According to Naomi Wolf, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund filed a request for documentation records about government surveillance of the Occupy Movement. According to Wolf the long-awaited documentation “shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council.” In other words, according to Wolf, the cops and DHS were working for and with banks to “target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens.”
The majority of members of the Occupy movement see themselves as peaceful organizers. But to the FBI the very entity is to be regarded as a “terrorist threat.” So much for the constitutional right of assembly in this country. So much for an out-to-lunch Attorney General Eric Holder NOT upholding our right to peaceful assembly.
As if this disclosure isn’t nauseating enough, the Senate waited until there were only four days remaining of their calendar year to rush through approval of a five-year extension of the warrantless surveillance FISA law that caused such heartbreak the first time around for liberals when Obama did his 180-degree flip-flop and voted for authorization.
Patrick Martin of wsws writes:
The 2008 version of the FISA Amendments Act was rushed through Congress to retroactively legalize the spying conducted by the NSA, using the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks as a pretext. While requiring the NSA to “target” foreigners, this was not a limitation in practice, since the law has been interpreted by both the NSA and the FISA court to authorize eavesdropping on any communication that may in any way be linked to a foreign target.
snip
In 2007, a liberal Senate Democrat from Illinois condemned the Bush administration’s policy of massive Internet and telecommunications surveillance and opposed any effort to authorize it through legislation. By June of 2008, however, Barack Obama had won the Democratic presidential nomination and was the presumptive heir to the role of commander-in-chief. He voted for the 2008 version of the FISA Amendments Act when it came before the Senate, and his administration has used these powers to the utmost.
The Washington Post estimated in a 2010 report that the NSA stores 1.7 billion communications—e-mail, telephone calls and other messages—every single day. An NSA whistleblower has charged that the agency’s database has accumulated more than 20 trillion interchanges between Americans.
The truth is that the greatest threat to the lives and liberties of the American people is the government of the United States and its military-intelligence apparatus, the largest machinery of state repression on the planet.
The military itself is increasingly involved in domestic operations directed against the American population, through new structures like the Northern Command, the first-ever headquarters for military action on the North American mainland, and the use of surveillance drones, thousands of which are being deployed within the borders of the United States.
The Senate vote re-authorizing five more years of the FISA Amendments Act and secretive domestic spying was an impressive 73 to 23. So much for Congress being a watchdog over a sustained illegitimate over-reach into our privacy by the tentacled branches of executive power.
This from Glenn Greenwald:
Critically, the FISA Amendments Act of 2008 did much more than shield lawbreaking telecoms from all forms of legal accountability. Jointly written by Dick Cheney and then-Senate Intelligence Committee Chair Jay Rockefeller, it also legalized vast new, sweeping and almost certainly unconstitutional forms of warrantless government eavesdropping.
snip
The Democratic Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Dianne Feinstein, took the lead in attacking Wyden, Merkley, Udall and Paul with the most foul Cheneyite accusations, and demanded renewal of the FISA law without any reforms. …
In other words, Obama successfully relied on Senate Republicans (the ones his supporters depict as the Root of All Evil) along with a dozen of the most militaristic Democrats to ensure that he can continue to eavesdrop on Americans without any warrants, transparency or real oversight. That’s the standard coalition that has spent the last four years extending Bush/Cheney theories, eroding core liberties and entrenching endless militarism: Obama + the GOP caucus + Feinstein-type Democrats. As Michelle Richardson, the ACLU’s legislative counsel, put it to the Huffington Post: “I bet [Bush] is laughing his ass off.”
snip
….Obama himself, who, in explaining his 2008 vote, said things like this:
“I know that the FISA bill that passed the House is far from perfect. I wouldn’t have drafted the legislation like this, and it does not resolve all of the concerns that we have about President Bush’s abuse of executive power. . . .
“I do so [vote for the FISA bill] with the firm intention – once I’m sworn in as president – to have my Attorney General conduct a comprehensive review of all our surveillance programs, and to make further recommendations on any steps needed to preserve civil liberties and to prevent executive branch abuse in the future.”
