Subscribe to Common Dreams News Updates
Most Popular This Week
Popular content
Today's Top News
The Always-Expanding Bipartisan Surveillance State
When I wrote earlier this week about Jane Mayer's New Yorker article on the Obama administration's war on whistleblowers, the passage I hailed as "the single paragraph that best conveys the prime, enduring impact of the Obama presidency" included this observation from Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin: "We are witnessing the bipartisan normalization and legitimization of a national-surveillance state." There are three events -- all incredibly from the last 24 hours -- which not only prove how true that is, but vividly highlight how it functions and why it is so odious.
First, consider what Democrats and Republicans just jointly did with regard to the Patriot Act, the very naming of which once sent progressives into spasms of vocal protest and which long served as the symbolic shorthand for Bush/Cheney post-9/11 radicalism:
Top congressional leaders agreed Thursday to a four-year extension of the anti-terrorist Patriot Act, the controversial law passed after the Sept. 11 attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil.
The deal between Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and House Speaker John Boehner calls for a vote before May 27, when parts of the current act expire. The idea is to pass the extension with as little debate as possible to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government. . . .
From its inception, the law's increased surveillance powers have been criticized by liberals and conservatives alike as infringements on free speech rights and protections against unwarranted searches and seizures.
Some Patriot Act opponents suggest that Osama bin Laden's demise earlier this month should prompt Congress to reconsider the law, written when the terrorist leader was at the peak of his power. But the act's supporters warn that al-Qaida splinter groups, scattered from Pakistan to the United States and beyond, may try to retaliate.
"Now more than ever, we need access to the crucial authorities in the Patriot Act," Attorney General Eric Holder told the Senate Judiciary Committee.
This will be the second time that the Democratic Congress -- with the support of President Obama (who once pretended to favor reforms) -- has extended the Patriot Act without any changes. And note the rationale for why it was done in secret bipartisan meetings: to ensure "as little debate as possible" and "to avoid a protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the law gives to the government." Indeed, we wouldn't want to have any messy, unpleasant democratic debates over "the expanded power the law gives to the government." Here we find yet again the central myth of our political culture: that there is too little bipartisanship when the truth is there is little in Washington but that. And here we also find -- yet again -- that the killing of Osama bin Laden is being exploited to justify a continuation, rather than a reduction, in the powers of the National Security and Surveillance States.
Next we have a new proposal from the Obama White House to drastically expand the scope of "National Security Letters" -- the once-controversial and long-abused creation of the Patriot Act that allows the FBI to obtain private records about American citizens without the need for a subpoena or any court approval -- so that it now includes records of your Internet activities:
White House proposal would ease FBI access to records of Internet activity
The Obama administration is seeking to make it easier for the FBI to compel companies to turn over records of an individual's Internet activity without a court order if agents deem the information relevant to a terrorism or intelligence investigation.
The administration wants to add just four words -- "electronic communication transactional records" -- to a list of items that the law says the FBI may demand without a judge's approval. Government lawyers say this category of information includes the addresses to which an Internet user sends e-mail; the times and dates e-mail was sent and received; and possibly a user's browser history. . .
Stewart A. Baker, a former senior Bush administration Homeland Security official, said the proposed change would broaden the bureau's authority. "It'll be faster and easier to get the data," said Baker, who practices national security and surveillance law. "And for some Internet providers, it'll mean giving a lot more information to the FBI in response to an NSL." . . .
To critics, the move is another example of an administration retreating from campaign pledges to enhance civil liberties in relation to national security. The proposal is "incredibly bold, given the amount of electronic data the government is already getting," said Michelle Richardson, American Civil Liberties Union legislative counsel.
The critics say its effect would be to greatly expand the amount and type of personal data the government can obtain without a court order. "You're bringing a big category of data -- records reflecting who someone is communicating with in the digital world, Web browsing history and potentially location information -- outside of judicial review," said Michael Sussmann, a Justice Department lawyer under President Bill Clinton who now represents Internet and other firms.
So first they conspire with the GOP to extend the Patriot Act without any reforms, then seek to expand its most controversial and invasive provisions to obtain the Internet activities of American citizens without having to bother with a subpoena or judicial approval -- "they" being the Democratic White House.
Most critically, the government's increased ability to learn more and more about the private activities of its citizens is accompanied -- as always -- by an ever-increasing wall of secrecy it erects around its own actions. Thus, on the very same day that we have an extension of the Patriot Act and a proposal to increase the government's Internet snooping powers, we have this:
The Justice Department should publicly release its legal opinion that allows the FBI to obtain telephone records of international calls made from the U.S. without any formal legal process, a watchdog group asserts.
The nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation alleges in a lawsuit filed Thursday that the Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel violated federal open-records laws by refusing to release the memo.
The suit was prompted in part by McClatchy's reporting that highlighted the existence of the memo and the department's refusal to release it. Earlier this year, McClatchy also requested a copy and was turned down.
The decision not to release the memo is noteworthy because the Obama administration -- in particular the Office of Legal Counsel -- has sought to portray itself as more open than the Bush administration was. By turning down the foundation's request for a copy, the department is ensuring that its legal arguments in support of the FBI's controversial and discredited efforts to obtain telephone records will be kept secret.
