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Worth Reading: Trevor Pott's editorial on NSA PRISM and its real ramifications
40hz:
Two mind-numbing articles by Paul Craig Roberts:
Robert's BioAbout Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
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A New Beginning Without Washington’s Sanctimonious Mask
and
Stasi In The White House
These posts pull no punches. (And here I thought I was royally pissed off! :tellme:)
Here's a few highlights:
Obama’s speech was delivered to a relatively small, specially selected audience of invitees. Even so, Obama spoke from behind bullet proof glass.
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Obama’s speech will go down in history as the most hypocritical of all time. Little wonder that the audience was there by invitation only. A real audience would have hooted Obama out of Berlin.
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This is the same Obama who promised to close the Guantanamo Torture Prison, but did not; the same Obama who promised to tell us the purpose for Washington’s decade-long war in Afghanistan, but did not; the same Obama who promised to end the wars, but started new ones; the same Obama who said he stood for the US Constitution, but shredded it; the same Obama who refused to hold the Bush regime accountable for its crimes against law and humanity; the same Obama who unleashed drones against civilian populations in Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Yemen; the same Obama who claimed and exercised power to murder US citizens without due process and who continues the Bush regime’s unconstitutional practice of violating habeas corpus and detaining US citizens indefinitely; the same Obama who promised transparency but runs the most secretive government in US history.
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Obama has taken hypocrisy to new heights. He has destroyed US civil liberties guaranteed by the Constitution. In place of a government accountable to law, he has turned law into a weapon in the hands of the government. He has intimidated a free press and prosecutes whistleblowers who reveal his government’s crimes. He makes no objection when American police brutalize peacefully protesting citizens. His government intercepts and stores in National Security Agency computers every communication of every American and also the private communications of Europeans and Canadians, including the communications of the members of the governments, the better to blackmail those with secrets. Obama sends in drones or assassins to murder people in countries with which the US is not at war, and his victims on most occasions turn out to be women, children, farmers, and village elders. Obama kept Bradley Manning in solitary confinement for nearly a year assaulting his human dignity in an effort to break him and obtain a false confession. In defiance of the US Constitution, Obama denied Manning a trial for three years.
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Obama has turned America into a surveillance state that has far more in common with Stasi East Germany than with the America of the Kennedy and Reagan eras. Strange, isn’t it, that freedom was gained in East Germany and lost in America.
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It is not clear to an ordinary person what Snowden has revealed that William Binney and other whistleblowers have not already revealed. Perhaps the difference is that Snowden has provided documents that prove it, thereby negating Washington’s ability to deny the facts with its usual lies.
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Here we have a US Secretary of State lost in delusion along with the rest of Washington. A country that is bankrupt, a country that has allowed its corporations to destroy its economy by moving the best jobs offshore, a country whose future is in the hands of the printing press, a country that after eleven years of combat has been unable to defeat a few thousand lightly armed Taliban is now threatening Russia and China. God save us from the utter fools who comprise our government.
The world is enjoying Washington’s humiliation at the hands of Hong Kong. A mere city state gave Washington the bird.
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The stuck pig squeals from the NSA director–”Edward Snowden has caused irreversible damage to US”–are matched by the obliging squeals from members of the House and Senate, themselves victims of the NSA spying, as was the Director of the CIA who was forced to resign because of a love affair. The NSA is in position to blackmail everyone in the House and Senate, in the White House itself, in all the corporations, the universities, the media, every organization at home and abroad, who has anything to hide. You can tell who is being blackmailed by the intensity of the squeals, such as those of Dianne Feinstein (D, CA) and Mike Rogers (R, MI). With any luck, a patriot will leak what the NSA has on Feinstein and Rogers, neither of whom could possibly scrape any lower before the NSA.
The gangster government in Washington that has everything to hide is now in NSA’s hands and will follow orders. The pretense that amerika is a democracy responsible to the people has been exposed. The US is run by and for the NSA. Congress and the White House are NSA puppets.
Let’s quit calling the NSA the National Security Agency. Clearly, NSA is a threat to the security of every person in the entire world. Let’s call the NSA what it really is–the National Stasi Agency, the largest collection of Gestapo in human history. You can take for granted that every media whore, every government prostitute, every ignorant flag-waver who declares Snowden to be a traitor is either brainwashed or blackmailed. They are the protectors of NSA tyranny. They are our enemies.
