Abby and Robbie Martin discuss the potentiality of an ‘Occupy Silicon Valley’ protest movement in a similar mold to ‘Occupy Oakland’ taking place in California’s San Francisco Bay Area. They address the ethical issues revolving around tech-companies like Facebook, Google, Apple, Microsoft, Soundcloud and debunk the notion that private corporations will install privacy safeguards on their own without the pressure of public consumer outrage. Robbie goes into the history of Silicon Valley’s roots, which tie directly to the Pentagon’s post-WWII defense industry private sector push.

Watch Robbie Martin talk about Facebook’s new police force and why Occupy Wall Street should take on Silicon Valley on Breaking the Set:

Robbie Martin Breaks the Set on Occupy Silicon Valley 

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Ask a group of people what form of government the United States has and you’ll be met with varied replies. Some insist it’s a democracy, others maintain it’s a republic, democratic republic, or constitutional republic.

Technically, the US Government was founded as a constitutional republic where representatives are democratically elected. However, this definition only typifies the government at its inception. As history has shown in abundance, governments are dynamic—they rise, fall and transform with time. When this occurs gradually, it’s not always clear that a fundamental and often dangerous transition has taken place.

In recent years, the idea that the US government is now an oligarchy, or corporatocracy, has gained traction. An oligarchy is a government “in which all power is vested in a few persons or in a dominant class or clique.” A corporatocracy, therefore, defines that dominant class as consisting of corporate interests.

It’s not hard to see why this term is increasingly being applied to the US, where corporate lobbying is used to buy political leverage, and Congress acts as the fulcrum to carry out this advantage with legislation. The incomes of the super wealthy have grown exponentially in relation to that of the average citizen, and their ability to displace the average voice has grown in tandem.

Even elite institutions are putting out research to back this claim. A recent study conducted by Princeton and Northwestern University called “Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens” measured influence on policy by examining 1,779 policy issues occurring between 1981-2002. Four groups were considered in the analysis: average citizens, economic elites, mass-based interest groups, and corporate interest groups, concluding (emphasis added):

“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”

The study alone doesn’t definitively prove corporate rule, and its authors admit their analytical test should be interpreted in a “tentative and preliminary” fashion. However, absence of “smoking-gun” proof does not suggest absence of oligarchic rule. The empirical data clearly shows that the US government has ceased to represent the people in favor of economic elites.

Examples of corporate hegemony abound:

*The Affordable Care Act was written and implemented by Elizabeth Fowler, former Vice President of Public Policy and External Affairs at WellPoint, the nation’s largest health insurance provider. No surprise, the legislation mandated that everyone purchase private health insurance, inking into law a huge advantage for the industry. One more trip through the revolving door returned her to the pharmaceutical industry to reap the rewards.

*State initiatives for mandatory labeling of GMO foods have been repeatedly stamped out by the propaganda boot of the Grocery Manufacturers of America (GMA) lobbying group, headed by Monsanto and DuPont, despite 91% of public support for GMO labeling (see Initiative 522 in Washington, Prop 37 in California). In May, Vermont passed a GMO labeling bill, only to be immediately sued by the GMA in an attempt to block the law from being implemented. If this wasn’t enough, these giants, plus Koch Industries, are now attempting to preempt the chaos of people knowing what they’re eating with federal legislation to supersede state labeling laws.

*The government bailout of “too big to fail” banks after the housing collapse transferred massive wealth from the taxpayers to the banks, with no disclosure of where the money was going and no arrests for anyone involved in the lead-up to the crisis. In fact, the US Treasury approved executive bonuses for bailed-out bank CEOs, while millions of Americans foreclosed on their homes.

*Bills overtly written by corporate lobbyists constitute a staggering proportion of legislation passed, as exemplified by an analysis of California’s 2007-2008 legislative period. Furthermore, lobbyists are de-registering from the system, limiting the ability to keep track of the extent of corporate influence.

Recently, Senator Bernie Sanders confronted Federal Reserve chairwoman Janet Yellen with statistics suggesting the US had shifted from a capitalist democracy (another misnomer) to an oligarchic form of government. Yellen replied that the statistics shared by the Senator greatly concern her. However, in a deluge of irony, her solution was that these concerns should be brought to the policymakers; the same policymakers seated at the crux of this problem. Because if Congress won’t listen, try asking Congress.