What's extraordinary about the Obama DOJ's refusal to release this document is that it does not reveal the eavesdropping activities of the Government but only its legal rationale for why it is ostensibly permitted to engage in those activities. The Bush DOJ's refusal to release its legal memos authorizing its surveillance and torture policies was unquestionably one of the acts that provoked the greatest outrage among Democratic lawyers and transparency advocates (see, for instance, Dawn Johnsen's scathing condemnation of the Bush administration for its refusal to release OLC legal reasoning: "reliance on 'secret law' threatens the effective functioning of American democracy" and "the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the Justice Department Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government."
The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens. The National Security State has reversed that dynamic completely, so that the Government (comprised of the consortium of public agencies and their private-sector "partners") knows virtually everything about what citizens do, but citizens know virtually nothing about what they do (which is why WikiLeaks specifically and whistleblowers generally, as one of the very few remaining instruments for subverting that wall of secrecy, are so threatening to them). Fortified by always-growing secrecy weapons, everything they do is secret -- including even the "laws" they secretly invent to authorize their actions -- while everything you do is open to inspection, surveillance and monitoring.
This dynamic threatens to entrench irreversible, absolute power for reasons that aren't difficult to understand. Knowledge is power, as the cliché teaches. When powerful factions can gather unlimited information about citizens, they can threaten, punish, and ultimately deter any meaningful form of dissent: J. Edgar Hoover infamously sought to drive Martin Luther King, Jr. to suicide by threatening to reveal King's alleged adultery discovered by illicit surveillance; as I described earlier today in my post on New York's new Attorney General, Eliot Spitzer was destroyed in the middle of challenging Wall Street as the result of a massive federal surveillance scheme that uncovered his prostitution activities. It is the rare person indeed with nothing to hide, and allowing the National Security State faction unfettered, unregulated intrusive power into the private affairs of citizens -- as we have been inexorably doing -- is to vest them with truly awesome, unlimited power.
Conversely, allowing government officials to shield their own conduct from transparency and (with the radical Bush/Obama version of the "State Secrets privilege") even judicial review ensures that National Security State officials (public and private) can do whatever they want without any detection and (therefore) without limit or accountability. That is what the Surveillance State, at its core, is designed to achieve: the destruction of privacy for individual citizens and an impenetrable wall of secrecy for those with unlimited surveillance power. And as these three events just from the last 24 hours demonstrate, this system -- with fully bipartisan support --- is expanding more rapidly than ever.
Read more at Salon.com
57 Comments so far
Show AllGlenn: You are one of my favorite writers today. I admire your sheer bravery and tenacity in exposing all the illegal-rendered-legal activities of recent administrations, and like Marjorie Cohn, maintaining a fierce judicial record of the unspeakable acts that have been woven seamlessly into the fabric of alleged national security.
Thank you for your tireless work. I pray that our citizens pass through this Dark Age, and once outside of its tunnel, enact a collective version of the Fearless Moral Inventory recommended to those in the A.A. Program.
Criminals in high places have turned the law on itself. Just as war is taken to mean peace, and rewarding the rich is passed off as the wisdom of the land (while so many suffer), it makes sense in such a bankrupt nexus that genuine law would be sacrificed for the expedient measures that allow the crooked to keep on keeping on with every sin iminaginable under the sun. And then some.
When human justice fails, the scales of karma generally kick into play. Like many, I am waiting to see that Truth put into plain sight... it seems to me that a lot of suffering is being allowed in order to summon the necessary shift of consciousness (or wake-up call) that is mandatory. Between TV acting like a soporific drug, added to diets so thick with faux fillers as to dull the nervous systems of those who ingest them, added to record numbers of prescribed anti-depressants, plus that old time favorite, alcohol, a great many have checked out (of awareness) just to survive the daily insults of life... under a government corrupt enough to steal from the poor to lend yet more to the already impossibly wealthy.
I don't know how much longer these levels of graft, corruption, and "war at their pleasure" can or will continue.
Let us complement our mundane efforts with a petition for Divine Justice...
SiouxRose:
Glen Greenwald has shown, repeatedly, that all three branches, and four if you count the corrupt corporate media, have slipped into support for Executive Fascism, where Congress and the Courts , ALL HAIL THE COMMANDER IN CHIEF, as the source of top down despotism. When Judicial Nazis appease criminality by the President by failing to take on fascist laws, EMBRACED BY BOTH CORPORATE, CLASS PARTIES, and Congress hands over, like the JUDICIARY, its power to the FUEHRER, (PRESIDENTIAL LEADER), it signals that that the American revolution, which compromised on slavery , class hierarchies, has come to a frightful end, namely the combined class forces, class politicians, and corporations have EMBRACED FASCISM, not only as an Amerikan Empire, but as a global fascist Matrix, through NATO, military criminals, and corporate criminals.
Spain has just begun a SOCIAL RESPONSE TO FASCIST AUSTERITY, FASICST WESTERN MILITARISM, by taking on ALL THEIR CLASS ELITES, who ignore the majority, which now MUST MOVE BEYOND PROTEST, to international strikes, from Greece, to Spain, to the Arab and Latin countries, until WESTERN FASCISM is dissolved by social parties, social ideologies, real democracy that pass SOCIAL WEALTH PRINCIPLES throughout the world, against corporate, military fascism.
I learned another thing from this great article. Mr. Holder, you know the chief law enforcer of the US is still alive. What with all the evidence of CRIMES committed by Bush et all, the banks, B P, the coal barons...oh hell, the list is too long, and he has done nothing, I assumed he was dead or something. But no. He showed up to explain why we need to continue the warrentless attacks on the sheep of this nation.
Sigh, I was really worried about him.
Thanks Glenn for continuing to write. Too bad few people get to read you. Or listen to you on DN.