The world has been growing increasingly sick of Washington for a long time. The bullying, the constant stream of lies, the gratuitous wars and destruction have destroyed the image hyped by Washington of the US as a “light unto the world.” The world sees the US as a plague upon the world.
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Mr. Roberts, you're awesome! :Thmbsup:
CWuestefeld:
Two mind-numbing articles by Paul Craig Roberts:
-40hz (June 26, 2013, 08:49 AM)
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I'm afraid you're crossing the line into partisan politics.
I agree with the overall conclusion you're presenting here. But, bad as the situation that they describe is, these articles do contain untruths and exaggerations (I won't enumerate them, because I don't want to dig deeper into the political quagmire). Presenting things in this manner undermines the effort in the long run: it gives the bad guys the opportunity to rebut trivial details while ignoring the big picture, and it robs us of (some of) the moral high ground.
IainB:
@40hz: I'm confuzzled. Do Americans really need things like the 2 articles by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts before they can see the stark reality of what has been happening and what is still happening to their country and the US Constitution?
wraith808:
Two mind-numbing articles by Paul Craig Roberts:
-40hz (June 26, 2013, 08:49 AM)
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I'm afraid you're crossing the line into partisan politics.
I agree with the overall conclusion you're presenting here. But, bad as the situation that they describe is, these articles do contain untruths and exaggerations (I won't enumerate them, because I don't want to dig deeper into the political quagmire). Presenting things in this manner undermines the effort in the long run: it gives the bad guys the opportunity to rebut trivial details while ignoring the big picture, and it robs us of (some of) the moral high ground.
-CWuestefeld (June 26, 2013, 09:50 AM)
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Agreed +1
40hz:
I find it interesting how so many are willing to concede our government's right to spin stories, send off flames, bully pulpit and dead-cat its opponents, and lie at will to the public - yet very quickly label any nose tweaking or blunt editorial characterizations in return as being "partisan politics."
Our enthroned leadership has made an art form out of using so-called "partisan" political strategies and debating techniques. That's one of the reasons they have been - and continue to be - so successful.
FWIW, I think we can have "intelligent" and "measured" and "respectful" dialog about this whole problem until the cows come home. The only way any real change will come about (or even become possible) is if the general public feels sufficient anger and disgust about what is going on to force changes. Because it isn't ever the "bright promise for the future" that stirs our public out of its chronic political llethargy. It's the hard realization that "enough is enough" and that "I am no longer willing to tolerate this behavior - starting now" that brings about social change. Something that our politicians understand and have learned to take advantage of all too well. Because they're often the first to remind you "you're better than that"; and that "you shouldn't talk that way"; and suggest you try to "exercise proper restraint and some consideration with your comments" - because they certainly aren't going to do the same with theirs.
I have long since passed the point where I am willing to allow our politicians to unilaterally frame (or more often re-frame) the debate, set the rules for discourse, or define the terms being used. That is a courtesy I will extend to people of goodwill who are actively and honestly attempting to work toward finding a solution and undoing the damage they have caused. And I have yet to see any politicians matching that description show up.
If Robert's articles step on some toes - or offend some sensitivities - so be it. Some toes deserve to be stepped on. And some sensitivities need to be offended. Because as long as this situation can be ignored, or finessed, or rationalized ("It's legal!) or endlessly and genteelly debated on forums and in coffee shops by "people who think and worry too much"...then it will only continue.
Right now we live with the uncomfortable and potentially dangerous situation of a powerful administration being caught out in series of incontrovertible lies and hypocritical acts going back several years. And, like all liars who have been found out, this administration is responding predictably as liars do. We're now seeing the usual psychotic attempts for it to"explain (i.e. lie) it's way out" as its former support base begins to crumble.
Hardly a time to pull too many punches IMHO.
But maybe that's just me? My problem is - I've seen this sort of thing before. Although nowhere near this bad. And it wasn't fixed that time by people being overly polite about it.
And it won't this time either.
YMMV :)
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