Guest blogged by David Edwards
Since 9/11, the Department of Defense has been authorized to expand the collection of information inside US borders.
NBC News is reporting that the Pentagon is watching “peaceful anti-war and counter-military recruitment groups.” One example includes extensive information that was collected on a group who were meeting to discuss how to protest military recruiting at a local highschool.
A recent article in the The Palm Beach Post described the group. It consisted of about 20 people, including five Quakers and a 79-year old grandmother. This was only one of 1,500 “suspicious” incidents in the database.
The Christian Science Monitor also has a good article on the Bush Administration’s current domestic spying and psychological operations activities.
– Video in Windows Media format…
– Video in QuickTime format…
David, when all is known, we will discover that the past 5 years has been a time of the greatest domestic spying in US history.
The Pentagon, FBI, and CIA are in on it. The one party system that has developed is spying on its opponents.
Financial, Medical, Educational, and political information is being collected and used against the administration’s political opponents.
The "Patriot" Act is the platform for this fascist endeavor.
Our government has TIME and PEOPLE to be doing shit like this???
The MSM has this 400 page report. Where can we get hold of it. I’m pretty high profile up here in the Seattle area – I’m involved in a number of progressive and anti-Bush organizations, I’m working actively to get recruiters out of high schools, I write LTEs often that are critical of Bush, the war, recruiters, etc. My car has close to 200 anti-bush, anti-war, pro-democracy, pro-peace bumperstickers. I wear my International Terrorist T-shirt in public on a regular basis.
Gotta tell ya, I want to know if I’m on that list. I know they are collecting information on groups, but what about individuals? I’ve seen a couple of pages of it, how they are filling out the spreadsheet. WHo has the whole thing that they can post?
If you want to get on the list it is pretty easy. You can sign up to be on th ewatch list on our site http://www.urbanterrorists.com ! On our web site http://www.urbanterrorists.com -you will find we are anti terrorist in all forms! The fact remains everyone that writes something here ! is now some sort of list. We all get put on lists everyday-spam-junkmail-watch lists who cares!! What is the difference! Are you on Santa’s list -now that is important!! The best you can hope for is that you personally can make a positive difference in someone elses life. If you keep focusing on the negative and running scared you become an easy target. There is nothing that evil likes more than evil minds- it waekens the soul. So if you focus on the bad and keep that close in your heart and mind you will reap that evil… We make music at http://www.urbanterrorists.com and some movies… do we think they matter?? Not really! Not unless someone sees our ART and it makes them stronger and wiser. And even then you are just another on our list!
Poor liberals. Today is a grat day for America and Iraq and they are too invested in failure to enjoy it.
Not blog headline?
No mention at all?
If people relied on liberals for news, they’d never know there was an election! Why is that? You are so alligned with the enemy you are bitter on a day like today, just like they are!
Democracy in Iraq! Free people using their feet and ballets to vote. Liberals tried to stand in the way. History has been written.
Follow developments from the WAR on Christmas
Here is a journal from a soldier deployed Get Frontline testamonies and hear the real words of those serveing their country in thewar on Xmas
http://www.thexmaswar.blogspot.com
democracy: a product so extensively exported that the domestic supply is depleted (The Nation)
Maybe Ricky can identify one liberal who tried to stand in the way of the Iraq election.
That’s what the man said in Comment # 5: Quote,
"Liberals tried to stand in the way."
Who? When? In what manner? Where? How?
What this liberal would say is, "Good for the people who went out to vote. I’m happy for them. But this is the second Iraqi election, and the violence and killing have increased since they held the first one."
By mentioning the grandmothers and Quakers, this story brings out the "dirty little secret" pro-war and pro-imperial forces never want to confront: the heart of the anti-war and anti-imperialism movement in the US is, and always has been, Christians. Not all Christian churches, but the longest standing, best organized, most principled, and most consistent anti-war protesters are found in Christian churches.
Conservatives have alway looked for other anti-war groups to blame as "anti-American." To acknowledge that their strongest opposition conspirators are to be found in pews on Sunday morning would be too explosive to their authority. So Christians will usually only be derided as "dupes" or "sympathizers," but that’s actually shuffling past the facts, as well as an insult to the Christian anti-war culture. People who worship the Prince of Peace can’t lead their own movement?
Christian anti-war "protestants" have been against US wars since at least the Mexican War of 1847 and the Indian removals. They easily pre-date Marx. Conservatives should face up to that fact, and its implications. Christians who oppose war and imperialism in their political name do not need anarchists, Marxists, atheists, "liberals,"or any other customarily derided group to lead or do their heavy lifting for them.