"I liked the part where Holder declared that now OBL is dead the vigilance of the USG must be enhanced and the Patriot Act expanded because the threat from al Queda is greater than ever"
That is hugely ironic isn't it? All that money spent, we compromise our human rights standing to kill an unarmed old man on foreign soil, and all the celebrations and we are less safe? Go figure?
Ah.. so THAT'S why they "found" bin Laden when they did...
It looks to me like they're simply seeking after-the-fact legalization of what they've been doing all along. National Security State officials (public and private) can now continue to do whatever they want without any detection and (therefore) without limit or accountability ever.
From George Orwell's 1984:
THOUGHT POLICE
"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."
1984:
A PICTURE OF THE FUTURE
"We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy...
"But always—do not forget this Winston—always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face— "
All excellent posts! Thank you. The Orwell material is mind-blowing for its prescience.
Thanks to Glenn for his continued excellent work, and to Siouxrose for helping maintain proper perspective. The pace of the world's devolution seems to be accelerating, or is it just me getting older? The protections of the Constitution and Bill of Rights have been systematically obliterated, but why worry? There doesn't seem to be a snowball's chance for US revolution, even when We the People start waking up to the realization that we've been had.
Big Brother will certainly count on chilling dissent and eliminating means for organizing, and they can always fall back to their Iron Fist. The bad guys are paranoid of losing even the slightest bit of control. And they are scared to death of the Arab Spring and Spanish sit-in movements going global. So they insist on keeping us afraid and hopeless.
We are thankful for the bravery of those who choose to stand against the elites and their propaganda.
But it won't matter between me and my maker. It won't have any effect on my anonymous boycotting of msm, Georgia Pacific, Chase, Citi, Wells, BofA, GE, BP, Exxon, Shell, and the rest of the evil Corporations. And I had already assumed they monitor my every move, so nothing changes there, either. Maybe I'll encrypt or anomalize my computer if I ever care that I'm threatened by Big Brother.
That said, the world is getting much scarier and way too quickly.
Peacemaker: Thank you for the nod, and I agree with every word in your post. However, allow me to add several tidbits, being that I am both a mystic and a romantic.
First:
Deliverance Happens!
Second:
Mystics tell us that the fall of our times (or way of life) is inevitable, but that something else will come after... a symbolic rising of the Phoenix. For those fed up with Empire, this may prove a good thing.
Third: When human agencies fail, and sometimes they come up against powers too overwhelming to crunch, there ARE powers unseen that lend assistance. (For Martin Luther King it was evidence of the Universe arcing towards justice, eventually!)
Four, no fat lady has yet sung.
Five, nice having you in the forum. And yes, it is utterly scary. Since I believe in reincarnation, I try to summon the imagination to recall what it must have been like to stand up to the powers during the French Revolution, or even march with Moses outside of Pharaoh's jurisdiction.
The struggle for liberty is a long one, and it would seem that the whole march of time has of late inverted on itself to regurgitate the old battles presumed already-won. This conceit, that time moves forward never to cycle back on itself, is probably in part responsible for the vast apathy still evident in our land. So many are convinced we're IN modern times, that they own freedom, and that the dark legacy of past tyrannical elites could never happen again. After all, this is Civilization, if not the new Christendom! And speaking of the latter, a lot of sheep have been led to the slaughter by the anti-Christ PREMISE that it is GOD that's calling for End Tmes. Therefore when they see "The signs," in the form of nature contorting, choking on all the poisons thrust upon her Body, instead of reacting in a manner that would embrace meaningful change... they passively go along with it all. They have been lied to... they believe all the calamities that directly ensue from human mismanagement of resources, starting with so much directed at the make-war state, are instead, proof of God's will for an end to it all.
This is a VERY tough fiction to overcome. My critics in this forum would make a greater fuss over my undestanding of astrology, than of the way the fundamentalist church has essentially married its message with the military's own death sentence: M.A.D. THOSE are the powers that have consigned us all to an ecological hell.
The process of the phoenix coming to rise will not come gently, nor without ashes.
Breathe with the forest, take the life force into yourself every chance you can. And thank the Great Mother for the gift of life... so few do, and She feels this neglect.
Great post, SiouxRose and thanks for the reminder to breathe deeply, to imbibe Gaia's lifeforce with gratitude.
Siouxrose,
Do you see the ET factor as being a part of this overall predicament?
I mentioned lately that I am re-reading ALL my books on prophecy to refresh my memory on what other sources had to say. A few DO mention this...
We are not a very evolved species, mankind. Few understand the eternal nature of the Spirit, and I believe that the Spiritual plane co-exists with our own. Some mystics have taken UFO for entities on these OTHER planes.
When I was in college, there was this intriguing woman (she reminded me of Morticia Adams) who I'd always see sitting in the audience during foreign film screenings. Years later our paths crossed. She had to be one of the most advanced souls I've ever met, and she was the first (along with her boyfriend, at the time) to conduct a past life regression hypnosis session on me.
In any case, when she developed enough trust in me, she showed me her gigantic sketchbook. She was an art major and had an incredible mastery of "the monkey mind." She could go into a trance-like meditation state and remain there a long time, and then when she'd return to ordinary consciousness, she had the capacity to DRAW what she encountered.
She had so many drawings of OTHER entities that live in our universe. It was amazing. I wish I could find her today, but many women change their names once they marry.
