Hmmmm.

Are we pronouncing this patient "still dead"?

by John Sanchez Jr. (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 1015 comments) on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 11:36:56 AM
 

Business as usual

Is anyone surprised at yet another caving in to the neocon agenda by a once meaningful Democratic Party?

by ardee D. (6 articles, 4 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 2388 comments) on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 12:14:08 PM
 

By the Corporations - For the Corporations

Just one more example thrown in our faces telling us where We the People stand. For the People - by The People - My Ass!

So much for the Rule of Law. That is if you're mega-rich, a politician or a mega-corporation, but if you're just one of the people watch out! Be prepared to be tasered and shipped off to one of the 600 fully staffed camps waiting your arrival. Prehaps you'll be lucky enough to work as slave-labor for one of the corporations. Now wouldn't that be fun?

I truly believe we're just on incident away from total tyranny. One "false flag" attack from Marshall Law and all pretences of us being a democratic/republic can be pushed aside and the Corporate/military elites can quit pretending and simply openly do what they wish with no fear of even having hearings by a so-called government of The People. Hell, we can even do away with elections and simply have various corporate boards direct policy - it's not like they aren't doing that now anyway. The farce our elections are now, who would notice? At least we wouldn't have to put up with years of bullshit sound-bites and 30 second commercials.

by Mr M (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 9 diaries, 1247 comments) on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 1:42:06 PM
 

You Got It

There is a crisis in this nation and detention camps are part of it. This is a time we should all keep our vigilance up.

by Timothy V. Gatto (348 articles, 177 quicklinks, 38 diaries, 575 comments) on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 1:59:27 PM
 

It won't work

Interned prisoners don't make good consumers.  They don't buy the new digital tv's or download music from iTunes.

Frightened and oppressed people don't go out to the stores and buy, buy, buy.  They may stay home and watch all the stupid television (television, the opium of the people) but they don't BUY all the things being advertised.

Slaves don't really make good labor forces -- they have to be policed, they have to be guarded, and they die if you don't feed, clothe and house them.

The whole farce of the corporate state of capitalism requires a well-controlled population that THINKS they have free will, when in reality, the whole game is rigged at every corner and every "decision" that the poor wage slave makes is actually either a false choice or no choice at all.  (note to self, isn't that the whole premise of MATRIX?)  Martial law will "break the spell" of the capitalist lie and render the whole system broken.

I don't believe that the owners of the system want to break it, as it will make their money worth less, their wealth harder to enjoy, and the world they want to live in and enjoy the pleasures of that much harder to inhabit.

That said, if there's a chance in hell that an "uppity black man" might become the leader of the free world, then all bets are off.

by Charlie L (2 articles, 2 quicklinks, 1 diaries, 638 comments) on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 2:28:15 PM
 

Abridgement of Elliot Cohen's article, The End of Privacy

The Bush administration has devised a bold new plan that has stripped away FISA protections in favor of a system of wholesale government monitoring of every American's Internet activities. On what basis? The national director of intelligence had predicted a disastrous cyber-terrorist attack on the U.S.if this scheme isn't instituted.

It is no secret that the Bush administration has already been spying on the e-mail, voice-over-IP, and other Internet exchanges between American citizens since _before_ Sept. 11, 2001. The National Security Agency has set up shop in the hubs of major telecom corporations, notably AT&T, installing equipment that makes copies of the contents of all Internet traffic, routing it to a government database and then using natural language parsing technology to sift through and analyze the data, using undisclosed search criteria (such as “opponents of George Bush”). It has done this without judicial oversight and obviously without the consent of the millions of Americans under surveillance. Given any rational interpretation of the Fourth Amendment, its mass spying operation is illegal and unconstitutional. (However, PNAC maintains that "the process of transformation" it envisions must include the "militarization and control of the Internet.")

The Bush administration had hoped to continue its mass surveillance program in secret, but as many as 40 civil suits were filed against AT&T and other telecoms, threatening to blow the government's illegal spying activities wide open. Unable to have these cases dismissed in appellate court by once again playing the national-security card, the administration drafted and tried to push through Congress a version of the FISA Amendments Act of 2007 that gave retroactive immunity to telecom corporations for their assistance in helping the government spy en mass on Americans without a court warrant. The administration's plan was to use Congress' passage of this provision of immunity to nullify any cause of civil action against the telecoms, thereby pre-empting the exposure of the administration's own illegal activities.

Two versions of the FISA bill emerged –- one of them was from the Senate Intelligence Committee and was drafted largely by Cheney himself and contained the immunity provision, and it is this one that Senate Majority leader Harry Reid chose to bring to the Senate floor.

All Bush and Cheney needed to do to protect themselves from criminal liability was to make the new spy-at-will law retroactive from the inception of the illegal NSA surveillance program, and the US Senate gladly complied. And this was sufficient to deflate the civil suits filed against the telecoms, since the past illegal spying activities that these companies conducted on behalf of the government then became "legal." Indeed, this was not the first time that the Bush administration has done this sort of legal retro-dating and nullifying of civil rights and gotten it through Congress. For example, the Military Commissions Act of 2006 conveniently gave Bush the power to decide whether someone -- including himself -- is guilty of torture, irrespective of the Geneva Conventions, and it made this authority retroactive to Nov. 26, 1997.

To sum up: BushCo is seeking abridgement of civil liberties in its usual fashion: by fear-mongering and warnings that our homeland will be attacked by terrorists -- this time of the menacing hacker variety -- unless we the people surrender our Fourth Amendment right to privacy and give government the authority to inspect even our most personal and intimate messages.

There are grave dangers to the survival of democracy posed by allowing any present or future government unfettered access to all of our private electronic communications. These dangers must be weighed against the dubious and unproven benefits that granting such an awesome power to government might have in fending off cyber-attacks.

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080124_the_end_of_privacy/

by Richard Clark (18 articles, 0 quicklinks, 0 diaries, 63 comments) on Wednesday, February 13, 2008 at 3:15:49 PM
 

Immunity from prosecution

Immunity from prosecution is supposed to be a prosecutorial tool available to compel testimony from material witnesses without allowing them to refuse testimony due to concerns over self incrimination.

Why can't it work the same way in this case? It may be a stretch, but wouldn't retroactive immunity from prosecution leave telecom companies with no recourse except to testify if they were subpoenaed by Congress?

by John Sanchez Jr. (4 articles, 0 quicklinks, 7 diaries, 1015 comments) on Thursday, February 14, 2008 at 2:27:35 PM