Author: Gary E Richardson

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Words of Wisdom…

Image

above Deer Park

…from a Zen brother:

There is this deep understanding that everything is always perfect simply because it is. It is not an understanding of the mind or logic, it is rooted completely in the heart. Although, like all of us, much spiritual practice, reading, meditation and retreats have occurred, this lesson comes directly from life:

Enough times seeing that what I thought was horrible and totally unacceptable turned out to strangely be exactly what was needed for the very best results.

Enough times learning that devastating pain seemed to be the most brilliant spiritual teacher of all.

Enough times seeing that those who I most feared or resisted were all actually just me in different clothes and coming to this seemingly other me with the exact perfect lesson.

Enough times to turn all my thoughts and beliefs and ideas completely upside down, until I finally saw that they were all, all of them, total illusion, blindness and ignorance.

It doesn’t mean I don’t live my life in service to others and work for the benefit of all. But I also know that I don’t know what that means.

It doesn’t mean deep grief and sadness and even occasionally a little anger don’t arise when I forget how perfect this seemingly crazy world is and always has been.

There are no others. There never has been a hair’s breadth of separation anywhere, ever. And yet … and yet this illusion appears so very real. It’s not surprising that it fools us so completely. The best solution may be to rest in this silence that has no answers, no questions, no ideas or beliefs. To help others knowing full well there is no other we are helping. We are only helping our self in the amazingly varied costumes we appear in, just as we are being helped in return. It’s not something the mind can really comprehend, but it is the best help we can offer. This is helping in truth.

Much Love and Many Bows to you, as myself in all its amazing variety and diversity, from warlords, corporate chiefs, politicians, trees, mountains and insects to the many gentle spiritual Bodhisattvas (including my wonderful cat Zen) who through their love help to shatter the illusion that is solely responsible for all human suffering.

—Peter Cutler

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Snowden, Through the Eyes of a Spy Novelist

For a look at Edward Joseph Snowden’s predicament through the eyes of spy novelist Alex Berenson, check out his guest-op in the New York Times: “Snowden, through the Eyes of a Spy Novelist”

I mention Snowden’s middle name, because it has come out that the extradition papers the US filed with HK misidentified him as Edward James Snowden, which was proper grounds for refusing the request, thus enabling Snowden’s escape. Hmmm, they’re going after this guy for telling the world how the US government is violating its constitution and who knows how many other nations’ laws; and they can’t even get the extradition request right.

Spy-novelist Berenson suggests what would have been the adult response to the Snowden affair:

We have treated a whistle-blower like a traitor — and thus made him a traitor. Great job. Did anyone in the White House or the N.S.A or the C.I.A. consider flying to Hong Kong and treating Mr. Snowden like a human being, offering him a chance to testify before Congress and a fair trial? Maybe he would have gone with President Vladimir V. Putin anyway, but at least he would have had another option. The secret keepers would have won too: a Congressional hearing would have been a small price to bring Mr. Snowden and those precious hard drives back to American soil.

Alas, truth is stranger than fiction—and often much less satisfying in the end; it’s beginning to appear that Mr. Snowden may be stuck in something closely approaching modern purgatory—the “transit area” of a 21st century Russian airport, or any airport, for that matter. We have it on no less an authority than Russia’s Alpha Male and former Chief Spook, Vladimir Putin, that Snowden is holed up “in the transit hall as a transit passenger.”

Vladimir Putin

Vladimir Putin (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Putin said Russia would not extradite Snowden to the US with whom Russia has no extradition treaty. He called US accusations against Russia “ravings and rubbish.” Putin, in so many words, wished Snowden godspeed: “Mr. Snowden is a free man. [Only a Russian czar could view Snowden’s being “free”—ever again.] The sooner he chooses his final destination the better it would be for us and for himself.”

Snowden may be there a long while according to extradition lawer Douglas McNabb, who conducted an online Q&A at the London Guardian website in which I participated on Wednesday afternoon. Shortly before McNabb went online, we learned that Ecuador had not issued refugee documents for Snowden as had widely been reported since he left HK.

“If he had the document he would be free to travel assuming the airline accepted it as a valid travel document, which most do,” McNabb said. “It is now being reported that Ecuador has not issued refugee travel documents for Snowden. If accurate, Snowden may be pulling an Assange but at a transit area in the airport with a hotel.”

McNabb noted that the US Supreme Court has ruled that even while breaking local laws federal agents may kidnap someone in another country and bring him back to stand trial in the US. The kidnapping is not grounds for having the charges dismissed.

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1970s Church investigations presaged Snowden affair

The Johnson Post today has an excellent look back at the work of the (Idaho US Sen Frank) Church committee, which revealed the ugly underbelly of the US “intelligence” apparatus in the 1970s.