In any case, I am no expert on the ET factor at all. I was told, during one of a rare few MEANINGFUL sessions with a trance medium, that I had been among those who lived on the earth when ET intelligence arrived here to work genetic experiments. Their purpose was to advance (or enhance the evolutionary track of) the primitive human beings living here by opening up new levels of intelligence. I was told they keep an eye on me. I have never had an ET encounter that I am conscious of, so while I'd like to believe this information, I have no way of knowing and thus take it with a grain of salt.
I DO know, as did Shakespeare speaking centuries ago, that "There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamt of in your philosophy," (Horatio)... and I find living in a mysterious universe to be quite an elegant adventure. Like Blake, it helps to recognize that even in a state of imprisonment, the inner mind remains relatively free. I suppose that's why reading Naomi Klein's exposure of inroads into mind control (for the purposes of torture) was so insidious... the sadists among us are not content to rape or maim bodies or ecosystems, they have to yet mangle the inner sanctuaries of the human mind.
Thanks for asking!
Thanks for the thoughtful tidbits.
I was thinking of Naomi Klein when I first read Glenn's article, and her many comments about the growing security state. She wrote and spoke about how a lack of privacy greatly impacts her own work (all her e-mails, contacts, computer research). She also wrote a scary article or two about the incredible level of monitoring of workers in China's capitalist manufacturing centers.
I'm intrigued by past life regression and will investigate.
Be here now.
I just find past life regression extremely interesting and would like to give it a try. If it's anything like finding a good shrink, I'll have to wade through a few bad ones first.
The April 25, 1988 issue of The New Yorker carried an interview with retired Air Force Reserve Major General and former U.S. Senator from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, who said he repeatedly asked his friend General LeMay if he (Goldwater) might have access to the secret "Blue Room" at Wright Patterson Air Force Base, alleged by numerous Goldwater constituents to contain UFO evidence. According to Goldwater, an angry LeMay gave him "holy hell" and said, "Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again."[36]
Curtis LeMay was also a chief designer of the MAD doctrine of strategic nuclear superiority. Also an advocate of devastating strategic bombing plans and was in charge of a hundreds of thousands of Vietnam bombing deaths.
Lemay was satirized in the film Dr Strangelove
In the end, perhaps the American Press will regret ceding all this power to their friends in the Federal Government. For they as professionals, as well as their families, will pay for the evil that Washington will continue to bestow upon the nation, its citizens, and the rest of the world as well.
"Justice will overtake fabricators of lies and false witnesses." –Heraclitus
We may not see justice soon, but most of us know how the Universe works.
"It is the rare person indeed with nothing to hide, and allowing the National Security State faction unfettered, unregulated intrusive power into the private lives of citizens - as we have been inexorably doing - is to invest them with truly awesome, unlimited power." - Glenn Greenwald
How many times when issues about the Fourth Amendment's warrant requirement restraint upon governmental snooping surface for public debate have you heard the refrain "If you're innocent - if you haven't done anything criminal or wrong and you don't have anything to hide - then you shouldn't care if the government has the ability to listen in"? Very abruptly, the discussion shifts from one about public policy to an accusatory focus upon personal lifestyle. Point. Game. Match.
As Glenn Greenwald notes, it is indeed a very rare person who has, literally, nothing whatsoever to hide. No embarassing past medical or psychiatric episode, regardless of how remote in time or how much the product of unavoidable happenstance. No deeply regretted mistake in judgment. No foibles. No foolish moral (or immoral) failures or indiscretions. No fast and loose moment of questionable financial impropriety. No word ever uttered in anger or frustration which in retrospect one deeply and sincerely wished could be taken back and erased forever. No lapse into stupidity, no stumble into sin.
J Edgar Hoover's FBI intensely surveilled Dr. Martin Luther King for years, trying to link him and the civil rights movement to the international Communist menace. What the snoops stumbled upon instead was evidence of marital infidelity, which they then tried to use to discredit King, blackmail him into silence, and destroy him. What the historical record now strongly suggests is that J Edgar had far greater improprieties in his own private, personal life to keep hidden from public view than Dr. King ever did.
The "awesome, unlimited power" of unfettered hi tech electronic surveillance in the digital age now goes beyond just listening-in-style eavesdropping. It includes the ability to retrieve and reconstruct targeted records of communications past long after the fact. And it includes the technological ability to possibly alter the context and/or the actual content of those electronic records, in order to create a different snapshot of reality. That is both awesome and ominous.
The National Security Agency (with a black budget reportedly three times that of the CIA) pioneered and refined that surveillance technology for over half a century at staggering taxpayer expense. Domestic police agencies of all stripe, from the FBI headquarters in Washington DC down to Barney Fife in Mayberry, RFD, have salivated for years to get their hands on that hi tech spook gadgetry, and be freed up to use it in the war on crime here at home - as free of legal oversight as the free wheeling black ops spies could use it in the war on terror abroad.
The Patriot Act marked a watershed moment in unleashing that surveillance technology, and the mentality accompanying its development, upon the American citizenry. What this article terms "the controversial law passed after the September 11attacks that governs the search for terrorists on American soil" has morphed into ordinary law enforcement techniques which today enable the search and seizure of evidence against gun runners, drug dealers, counterfeiters, gamblers, tax evaders, and yes, home grown political dissidents, some of whom actually fancy themselves cut from the cloth of that Martin Luther King fellow.
When did this "protracted and familiar argument over the expanded power the [Patriot] law gives to the government" ever take place?
I must have missed it.
