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Thomas Drake: You're Automatically Suspicious Until Proven Otherwise
colinneagle writes "RT had a very interesting interview with former NSA official turned whistleblower Thomas A. Drake, who said, 'Security has effectively become the State religion; you don't question it. And if you question it, then your loyalty is questioned.' 'Speaking truth of power is very dangerous in today's world,' he added. The interviewer pointed out that investigative journalists are labeled as 'terrorist helpers' for trying to reveal the truth, to which Drake said the government's take is 'you go after the messenger because the last thing you want to do is deal with the message.'"
Network World also has a pretty good article on William Binney's keynote at HOPE 9, wherein he revealed some technical details and a bit more background on the NSA's domestic surveillance program. Unfortunately, neither audio or video of the talk are available yet.
'Security has effectively become the State religion; you don't question it. And if you question it, then your loyalty is questioned.'
Sounds exactly like the conditions that people lived in under the rule of the Nazis and Communists. The "the land of the free and the home of the brave" have become what they fought so hard against - "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." Heil Amerika!
It was a good talk. I found it interesting.
I think the big take away from his insights was that the root of this evil was the corruption that consumed the NSA, and the pressure to send money out to the military industrial complex that surrounds government agencies.
It seems to me, in the context of this article, that the security religion is used as a veil to hide that corruption. By now, they may be using doublethink to believe their own lies, but that is the root cause. To fix it, we have to remove the dirty ties between the NSA and the MIC.
He repeatedly said in his talk that no matter what he did to solve a problem, he was never allowed to call it solved. There was always more at stake, more danger around the corner that would be used to scare Congress into spending more money. As he said... keep the problem going so the money keeps flowing.
-d
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
Request confirmed. Please stand by for orbital laser strike. Have a nice day!
Tic-Tac-Toe, Global Thermonuclear War, and relationships all have the same winning move.
I'm so glad I was born into the land of the [REDACTED] and the home of the [REDACTED]
Guard that 2nd amendment right people, since you are dealing with people that are armed to the teeth and have no issues killing civilians. Simply look at the body counts in the Middle East, Africa. Do so with unbiased corporate owned media, or check numerous sources.
Do you honestly think that you could fight the U.S. government with any amount of weapons you as an individual, or even organized with your buddies, could ever accumulate? Were you not paying attention to stories about Ruby Ridge, Waco, etc.? Or hell, for that matter, the Civil War?
I always have to laugh when I see this "We might need to fight the government!" argument people make about the Second Amendment. If it ever comes to the point where we have to have an armed revolution, your little pop guns aren't going to do diddly against our domestic police forces. The only way it would ever happen is for individuals that make up the police forces (that is, the police, National Guard, Coast Guard, and other domestic security agencies) to be on your side.
You would be "removed" before you ever got to the point where you could seriously fight the government. If you're lucky, that means you'd be shipped somewhere like Guantanamo Bay (or more likely, extraordinary rendered to some godforsaken hellhole where they torture people).
If you're going to change the government, you're going to have to do it by changing the hearts and minds of the U.S. citizenry to elect people who are willing to change the laws and give up some of the power the State has accumulated over the centuries. Not an easy task, I'll grant you, and many people believe that that will never happen. But if not, well, you're going to have to accept what we're stuck with today because armed revolution is not, nor will it ever be, the answer.
>>> Many leaders of [Tea Party, OWS, and the Ron Paul followers] have been jailed, detained.....
When did this supposedly happen? I'm aware of the Occupy people being jailed, because they were vandalizing property (see the broken windows in Oakland, and feces found in churches/along sidewalks) but not about Tea Party or Paulbots in jail or detained?
>>>Tyranny is a very short step away from where we are now
I've said the same thing on my facebook, but 99% of the responders tell me I'm nuts. For example they defend the Obamacare Mandate saying it's "reasonable" and that TSA employees are just doing their job. ("Would you rather be blown up?") That when I was pulled-over in Texas by DHS, I should have left the police look inside my trunk, instead of saying no/no/no for an hour. ("If you've done nothing wrong, what do you have to hide?") Perhaps I am wrong and the government really isn't heading towards tyranny.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Because third parties that gain power never get corrupted, right? Oh wait, they do (see Republican party).
The point is that it's cyclical. When a party becomes corrupt, they ought to be ousted. But the political party system in our mathematically flawed election process is built to prevent those in power from losing it to upstarts. This is how political parties become corrupt: because they become entrenched.
Electoral collect, first past the post, no alternative vote, these are concessions against fair voting in an era where it took weeks to get a message from one end of the country to the other. Today? Not so much.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Haven't you heard? They're all in the secret FEMA death camps.
