperialist superpower works because you need to understand this to understand why Eric Cantor matters. Although the president gets the helicopters and the airplanes, and gets to say who gets a drone missile up his ass on a day-to-day basis, it is in fact Congress that allocates the money for those missiles and helicopters. And in general, the executive branch abides by the law, most of the time at least, we hope, and those laws must be passed by both houses of Congress and signed by the President.

But to bring a bill up to a vote is not a trivial matter, and it requires the machinations and scheming of the two political parties to do so. Every time there is an election, the House and the Senate reorganizes itself into a majority and minority coalition, and each of those coalitions has representatives on the important committees that are preparing the legislation and the budgets. So if the Republicans have a majority of the House, as they do, their representative is the chair of, for example, the House Armed Services Committee. Seniority in the House and Senate also plays a role in determining who can get things done.  The standing committees take the lead in preparing legislation for their branch of Congress, House and Senate, and when passed by the committee it goes to the floor of the House or the Senate for a vote by all the members. (1)  (2) 

the smoke filled room

So the House and the Senate are each a complicated network of smoke-filled rooms, each filled with power, self-entitlement, influence, obligations, history, villianry, idealism, and hypocrisy and having been driven mad by power, push each other around with their large software packages, working with great vigor to get nothing done.

But one stands above these smoke-filled rooms whose job it is to coordinate their actions and bring it to a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives.

One ring to rule them all, one ring to find them, one ring to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.

Eric Cantor is the Majority Leader for the House of Representatives, and Eric went to Collegiate.  The mind reels.

End of Part One

Eric Cantor on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Cantor

The smoke filled room on Wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Smoke-filled_room

The One Ring on Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Ring

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1. The Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences works in a similar way. The various subsections nominate films in their respective categories, e.g. acting, screenwriting, costume design, film editing, cinematography, etc, but then the entire Academy membership votes on who receives the award that year.

2. If you think about each of those representatives and senators having constituents, each with their own strongly held beliefs, and multiply out the different agendas, then it becomes clear that most bills in Congress must be wild compromises almost by definition to "get out of committee".   Thus, having a major party that does not compromise throws a wrench into the system like you would not believe.