Any attempt to spy on, subvert, derail or otherwise cripple a truly American anti-war or anti-imperial movement, in any generation, can do so only by persecuting Christians and their Church. And make no mistake, they will be persecuted, not in spite of their Christianity, but precisely because they are Christians. They are being persecuted for standing up to Caesar AS Christians.
"War Is Good for Business: Invest Your Son"
artist Seymour Chwast
# 9 – Rick — Thanks for bringing up something that really needed to be said. Although the anti-imperialist, anti-war movements in our history have attracted principled people of all beliefs, Christians have always been predominant and often have been the most courageous.
Yeah Rick, Arry at #11 is what I would say too.
Some of these Christian folk think Jesus was persecuted by a totalitarian regime that oppressed people.
They think Jesus said "Love your enemies" and some controversial things like that.
"If people relied on liberals for news, they’d never know there was an election!"
Funny… first, this isn’t a "news agency", it’s a private blog. Why is it Brad’s responsibility to all of a sudden "report on everything"? Second, aren’t you wing-nuts always calling the MSM the "liberal media"? Um.. hello?
Can someone explain to me why trolls keep coming to places like this and saying the same illogical and disproved crap over and over? Why can’t they pull their heads out of their asses and have a real discussion?
Liberals don’t oppose Democracy in Iraq. We just think the current elections are pretty much irrelevant to America. Our presence in Iraq skews their (Iraqi election) outcome and violates international and American Law.
Be truly Conservative — beg Bush to leave Iraq to uphold the law.
Nixon enemies list == Pentagon spying list
Bush is going full circle to emulate his hero, Richard "Tricky Dick" Nixon. But, of course, he’ll burn the tapes.
Poor old Ricky, the traitor that would surrender his constitutionally guaranteed and traditionally held civil liberties to Big Government so that foreign people in foreign lands can have "historic" elections. Yeah, in a few years ‘democracy’ will be HISTORY in iraq as our hand-picked rulers will turn it into the dictatorship its always been.
Poor old Ricky, the great Patriot of Iraq, fawning over their elections while ignoring the infestation of the corporatist elite and corrupt Big Government that is destroying our OWN elections!
There is so much domestic spying I can’t keep track of it anymore (link here).
There is so much corruption Fitzgerald had to pull off the Plame/Wilson case to go to Chicago to indict a neoCon who once owned a chunk of the MSM and "managed" a lot of presstitutes (link here).
Some in congress are fighting back (link here).
Several elections were held in Vietnam while American soldiers were wandering through its jungles for 12 years, killing people and getting killed. Those elections had no noticeable effect one way or the other, either on our war policy or the lives of Vietnamese citizens.
This is the second Iraqi election. After the first one, Bush (and every troll on bradblog) proclaimed it a historic day. Since then the casualty rate in Iraq has increased. Maybe it will be different this time. But don’t place bets with your bookies on it, trolls.
By the way, today is the fourth in a row that The New York Times has failed to mention O’Dell’s resignation or the class-action suit against Diebold.
We’re supposed to be fighting for Iraqi freedom, yet we’re bribing foreign journalists to disseminate propganda in the Muslim press, even as our own media censor important news embarrassing to Republicans. Some freedom, huh?
Raw Story is running a story today about how the Times knew a year ago that Americans were being spied on by their own government but failed to publish the story "at the request" of the Bush administration. Change "at the request" to "under threat of" and you’re closer to the truth.
For a so-called liberal paper, The New York Times does a wonderful impression of Pravda.
NEW YORK – The National Security Agency has eavesdropped, without warrants, on as many 500 people inside the United States at any given time since 2002, The New York Times reported Friday.
That year, following the Sept. 11 attacks, President Bush authorized the NSA to monitor the international phone calls and international e-mails of hundreds _ perhaps thousands _ of people inside the United States, the Times reported.
READ more on the AP
#9 and #11
AMEN!
On the subject of a moral budget see below…
The real Christmas scandal
by Jim Wallis
There is a Christmas scandal this year, but it’s not the controversy at shopping malls and retail stores about whether their displays say "Merry Christmas" or "Happy Holidays." The real Christmas scandal is the budget proposed by the House of Representatives that cuts food stamps, health care, child support, and educational assistance to low-income families – while further lowering taxes for the wealthiest Americans and increasing the deficit for all of our grandchildren.
That was the message we brought to the steps of the House office buildings yesterday. The day was cold but the message was clear, as hundreds of religious leaders and faith-based organizers who daily serve the poor joined for what became a revival and prayer meeting in the United States capital….