You are. If you think the US is anywhere NEAR anything that can be described as tyranny, you have no clue what tyranny actually is. The irony is that anything which weakens the US will only give nations like China an advantage, and that's exactly what they're waiting for, and those aren't nations which respect anything resembling freedom or liberal democracy. Oh, I know: you'll say, "the US doesn't, either." I sincerely hope you don't get the world you wish for, because it will be one where you are far less free.
Who fought? And who supported. While volunteers American soldiers flew bombers at great personal costs to disrupt the Nazi war machine, American made ball bearings came in via Sweden in large enough quantities to offset the damage to production. While Americans born in the US with Asian ancestors were rounded up and killed if they disobeyed, the open Nazi Ford was never even questioned and his heritage continues to this day.
Yes, America fought in WW2 against the nazi's but it was not exactly undivided in this and those who think those who wished the US to not aid the Allied forces were pacifists is gravely mistaking. It always amazes me when people come up with alternate histories were the US does not enter WW2, the far more likely alternate outcome would have been the US getting in on the Axis side. What after all is the difference between "keine juden" and "whites only" in spirit? Hell, IBM supplied the lists, Americans supplied the gas, the idea of going "east/west" for "lebensraum", of concentration camps (don't make the mistake of confusing concentration with extermination) (indian reservations). America was far from a natural ally for the Allied forces. Not that most of the allied nations were much better.
Don't forget how hated Roosevelts New Deal was and still is in certain quarters, quarters that have only gained in power.
Right wingers are like the Mafia, they are still fucking there! Want some proof? South Korea's whaling plans. WHY? They had given it up for decades, their economy doesn't need it and they have no depressed areas where people need any type of job. So why? Because some people who never let go of the past saw an opening. They were stopped, this time... but they will not go away, will try again and again and again.
The fight for freedom never ends, because evil never stops. Not the evil that rapes and pillages but the evil that excuses it as being cultural or just the way things are or ignores it as being a fundemental part of the good old days the evil wants to bring back.
See Romney's entire election campaign. They are not back, they have never gone away.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In another recent development: The country of the USA is officially changing it's name to "East Germany". If geographically misleading, it seemed fitting in a number of other essential details.
The name was cheap, through recent disuse. The US was able to obtain it through a swap for their equally abandoned Constitutiuon.
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
What do you mean by "anything which weakens the US" ?
Because from where I'm watching, continued abuse of the US political system by monied interests (be they civilian or military-industrial) is weakening the US, weakening it's freedoms, weakening its civil rights, and weakening the prosperity of the majority of its people.
But Americans have been hugely keen on giving more and more power to their federal government
Sigh. No. The ignorance of history by the average American is appalling. No, this is nothing new. It goes back to the 1798 Alien and Sedition acts, at least. There's nothing "more and more' about it-- you do remember the domestic spying of the 1960s and 1970s, right? Or the Kent State incident where National Guardsmen shot a bunch of students on the quad (who, as it turned out, didn't even have anything to do with the protests over which that the Guards had been called out?) Well, no, probably you don't. What is new is the large amount of push-back against giving power to the federal goverment.
There's been for the last two centuries a give and take between cries for security and the desire for non-interference; or, if you like, the battle between fear and freedom.
, so this is in inevitable byproduct. Of course there must be some government, but not one that grows without bound and attracts power hungry, corrupt authoritarians. But hey, keep on voting for those Republican and Democrats, because that's been working out so well thus far, amirite?
You're ignoring large amounts of debate and back-and-forth in order to phrase things as simple freedom-versus-evil. Even in the two-party system, the parties are not monoliths; opinions are not uniform nor black-and-white. However, if you don't like the two-party system, you might try to see if you can advocate changing the ballotting system that we currently have, which drives the politics to two parties. Try advocating approval voting, for example, which is a system that is not biased toward two parties: http://www.electology.org/approval-voting http://bcn.boulder.co.us/government/approvalvote/center.html (or any of several other methods that don't fail badly with multiple candidates).
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Right now, a lot of public money flows to private enterprise because of the military, but there's a shit-load more money there. Communications, transportation, energy and education are all cash-cows that they're just starting to seriously milk to varying degrees.
I take it you weren't. A small group of irate people with zero support can cause massive problems for the federal government? So what happens when half the houses in a region go Ruby Ridge? Then you segue to Civil War status. And there we see that a group of states can indeed give the federal government a run for the money.
So did you notice the part where the federal government won in each and every case? That afterwards, there was exactly zero meaningful change, except possibly to push the pendulum even further in the direction of unfettered federal power?