Face it—we live in a corporatocracy.

Consistently low approvals of Congress and the popularity of the Occupy Wall Street movement suggest the average person grasps the nature of the problem, but the magnitude of the corruption hasn’t yet seeped into the public consciousness. Only six corporations control 90% of what Americans see, hear and read, which adds to the disconnect between what the government is doing and what people perceive it as doing on their behalf. Many prefer to see each act of corruption as an isolated incident, rather than a series of interrelated and escalating incidents reflecting a severe systemic deficiency. This cognitive dissonance must be addressed head-on if we ever want to pry ourselves from the government’s corporate clutches.

Written by Marc Frey for Media Roots, Photo by Adbusters

logo taken from an actual NSA spy satellite exterior called: NROL-39

PBS’ United States of Secrets is a stunning, must watch documentary covering the detailed history of the post 9/11 NSA mass surveillance program.

The two part series lets state officials prop up the narrative that such spying is needed amidst a ‘War on Terror’, but juxtaposes their rhetoric with stories from NSA whistleblowers’ who were targeted for speaking out.

Incidentally, the history of ‘The Program’ derives in large part from an internal leaked document, which outlines how former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales helped shield the Bush administration from the illegality of dragnet spying. After Obama inherited Bush’s spying apparatus, he charged multiple whistleblowers with espionage for leaking information about ‘The Program’ to the press.

United States of Secrets puts the Snowden leaks in context with the NSA’s sordid past, and cogently outlines how the surveillance state got to where it is today.

MR

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You can watch United States of Secrets on You Tube, albeit in lower quality than PBS:

United States of Secrets Part 1 of 2

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United States of Secrets Part 2 of 2

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Glenn Greenwald was asked all-too-familiar stock questions on mainstream programs like Meet the Press and Charlie Rose during his book tour for No Place to Hide. Although he was put on the defense in almost every segment, Greenwald held firm and consistent when combating the adversarial tone of US establishment journalists.

Over the course of his high profile interviews, many may have missed his lengthier and more candid talks in Hamburg, Amsterdam and at Harvard. Here’s some of our favorite quotes from those lectures that you probably won’t hear on the corporate media.

Obama’s NSA Lies 

“I think [Obama is] due a lot of credit because it really is impressive that he’s able to say those things with a straight face and not bursting out in laughter, I find that skill really really extraordinary, and he’s very good at it and I think we ought to acknowledge it in fairness.”

CIA Assesses Senator Obama

“The greatest hope for saving America’s war fighting ability and to stem the tide of anti-war sentiment in Europe was for then-Senator Barack Obama to become president, because what that would do is transform these wars from George Bush’s face, which the world had grown increasingly tired of and had been viewed as this kind of swagger and unilateral cowboy that was particularly hated in Europe, into this kind, sophisticated, progressive face of Barack Obama.”

“And by making Obama the face of these wars it would transform all this anti-war sentiment into people who were willing to acquiesce to the war if not outright support it. [The CIA] knew that he would continue all of these policies, but his branding was so pleasant and especially in Western Europe, so beloved that it would be an immense asset for the National Security State.”

Obama’s European Branding Power 

“There’s so much rhetoric about the US government, [and Obama is] an effective salesmen around the world for this myth of American greatness. I think one of the principal things that this debate over the last year has done is open people’s eyes about the reality of president Obama vs. the image.”

Global Obama Tarnishing

“I live in Brazil where he had been beloved and across every Brazilian newspaper is very menacing pictures of him connecting him with spying.”

The Democrats

“We have been criticized very predictably and very inconsequentially from what I will call for just  lack of a better term: ‘the Right’, which is, you know, primarily Democrats who voice this critique that our disclosures are going to help the terrorists and result in the deaths of innocent people and all of that. I was on CSPAN two days ago, and every time the host said ‘And now we’re going to go to the Democrat line’ I knew I was about to be called a traitor. It was completely reliable.”

Snowden = Russian False Flag

“Those very same people who had been saying just two weeks earlier that [Snowden] was clearly a Chinese spy suddenly switched on a dime saying obviously this is an operation by Vladimir Putin.”

