If, as we now know, J. Edgar Hoover had a secret "plan to suspend habeas corpus and imprison some 12,000 Americans he suspected of disloyalty," why not Dick Cheney?
Hoover's just-declassified 1950 plan, laid out in Sunday's New York Times, wasn't about Korean War enemy combatants; it was targeted at Americans -- the radicals, pinkos, longhairs, fairies and other nogoodniks on Hoover's naughty list. Is it so farfetched to think that, if the contents of Cheney's mansafe manage somehow to evade their rendezvous-with-shredder destiny, we will someday learn that Addington, Yoo and the other elves drafted a just-in-case executive order to round up today's Long War dissenters when (Heaven forbid) the next 9/11 occurs?
I know, I know: I'm being paranoid. I'm making the mistake of thinking that Admiral Poindexter's Total Information Awareness office was a neocon feature, not a bug. I'm forgetting that Operation TIPS -- the "terrorism information and prevention system" -- was shut down. I must be whacked to believe that habeas corpus would ever be suspended for American citizens. I have to be delusional to imagine that the Congress will permit a version of FISA to pass that won't stop the CIA and the NSA from reading the emails and listening in on the phone calls of Americans whose sin is to think the Patriot Act is unpatriotic. I'm nuts to think that Rove and Libby left behind an enemies list that had more than Joe Wilson's name on it. Yeah, I'm just getting off on the thought of J. Edgar and Big Time in Santa drag.
By coincidence, the night before I read the story about Hoover's 1950 plan to protect America from its enemies within, I saw the 1950 movie Born Yesterday. It's about a millionaire scrap-metal dealer (Broderick Crawford) who hires Paul Verrall (William Holden), a Washington journalist, to culturefy his dim-bulb floozie (the brilliant Judy Holliday), while the tycoon plays Brent Wilkes to a Truman-era Duke Cunningham. Toward the end of the movie, there's a scene where Holden tells Holliday that the greed of the businessman and the corruption of his bribed Congressman amount to creeping fascism. In screenwriter Garson Kanin's words, "It's enough to break your heart. You see a perfect piece of machinery -- the democratic structure -- and somebody's always tampering with it . . . trying to make it hit the jackpot."
There would have been more dialogue like that in the movie, had Columbia head Harry Cohn not censored it under right-wing pressure. It comes as no surprise that both Holliday and Kanin were blacklisted in Red Channels, the 1950 report on "Communist influence in radio and television." (Among others on that enemies list: Leonard Bernstein, Aaron Copland, Norman Corwin, Kanin's wife Ruth Gordon, Langston Hughes, Arthur Miller, and Howard K. Smith.) Should it come as a surprise if it one day turns out that today's Garson Kanins and Paul Verralls (Keith Olbermann? Amy Goodman? Bill Moyers?) were slated by Cheney apparacthiks for a habeas corpus-free roundup? Maybe you don't have to be born yesterday, or a conspiracy theorist, to wonder.
Follow Marty Kaplan on Twitter: www.twitter.com/martykaplan
Has anybody else discussed the GPS locator embedded in all cell phones made since 2005, and the Federal government's court victory (2006) that allows the feds to use these to do blanket surveillance on anybody at any time?
This GPS is called E911, and many newest models do not allow you to disable the feature. Even when it is turned off (Verizon has 2 models), the GPS AND microphone on these models can be remotely activated at any time by the "powers that be". They become transmitters without your knowledge. OnStar has this capability also.
The only way to totally disable these phones is to wrap 'em in aluminum foil! Ain't that a hoot?! (Think of that the next time someone issues a "Tin foil alert!")
Don't you feel safer, now?
(I didn't even go into the little fact that anyone can track any person's cell (including unlisted numbers) for a small fee. Just gotta know the number for the phone. You can also get valuable info like the person's home address.)
Ain't Bush's neoAmerica grand?
Great article on the illegal fed surveillance:
http://www.news.com/E-tracking-through-your-cell-phone/2010-1039_3-6038468.html
Excellent article in Wiki:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cell_phone_tracking
Excellent article on the history of remote GPS cell surveillance:
http://news.zdnet.com/2100-1035_22-6140191.html
and anyone that protests this fascism will be called terrorists and we all know what we can do to terrorists.
the evnagels elected bush and look what we got a born again sociopath so scary the demos hide in fear of him and give him whatever he wants for his illegal war for oil.
of course the demos hide in fear of just about anything.
take your pick next election americans religious war mongers or fearful wimps.
welcome to american politics.