As opposed to, I dunno, say, Martin Luther King, Jr.? Yeah, all of those weapons he was stockpiling sure helped shake things up. And all of those 60s hippies who were so gung ho about engaging in armed conflict really made the difference in stopping the Vietnam War. Wow, remember that bloody clash when the students at Kent State started firing back at police? Even today in, say, the struggle of gay people much much recent success to gain acceptance in society, I can't help but notice how it finally came about when they started espousing arming themselves to defend their rights.
Except... Oh yeah, right! None of those things happened! All of those fundamental shifts in how government has changed were accomplished through non-violent campaigns to win the hearts and minds of the American people.
Look, I know it's fun to romanticize the Revolutionary War, as if that's the One and Only Way to solve government oppression. Maybe you missed out on the history of things like 1) England was across the Atlantic Ocean, which posed a significant logistical disadvantage, 2) England was also mired in conflict with France at the time, and 3) England didn't have a massive arsenal of modern weaponry to use against the colonists. Yes, we won, but anyone who doesn't recognize that such an example is practically useless in today's world is an idiot.
In the graduate studies lab where I got my Ph.D., my adviser and most of my coworkers were from Islamic countries: Egypt, Lebanon, Palestine, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia. All identified as Muslim, but represented various points between conservative and liberal: several drank alcohol, several (including both males and females) had premarital sex, several smoked tobacco, one (at least) smoked weed openly (as possible in the States). Most, but not all, regularly attended religious services. Most, but not all, fasted during the day during Ramadan. All but one of the females wore just Western clothing; the other wore Western clothing plus a hair scarf. Two of the married males were, to the whole group's opinion, overly demanding of their wives (in this opinion, there was no disagreement between the Western and other Islamic students). Of these two males, only one (the Saudi) intended to marry a second wife; all the others felt this was a backwards practice.
The rest of the lab consisted, with some fluctuation over time, of two Christians (one American, one Asian), two Atheists (one American, one Indian), one Jew (American) and two Hindis. And yet there was no cultural strife within the lab. Everyone got along, everyone helped out their fellow students when possible. The Islamic students would invite everyone to the evening meal during Ramadan, the Christian/Western-traditional students, if in town over Winter break, would invite everyone to Christmas dinner. As with any big group there were cliques of closer friends, but it didn't happen on sectarian lines.
So obviously Islam isn't totally evil, and Muslims aren't a single organism. As with any group, there is a continuous spectrum between conservative and liberal. As with any group, you have a majority of people just trying to get by, a few bad apple loud mouths, and a tiny minority of dangerous psychopaths. I won't deny that Islamic fundamentalism is a serious problem in the Middle East, and I won't say that there's never a reason for the US to intervene to protect our interests. But as an American, Christian fundamentalism is a much more pressing concern to me, as it can have (and has had) a much more direct negative impact on me and my country.
There is nothing inherently evil about Christianity or Islam.
Sure there is: they both require you to put non-Bayesian means ahead of Bayesian means as a way of knowing reality, and that is the root of all evil.
In the case of religions, scripture and ecclesiastical authority are the favoured non-Bayesian means. In the case of political organizations, party doctrine and ideology are the favoured non-Bayesian means.
Whenever anyone attempts to induce someone to abandon the only possible consistent way of knowing reality--Bayesian reasoning about systematic observations and controlled experiments--they are committing the most fundamental act of evil possible.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Not really. In order to be of any relevance in the US system a new party would need to instantly get about one third of the votes. That's extremely implausible. If we look at Europe where proportional systems are the norm, new parties considered to be undergoing a meteoric rise to power gain single-digit percents - and that's in a system where the notion that a vote for anything but the biggest party is a wasted vote doesn't exist.
It's easy to form a party and get the message out. It's hard to do so and instantly gain the support of a third of the country, especially when you consider that the incumbents can most likely outspend you by orders of magnitude and have the bonus of voters who always vote for the same party without thinking.
Unless the entire nation completely loses faith in one of the two big parties it's extremely unlikely that any new entrant will have any chance of making their voice heard. At least not until they're willing to spend the equivalent of a mid-size corporation's market cap on their campaign.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
Look, I have no issue with some people wanting to be a pacifist. All causes need martyrs. What I take exception to is someone telling everyone to be pacifist. Historically large populations that believe this is their only option end up being the victims of genocide. Just ask the 80 million or so Chinese pacifists that were murdered by Mao, or the 30 million Jews that were murdered by Hitler, or the 60 million or so that were murdered by Stalin and Lenin.. Oh wait, you can't because they were all murdered.
No where do I state that a gun is your only option, what I state is that people need to protect that right.. just in case there are no peaceful alternatives.
