Showing posts with label Donald Rumsfeld. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Donald Rumsfeld. Show all posts

Thursday, June 13, 2013

Before PRISM: The Curious History of the US World-Wide Surveillance Network- Part One

by Nomad
Recently many people seemed altogether mortified, shocked and angry when whistle-blower Edward Snowden, former contract employee of the National Security Agency (NSA) supplied both the Washington Post and The Guardian details about two top- secret surveillance operations.

The Snowden evidence describes one operation which was an effort to collect data from Verizon about millions of phone calls. The other operation was called PRISM. In that operation, metadata was harvested from millions of Internet sites. Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube and Apple were all apparently involved in the PRISM operation. 

Although both programs seem to have been overseen by Congress and a top-secret court, the extent of the operations came as a shock to a lot of people. 

One source describes PRISM like this:
“Its establishment in 2007 and six years of exponential growth took place beneath the surface of a roiling debate over the boundaries of surveillance and privacy.”
What PRISM does is to allow the NSA and the FBI to tap directly “into the central servers of nine leading U.S.Internet companies, extracting audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs that enable analysts to track a person’s movements and contacts over time.”
Who, the reporters and public asked, could have imagined that the United States government- for whatever reason- would engage in such violations of personal privacy? Conservative voters feel as though their worst fears about Big Government and about Barack Obama have been confirmed. Many stunned liberals are asking:Why would President Obama launch such an attack on our freedoms?

Perhaps the only truly shocking aspect of the recent whistle-blowing revelations is the fact that anybody should be shocked at all. People who have been paying attention should have known the extent of this type of surveillance.
Perhaps the only truly shocking aspect of the recent whistle-blowing revelations is the fact that anybody should be shocked at all. Everybody -those who were not sleeping-  should have known the extent of this type of surveillance. 

Much- but naturally not all- of the information about these operations had been made public a long ago. The American people (at those who were awake) were warned and chose to ignore the challenge to their civil liberties.. until now. 


The present anger – much of it unfairly directed at the Obama administration- comes a little late in the day. The evidence of these (and even more extensive and intrusive) electronic spying operations has been right under everybody's noses for over a decade. As we shall see in this report it is especially disingenuous for Republicans to bluster now.
The problem of the government’s covert spying on its own citizens began long before Obama, before Bush, Reagan or even before Nixon.

Friday, May 18, 2012

Amazing: Will Americans Actually Give Republicans Another Chance in the 2012 Election?

Mitt George Romney Bush
by Nomad
If you think about it, it's pretty astounding that, after eight years of George W. Bush, anybody in their right minds would even consider voting for another Republican party candidate. 

It must say something about the ability of the American people to forgive- or maybe, just to forget. It has to say something about the character of a nation that they would be willing to trust the same party with the reins of power again in this decade. 

Remember when we were all prepared to impeach Bill Clinton for hanky-panky in the Oval Office while the rest of the world scratched its head and wondered? The GOP talked like it was the end of the world. 
It's really beyond belief that we used to think THAT was as low as a president could fall.  
Yes, it takes your breath away. Especially given the fact that nobody in the Republican party- as far as I recall- ever said they were sorry about: 
  • the unnecessary and illegal war in Iraq, 
  • falsely representing Iraq as an imminent threat to the United States, 
  • mishandling of the disaster relief after Hurricane Katrina, 
  • the failure to respond to prior intelligence and 
  •  fumbling of the 911 investigation, 
  • the disastrous tax cuts which drove the economy into the ditch, 
  • the Patriot Act and the desecration of civil liberties, 
  • the outing of a CIA agent purely for political gain
  • "kidnapping" and detention of foreign nationals without trial, 
  • the use and legitimizing of torture, 
  • the illegal spying on American citizens 
Perhaps I was sleeping but I don't remember hearing anybody apologize for 
  • awarding no-bid contracts in the rebuilding of Iraq,
  • allowing Halliburton and friends to overcharge the government, 
  • Failing to provide adequate protection for contract workers in Iraq  
  • or failing to provide troops with body armor, 
  • falsifying US troop deaths and injuries
  • the national shame of the Abu Ghraib prison scandal
  • the murder of untold Iraq and Afghan civilians who had simply been in the wrong place at the wrong time, 
  • lying to the American people and 
  • disgracing the image of the United States around the world.
And yet, after eight years of George W. Bush- who somehow feels confident enough to endorse Mitt Romney and peddle his self-serving memoirs, still to this day walks amongst the people as a free man. Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld clearly have no fear that they might be someday held accountable. 

Another stunning thing? it's not as though Mitt Romney is a breath of fresh air from the pollution of the Bush years. The same people who got Bush into the White House are behind Romney. Karl Rove's group, American CrossRoads, has recently put out an attack ad on the president, filled with lies and distortions. That's right, Karl (Bush's Brain) Rove. 
And there will, no doubt, be a lot of people who will come back to and vote for the same party and vote for the same people with different faces and different names. 
Other than that, nothing has changed about the Republican party. Only, perhaps, their use of hate and lies to divide the nation may be a bit less restrained.

Even now, there are die-hard Republicans who have the arrogance to proclaim President Obama as "the worst president since Carter." They seem to be serious when they say it but how they can forget the years from 2000 to 2008 so easily is really something that defies explanation.