Needless to say, none of that ever happened.
snip
Yesterday, Feinstein stood up on the Senate floor and began by heaping praise on her GOP comrade, Sen. Saxby Chambliss of Georgia, for leading his caucus to join her in renewing the FISA act without any reforms. She then unleashed a vile attack on her Democratic colleagues – Wyden, Merkley, and Udall, along with Paul – in which she repeatedly accused them of trying to make the nation vulnerable to a Terrorist attack.
snip
That is exactly the foul message which Dianne Feinstein, doing the bidding of the Obama White House, spewed at her liberal Senate colleagues (and a tiny handful of Republicans) for the crime of wanting to bring some marginal transparency and oversight to the warrantless eavesdropping powers with which Obama vested himself when voting in 2008 for that FISA law. …
snip
Fast forward to 2012 and all of that, literally, has changed. Now it’s a Democratic President demanding reform-free renewal of his warrantless eavesdropping powers. He joins with the Republican Party to codify them. A beloved Democratic Senator from a solidly blue state leads the fear-mongering campaign and Terrorist-enabling slurs against anyone who opposes it. And it now all happens with virtually no media attention or controversy because the two parties collaborate so harmoniously to make it happen. And thus does a core guarantee of the founding – the search warrant requirement of the Fourth Amendment – blissfully disappear into nothingness.
J. Clifford, Irregular Times, writes:
Members of Congress are not primarily tasked with defending the physical territory of the United States, or ensuring the physical security of its people. Their first, most necessary job is to defend the Constitution, the document that provides us with our freedoms.
Among the most essential of the freedoms established by the Constitution of the United States of America is the Fourth Amendment, a part of the Bill of Rights. The Fourth Amendment establishes a right to security – but not the kind of security that’s been delivered under the authoritarian title of The Homeland. The only security that the Fourth Amendment provides is protection from excessive government searches and seizures: “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The FISA Amendments Act establishes a gigantic, pervasive system of unreasonable search and seizure that violates the specific requirements of the Fourth Amendment. A vote in favor of keeping in place the FISA Amendments Act, one of the worst holdovers from the era of George W. Bush, is a violation of the Oath Of Office.
That makes any member of the Senate who voted yesterday to preserve the FISA Amendments Act for five more years a traitor who deserves to be removed from office at the next electoral opportunity.
The following is a full roll call of the 73 U.S. senators who voted in favor of prolonging the FISA Amendments Act: Here are two toll-free numbers to the Congressional switchboard. 1-866-338-1015, 1-877-210-5351. If you find one or two of your senators on this list, I recommend giving them an angry call about their vote and thinking twice about ever voting for them.
Senator Lamar Alexander
Senator Kelly Ayotte
Senator John Barrasso
Senator Michael Bennet
Senator Richard Blumenthal
Senator Roy Blunt
Senator John Boozman
Senator Scott Brown
Senator Richard Burr
Senator Benjamin Cardin
Senator Thomas Carper
Senator Robert Casey
Senator Saxby Chambliss
Senator Daniel Coats
Senator Thomas Coburn
Senator Thad Cochran
Senator Kent Conrad
Senator Susan Collins
Senator Bob Corker
Senator John Cornyn
Senator Mike Crapo
Senator Michael Enzi
Senator Dianne Feinstein
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand
Senator Lindsey Graham
Senator Charles Grassley
Senator Kay Hagan
Senator Orrin Hatch
Senator Dean Heller
Senator John Hoeven
Senator Kay Hutchison
Senator James Inhofe
Senator Johnny Isakson
Senator Mike Johanns
Senator Tim Johnson
Senator Ron Johnson
Senator John Kerry
Senator Amy Klobuchar
Senator Herb Kohl
Senator Jon Kyl
Senator Mary Landrieu
Senator Carl Levin
Senator Joseph Lieberman
Senator Richard Lugar
Senator Joe Manchin
Senator John McCain
Senator Claire McCaskill
Senator Mitch McConnell
Senator Barbara Mikulski
Senator Jerry Moran
Senator Bill Nelson
Senator Ben Nelson
Senator Robert Portman
Senator Mark Pryor
Senator Jack Reed
Senator Harry Reid
Senator James Risch
Senator Pat Roberts
Senator John Rockefeller
Senator Marco Rubio
Senator Charles Schumer
Senator Jeff Sessions
Senator Jeanne Shaheen
Senator Richard Shelby
Senator Olympia Snowe
Senator Debbie Stabenow
Senator John Thune
Senator Pat Toomey
Senator David Vitter
Senator Mark Warner
Senator Jim Webb
Senator Sheldon Whitehouse
Senator Roger Wicker
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Glenn Greenwald, once again mourning more Obama betrayal:
Here we find yet again a defining attribute of the Obama legacy: the transformation of what was until recently a symbol of right-wing radicalism – warrantless eavesdropping – into meekly accepted bipartisan consensus. But it’s not just the policies that are so transformed but the mentality and rhetoric that accompanies them: anyone who stands in the way of the US Government’s demands for unaccountable, secret power is helping the Terrorists. “The administration has decided the program should be classified”, decreed Feinstein, and that is that.