That's the stick.
Endless war profiteering is the carrot.
There, i'm on the list now too for publicly quoting a 19th century Russian revolutionary. (i'm not worried, i know i was already on lists)
Today is the culmination of the national security state that began at the end of WW II.
"His [Forrestal] immediate effort to reverse the fact and spirit of demobilization called for a campaign against postwar American complacency. To generate support for the increases in the military budget that the new Navy and the new Air Force required, Forrestal would have to, as Senator Arthur H. Vandenberg, his main ally on Capitol Hill, put it, ‘scare the hell out of the American people.’" (House of War, James Carroll, p. 137)
And the scare campaign has never ended. It gets wrapped up in the mythological version of history taught in schools; it permeates ideologies of left and right; and it directs a once great nation down the path of its own ruin.
And we all know who is the Dick (er, I mean "dick") and who is the tater....
There is a new tyrannical law coming to town brought by both Dems and repubs that will set up a commission to investigate American Citizens who question the government...It is called something like The Homegrown Terrorist act.
This all began with the War On Some Drugs. The War On Some Drugs which many foolish Americans did and do support was all about increasing the power of government and law enforcement and taking away rights and liberties from Americans.
Drugs are more available and are now a danger to those who don't use them and are far more dangerous then ever before.As a method of dealing with the small number of individuals with drug problems it is an absolute failure, but it has been great at turning our free country into a police state.
We need to clarify that the "Right to Life Liberty and happiness" is ALL about acknowledging 100% individual freedom and privacy.
Police make up probable cause and they ALWAYS have it.
Until we end all the laws passed since 9-11 and the War On Some Drugs we will never be a Free America.
The corruption, illegalities, and crimes against humanity, of this "misadministration" are so unbelievable and stridently blatant, that they hardly qualify as a conspiracy.
My country is now thoroughly unrecognizable to me.
This crap can't continue. A pre Magna Carta mentality is totally unsustainable.
Though this guy is really controversial, this isn't a bad idea. . .
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Descendants_of_Sitting_Bull_Crazy_Horse_1220.html
When I read the 5th paragraph of that article that references the states involved, of course the imaginary IPod in my cranium immediately shuffled to ". . .Movin' to Montana soon. . ."
Moments later, the thought occurred to me that if the Lakotas could actually pull this off to any extent (a long shot for linear thinkers) then it could possibly be construed that our not so illustrious VP could fall under the Lakota's oh so illustrious jurisdiction. Though I'm not at all familiar with the mechanisms or subtleties of tribal law, I would well imagine that they wouldn't look all too favorably upon unruly tyrants.
Given his whole undisclosed location routine, they could at least try him in absentia.
That could actually truly qualify as revenge of the quails.
Here's a cool link.
http://www.sedonadigitalarts.com/html/video_previews.htm
"Happy Festivas. . .for the rest of us."
EXCELLENT POINT, Marty. I think all rational, sane and concerned Americans should keep this in mind--if the Boston Red Sox can win TWO World Series titles in the SAME decade, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!
If everyone that I have noted in the many Huffington posts were to do something other that "blog" about the growing problems of this country, maybe something would change.
I am getting the idea that these blogs are nothing more than a lot of like-minded thinkers "preaching to the choir" in a safe haven that reinforces their ideas but only inside an echo chamber.
If YOU don't think you're on their list you're a fool, and by you, I mean everybody reading this post, not just the high-profile liberal author of this piece. If you post 'anonymously' you're on their list too. I never post anonymously as a means to avoid personal exposure because it cheapens the public debate. It is also a futile exercise in keeping below the watchlist radars. Attempts to hide or obscure by cipher(encryption) seem pointless as well, although an attractive lure for the technophile.
I never advocate anything other than peaceful resistance and never will, yet I've no doubt made the list. How much would it take to make the list? Isn't it millions of names long now?
Let's hope that when the next disaster happens, and their power grab begins, the ineptitude shown in occupying Iraq will be repeated here and the indigenous population will win.
Try to remember that it is just the FIVE PERCENT majority(?) of the American Taliban party that has taken over control the US (Proof: torture was considered illegal, but now it isn't. The bible encourages and has examples of torture. The current frontrunner of the Repugs is an evolution denying PREACHER who favors same. This is a loud mouthed minority at the right place at the right time (they think). They're gonna lose big in 2008 unless they rig the game.
Enjoy.