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Knight to queen's bishop 3 - Snowden charged with espionage.

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TaoPhoenix:
As long as the government kept them convinced there was a monster hiding in the closet waiting attack they were too scared not to believe. As soon as they looked in the closet and saw the NSA instead that's who they're afraid of.
-Vurbal (August 13, 2013, 04:26 PM)
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There's comedy gold there, ya know!

Vurbal:
That WSJ artice basically matches my observations going back all the way to the previous administration. I think it can be largely explained by the similarities between the 2 presidents. Because lacked significant experience navigating the Washington political environment so both chose running mates who were established power players with a lot of history as Congressional power players from the period when the lobbyists basically infiltrated the legislative process in the 80s and 90s.

The initial change started in the early 80s. Lobbyists focused largely on Republicans who were desperate to get control of Congress. That finally happened in the mid-90s. They came in with the goal of passing as much legislation as possible in the shortest amount of time. The only way to accomplish that was bringing in outside help to quickly author complex bills and rally support. The same corporate allies who helped them modernize the party's campaign strategies were right there volunteering to do the same for the day to day operations.

Even as recently as Clinton, though, they hadn't gained a foothold in the White House. They were writing most of the laws and directing votes but for the most part their direct influence stopped there. When Dick Cheney became Vice President he brought them along for the ride. His primary corporate allegiance was to the defense industry and the current dominance of the intelligence contracting industry reflects that. I'm sure he was also instrumental in the general atmosphere of former corporate executives almost entirely taking over as government regulators.

Obama had the same problem and his solution was Joe Biden. Not by coincidence when Biden became Vice President the intellectual property interests he represented in Congress got their own private police force spread throughout the Justice Department and Homeland Security. He also had strong ties to the intelligence community so naturally their expansion into the executive branch continued as well.

At this point the question is whether change comes before we hit rock bottom or after. The more top heavy the economy gets, the faster the end comes. At the rate we're going I'd say rock bottom is within the next 5 years, probably the next 2-3.

TaoPhoenix:
After.

But you can't use Rock Bottom anymore. That's WWE's intellectual property now!

Dramatization of the US condition:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRqVNS_tQ4A

Renegade:
More hilarity - Oath Keepers is running ads in Washington District of Criminals:

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2013/08/16/pro-snowden-ad-near-white-house-targets-unrepentant-obama

...

A photograph of President Barack Obama is bracketed by red panels that say "Truth Is Treason" and "Big Brother Is Watching."

Last month the group posted three ads inside the Pentagon Metro stop, encouraging workers with access to classified information to "expose unconstitutional actions."

The Pentagon ads enraged some workers, including one man interviewed by WJLA-TV. "[Snowden] should be crucified," the man said.
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dr_andus:
"David Miranda, partner of Guardian interviewer of whistleblower Edward Snowden, questioned under Terrorism Act."

Again, this is just taking matters too far, just like with the Bolivian president's airplane. But at the same time this is scary that this is happening in a 'democracy,' very likely at the behest of another 'democratic' nation. It's difficult to read this in any other way than as an attempt at intimidating a journalist. This whole "free press" and "free speech" thing is just a thing of the past.

But they obviously had zero suspicion that David was associated with a terrorist organization or involved in any terrorist plot. Instead, they spent their time interrogating him about the NSA reporting which Laura Poitras, the Guardian and I are doing, as well the content of the electronic products he was carrying. They completely abused their own terrorism law for reasons having nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism: a potent reminder of how often governments lie when they claim that they need powers to stop "the terrorists", and how dangerous it is to vest unchecked power with political officials in its name.
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And here is another, more potent quote from Greenwald:

This is obviously a rather profound escalation of their attacks on the news-gathering process and journalism. It's bad enough to prosecute and imprison sources. It's worse still to imprison journalists who report the truth. But to start detaining the family members and loved ones of journalists is simply despotic. Even the Mafia had ethical rules against targeting the family members of people they felt threatened by. But the UK puppets and their owners in the US national security state obviously are unconstrained by even those minimal scruples.
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