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U.S. Secretly Tapping Bank Databases
The Washington Post and New York Times are reporting on a Bush administration initiative that has tapped into a vast global database of confidential financial transactions for nearly five years. Relying on a presidential emergency declaration made under the International Emergency Economic Powers, the administration has been surveilling the data from the SWIFT database, which links about 7,800 banks and brokerages and handles billions of transactions a year. From the article:
Together with a hundredfold expansion of the FBI's use of "national security letters" to obtain communications and banking records, the secret NSA and Treasury programs have built unprecedented government databases of private transactions, most of them involving people who prove irrelevant to terrorism investigators.The NYTimes goes on to say that the joint CIA-Treasury program has played a hidden role in domestic and foreign terrorism investigations since 2001 and helped in the capture of the most wanted Qaeda figure in Southeast Asia. Still, the access to large amounts of confidential data was highly unusual, and concerns were raised about legal and privacy issues.
Uh oh you caught me!
:-(
You are right though, in reality I do not mind secret courts, phone tapping, bank tapping, warrantless searches, americans being held indefinatly without access to a lawyer or charges being filed, torture, secret prisons, war, CIA leaks, and our spending more money on defense than all other countries on the planet combined and doubled while our education and healthcare go down the toilet and we run up a defecit that cannot reasonably be paid in the next 5 generations.
Yup, red handed. Was just trying to annoy you, my bad.
Can we go back to blaming communism?
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
Mod me down all you want. It's still true.
-Eric
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So far it seems though, and I say this as a foreign observer, that America is taking it all sitting down.
We're not taking it sitting down. We're taking it in the ass, bent over the lap of a bound lady liberty. And the funny thing is, there's a bunch of folks saying they absolutely love it, because George Bush said they love it.
"C'mon, you know you love it!" he says. But still they don't squirm like he likes, so he says, "Terrorism! 9/11!"
And then they orgasm. "Oooo, I just love you, Mr. President!" And they say, "Those other people who don't love getting raped in the ass by their government are nothing but liberal crybabies." Because it's easier for them to call names and ignore the waxing fascism than it is for them to admit the truth: they support a fascist regime that has not made us one iota safer.
They, the party that once called for reduced government interference in our lives, are whining about how fucking great it is that the government is more involved in our lives to the point where they know how we spend our money and whom we call, and they are telling us how to think.
So, no. We're not taking it sitting down. We can't sit down. Our asses are sore.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
I will be interested in seeing the BBC's take on the matter.
Look at the YEAR in which they were used.
... and rather short on facts about chemical weapons.
If Saddam had them 20 years ago, that does NOT make him a threat TODAY.
No one is saying that Saddam did not have chemical weapons at any time in the past. We know he did. We were the ones who were helping him develop them for use in the Iraq/Iran war.
And your articles are rather long on descriptions of Saddam lounging by a pool in a speedo
Dude, Iraq fought Iran.
Iraq was a secular totalitarian state.
There was NO danger of them changing to a Theocracy while Saddam was alive.
So just leaving Saddam and the sanctions in place would have achieved your stated goal without the loss of a single US soldier's life.
If it's not about oil, then make the case without mentioning oil.
Because you cannot do so, without fantasy scenarios that Saddam's existance would have prevented, it is/was/will be about the oil.
So? No one is saying he was an angel. Just that he was not a threat to the United States of America or our allies.
Do not confuse "bad person" with "threat to the US".
Do you have some kind of calendar-phobia?
You keep bringing up actions from years before the last invasion. What he did in 1990 has no bearing on whether we should invade in 2003. There were THIRTEEN YEARS between those two events.
I don't know about "feel convenient", but it certainly fits the established facts.
And again you support the position that it was about the oil. Or, more exactly, about who controls the oil.
So, be as sarcastic/flippant as you want to be about it. The fact remains that you do not have a justification that does NOT involve the oil.
Oil does not vote. Oil does not elect representatives. There is nothing noble about going to war for oil. Therefore, saying that the war was for oil cannot be "craven".
Only in your mind, only in your mind.
Germany was actively invading other countries and attacking our ally England.
Iraq had
They had the intelligence, and the power to cherrypick, to invade the country, Iraq, that was right for them. The Bush administration is the Iran/Contra administration . All these people made their bones in the 1980s CIA/NSA cocaine and guns conspiracy. That hijacked American foreign policy to wage secret wars in Central America. To raise money for secret wars elsewhere, like in Africa, and Osama bin Laden's Afghanistan. With secret Saudi funding and Iranian funding. As seed money for robbing the Savings and Loans of over a $TRILLION (in 1980s dollars: our GDP was 1/4 what it is today).
These same people, like Poindexter, Negroponte, Bolton and so many others, wrench our country into invading Iraq to the benefit of Saudi Arabia and Iran, giving the NSA and CIA powers previously forbidden by our constititional democratic republic. While spying on all Americans for the political power that ensures their corporate backers will make all the money they want, forever.
They're pulling it off. As measured by $TRILLIONS in profits and unlimited power, killing thousands around the world and leaving our country to rot. How can we possibly deny that they're smart, that they're doing it all on purpose, that it's malice, even evil, that is driving all their actions? Because the truth is too much to admit, especially since we like to believe what we see in the media: the Republican government works for us, not themselves and their corporate masters.
--
make install -not war
I'm not speaking to the original point, but
I suspect you are indeed part of the majority which dismisses arguments based on who is making the argument and not based on the merrits of that argument. At least, your posts are strongly suggesting this.
When ranting and raving on the internet without presenting any sort of corroboration, indeed with not even leads toward information that may serve as a basis of evidence, dismissal is pretty much the only option. Anyone can post anything, and chasing down the rainbows of paranoia isn't a productive activity. After all, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
This whole situation is kind of like the OJ defense: claim the administration is so incompetent as to be unable to conduct the normal business of the country, while at the same time masterfully organizing the biggest conspiracy in history completely successfully? Something doesn't fit.
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