Glenn, the prwatch.org legal analysis was pretty good, but didn't hit the nail on the head when it comes to the legal consequences of conducting an illegal covert propaganda program. Covert propaganda is routinely prohibited by appropriations acts. Under these provisions, there is no money appropriated for the purpose of illegal propaganda. If money is actually spent in this fashion, then the agency violates the Antideficiency Act. Rarely is any action taken against the employees involved. When illegal propaganda is undertaken by the top like by the Secretary of Defense, who is really going to do anything? In order to strengthen the law, I suggest that individuals who knowingly participate in covert propaganda should be "debarred" by the Federal government, meaning making them ineligible to receive government contracts, grants, and other Federal money. Since the generals in this case, and the PR flacks in previous cases under the Bush Administration were actively seeking government contracts, debarment may be an adequate deterrent.

I think he was the "Captain Nemo" type figure in "Illuminatus", a trilogy of wanky science fiction by ex Playboy writers that did much to corrupt a generation. The fact that I even remember it - along with my remarks about Satanists, Setians, and Crowleyans on the next thread - should show how 'libertarianism' actually impacted me, in the 1970s and 1980s : via occultism. If anyone is curious about what the occult scene was really like in those days, they can't do better than to read this absolutely sweet, poignant memorial, "The Doom That Came To Chelsea," by Alan Cabal (probably not his real name, but I am proud to say that he, or someone using the same name, occasionally sends comments to my blog):

http://www.nypress.com/16/23/news&columns/feature.cfm

It won't make any difference if you ignore bucky or not. Say something critical about Rothbard, for instance, and you are the devil incarnate. Greenwald's articles, like many others, are carried by LewRockwell.com because they are a news aggregator. It helps sucker in the uninformed. This leads Bucky to conclude that Glenn has drunk the kool-aid. Having said that, it is best to ignore him, Sinnard and Brightstar65.

Aych, OTOH, the one who raked you about the test, has his moments of clarity, interspersed with fits of pique.

What would you call the polar opposite of authoritarian then?

I'm not objecting to the term the test uses necessarily; categorizing and labeling the political spectrum is not in my area of expertise. I'm just saying that "a libertarian streak" as demonstrated by scores on that test does not equate to identifying with the Libertarian Party or an anti-state belief.

Much of the actual debate on this comments section (and by debate I mean discussion that isn't comprised of lobbing ad hominems back and forth) between those who self-identify as Libertarians vs. Democrats is really a difference of opinion about the role of the state vs. private interests. In primarily social policy areas, such as whether government should be in the business of legislating private behavior, both groups largely agree.

But if you look at the left/right poles in the quadrant rather than just the top/bottom ones, you'll note that they sub-label the focus as collectivism vs. libertarianism. I interpret that to mean a difference in perspective on economic goals that give primacy to the needs of the many over the individual vs. the opposite, respectively.

As for the labels, I don't have much personal investment; I think they're calling me a libertarian communist after all. But I also recognize that their model is not a binary one (either you're a libertarian or you're George Bush, for example).

Well, when the poles given for the social scale are control vs. more or less "live and let live," and they are called libertarian vs. authoritarian, it's not surprising to see this crowd have a strong "libertarian streak" as you put it.

What would you call the polar opposite of authoritarian then?

You quote me saying:

" ... Politics to me is just a given, like having umpires or referees in sport - and it seems so obvious that if one starts out with the idea that all government is tyranny anyhow, then one has deprived oneself of any means of combating tyranny in the normal sense, because one has said, it's all the same ... "

Then YOU say:

"Politics in America at this time may well be a force that one must contend with, but ignoring the truth is not a wise plan. Glenn Greenwald spends the majority of his published words setting the record straight and pointing out the falsehoods and pro-government propaganda that pretends to be "news". Should he just stop and tell everyone that all is well and to believe your 5th grade teacher about how our system works? I think not."

