Google working with US intelligence agencies

As if I didn’t have sufficient cause to worry about all the private info I’ve willingly handed over to Google (oh, how I love Gmail and Google calendar and Google Docs and Google Apps and Google sitemaps and Google Analytics and… and …), I now have to wonder about this match that’s straight out of 1984:

Google has been recruited by US intelligence agencies to help them better process and share information they gather about suspects.

Agencies such as the National Security Agency have bought servers on which Google-supplied search technology is used to process information gathered by networks of spies around the world.

Google is also providing the search features for a Wikipedia-style site, called Intellipedia, on which agents post information about their targets that can be accessed and appended by colleagues, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.

All right, let’s set my paranoia aside, and admit that organizing and building a wiki-style tool for the intelligence community is pretty cool and, too, one of those, “Shit, why weren’t they doing that already?” kind of moments.

And now, back to dealing with my paranoia, Shit, just what else will Google, NSA, CIA and the Telecomms collaborate on next, and just how badly will we get screwed?

Bush’s DOJ and Eliot Spitzer

It doesn’t take a political genius to realize that there’s more to the Eliot Spitzer story than what has been reported.

Soon after the news broke, I commented to friends how there’s another story to be told; a story that includes Wall Street interests, a crusading progressive politician with his eye on the White House, a politized Department of Justice, and, of course, we cannot forget that the Bush Administration still controls the reins of the Executive branch (i.e., they still control the investigative muscle to go after the opposition).

Because of this, I wasn’t too surprised to read this on Harper’s No Comment:

Just after the scandal broke, a number of New York pols told me they were convinced that the Albany Republican establishment knew “all about” Spitzer’s problems well in advance of the press reports. I couldn’t find anything that substantiated this suspicion, but Newsday’s Ellis Henican now presents the first evidence. He interviews Roger Stone, a man known as the ultimate dirty-trickster of New York politics.

But before I could even make my way to the Capitol to gather up a new pile of reaction statements, my cell phone was ringing from a place even nicer than this. The call-back number said 202, for Washington. But the sunny voice on the other end could only be in Miami.

Yes, it was Roger Stone. And the exuberance in his voice made high-fiving Albanians sound almost morose. “I didn’t make him go to a prostitution ring,” said the most famous and ruthless Republican dirty trickster who still walks the earth. “He did that all on his own.”

Stone said that even before I asked if his hand was somehow in Spitzer’s latest trouble. I figured, somehow or another, it had to be. “No comment on that,” Stone said. “I will say I knew it was coming. That’s why I wasn’t too upset about the results of the special election,” where a Democrat grabbed a supposedly safe Republican State Senate seat, leaving Democrats just one vote shy of control.

Maybe this is pure braggadocio. But if Roger Stone did know that all of this was going down then the state’s Republican leadership most likely did too. That would be more powerful evidence of a politically corrupted investigation and prosecution.

This, it goes with out saying, in no way excuses Eliot Spitzer’s blame and total lack of sense, and responsibility. However, it would not come as a great surprise if we later learn that Bush’s Department of Justice launched a fishing expedition with the sole intent to catching a once promising Democratic prize. Yes, the now former governor of New York should’ve known better.

And now to wait for the enterprising journalist that will dig beneath surface, and look pass the sex scandal, and easy story of prostitutes and powerful men.

Will Tim Russert hold John McCain to the same standards?

Picking up on whether the Russerts of the DC media bubble will question St. McCain on his relation with a radical religious extremists, John Hagee, Jane Hamsher chimes in:

Tim Russert, in front of millions of Americans on Tuesday night, was quick to force Barack Obama to denounce Louis Farrakahn repeatedly until he worded it to Russert’s satisfaction (evidently “unacceptable and reprehensible” didn’t quite get the job done). Despite the fact that Obama never sought Farrakhan’s endorsement, Russert felt this line of questioning was appropriate given Farrakhan’s intolerant remarks about Jews in the past.

Okay, fair enough. But if that’s the case, then why isn’t he pressing John McCain about radical religious extremist uber-nut John Hagee?

Mr. McCain, who has been on a steady search for support among conservative and evangelical leaders who have long distrusted him, said he was “very honored” by Mr. Hagee’s endorsement. Asked about Mr. Hagee’s extensive writings on Armageddon and about what one questioner said was Mr. Hagee’s belief that the anti-Christ will be the head of the European Union, Mr. McCain responded that “all I can tell you is that I am very proud to have Pastor John Hagee’s support.”