I was looking real close for it, but I couldn't find newspaper or media coverage of that mythical protracted, familiar debate anywhere.
Thanks, Glenn, for the latest update on what's happening in our bipartisan surveillance state.
Bill from Saginaw
Bill: This was a GREAT post! Brilliant, really.
I wonder how many in the forum have occasionally enjoyed spontaneous sex outside? I can't even go there any more because there is that nagging sense that a camera might be in range, or that some satellite might be panning in.
"Is that a pistol in your pocket, or are you glad to see me?" (As Mae West put it)
What would the difference appear as viewed from a mile high?
When I lived in the Florida Keys, a friend of mine found this incredible spot at the end of a canal where due to the tidal actions, water would surge through making lots of little whirlpools. We used to love to slide in and ride these whirlpools... usually topless. Above was one of those blimps from the Navy in pursuit of some drug-carrying vessel to impound. We used to wave to the sky on the presumption the guys were watching us.
Now we KNOW they are.
I was told, when I used to do Yoga on Boca Chica Road right next to the Southermost Naval base that they had surveillance equipment strong enough to hear EVERY conversation taking place on the beach, or on boats off-shore.
You are totally right... as human beings, we all have slipped at one time or another. If someone takes a candid picture of you chewing food, for instance, your face can look contorted. Sometimes CD has pictures of our "leaders" bearing exremely twisted expressions. That could be YOU or I, and for all we know, with the mega bucks pouring into so many domestic spy programs... there probably IS such a log.
And don't think THEY are not here, my friend...
Deleted by author.
HI, Tom:
The "personal responsibility" meme, inverted into the YOY axiom also leads many to think the anger, inverted into depression, is their OWN fault. Therefore instead of looking to a holistic, communal solution, many are encouraged to take anti-depressants. Ours is a morally and spiritually SICK society. It is no wonder so many need their drugs (or alcohol) to cope. I realize a small percentage have TRUE chemical imbalances and really DO perhaps need the drugs. For the rest, it's a coping device because I suspect millions feel what you do.
Even before these morally outrageous times, Sommerset Maughm (I believe it was, and EPRHAIM, feel free to correct my spelling, I don't have time to google the name right now) defined much of civilization as being composed of persons living lives of quiet desperation.
Here's the difference: there's no REASON for it to remain quiet, or personalized! Remember the scene from Network? If you're NOT mad as hell, you're not paying attention. That is the damning truth!
I hate bars and there are few people in my area that I can talk to openly about these matters. For me, CD is like an after hours salon where I can have a virtual (sometimes actual) glass of wine with cyber friends... for many of us who return to this site, the sense that others see and feel what we do, keeps us sane. After all, how many in our family circles really reinforce what we KNOW to be true? My sisters think the economy is going along just swell... and they do NOT want to talk about earth changes. That kind of puts a muzzle on me... and I am not one to be silenced (as my forum detractors have perhaps realized).
Gotta run...
Illusions rule!
Hi, Siouxrose---
To say that you have a wonderful gift of perception and sensitivity would be a tremendous understatement. Your spirituality give me hope of something much better and your words touch my heart. Thanks for your note.
I comment here for the same reasons.
I couldn't read but a bit of the piece. Much like some others here, I feel otherworldly or out-worldly. I try and sometimes succeed in turning the negative into a positive by helping someone but it is just a distraction, moments long. We are feeding on each other and we don't taste all that great; do we? I'm not a Jesus kinda guy but didn't he say something like; forgive them father for they know not what they do? So in my time remaining I try to forgive but I'll never ever forget.
One of the inane babblings churchers frequently pawn off on me is to forgive and forget. Forgive, I am willing. Forget? Never. Be wise as a serpent and gentle as a dove. Jesus was a real "mensch" and wouldn't want any of us to be patsies.
Thank you Glenn Greenwald for your article, but none of this is surprising. We are all going to be raptured on the 21st anyway, or at least the believers will be, whoever they are, so what does this matter.
But really, not sure when democracy ended in the U.S. I guess it's been a progressive process of decline, but regardless of who we vote for, it is likely we will end up with the same result.
Sorry to be so negative, I'm just trying to be realistic.
Go watch/read 'The Handmaids Tale' by Margaret Atwood if you are of a mind to know where the US will be in five years.
When the FBI participates in FASCISM, CRIMINALITY, and are protected by criminal class elites, who use the RULE OF LAWS AS TOILET PAPER, it is time to take on these NAZIS, FASCISTS, TOTALITARIAN THUGS, whether through the corrupt courts, or in the streets to take out their BROWN SHIRTED FASCIST IDEOLOGY!!!!! ALSO, WHEN THE JUSTICE DEPT. APPEASES CRIMINALITY, FASCISM, it is time for a world wide revolution against these criminal class elites, WORLD WIDE!!!!
EFF Demands Answers About Secret Surveillance Law Memo
Justice Department Withholding Information on Controversial Legal Theory
http://www.commondreams.org/newswire/2011/05/20-0
EXCERPT: WASHINGTON - May 20 - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has filed a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) suit against the Department of Justice (DOJ), demanding the release of a secret legal memo used to justify FBI access to Americans' telephone records without any legal process or oversight.
A report released last year by the DOJ's own Inspector General revealed how the FBI, in defending its past violations of the Electronic Privacy Communications Act (ECPA), had come up with a new legal argument to justify secret, unchecked access to private telephone records. According to the report, the DOJ's Office of the Legal Counsel (OLC) had issued a legal opinion agreeing with the FBI's theory. That legal opinion is the target of the FOIA lawsuit filed Thursday.