Make the phone calls. Please! THAT should NOT be THAT!!!!
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One of the notable characteristics of fascist control is that it always has to have a "Them Others" as a "threat" to "our beloved nation". This allows it to trample civil rights, remove freedoms, be paranoiac about "national security", and engage in secret espionage and actions against its own citizens.
All in the name of dealing firmly with "Them Others". It is rather masterful how recent governments in the US have managed to build such fear and loathing against ...... essentially no one! Just some unnamed, unknown "terrorists." What ingenious flexibility! "The Unnamed Enemy" is gonna "do something" to us if you don't support us when we deprive you of your rights!
Who are these Unnamed Others? What do they want to do to us? DON'T ASK ---- IT'S TRAITOROUS TO ASK ---- IF YOU ASK THEN YOU ARE HELPING THEM!!
We DO live in "interesting" times.........
.
All in the name of dealing firmly with "Them Others". It is rather masterful how recent governments in the US have managed to build such fear and loathing against ...... essentially no one! Just some unnamed, unknown "terrorists." What ingenious flexibility! "The Unnamed Enemy" is gonna "do something" to us if you don't support us when we deprive you of your rights!
Who are these Unnamed Others? What do they want to do to us? DON'T ASK ---- IT'S TRAITOROUS TO ASK ---- IF YOU ASK THEN YOU ARE HELPING THEM!!
We DO live in "interesting" times.........
.
Happy New Year from me also, Libby.
And Happy New Year to everyone else.
And Happy New Year to everyone else.
sky, yes, that is one of the ingredients of fascism, isn't it. demonizing others, ramping up xenophobia. I always had trouble understanding McCarthyism -- expected more from the citizenry, but a ferocious cronyism happened that made ordinary people police each other to such a horrifying degree or become so cowardly and so passive to the punishment and slandering of others, they wouldn't cover their backs. like mean girls culture ferocity coming at you if you don't get "in line." I fear that sometimes -- the mccarthyism cronyism ferocity with the call to be uber loyal re Israel for example and not challenge it at all or to have to weather accusations of anti-semitism. look at how hagel is getting challenged for secretary of defense because he is not obsequieous enough to Israel. he is not a challenger to Israel by any means, he just isn't enthusiastic enough because many powerful Jewish/Zionist leaders' and their cronies' expectations of loyalty assert zero tolerance for challenge. sigh.
anyway ....
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013, Sky, Toritto and Frank!!! :-) Thanks for stopping by! best, libby
anyway ....
HAPPY NEW YEAR 2013, Sky, Toritto and Frank!!! :-) Thanks for stopping by! best, libby
Excellent post. I'm really surprised they replied to the FOI request at all. Perhaps they want us to know they have virtually shredded the Constitution - so we won't bother them about it any longer. I still vote in Washington State and am happy to report neither of my senators (Patty Murray or Maria Cantwell) voted for this abomination.
Scary financial times makes cowards of a majority but, it is sad that freedom means very little to so many.
Scary financial times makes cowards of a majority but, it is sad that freedom means very little to so many.
Phone calls Libby? You don’t stop treason with phone calls. My advice to you and to every other American who feels so strongly about their constitution being deliberately shredded is stop whining and start shooting. Myself I think you all deserve to be slaves, you are obviously far happier that way, sitting behind your keyboards bo hoo Obama did this and the senate did that bo hoo bo hoo! I have no more politics. My only politics are that the finite resources of this planet must be conserved in order for there to be a future and if they have to kill every last one of you to do it they have my blessing. And if they aren’t strong enough or committed enough to do what needs to be done well then you need a different master.
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