If you thought special interest money in the last election was a problem you haven't seen anything yet. Thanks to Citizens United the Koch brothers and their Rightwing friends are determined to spend what it takes to put their servants into office. This is so obvious one would think that the Supreme Court would realize the dreadful mistake they made. However, I don't think they see it as a mistake. The corruption of American democracy was what they intend! ed.
First Perturbations of Resistance to the Encroaching Police State?
This short Youtube video shows some cop cars nearby a club at night, and the cops in the cars are apparently monitoring those entering or emerging from the club, all of whom are peaceful and causing no trouble. Some men decide to approach the cop cars and issue the kinds of threatening questions innocent motorists stopped by the police routinely receive, “Is there anything illegal you in your vehicle, can I search your vehicle?”, etc. After a short time of this treatment, the cops leave. Some of the comments on this video urge watchers of it to spread the word and organize similar types of such incidents against other cops. This make me wonder: is this incident an early warning signal of mass citizen resistance to government-corporate tyranny? If this kind of action catches on, it may well be.
Remarks by the President on Review of Signals Intelligence
(if he had told the truth)
Department of Injustice
Washington, D.C.
11:15 a.m. EST
Who Am I? Who Are We?
THE PRESIDENT: A small, secret surveillance committee of goons and thugs hiding behind the mask of patriotism was established in 1908 in Washington, D.C. The group was led from 1924 until 1972 by J. Edgar Hoover, and during his reign it became known as the Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI agents spied upon and infiltrated labor unions, political parties, radical groups—especially those led by African-Americans—anti-war groups and the civil rights movement in order to discredit anyone, including politicians such as Henry Wallace, who questioned the power of the state and big business. Agents burglarized homes and offices, illegally opened mail and planted unlawful wiretaps. Bureau leaders created blacklists. They destroyed careers and sometimes lives. They demanded loyalty oaths. By the time they were done, our progressive and radical movements, which had given us the middle class and opened up our political system, were dead. And while the FBI was targeting internal dissidents, our foreign intelligence operatives were overthrowing regimes, bankrolling some of the most vicious dictators on the planet and carrying out assassinations in numerous countries, such as Cuba and the Philippines and later Iran, Guatemala, Vietnam, Chile, Iraq and Afghanistan.
Here are the views of a former high ranking NSA official. They remind me of Richard Clarke.
Just because authority at this point only intrudes to a small degree does not mean it cannot go much further. The information will be there to work with. And there are thousands of laws.
I am always concerned I may seem alarmist about a trend but, really I'm just reporting the data, the emerging information. President Obama's comment today that this network of agencies is made up of our neighbors is patently disingenuous.
Click through to see the actual powerpoint slides that document this piece.
When you read this think of the hundreds of thousands of individuals, particularly young people and, most particularly, Black and Brown kids whose lives, and the lives of whose families, were derailed by arrest and incarceration for years or decades for tiny amounts of drugs, while this government supported dope trade was going on. You have to ask yourself: who are the real crimi! nals?
Is it any wonder that American's now see their government as the country's leading problem.
This would be an important well-researched essay no matter who wrote it. But it is doubly so because the author is a United States District Judge for the Southern District of New York. The point it makes challenges the integrity of Obama Administration Justice Department in a very fundamental way. The last five year's performa! nce under Attorney General Holder have, in my view, put the American judicial system in crisis. In case after case it is clear that there are two kinds of justice: justice for the rich and lack of justice for everyone else.
Yesterday it was laptop searches, today it is the destruction of the instruments of an internationally renowned musician. This is all part of the rise of the American police state. And please note my comment of yesterday that this is problem that particularly afflicts darker complected individuals, particularly with Muslim sounding names.
The TED talks which at first I thought a wonderful idea have over time become, well, something considerably less. This report tells part of the story. But there is another issue which is not mentioned here: TED will not permit any presentations that deal with a non-reductionist materiali! st view of consciousness. It is straight-out prejudice and censorship.
Yet another example of the Schism Trend that is separating us into two countries. (See my essay: At the Cost of Your Life: Social Value, Social Wellness. http://www.explorejournal.com/article/S1550-8307%2813%2900249-8/fulltext) One aspect of this is that as time goes on the Red value states are literally becoming unhealthy compared to the Blue value states.
Recent revelations published on the Press TV website, the New York Post and Veterans Today have changed history.
The story was simple, two American congressional representatives were allowed to read the Congressional 9/11 Investigation Report, this time including the areas President Bush had ordered removed. Both congressmen clearly state that the redacted pages of the report place full responsibility for the planning and execution of 9/11 on one or more foreign intelligence agencies, not “terrorists.”
What is also clear is that President Bush’s personal role in covering this up protected the real perpetrators of 9/11 and pushed the US into, not just two insane wars but draconian moves against America’s government.