Notice the “been on a steady search” part. If Obama had actively sought Farrakhan’s endorsement, his campaign would be over.

[...]

Hagee was, if you’ll remember, the guy who said that Hurricaine Katrina was God’s revenge for a gay pride parade. He thinks war with Iran is essential so as to bring about Armageddon (when you can say bye-bye to the Jews). But as Glenn Greenwald says, he’s a white Christian evangelical bigot, and therefore entitled to respect from the pundit class:

[W]hite evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people. They are still fit for good company, an important and cherished part of our mainstream American political system. The entire GOP establishment is permitted actively to lavish them with praise and court their support without the slightest backlash or controversy. Both George Bush and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sent formal greetings to the 2006 gathering of Hagee’s group.

By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers.

How come Tim Russert — in all the times he sits and chats with Lieberman, McCain and various high Bush officials — never reads all of the inflammatory, disgusting, crazed “Rapture-is-Coming/ All-Jews-will-Burn/ Kill-All-Muslims/ Hurricanes-are-Punishment-against-Gays” pronouncements from John Hagee and James Dobson and Pat Robertson and demand that John McCain and George Bush and Joe Lieberman “denounce” those views and “reject” their support? What’s the difference, exactly?

So, again, will the Russerts in the DC media bubble stop to ask St. McCain if he denounces and rejects the support he has received from radical cleric John Hagee?

Of Louis Farrakhan and John McCain

Media double standard? Inquiring minds want to know:

Barack Obama was questioned at Tuesday night’s debate by Tim Russert and Hillary Clinton about repudiating Louis Farrakhan’s endorsement — which Obama said was unsolicited — in the strongest terms possible. He was repeatedly badgered by Russert, and was forced to disown Farrakhan over and over again.

The very next day, John McCain appeared onstage in Texas with Pastor John Hagee, an influential activist in the Christian Zionist movement. Hagee’s comments about world affairs can make Farrakhan seem pedestrian at times: He eagerly awaits the Armageddon, considers the Catholic Church to be the Anti-Christ, and has said that Jews brought their own persecution upon themselves.

But when it came to McCain’s rather controversial backer, the press hardly batted an eye. Seems like a pretty clear double standard, right?

[...]

Very much like Farrakhan, Hagee has regularly made remarks about current events and other religions that many would find alarming. But unlike Farrakhan, he has never truly faced the scrutiny of the mainstream press, and major politicians like Joe Lieberman and John McCain have freely associated with him.

In 2006, Hagee laid out his views on eschatology in a book called Jerusalem Countdown, in which he claimed that sources had told him a year earlier about world events to come — and amazingly enough, all those predictions had come true over the past year. Next on the agenda, according to his March 2006 interview in Human Events: Israel would go to war with Iran before May 2006. And from there, Hagee eagerly anticipated an all-out world war against Iran and Russia, followed by the Second Coming.

[...]

So here’s the question: Will the same media outlets who have hammered Barack Obama about Louis Farrakhan’s uninvited endorsement now ask John McCain to denounce and reject the support of John Hagee, which was actually sought and publicly accepted?

We’ll see of the DC media and the Russerts of that town even dare to ask St. McCain if he’ll denounce the statements of his supporter, John Hagee. I’m not counting on it.

Our own response machine

This is encouraging:

[W]hen the right-wing smears against Barack Obama began to paint him as unpatriotic, The AP’s Nedra Pickler was happy to oblige by running an article whose third paragraph literally begins “conservative consultants say…” and goes on to quote disgraced right-wing smear merchant Roger Stone as an expert. [...] What the right-wing message machine and its enablers in the media didn’t count on this time was that now there’s a left-wing message machine.

Cue Jane Hamsher:

The AP probably doesn’t care a whole lot about what you think, but it does care what the papers who subscribe to their wire service think. So we’ve set up a page where you can plug in your zip code and automatically send an email to the papers in your area who syndicate the AP and let them know this is beneath what you expect their coverage to be — for this election cycle and beyond.

Especially if you live in some state that’s less likely to get a lot of attention like New York or California, please take time to send an email. We want to blanket the country as broadly as possible and let every paper know that this kind of journalism is unacceptable — and that you’re watching.

I’m just happy to see that, after years of complaining, progressives may be seeing the start of our own organized response machine to act as a counterweight to right-wing noise machine that has dominated our national discourse for years.