Either this is a complete non-sequitur, or you are trying to tell me that he writes his articles because he starts out from the idea that "all government is tyranny anyhow." If this is the case, it's the first I have heard of it, and I should appreciate if someone could show me where he says this. My argument was that anyone who thinks this will have no incentive for trying to "improve" or "reform" it, and therefore no motive for writing detailed critiques in the way that he does.

Oh, and whoever it is who claims to infer from my dismissal of simplistic attitude metrics that I have done them, and disliked the result I have obtained, is just spinning his wheels.

Smith-Mundt is a Moot Case - Except It's Not

By Patricia H. Kushlis

Why is it that the U.S. government still operates its overseas information activities as if the Internet had never been invented? Or actually, it operates them with increasing impunity as if Smith-Mundt, the law that came into being in 1948 and was strengthened during the Vietnam War that separates information aimed at foreigners from information designed for American consumption, had been repealed years ago. Except it wasn’t. This artificial and meaningless firewall – supposedly to keep the executive branch of the U.S. government from “propagandizing” the American people – should have been repealed once the Internet took hold.

By 1996 when I worked in the US Information Agency’s Information Bureau and we published quarterly electronic journals on national security issues, developed our own subject-specific web pages as well as a regular news service called the Washington File, it was clear the Smith-Mundt designated separation between information and information had become meaningless.

Fast forward to today: Just look at a few reader statistics for America.gov.

America.gov is the latest product of the State Department’s Bureau of International Information Programs (IIP) which ten years ago was USIA’s Information Bureau. IIP products supposedly come under the restrictions of Smith-Mundt in contrast to the State Department's Bureau of Public Affairs webpage (state.gov) which is supposedly for Americans. I find State.gov to be one of the most complicated and confusing webpages on the Internet not to mention sporting more pictures of Condi, left and right, than even the satirical anti-Condi Princess Sparkle Pony blog.

Now I can’t access State or IIP internal data, but I can access America.gov and when I last looked at America.gov’s traffic details on Alexa, an internet ranking service connected to Amazon.com, I noted that 31.2 percent of the hits come from within the United States. India follows with 12.2 percent, then the UK with 4.5 percent, Germany with 3 percent and Canada with 2.7 percent. So much, in my view, for Smith-Mundt. It is outdated and unenforceable. The Internet is the 13 foot ladder used to scale Smith-Mundt’s 12 foot fence as our Governor Bill Richardson once said in reference to the immigration issue. Besides, I think Americans should know what their government tells others and how it presents itself abroad. It’s our taxes that pay for this stuff after all.

In comparison, 48.7 percent of State.gov's traffic comes from the U.S., the website ranks higher in Iran than the US and 58 percent of State.gov viewers are looking for travel information(47 percent) or/and electronic visa forms (11 percent).

What can and should, however, be instituted – with no exceptions for any branch or agency of the US government including the CIA and the US military is a policy of clear information attribution. This also includes any information products produced by contractors for the US government. Remember the Lincoln Group? Or how about General Dynamics which has added the manufacture of web pages for overseas audiences to its weapons production arsenal - in a bizarre sort of contractor mission creep?

What goes around comes around

The problem with Smith-Mundt is particularly true in the viral Internet era. What’s the old adage: “What goes around comes around?” Have you ever wondered how many of those “good news” stories in the Iraqi media were bought, paid for and placed by some US government contractor? Think how difficult it must be for reporters covering Iraq to distinguish the fake from the real. Some of this is called PSYOPS, or psychological operations – but I wonder sometimes who the ultimate recipient really is.

[...]

It seems to me, therefore, that the best way we can protect ourselves from ourselves – or the blow-back from overheated US government paid-for information operations particularly on the military side of the house which has been on a war footing since 2003 - is jettisoning an archaic law now all but ignored with a “wink and a nod” and replacing it with a policy of clear attribution that is strictly enforced not evaded.

This might even be a first step in the restoration of America’s image abroad by a new administration. Who knows?

http://whirledview.typepad.com/whirledview/2008/05/smith-mundt-is.html