“It’s really remarkable how seriously all of that has been taken despite the fact that there’s zero evidence to support any of it and mountains of evidence to negate it.”

Russia is Scary

“There is this amazing dynamic in American political discourse which is that certain words drive Americans instantly into hysteria and irrationality. One of them is terrorism, the minute you say that everybody screams and jumps under the bed, not quite as much as they did before but still.”

“The much scarier word for people is Russia, this is a word that if you really want to scare an American and make them go away just whisper Russia in their ear and they’ll start running down the street.”

“On television every interviewer would say to me ‘well what about Edward Snowden he must be completely miserable, i mean he’s in Russia‘ I guess they assume that all 160 million people who live in Russia are instantly and automatically miserable from the time of their birth until they die like it’s just one big gulag.”

The Role of Journalism

“The Washington Post, New York Times and other media outlets have been more aggressive because they would have been shamed if they hadn’t been.”

Passion in Journalism

“I think it’s much more powerful as a journalist to be honest about the way you see the world and the assumptions that you’re making than it is to try and deceive your readers into pretending that you float above opinion. I think that passion and vibrancy and soul are necessary for good journalism, the attempt to drain all that out of it has made journalism not just weak but boring and sort of neutered.”

Coordinated Scripts

“I’ve been pretty scornful of the notion that there is this active plotting among journalists and media outlets to coordinate their storyline.”

“Within 24 to 48 hours literally after we first introduced Snowden to the world, there was this immediate consensus among all these media elites that they were completely capable of taking this person that they had never heard of before and didn’t know the first thing about and were diagnosing him, like clinically diagnosing him, psychologically assessing all of his pathologies. They all settled on this coordinated script that he was a ‘fame seeking narcissist’  If you Google it you will find this phrase over and over again.”

“Where did that come from, that ‘fame seeking narcissist’ thing, I really want to know.”

Pretend Respect

“There’s all these unwritten rules that govern the ways journalists are supposed to behave.”

“You’re not supposed to be too aggressive in condemning the government, you’re supposed to pretend to have respect for their fearmongering claims about why you shouldn’t be publishing.”

Exploiting Sexual Vulnerabilities

“I never used to be able to understand why in response to the leaking of the Pentagon papers the response of the Nixon administration was to break into the office of his [Daniel Ellsberg’s] psychiatrist in the hope of obtaining his psycho-sexual secrets. It never made any sense to me. It seemed like the ultimate non sequitur, ‘Oh look we have documents showing that the US government has been systematically lying to us for years about the Vietnam war’ and the response would be ‘well Daniel Ellsberg is a swinger’.”

“It’s an incredibly effective means of excluding somebody from decent company, and making everything they say instantly dismissed for that reason.”

Privacy/Encryption

“There are chat programs such as Pidgin and OTR that provide relatively good protection, there’s the TOR browser that lets you use the internet anonymously, the Tails operating system.”

“The problem is all these names are pretty daunting to people who haven’t heard them before…I think the tech community needs to develop these tools to make them much more friendly…Once that happens and that will happen, encryption will become the default means of how people communicate on the internet.”

Email Privacy

“I do use PGP email, and in part I use it because I happen to have read a lot of NSA documents talking about how frustrated they are at their inability to invade it.”

“If you use PGP email, the NSA actually looks for the people who are using encryption, because in their twisted minds, your desire to shield our communications from their prying eyes is evidence that you are suspicious.”

Laura Poitras’ Snowden Film 

“Amazingly [Laura Poitras] filmed virtually everything that took place in Hong Kong, our interaction with Snowden, all of the conversations we had, which is going to be in a documentary she releases in the Fall.”

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Check out Greenwald’s lengthiest and best public appearances so far in May 2014:

Glenn Greenwald and Noam Chomsky on Edward Snowden & The Surveillance State 

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 Glenn Greenwald at CATO Institute: No Place to Hide

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 The John Adams Institue Presents Glenn Greenwald: No Place to Hide

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Richard Bacon Interviews Glenn Greenwald on BBC 

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 Glenn Greenwald on The Kojo Nnamdi Show: State Surveillance & The Snowden Story

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 TV Brazil’s Alberto Dines Interviews Glenn Greenwald on NSA

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Written and compiled by Robbie Martin AKA @FluorescentGrey