The Johnson Post is the blog of my mentor at Idaho public TV, Marc Johnson. In the early 1980s, we produced the nightly “Idaho Reports”

Marc, in his blog, quotes a recent  article in Harper’s magazine’s online Stream, On the NSA’s “That ’70s Show” Rerun:

“The Snowden Affair is a ‘rerun’ of issues first uncovered during the 1970s, though these problems trace back to the earliest American efforts at espionage,” says [Pat] Shea. Between 1975 and 1976, the Church committees produced more than a dozen reports detailing the illegal activities of the NSA, CIA, and FBI, which included opening mail, intercepting telegrams, planting bugs, wiretapping, and attempting to break up marriages, foment rivalries and destroy careers of private citizens. “We thought we put a stop to this wholesale collection of information on Americans forty years ago,” says Peter Fenn, another former Church staffer.

Looks like we’re condemned to repeat some history here. Marc notes in his blog, as I did a few days ago, that the polling data show a lot of ambivalence on the part of our fellow citizens “and perhaps as a result poll-sensitive elected officials, with the exception of Wyden and Udall, are laying low. Again, I suspect, Church would be stunned.” I sure am!

The situation is much worse now than then. The nation has bought into an omnipresent danger of terror in the land. It’s one way of keeping a fragile polity united.

Be sure to check out The Johnson Post

 

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Where is Edward Snowden?

Well, here’s a thought:

I’ve been following the adventures of Edward Snowden, and it appears that no one has actually seen him in Moscow, where he was supposed to have spent the night after leaving Hong Kong. In addition to having booked a seat from Hong Kong to Moscow, Snowden had a seat on a flight to Havana that left Moscow without him today.

What if that were a feint. and he actually went in the other direction. VietNam might be a convenient stopover. There he could visit with the Ecuadorian foreign minister and, perhaps, hitch a ride to Ecuador.

What do y’ think?

Just for the heck of it, I plotted the journey from HongKong to HaNoi to Quito on a Google map. It’s a pretty straight shot.

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NSA surveillance may be legal — but it’s unconstitutional

Informative links:

“NSA surveillance may be legal — but it’s unconstitutional” by Laura K Donohue, Georgetown law professor and director of the Center on National Security and the Law, in the June 21, 2013, Washington Post. NSA surveillance programs undermine purpose of FISA, which was established to prevent this kind of overreach

“The top secret rules that allow NSA to use US data without a warrant”  by Glenn Greenwald and James Ball in the June 20, 2013, London Guardian. FISA court submissions show broad scope of procedures governing NSA’s surveillance of Americans’ communication; documents show that discretion as to who is actually targeted lies directly with the NSA analysts.

 

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Another NSA whistleblower spills the beans: Obama targeted in 2004

According to former NSA analyst Russell B Tice, in the summer of 2004,”a 40-some-year-old wanna-be senator from Illinois” was a target of NSA surveillance. The target lives in “a big, white house in Washington, DC…the President of the United States, now.”  [full Russ Tice interview]

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Good Guardian links:

This morning, the Guardian has a summary of Edward Snowden’s online chat comments yesterday, as well as an overview of the number of government data requests various Internet service providers have been receiving—Yahoo reports c. 2,000/month; Apple, c. 750; Facebook, c. 1,500; Microsoft, c. 1,000. They were unable legally to break out how many of those were Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) requests as opposed to the more numerous requests related to criminal investigations.

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Ed Snowden Q&A online this morning.

In an unprecedented bow to citizen journalism, for about an hour and a half this morning, Edward Snowden answered 18 questions submitted online. The questions and answers are republished in full at http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/17/edward-snowden-nsa-files-whistleblower?commentpage=6

While he did not get to my specific questions, Snowden provided useful clarification about the difference between policy restrictions and technical capabilities for accessing communication content.

While he made it clear that he was divulging information only to journalists, not governments, the mainstream media did not fare well:

Initially I was very encouraged. Unfortunately, the mainstream media now seems far more interested in what I said when I was 17 or what my girlfriend looks like rather than, say, the largest program of suspicionless surveillance in human history.

I loved his witty response to the question of whether he was supplying China with information in exchange for asylum:

Ask yourself: if I were a Chinese spy, why wouldn’t I have flown directly into Beijing? I could be living in a palace petting a phoenix by now.

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NSA/PRISM/Snowden news roundup

The Guardian has published a helpful “Online privacy and PRISM news and teaching resources round up.” It includes many of the Guardian articles I’ve been linking, plus teaching materials (anyone have Dick Cheney’s email?) and a lot more.

Snowden’s latest revelations in the Guardian make me reevaluate my recent quip about the Brits not wanting to get involved. Snowden disclosed that during the 2009 G20 summit in London, British agents were monitoring the computers and intercepting the phone calls of foreign officials and even set up an internet café so they could read their email. This is getting to look more and more like an episode of MI5, the BBC high-tech spy series that kept public TV viewers on the edge of their seats for several years. Snowden’s and the Guardian‘s timing is pretty good; the Brits are hosting a G8 summit Monday.

An Observer/Opinium poll of 1,942 Brits was released yesterday: