News we missed during the week

[klein]

The Domestic Surveillance Boom, From Bush to Obama

This is making worldwide news !
It's just not Verizon, it's almost every phone, every internet site (from facebook to Google).

Basically it's screening of everyone, probably worse than China, maybe in par with South Korea or as bad as the past East Germany or USSR governments.
The Land of the Free ?????

 

[roadrunner2012]

Meanwhile, look at what those sneaky Republicans did this week. Notice that they didn't do it crying in front of TV Cameras.

While No One Was Looking: House GOP Voted Against GITMO Closure � Antiwar.com Blog

 

[Upsmule]

Meanwhile, look at what those sneaky Republicans did this week. Notice that they didn't do it crying in front of TV Cameras.

While No One Was Looking: House GOP Voted Against GITMO Closure � Antiwar.com Blog

hahahah, yeah, those "sneaky Republicans" have been trying to keep that fact that they DON'T believe GITMO should be closed, quiet.....ever. Meanwhile - well into the liar in chiefs second term now....his "promise" to close GITMO isn't any closer. And it's the GOP's fault of course. Or maybe still Bush's fault. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

 

[wkmac]

Meanwhile, look at what those sneaky Republicans did this week. Notice that they didn't do it crying in front of TV Cameras.

While No One Was Looking: House GOP Voted Against GITMO Closure � Antiwar.com Blog

Funny how that works. And people have such a hard time understanding why I'm so cynical towards the 2 party state. Or 2 wings of the same bird of prey!

Seems Obama and the GOP are in full agreement AGAIN so begs the question, what else are they really in full agreement on?

 

[Upsmule]

Funny how that works. And people have such a hard time understanding why I'm so cynical towards the 2 party state. Or 2 wings of the same bird of prey!

Seems Obama and the GOP are in full agreement AGAIN so begs the question, what else are they really in full agreement on?

It's been long overdue since we've needed to allow libertarians the chance to screw us. How bad could it be? Seriously? Force the gullible to stop relying on the government, get off their collective asses and DO something?

 

[wkmac]

Not exactly news from this week but news missed because it's off the typical radar. Very interesting piece written on Saul Alinsky by Jesse Walker at "The American Conservative" in 2010'. If you are looking for a hit piece to feed your deeper anti-Obama ideas, this piece will fall far, far short towards that end. In fact, one is left to believe if Alinsky were with us today, he'd be opposed to Obama as well and it goes without saying he'd be no Romney man either.

Being that some segments of the Tea Party are finding value in Alinsky (let the bodies hit the floor) the man himself if still with us today might even be a featured speaker at some Tea Party events.

If I just flicked your antenna with that statement, read Walker's piece and you'll understand why I said it. Jesse Walker is also editor of the libertarian magazine Reason so no blue state apologist here.

Now have fun with the cognitive dissonance which I expect will cross the political isle to both sides making this even more fun!

 

[wkmac]

A true man of the de-centralized left, Kirkpatrick Sale on "The Rise of Nullification" and once again it's "The American Conservative" giving a neo-luddite liberal a voice. But then in the paleo-conservative, classical liberal/libertarian world, Sale is seen and accepted as hero as do I.

 

[wkmac]

It's been long overdue since we've needed to allow libertarians the chance to screw us. How bad could it be? Seriously? Force the gullible to stop relying on the government, get off their collective asses and DO something?

Many libertarians (I did not say all on purpose) don't want to screw you as much as just leave you alone and let you and those closest to you figure out how you want to live your lives. At the very least, many libertarians look towards a model before the Constitution itself in the Articles of Confederation as being the framework for a federal state but for many even that is too much.

Texan in another thread asked if one were King for a Day so to speak, what would you do? If you take libertarian thought towards it's conclusion, the first thing you'd do as King would be to fire yourself from the job. This is why I think the Libertarian Party as a political party jumps the tracks as this is not their goal but rather they want to be King. And I speak as a former State Libertarian Party Delegate in the mid 1990's.

That aside, why just libertarians? Why not the Green Party, the Constitutional Party, even the....wait for it.... the Socialist Party? Free Speech is Free Speech, you can't pick and choose. Getting everything out on the table also brings it all out into the sunshine so everyone can see it. At the same time this provokes conversation which leads to questions, then answers and thus knowledge. An informed individual is not what the ruling class wants nor can it maintain power with.

 

[Upsmule]

Exactly. We haven't been the "United States" of america for some time now. Why even have state legislatures any more? The federal government has long since taken over all of our lives.

 

[wkmac]

Exactly. We haven't been the "United States" of america for some time now. Why even have state legislatures any more? The federal government has long since taken over all of our lives.

So why do you support and even take part in a system that maintains this approach?

If someone said, "you are thirsty so here are 2 glasses. One has the venom of the Inland Taipan (world's most deadly snake) and the other has venom from the Eastern Diamondback which not near as deadly. Pick one and drink!"

Do you just drink accepting the false choice or do you walk away and look for something that offers a better choice and better for you?

IMO, this is exactly where we are at in the present situation and depending on one's POV will determine which in the Taipan poison and which is the rattlesnake. Either way you go, you're dead at the end.

 

[Upsmule]

Exactly. We haven't been the "United States" of america for some time now. Why even have state legislatures any more? The federal government has long since taken over all of our lives.

So why do you support and even take part in a system that maintains this approach?

If someone said, "you are thirsty so here are 2 glasses. One has the venom of the Inland Taipan (world's most deadly snake) and the other has venom from the Eastern Diamondback which not near as deadly. Pick one and drink!"

Do you just drink accepting the false choice or do you walk away and look for something that offers a better choice and better for you?

IMO, this is exactly where we are at in the present situation and depending on one's POV will determine which in the Taipan poison and which is the rattlesnake. Either way you go, you're dead at the end.

It makes you wonder if our votes even count anymore. Or even if voting just for the principal of voting matters either. I've been voting for some time now, only because I feel it'd be a slap in the face to the men who died for our right to if I sat home like sadly millions do on Election Day. But again - what would it really matter?

 

[wkmac]

It makes you wonder if our votes even count anymore. Or even if voting just for the principal of voting matters either. I've been voting for some time now, only because I feel it'd be a slap in the face to the men who died for our right to if I sat home like sadly millions do on Election Day. But again - what would it really matter?

But if the process of voting elects people who make it even worse.

For some reason we never think of this as a worse slap in the face if one wants to take that POV. Being what these men and women thought in regards to what they sacrificed for, what do you think they would say to us now if they could? If their stand really was for freedom as we say and yet the status quo is a continuing erosion of freedom, again what might they tell us to do?

Seems to me taking a principled stand and refusing to support a system that enables these psychopaths in the first place does more honor but then it's a matter of perspective is it not?

 

[wkmac]

Thom Hartmann is dead on. It's past time to kick the Dept. of Homeland Security to the curb as a complete failure.

The surveillance state is even bigger, and scarier, than we thought.

And, as a result, it's time that we broke up the failed national security experiment known as the Department of Homeland Security. Returning to dozens of independent agencies will return internal checks-and-balances to within the Executive branch, and actually make us both safer and less likely to be the victims of government snooping overreach.

On Wednesday night – the Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald revealed that the National Security Agency is secretly collecting the phone records of millions of Verizon users. The agency received authorization to track phone “metadata” over a 3 month period from a special court order issued in April.

We now also know that what the Guardian uncovered is just the tip of the iceberg of an ongoing phone and internet records collection program that likely includes almost all major US telecommunications companies.

President Obama - who promised the “most transparent administration ever” - now finds himself and his DHS at the center of yet another civil liberties controversy. That controversy has deepened in the wake of two reports published last night in both the Washington Post and the Guardian that outlined a different NSA snooping program – a data mining initiative code-named “PRISM.”

PRISM – which was created in 2007 during the Bush Administration – is almost certainly the most far-reaching surveillance program ever created. By reaching into the servers of 9 different major US internet companies – including Facebook – Google – and Apple – the NSA has access to millions of users’ personal data – including emails – chats – and videos.

Is it time to do away with Homeland Security?


This also brings up the question, is this really new? During the Clinton administration, a warning from a minority of folk went out about a program called Carnivore and the mass reply was the typical cat calls of "tin foil hat", "conspiracy theorist" you get the drill. Yet here we stand almost 20 years later seeing even worse but a reminder that those cries from the "tin foil hat" crowd turned out to be true. They were the canary in the coal mine!

Carnivore Software Wikipedia

Sometimes conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact!

 

[wkmac]

This also brings up the question, is this really new? During the Clinton administration, a warning from a minority of folk went out about a program called Carnivore and the mass reply was the typical cat calls of "tin foil hat", "conspiracy theorist" you get the drill. Yet here we stand almost 20 years later seeing even worse but a reminder that those cries from the "tin foil hat" crowd turned out to be true. They were the canary in the coal mine!

Carnivore Software Wikipedia

Sometimes conspiracy theory becomes conspiracy fact!

wink wink

 

[wkmac]

Sober Driver Charged With DUI

Hey BOYYEE, you ain't from around here are you?

 

[804brown]

"Free Trade" Was Never Really About Trade | Common Dreams

 

[UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)]

"Free Trade" Was Never Really About Trade | Common Dreams

Nor was it ever really free.

 

[wkmac]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMcjpgqEwfQ

 

[wkmac]

World's Most Evil and Lawless Institution? The Executive Branch of the U.S. Government

 

[texan]

Birdwatchers flock to see rare bird, then watch it killed by wind turbine

There hasn’t been a sighting of a White-throated Needletail in the United Kingdom for 22 years, so nearly
80 birdwatchers flocked to Scotland this week to get a look, the Telegraph reported.

But instead of enjoying the world’s fastest flying bird soaring, they watched it fly into the small blade
of a wind turbine and die.



Rare bird, white-throated needletail, killed by wind turbine in front of crowd of twitchers | Mail Online