Lets remember something which you neglected to point out. MLK was assassinated right? As was JFK, as was Bobby Kennedy, as were at least hundreds of other people that spoke out publicly regarding Political Corruption, Equality/Human Rights, the dismantling of our Education system, and the MIC.
This is long but there is a point. Keep this in context as you read.
Would you care to really test your level of reality? How about you review some of the music figures that were assassinated relatively recently and find out their political affiliations and who they were being investigated by? Of course, it's just "those crazy gangsta rappers" right? Keep your hat on your head, I'm not claiming that all of the rumors and stories are true. I'm claiming that it's interesting that certain people were being investigated by certain agencies and ended up dead by assassination. Coincidences with the JFK assassination are interesting, such as police being removed from areas just prior to the assassins starting to shoot, and the same Police showing up at locations over and over and having no reports or reports that were completely fabricated, security video tapes vanish, evidence being destroyed, etc... If you investigate you will start to think, and thinking is pretty scary right? How many times can something be coincidence before it becomes a plot? Interestingly, there were specials on the news regarding the East/West Rap Wars that had no mention of Government agencies investigating and tailing these guys for years, the evidence tampering, etc... we only heard about those "Violent and Crazy N-words". Have you been manipulated in to believing in a reality that does not exist? Since I have been investigating, the preponderance of evidence clearly shows that I have been presented a manipulated reality regarding many of those people. I am not convinced yet, but the best argument for the media presented reality is "The alternative is so far fetched it can't be true" which I hope you see as the self protecting fallacy it is.
The point of that last paragraph is really this: All of those people were publicly asking for peaceful and progressive changes to the Government for the betterment of society. They were pacifists for the most part as well. Who won, the dead guy or the corrupt? I think you know the answer to that question. (The use of the term "corrupt" there is very intentional since I have invested a lot of time investigating many of these assassinations. That is my opinion of "who" and may not match your opinion of "who".)
Now you are probably going to cry "Begging the Question" when you get done reading those two paragraphs but keep the fallacy card in your pocket. That would only be true if I stated that it was all factual, and I was very clear that I was not sure of all the facts. I stated that it was interesting, and worth investigation. Once you start to realize that your reality is being manipulated, I hope it pisses you off and you start to dig in to the truth in more areas.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
You're mixing the ideas of what's "good" with what's "possible".
Consider Oklahoma City where a couple of guys killed 168 people and wounded over 600. Did the feds "win" that one? Suppose there were 10.000 potential Tim McVeighs in the country. Is the government going to establish a defensive perimeter around every single federal building and guard it with military forces? Will they also build living quarters for all government employees and their families inside these "green zones"? How do they guard all of the supply lines and critical infrastructure at the same time? What about the $1.6T annual federal deficit? What would happen to the economy and the government's ability to levy taxes if they had to deal with a domestic insurgency?
You don't need the American Revolution as an example when there are numerous modern examples.
You think England was over-extended? What about the USA with 700 military bases in 130+ countries and demoralized military personnel?
I don't think armed revolt would be a "good" thing or even a "likely" thing, but it's entirely "possible". Anyone that thinks "modern weaponry" is certain to defeat a determined insurgency fighting on its own soil is the idiot.
Do you honestly think that you could fight the U.S. government with any amount of weapons you as an individual, or even organized with your buddies, could ever accumulate?
Sure, get enough buddies, enough organization, and eventually enough military hardware and you can beat the pants off the federal government.
Do you honestly think you and your buddies could stand up against the full wrath of the US military, against unrelenting 24/7 aerial bombardment, against battalions of tanks, against biological and chemical agents, and nuclear strikes? Unless your "buddies" include major superpowers like China and Russia, you haven't got a prayer.
How long do you expect the federal government to continue to exist after they decide to use biological, chemical, and nuclear strikes in a genocidal extermination of their own cities? Which soldiers do you expect to push the button to launch a nuke at, say, Ohio? And were that to happen, do you think the rest of the world WON'T get involved? They didn't stay out of our first revolution, they didn't stay out of our civil war, they didn't stay out of Libya...
Were there to be some kind of large and violent revolutionary movement, there would be FAR more resistance from the police forces than the military. Most soldiers would probably go AWOL. They joined to _protect_ the citizens, not kill them. That's the police's job. Aside from the fact that any soldier fighting a domestic insurrection would be in violation of federal law (though I'm sure that would change.) Yes, there are some SWAT teams with tanks, but we wouldn't be facing A1M1s, we wouldn't be facing aerial bombardment, and we CERTAINLY wouldn't be facing chemical/biological/nuclear weaponry. And if we did, that is exactly the point at which we would win. Just look at recent events in the middle east.