The Inspector General's report is heavily redacted, concealing which part of the surveillance statutes the FBI and OLC are relying on to reach their dangerous conclusion and to what types of records this new purported exception to the law applies. However, the report does show that the Inspector General had grave concerns about the FBI's interpretation of the law.
"Even officials within the Justice Department itself are concerned that the FBI's secret legal theory jeopardizes privacy and government accountability, especially considering the FBI's demonstrated history of abusing surveillance law," said EFF Senior Staff Attorney Kevin Bankston. "Secret law has no place in our democracy. Congress can't even consider closing this dangerous surveillance loophole until we understand the FBI's legal argument, yet the Department of Justice is still hiding it from Congress and the public."
Earlier this year, the DOJ denied a FOIA request from a journalist seeking disclosure of the secret OLC opinion and in doing so revealed -- perhaps inadvertently -- the specific portion of the law on which the FBI's aggressive legal theory relies. Based on its analysis of that particular ECPA provision, 18 U.S.C. 2511(2)(f), EFF fears that the FBI and OLC have wrongly concluded that national security investigators are free to obtain records of Americans' international communications without first obtaining a subpoena or any other legal process. With this additional information about the contents of the OLC opinion, EFF filed its own FOIA request, but the DOJ has continued to stall its release.
"Congress is currently debating how to reform surveillance statutes like the PATRIOT Act and the Electronic Communications Privacy Act," said EFF Senior Counsel David Sobel. "If the FBI is claiming that it has the right to secret, unchecked access to Americans' communications records, Congress and the American public need to know that now."
For the full FOIA lawsuit:
https://www.eff.org/files/filenode/secretlawmemo/complaint.pdf
SAY SIEG HEIL TO THE INJUSTICE DEPARTMENT AND THE FASCIST FBI!!!
The posts are so many - so heartfelt.
May I try something? I find inspiration in quotes from the past - perhaps they might help??
Perspective:
=========
"One night when I had tasted bitterness I went out on to the hill... I sat down on the heather. Overhead obscurity was now in full retreat. In its rear the freed population of the sky sprang out of hiding, star by star...
I perceived that I was on a little round grain of rock and metal, filmed with water and with air, whirling in sunlight and darkness. And on the skin of that little grain all the swarms of men, generation by generation, had lived in labour and blindness, with intermittent joy and intermittent lucidity of spirit. And all their history, with its folk-wanderings, its empires, its philosophies, its proud sciences, its social revolutions, its increasing hunger for community, was but a flicker in one day of the lives of the stars."
- "Star Maker", Olaf Stapledon, 1937.
Historical:
=======
"Terror is not a new weapon. Throughout history it has been used by those who could not prevail, either by persuasion or example. But inevitably they fail, either because men are not afraid to die for a life worth living, or because the terrorists themselves came to realize that free men cannot be frightened by threats, and that aggression would meet its own response."
- John F. Kennedy
1979:
====
"Nuclear power is a symptom, albeit a very serious symptom, of societal disease. But the disease is the existence of privilege and power"
- John Gofman, "An Irreverent, Illustrated View of Nuclear Power"
Now:
====
"Every one of us can do something to protect and care for our planet.
We have to live in such a way that a future will be possible for our children and grandchildren.
Our own life has to be our message."
- Thich Nhat Hanh
"The Bells of Mindfullness", in:
"Moral Ground: Ethical Action for a Planet in Peril" (2010).
Manysummits
=====
People need to realize that we are a worse fascist state than many realize wiht all the surveillance and subverting of basic protections in the anti-Patriotic PATRIOT ACT B.S.
Obama is such a very slippery character that it makes him a superbly effective fascist uber die republik of us since he says a bunch of liberal and compassionate platitudes and then goes out and does anything a complete corporate bastard like Bush or Cheney would do anyway--like bombing innocent people for a 98-100% phony war, so according to the rule, when offered a lily-livered Democrat trying to be as REpublikan as his fear and insecurity will take him---and and an out-and-out full force Republican degenerate, the 'voters' will choose the real thing. Americans don't do things halfway--it's one of their faults, I mean positives...
Obama is really more dangerous than a Bush who brazenly flaunted his lower nature without hesitation--hick! when you grew up half-drunk, why pretend to be half-moral, half-intelligent, or half-truthful? Drunks can't lie very well, but intellectual politicians can transform into nifty chameleons for of the elite.
Obama lies with a smile and cheats with his eloquent speeches. He deceives the masses or tell them what they want to hear but we aren't finding out how badly o ur functional democracy and domestic economy prospects are being subverted by Congressional leaders, The White House, and corporate henchmen who stand beside them, underneath them, and over them.
It truly doesn't matter if you have a black face, a white face, brown, green, yellow or red--when you do the wrong things, you are doing wrong--bad,. bad bad. Blacks aren't fooled by Obama--theyh tend to be very astute politically. And although they (and we all) liked having an African-American elected President but it must be a disgrace to the Black people to see the 1st Black elected turn to be such a weak-willed turncoat and two-faced man.
Mr. Obama is doing very bad things. Wake up liberals and progressives, we don't have to support him or be blackmailed into leaving off our political analysis just because he will be paired off against someone who probably couldn't balance a state budget if it sat on a vast oilfield. As a slippery fascist, -we should expose his persona so we at least can have an honest election between the highly intelligent militarist, corporatist, fascist Obama and whoever the heck makes it through the Republican primping, grooming, and advertising process...do we think Americans will elect the lesser Fascist or the Greater Imperialist? The Proverbial Beelzebub must be laughing awful hard right now, but I'm not.
