Here's a Washington Post story by John Solomon and Carrie Johnson about illegal FBI wiretaps. This after Bush got before the American public and swore that he wasn't wiretapping American citizens...
The FBI illegally collected more than 2,000 U.S. telephone call records between 2002 and 2006 by invoking terrorism emergencies that did not exist or simply persuading phone companies to provide records, according to internal bureau memos and interviews. FBI officials issued approvals after the fact to justify their actions.You get the government you deserve in a democracy. If the people can't be bothered to vote. Or if the vote stupidly because they "buy" the propaganda used by the sleazy right. Or they are "bought" by the rich & powerful who use dollars to drown democracy. Then you get a crummy government.
E-mails obtained by The Washington Post detail how counterterrorism officials inside FBI headquarters did not follow their own procedures that were put in place to protect civil liberties. The stream of urgent requests for phone records also overwhelmed the FBI communications analysis unit with work that ultimately was not connected to imminent threats.
A Justice Department inspector general's report due out this month is expected to conclude that the FBI frequently violated the law with its emergency requests, bureau officials confirmed.
I keep thinking... Rome fell to the Dark Ages not because the Roman legions were inferior to the barbarians. No. It fell because the elites who needed to pay the taxes to support the legions decided to turn inward and avoid taxes figuring that "the other guy" would cover the gap. But once you become a sieve... the barbarian hordes flood in and take over.
The above is a tragic story. But I'm particularly glum tonight because the American public has embraced the party of family values and voted in the Playgirl fold-out "boy" to be their next Senator from Massachusetts. The Republicans who want to deregulate and downsize government and whose philosophy led to the unhinging of the economy in 2008, are now winning elections in 2010 because the public can't separate fact from fiction and keep buying Republican lies.
To me, the Republican Party is very much the barbarian hordes. They are a dark force that is at the gates pounding to get in and the American public, by not holding public officials (police, FBI, etc.) up to a standard of honesty and public duty, have gone the way of the Romans. It seems that Americans who can't be bothered to vote, who cynically claim "I'm just one person and my vote won't matter" have let the barbarians knock down the gates. Night is falling.
4 comments:
Here is a link to a YouTube of a Noam Chomsky interview. Propaganda has served the Republicans well, but it has created a very bad environment for the nation. I ran across Chomsky while looking into cointelpro.
Thomas. This is a good video and presents a reasonable statement that government is of the people, by the people, and for the people.
But be careful with Noam Chomsky. He is a very smart guy, but he is a bit of a fanatic. He certainly is the master of a lot of facts, but he has taken some very hardline radical left viewpoints. I find I have to pick-and-choose when I read Chomsky. I like a lot of what he says, but at times I back off because he goes too far.
I have not read much if any of his books, but from the few videos I have watched; I already have to agree with you about being careful and the fanatic radical viewpoints.
Thomas: Here is a relevant bit of comment from Brad DeLong pointing out that Chomsky's "critical insights" are sometimes the ravings of a fanatic:
And uncovering the cynical crimes of mad governments? Take a look at Chomsky's 1979 After the Cataclysm:
"If a serious study…is someday undertaken, it may well be discovered…that the Khmer Rouge programs elicited a positive response…because they dealt with fundamental problems rooted in the feudal past and exacerbated by the imperial system.… Such a study, however, has yet to be undertaken."
Reflect that it was published three full years after the Cambodian Holocaust of the Year Zero. Ask yourself whether this is an uncovering or a covering of the crimes of an abominable regime. But it gets worse. Go back to your Nation of 1977, and consider the paragraph:
"...there are many other sources on recent events in Cambodia that have not been brought to the attention of the American reading public. Space limitations preclude a comprehensive review, but such journals as the Far Eastern Economic Review, the London Economist, the Melbourne Journal of Politics, and others elsewhere, have provided analyses by highly qualified specialists who have studied the full range of evidence available, and who concluded that executions have numbered at most in the thousands; that these were localized in areas of limited Khmer Rouge influence and unusual peasant discontent, where brutal revenge killings were aggravated by the threat of starvation resulting from the American destruction and killing."
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