This was the culmination of a yearlong effort by people of faith to teach our nation’s political leaders that "a budget is a moral document." I was proud to be one of the 115 pastors and leaders out of that group who were arrested for kneeling in prayer. In the final stages of the budget process this week, after praying and making our best arguments from afar, we decided to take our prayers and presence to the steps of the Cannon House Office Building….
We all noted how full of faith the day was for those involved. Many of those who took part in the prayerful and nonviolent civil disobedience were from groups such as the Christian Community Development Association, whose member organizations around the country live and work alongside poor people every day. Their founder, John Perkins – who at 75 was one of the oldest people arrested – inspired us all as he has for 40 years of faithful ministry among the poor.
What is next, torture of Americans while they are spied upon?
One white house lawyer says that torture, which is a form of spying (getting information against the will of the one being spied upon), which this admin has advocated, is the lowpoint of all american political history!
"Indeed, not even Franklin Roosevelt’s horrific internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II is, in my view, as low a point as President Bush and Vice President Cheney’s call for the unrestricted, unreviewable power to torture. It seems the precedent for Bush and Cheney’s thinking resides in the Dark Ages, or Stalin’s Russia."
(link here).
And those neoCons are trying to spread that around the world in our name. They are going down!
1958 – Reasons to fear the USSR:
They spy on their own citizens.
The common people work for the benefit of the few politicians.
There is no religious freedom.
They attack other countries with no provication.
They hold political prisoners indefinitely with no trial.
They have a one party system.
Their elections are rigged.
2005 – Reasons to fear the Neocon Administration
They spy on their own citizens.
The common people work for the benefit of the few politicians.
There is no religious freedom.
They attack other countries with no provication.
They hold political prisoners indefinitely with no trial.
They have a one party system.
Their elections are rigged.
Forgot – They want to nuke the rest of the world.
News Today: Bush Ok’d spying
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10488458/
We’re making a huge difference, friends. Let’s not forget it.
For those like Ricky who think we’re "too invested in failure (to appreciate the Iraqi election)…", I have two things to offer:
1) Bush FAILED to get his way on prisoner torture, accepting McCain’s plan instead.
2) Bush/Cheney FAILED to convince the Senate, controlled by Republicans, that the Patriot Act deserved to be renewed…no doubt because of the revelations about illegal surveillance of Americans.
People who love freedom are invested in SUCCESS this morning, Ricky.
#25 -Another solid factor in the USA"PATRIOT" Act failure (and the Bill of Rights success) in this battle is that 62,333,132 citizens now reside in areas covered by pro-Constitution, pro-liberty, anti-"PATRIOT" Act resolutions. It is a foundation that has been built steadily the last few years, and I believe it’s effects are proving to be substantial.
I spent a good part of 2004 working on this issue, and the depth of citizen passion toward the preservation of liberty was one of the most encouraging things I’ve experienced in a long time—and it puts in its place the stupid liberal/conservative sandbox the trolls are playing in.
As I am writing the #26 and this among screaming kids and general bedlam, I have no idea if the last sentence in 26 makes sense. I, of course, mean to say that the depth of citizen passion puts the "stupid liberal/conservative sandbox" to shame; puts it into perspective. Now I’m gone until I can hear myself think again.
I believe the ‘gov’t has been spying on us forever, the methods have been greatly improved. bush does not answer to anyone but God, it seems, he is evidently right up there with the Pope. His indignation that we should even question his authority says it all to me. M4
Gotta get this in – screaming kids or not. Who wants to know everything about you? Answer: 1) the government and 2) corporate America. They are completely intertwined and what’s good for one is good for the other. When businesses have been gathering information about individual consumers, refining their techniques, spreading the net…(you might have said, "That’s not so bad. It’s a logical way to market to individuals.")…they have been developing a "spy" structure to reinforce and take to a new level the old FBI, CIA, Pentagon apparatus. Now that the government and the corporate power structure are one the disappearance of privacy is potentially complete. I think you will see one aspect of why corporatism and liberty are incompatible.
It is really lucky that the Busheviks are as ham-handed as they are.
I didn’t put in the smilie in #29.
The current "Patriot" act, which the Senate just slowed down, allows spying on YOU and is being used.
A student writing a paper assigned by his professor was visited by two thugs from "homeland security" when he checked out a book about Mao.
The explanation they gave was "the book is on a ‘watch list’" (link here).
Yeah, I love those ‘warranty cards’ that come with every purchase. They ask you everything but the color of your underwear, and the gullible send them back thinking they are somehow getting a warranty on the product….duh. Nothing is guaranteed anymore, thus the need to buy ‘insurance’ because the company won’t guarantee their products to work. The ‘warranty card’ is just another information gathering tool.
