Letters to the Editor
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Will this be under FISA too?
I call your attention to
http://tinyurl.com/22w9er
an article in the Washington Post about a pact reached in May by Mike McConnell (DNI) and Mike Chertoff (DHS) to use spy satellites, ground penetrating radar, and infrared sensors for law enforcement within the United States.
Recall that the new law was immediately put to the use predicted by Guantanamo detainee lawyers, and totally undiscussed during the debate over its merits:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/08/citing-four-day.html
How much safety-by-spying does it take before we don't feel safe to exercise our First Amendment rights anymore? Is this the reason the Bush people have been so slow on inspections at the ports? They seem to love putting spying and surveillance to "good use", but port inspections could have the "bad use" of denying entry to lead filled toys. Does it seem unlikely that the goal is a state of sated consumers who work and shop but do little else, because they wish to have nothing to hide?
The Bush administration attitude to the citizenry with respect to domestic spying seems to be: we've already established what you are, we're only haggling about the price. And Congressional Democrats are having a difficult time with understanding the concept of a slippery slope. Have they restored habeas corpus? Will they restore the Fourth Amendment? Do they, in their heart of hearts, really care?
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So the neocon agenda...
...contiues to be rolled out there in yankland and here in oz where the local demon, Pauline Hanson is trying to get voted into the Senate on the back of stopping Muslim immigration. Like Gingrich she is targetting those weak and helpless brown people who happen to face mecca every now and then. How will she know their religion? Will she ask "er excuse me but do you believe in God or Allah?" Imagine the strange looks that will produce. But my yankee friends your problems are far worse, you have Ahriman, the Persian Evil principle in charge of the most powerful arsenal in the world and just itching to un leash all those nukes on those pesky Persians and Arabs. He will do it, just like Hitler, Stalin and all the other evil bastards of hsitory did. With his doppleganger Cheney at his side Bush will fuck the planet before he is thorugh, thats the real satanic plan emanating from the pea brain of this evil prick. Arrest him now, before it is too late!!
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@treeman
Interesting you mention Ahriman. Before being known as the Great Evil, Ahriman was known as the Great Lie.
No, we haven't arrested him yet. He's planning to arrest all 300 million of us, instead.
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Well, then, Kitt...
get thee over to the Interrobang and post away. We could all use something to help us focus.
(I was goofing, too, except about being able to eat what I want.)
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Unattached? Find Your (Political) Soul Mate
Try the quiz:
http://dehp.net/candidate
I tried the quiz.
Tancredo and Hunter don't look like good matches for me.
See also:
http://flprogressive.blogspot.com/2007/08/progressivism-is-not-dead-but-its-on.html -
The Soviet comparison
Not only do I agree that it appears that American torture methods have converged with Soviet-style ones, I posted about this last Friday on Glenn's letters thread.
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/10/libya/permalink/89b6f257ba52139ddf909e81bec5e59d.html
http://letters.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2007/08/10/libya/permalink/bd9e33f7da7dfe40d263d4f4e2311872.html
In the second one I quote The Gulag Archipelago; it is scary how similar those techniques are to what we know was done to Padilla.
On the subject of Iran, I am happy to bet anyone here that we will not be engaging them militarily, for a whole host of reasons, unless we are attacked in a major and undeniable way first. I don't think that is just wishful thinking on my part.
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Okay! Translate please?
If that means those spy satellites in the sky look down at us if we take a leak off the back porch...We've lost lots of privacy?
Karen M: Remember: Just no worry about whether you cook leaks with the soup or whatnot! Say, "Please, Kitt, pass the big bowl of buttered mashed potatoes to the NSA creeps!"
I really am trying to leave here.
I got to rush now for a meeting with the police.
I hope I can Chertoff the computer and not be seen.
Believe you me. I share the "contraption" with creeps.
I go leak.
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Classic Case of Projection?
This consistent fear that English Speaking Peoples have of the Hordes of Aliens lying in wait to descend upon them feels like lots of projection. In fact, it was the English Speaking Peoples who became the Hordes descending on myriad others, from our own Native Peoples, nearly wiped out by the advent of the English to these shores (together with their follow-on immigrants), to the numerous other colonial and imperial outposts of England (Ireland, for example, where a six county chunk of the island is still occupied by Alien Hordes from across the Irish Sea.)
The English-Speaking -- particularly Americans -- are the Alien Hordes, and Gingrich and his ilk know this deep in their coal-black hearts and souls (such as they are). What's going on in Iraq is nothing less than another attempt by English Speaking Hordes to impose colonial suzerainty on resistant Mesopotamian Natives, much as Churchill and his Colonial Office attempted post-WWI.
Gingrich and his ilk have long been masters at diverting attention from what is really going on, who the Bad Guys really are, to some Image of Peril we (poor things that we are) constantly face, whether it is The Clintons Rampant or Brown People Ascendant. All the same Peril in the end; that is, the Peril is any Other who would resist the imposition of American Hegemony and Authority, and any Alien Other who would dare to use American-style tactics against the Glorious United States.
So yes, Fear the Brown Invasion, fear it more than any other Fear you can imagine (for now; be prepared to switch Fears at a moment's notice). Tremble and quail at the march of the Horde. And then gird thy loins and march forth to seize the HordeLand, exterminate and expell the Evil, claim it for our own.
All of Mexico could have been seized in 1848. That only half of it was is now considered a Mistake among some of the more active Anti-Immigrant Horde elements. A mistake to be rectified.