Our parents lived in the Great American Generation while we inhabit an unbelievably scummy time at the nation progessively degenerates politically and economically. death would be preferable to living under corporate fascism unchained. Where are the brave ones now? Soldiers of truth and freedom?
I thought it could never happen here but I was wrong. What happened in 1930's Germany, Russia, and China is now taking place here and it will not go away. Long live the principles of democracy and death to all tyrants.
Kudos to Glen Greenwald for keeping this paramount issue in the public eye. It occurred to me that I would love to see his writing in mainstream magazines like - I don't know - perhaps "Women's Day."
On another note:
All too often, it seems to me, we fail to think carefully about the "why and wherefore" of the exponential growth of Bipartisan Surveillance State. As in, "Why Now?"
One hypothesis is that certain interests are well aware that humanity is headed for an "Evolutionary Crash." It remains to be seen if we can respond to the massive challenges ahead in ways that transform them into an "Evolutionary Bounce," as Duane Elgin put it in his book, Promise Ahead.
In other words we can ask ourselves what problems this increasingly totalitarian direction might be designed to address.....
I would suggest that - given the exponentially accelerating chaos that is heading our way - the current viewpoint of more than a few 'top-of-the-heap" people/interests involves a high risk, but "necessary" strategy. That is, the development of a flexible, incrementally expanding, post-modern authoritarian approach. This would be seen as the only feasible way of maintaining order - and their own positions of power - as the the "wheels come off the tracks."
***
From an 2001 interview entitled - The Breaking Point:
WIE: "Many of today’s leading thinkers, futurists, scientists, and visionaries are warning us that the next twenty to thirty years will be a testing time for the human species, a time of evolutionary crisis that will entail great, and potentially even catastrophic, change. Could you please describe what you feel are the key factors precipitating this crisis? What will we be facing in the coming years?"
DUANE ELGIN: "What we’re really facing is the convergence of a number of powerful trends - climate change, species extinction, the spread of poverty, and the growth in population. All of these factors could develop individually, but what’s unique about our time is that the world has become a closed system. There’s no place to escape, and all of these powerful forces are beginning to impinge upon one another and reinforce one another. Our situation is something like a set of rubber bands that you stretch out and out and out until they reach the limit of their elasticity, which is the breaking point of the system."
AMMA: Interesting post. I think we now have to add radiation exposure to the list you referenced. I am mortified by the ongoing Japanese situation and what it will mean to the world's oceans, the womb of life. Very real extinction events are beginning...
TOM JOAD: You are so kind! Thank you for letting me know that my words can still touch a soul.
This is a sad day for whatever hope remained about the prospect of changing the political system through the electoral process. Both parties support an environment where everything flows up but not down. Information flows up to the government and large private businesses, but the information that flows down is controlled and narrowed by these same interests, who use that information differential against us. Same with money: a small number of families receive vast sums from the ones on the bottom while very little comes back down, creating massive inequality, not seen since 1928.
The thing is that the high inequality is itself an indication that the system is out of regulation and is passing well past overshoot, into the region where most systems fail catastrophically. The telltale sign is the appearance of exponential curves, and if anyone has seen a plot of the national debt lately, it's almost perfectly exponential. A similar process is happening with ecological systems (seen a CO2 concentration chart lately), and the common thread in these breakdowns is that they are signals of the pending failure of the growth model of doing business. Indefinite growth is impossible, and we are in the process of proving that empirically.
So at this point, we are on the verge of complete system failure and those who have been the prime beneficiaries of the current system: politicians, judges, Wall Street Thieves, CEO's, media personalities, celebrities, and generally those who now have authority are basically panicking. We probably shouldn't be that surprised they are loath to relinquish their wealth and authority, regardless of how plainly obvious it is that they have corrupted and abused every system of negative popular feedback within their power to control in order to maintain their advantage - and it is clear they have put great resources to the matter. But regardless of all their tricks and techniques to attempt to subvert the will of the public, they are effectively trying to keep a beach ball of discontent underwater while the ball is growing in size with every passing day.
The reason for all this surveillance is that TPTB in the US see what happened in Tunisia, Egypt and other Middle Eastern countries, and what has been ongoing in Greece, and now Spain and spreading to other EU countries and they are deathly afraid. They expect it to come here as well, after the more severe austerity measures are implemented. But despite their best efforts at control, as Siouxrose said in her opening comment, "When human justice fails, the scales of karma generally kick into play." I couldn't agree more and thanks for your comments. It's folks like you and other commenters on this thread that give me hope that not all will be lost after the inevitable collapse.
Thank you for the head's up, WILD CARD, your post reflects a great deal of wisdom. Some may come by their findings in the study of natural law. Through this lens they evidence the balanced homeostasis that supports the sustenance of ecosystems. Those who study human health understand similar balancing mechanisms that live within the human body. It is the same way with earth, and even those tangential manmade systems atop it. Balance is one of the key laws of the universe.
I applaud the analogies you offered, and the case you made as per that balance being seriously off kilter.
Last night I had trouble sleeping as I found my night reveries haunted by the images of Japan... all that radiation spewing into the sea. As if the wound to the Gulf of Mexico does not present enough of a toxic overload to underwater communities. If Jacques Cousteau were alive today, he'd probably burn an effigy in front of the White House, or organize pickets of nuclear power plants everywhere.