"Complete this questionaire", another one, how many people fall for that one. Soon they are in a data base which is linking to another database which is linking to the mother of all databases. Whoever is running this show knows everything about everyone of us and anyone that doesn’t believe it can buy the bridge I have for sale.
Oh, almost forgot, another example I love, "On Star" tracking every move we make and the ‘black boxes’ in our cars that track how many times we put our seat belts on, or how fast we drive…the insurance companies use this information to decide if we were at fault in an accident.
My only consolidation is the fact that there are more of us than them and it will take a great deal them to get the ‘more’ of us. M4
#1 Dredd, saw that while ‘out there’, someone suggested a whole lot of us should check out or buy a book about Mao. This idea could work, if enough people would start doing the things cited on the ‘watch list’. Guess this would have to be pretty organized, so friends and family would be able to keep track of the ‘missing’. M4
Whoops I meant Dredd #31.
Hardly needs to be said, I guess, but the loss of privacy=the likelihood (well, certainty) of oppression. A basic and well-known characteristic of a police state is the obsessive interest in every detail of the lives of its people. (Control is what they are about, of course.)
The incredible childlike naivete of many Americans threatens to bring us down. — the idea that we are different, charmed — that the tools of oppressive political power can be used here but we’re safe because we are…well, Americans.
MeriFour #33, #34
The fact of massive spying has never been accepted by the American public, but it has been cranked up by Bush.
Every phone conversation of political opponents is being watched. It is stunning:
"If you made a phone call today or sent an e-mail to a friend, there’s a good chance what you said or wrote was captured and screened by the country’s largest intelligence agency. The top-secret Global Surveillance Network is called Echelon, and it’s run by the National Security Agency and four English-speaking allies: Canada, Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand.
The mission is to eavesdrop on enemies of the state: foreign countries, terrorist groups and drug cartels. But in the process, Echelon’s computers capture virtually every electronic conversation around the world." (link here).
The NSA, which Bush has ordered to focus on America, is the largest spy ring in the world.
Add that we have larger military spending than all of all the other nations combined, and is it any wonder the world no longer trusts us? Or that we no longer trust the president and his administration?
#36 Dredd, aaaah Echelon, we are so deep in spying, I don’t know why anyone would not believe this. You mentioned military spending, but what about the deep hole ‘black budget’, no one answers to anyone…classified. This is the simple reason I wear my ‘tin foil’ hat proudly. Nothing is outside my thinking, or a realm of possibility. I must look into conspiracy theories as these are the areas that more often than not, contain the unsavory truth. M4
Victim Of Domestic Spying Tactics
Without probable cause my local FBI department has taken a malicious approach either for indictment or to obtain information by extreme unnecessary measures of harassment and entrapment by spying on me. Their actions have violated my Civil Rights of privacy and unlawful entry into my home without a legal documented search warrant on various occasions I placed a spy camera in my bedroom to confirm this suspicion of illegal entry and have done so successfully. I am also certain the have bugged my phone lines because, I hear clicking sounds and slight electronically beeping sounds while in conversation when using it and have been followed to suggested locations after I had informed whomever after conversation.
I was informed by a good friend working for an affiliate police force local to this area, which is an under-cover agency for the CIA, tell me that they were performing sneak and peek searches and swab tests in my bedroom which to the best of his knowledge were negative in conclusion.
They have even gone as far as breaking into my home while I was in my bedroom with the door closed, even when I was sleeping at night. They go as far as making sounds outside my apartment windows and around the door, even opening the windows at all hours of the day playing paranoiac games. I know that they are in my neighbor upstairs apartment performing surveillance because, I can usually hear them walking about and talking to relay information. Even if I was to go the store they would follow me in there to watch what I was buying. I have witnessed federally licensed cars parked outside along of the property where I am currently living. Also the electric meter to my apartment has been tampered with which, the seals and lock are now broken off to shut down power so, that maybe a hidden camera could not detect them. Along with my computer acting strangely lately, I had my computer diagnosed and it has been bugged and is an irremovable file.
I have witnessed and heard them outside on the property on numerous occasions where I live and called the police to make several complaints to report the incidents so, that I may have legal documented statements facts of harassment.
This has been going on for almost 2 months with my acknowledgement and has caused me much un-wanted emotional trauma and also causing to me relocate from this area. I even fear for my own safety now.
I have a few theories as to why this has happened to me but, nothing I have done validates them to take such actions towards me.
Furthermore, I have no criminal record as to date to justify their behavior and I am seeking legal advice on this matter.
Christina Mathers