Years ago I wrote (and published) two books of predictive astrology, and I related that there would be a phase of genetic abnormalities, persons born (on a frequent basis) with derformities. I did not understand the cause behind what looked evident from an examination of the "star patterns," but now I do.
There is such inordinate hubris behind the tamperings with nature that have now become routine. From the genetic dismantling of the saced codes, to the playing with the nuclear fire that was buried deep inside the earth's bosom, to the way Monsanto insures the sterility of seed lines... and then, too, there is war, and its damage to human beings, ecosystems, and natural resources. At one time, each was beheld as a KINGDOM. We thought in terms of the plant Kingdom, and the mineral kingdom, and the animal kingdom. The idea that man supercedes all other living causes has made for hierarchy instead of the understanding that life is a circle, and all things therein connected.
In any case, I, too, take what measure of solace I can from minds like yours that dance with me in this forum where ideas have room to take flight. It also helps to deal with those who throw rocks in attempts to abort said flight...
How I wish Cousteau's legacy was still alive.
Maybe if we started calling the FBI et al the Stassi, which is an old and not so well known term, or Gestapo, or SS, which are more well known despite their age. At least they'll be termed properly. The uncontrolled executive allowed by the 1787 constitution is ultimately at fault, but the citizenry is also much to blame.
Greenwald understands the true bipartisan nature of fascism in America and nothing illustrates this better than the deal on the patriot act.
What are we to do? The people in power have us herded in to free speech zones and have us under indirect threats of torture and even extra-judicial execution. We "whine" that our kindred spirits are not able to accomplish anything by practicing CD (Civil Disobedience). And our every move, conversation, and consumption habit is under surveillance and recorded for all time.
I have a friend who always took his camera to demonstrations with us. When the big helicopters continuously and noisily buzzed us, he'd point his telephoto lens at the copters and snap away. They couldn't land and take it away, and he was always careful to stay in the middle of the crowd surrounded by known friends who could easily pass the camera around if accosted by moles.
David Sirota's piece in Truthout yesterday, "Turning the Camera on the Police", is a little timid in his approach, but if we, the people, practiced such CD as increasing our aural and photographic surveillance of police and government officials (even when against the "law"), we could go a long way in preventing the "security" state from trampling our civil rights and our freedoms. Use your cellphones, cameras, and Ipods (to record) what goes on around you. You don't even have to put it on U-tube. Just do it. And pass it around as Julian Assange has done.
There are more of us than of them.
Use fear-generating counter-surveillance and hook the paranoia of the "authorities".
To better understand how the two party system operates, a brief historical perspective is submitted by Scott Mclarty in his article of 5/19/2011 on CD:
"Which Side Are You On? New Language for a New Political Reality."
Like so many others, I, too, greatly appreciate Glenn Greenwald's thoughtful, critical analysis of legal, political events, and this article on our ever-expanding surveillance state is no exception.
It appears these "Orwellian" Acts of extreme secrecy are based in fear, panic and dread, and this over-reaction to terrorism only highlights that the terrorists have won - at least on a psychological level.....Or, could it be that all three branches of the government are actually more fearful of their own people who no longer are fooled by their massive cover-up of wrongdoings? At any rate, fear is fear no matter what the source.
How do "we the people" combat this fear? One solution is for the Left to apply sustained pressure on the Democrats in government to swing the pendulum back from a pre-enlightenment way of thinking and acting to a more enlightened
era of behaving. The Enlightenment Age was (and is) the age of reason and rationality, soundness of ideas, knowledge, education and learning - an age of open-minded, liberated (liberal) and illuminated thinking that brought forth our Declaration of Independence, democracy, democratic form of government, Constitution and Bill of Rights. The only lasting solution to fear and hate is a sustained movement to light and love - enlightenment.
Give up on the Democrats.
Well if we are to give up on the democrats then we need to demand it of republicans. Because we aren't given a real third party alternative are we? For me neither party is secure. My vote is based on performance. Fail to perform and you won't get my vote a second time.
Another 4 years of the Patriot Act and Americans - known for their short term memories - will have forgotten what freedoms they've lost and this will become the norm. In a short time, more draconian laws will be passed and the sheeple will accept them.
I am sure that's the hope. I am not sure the reality is that people will forget the liberties they once had. It certainly wasn't true for the Jews held captive by Egypt, or the blacks in the US. There are many more cases where dominated peoples have remembered their previous status after centuries of repression and rebelled against their subjugation.
"Siouxrose,
"Do you see the ET factor as being a part of this overall predicament?"
***
It appears to me that the "ET" factor is one of the biggest elephants in the room. To date use of the very intentional strategy of "ridicule" has kept this out of the news. Yet this is a major factor in the development of what Glen G. refers to as The Always-Expanding Bipartisan Surveillance State.
It now appears increasingly likely that Disclosure will occur within the next five years. For the record, a few suggestions to get up up speed on this.
Author: Richard M. Dolan
UFOs and the National Security State: Chronology of a Coverup, 1941-1973
The Cover-Up Exposed, 1973-1991 (UFOs and the National Security State, Vol. 2)
A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact
***
Disclosureproject.org
"The way a republic is supposed to function is that there is transparency for those who wield public power and privacy for private citizens. "
Perhaps that should be the key issue of the next election. Let's see which candidate supports that? And it won't increase the deficit or the debt. In fact it might mitigate the use of expensive private intelligence contractors to monitor the rest of us while the true scoundrels are protected from public view.