"Anybody have any questions .... ?"
Showing posts with label 4th Amendment. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 4th Amendment. Show all posts
Sunday, July 14, 2019
Thursday, February 16, 2017
The Shapeshifters of Bullshitistan - 3
A Dog Has Died
by Pablo Neruda
My dog has died.
I buried him in the garden
next to a rusted old machine.
Some day I'll join him right there,
but now he's gone with his shaggy coat,
his bad manners and his cold nose,
and I, the materialist, who never believed
in any promised heaven in the sky
for any human being,
I believe in a heaven I'll never enter.
Yes, I believe in a heaven for all dogdom
where my dog waits for my arrival
waving his fan-like tail in friendship.
Ai, I'll not speak of sadness here on earth,
of having lost a companion
who was never servile.
His friendship for me, like that of a porcupine
withholding its authority,
was the friendship of a star, aloof,
with no more intimacy than was called for,
with no exaggerations:
he never climbed all over my clothes
filling me full of his hair or his mange,
he never rubbed up against my knee
like other dogs obsessed with sex.
No, my dog used to gaze at me,
paying me the attention I need,
the attention required
to make a vain person like me understand
that, being a dog, he was wasting time,
but, with those eyes so much purer than mine,
he'd keep on gazing at me
with a look that reserved for me alone
all his sweet and shaggy life,
always near me, never troubling me,
and asking nothing.
Ai, how many times have I envied his tail
as we walked together on the shores of the sea
in the lonely winter of Isla Negra
where the wintering birds filled the sky
and my hairy dog was jumping about
full of the voltage of the sea's movement:
my wandering dog, sniffing away
with his golden tail held high,
face to face with the ocean's spray.
Joyful, joyful, joyful,
as only dogs know how to be happy
with only the autonomy
of their shameless spirit.
There are no good-byes for my dog who has died,
and we don't now and never did lie to each other.
So now he's gone and I buried him,
and that's all there is to it.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Sunday, May 17, 2015
The 1% May Face The Wrath of Sea Level Rise First
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| Fig. 1 Dag Hammarskjold Plaza? |
I. Who Gets It First?
Regular readers know that I have been writing about sea level rise (SLR) a lot lately, which means reading a lot of research material.
In this post I want to point out, based upon that recent research, what I see written and spoken often.
It is a misunderstanding frequently printed and spoken by social and corporate media.
That misunderstanding is the notion that life-threatening SLR will first be tilted against the world's poorest people:
"As the coastal cities of Africa and Asia expand, many of their poorest residents are being pushed to the edges of livable land and into the most dangerous zones for climate change. Their informal settlements cling to riverbanks and cluster in low-lying areas with poor drainage, few public services, and no protection from storm surges, sea-level rise, and flooding.(World Bank: What Climate Change Means for ... the Coastal Poor). The New York Location of the World Bank is in between the Hudson River and the East River, thus, Fig. 1 seems appropriate.
These communities – the poor in coastal cities and on low-lying islands – are among the world’s most vulnerable to climate change and the least able to marshal the resources to adapt, a new report finds."
New York Harbor and its surroundings are at the front of the line for tidal inundation and/or tidal disruption when Greenland does its thing (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization).
The wealthy 1% will lose the dynamism of their fortunes first, by those events described in that Dredd Blog post.
Has anyone noticed any poor people owning the mechanisms and shipping fleets which utilize the ports of the world (Bulker, Container, Combo, Tanker, LNG, Multigas, or LPG)?
Is it the poor who thereby become wealthy 1% billionaires like Aristotle Onassis or Daniel K. Ludwig?
Hey World Bank, how about this comparison of the poor with the port users (Billionaire Greek Ship Owners, Shipping companies of the United States)?
Likewise, has anyone compared ocean-front property prices to property prices inland 20-100 miles?
II. Relying On Killers For "Protection"
So, when the military fails to stop the invasion (Why The Military Can't Defend Against The Invasion), and then SLR gets up high enough to shut down the ports, what is planned for the hoi polloi (A Closer Look At MOMCOM's DNA - 4)?
When civil unrest gets some steroids and goes through the roof, the 1% have directed their body guards, through the Commander In Chief, to make due:
(Will The Military Become The Police? - 3). Plans, orders, training, and equipping of the local police as surrogates for martial law have already taken place.A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.
Do What With These Tanks?
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.
The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.
I am not sure that they contemplated unrest caused by SLR, but they do expect that unrest is coming, thus, they have been training and preparing for it:
This lesson is designed to describe the nature and causes of disaffection and social unrest; define the potential for social unrest in the United States; identify the types of confrontations; define crowd behavioral and psychological influences; identify patterns of disorder.(U.S. Army Military Police School Civil Disturbance Operations Course). I have written about this in the context of the popular question "what could go wrong?"
…
2. Application of Force.
a. General.
(1) Civil disturbance operations by federal forces will not be authorized until
the President is advised by the highest officials of the state that the situation cannot be controlled with nonfederal resources available. The mission of the control force is to help restore law and order and to help maintain it until such time as state and local forces can control the situation without federal help. In performing this mission, the control force may have to actively participate, not only in subduing the disturbance, but also in helping to detain those responsible for it. Control force commanders are authorized and directed to provide such active participation, subject to restraints on the use of force.
Safe from SLR at last
(2) Prior to committing any federal forces in the quailing of civil disturbance whether in CONUS or OCONUS commanders should train and continually brief the control force on the rule of engagement (ROE). The commander is responsible for drafting, interpreting, disseminating, and training the control force on the ROE. The staff Judge Advocate (SJA) should be included in the ROE development to ensure that it will not improperly constrain actions, but still will remain consistent with domestic and international laws, polices, and orders of the chain of command.
For quite a while now, the gist of that writing has been about what happens once the "put them all in camps to protect and care for them policy" degrades into an operation of killer-cop types:
“Whereas it appeareth that however certain forms of government are better calculated than others to protect individuals in the free exercise of their natural rights, and are at the same time themselves better guarded against degeneracy, yet experience hath shewn, that even under the best forms, those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people at large, ....whence it becomes expedient for promoting the publick happiness that those persons, whom nature hath endowed with genius and virtue, should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive, and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens, and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or accidental condition of circumstance.”(Thomas Jefferson, emphasis added). The current nationwide policy, of giving used-battle-gear and equipment to local police forces, shows that "there are many here among us" who are not human-rights, civil-rights, constitutional-rights, or democratic-rights oriented.
There have always been, and will continue be, those who chose to push the limit way past those concepts, and on into tyranny:
- A Tale of Coup Cities
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 2
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 3
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 4
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 5
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 6
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 7
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 8
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 9
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 10
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 11
- A Tale of Coup Cities - 12
- Will The Military Become The Police?
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 2
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 3
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 4
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 5
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 6
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 7
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 8
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 9
- Will The Military Become The Police? - 10
III. The Demise of The Ports Will Be A Trigger
I recently wrote: "The roads to and from the harbor are closed, the power is off, everyone is gone inland to camps, etc., and it is that way at every port at every coastal area" (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization).
Recall what the breakdown of International Commerce and Intercourse due to SLR damage to ports causes:
"By volume, more than 95 percent of U.S. international trade moves through the nation's ports and harbors, with about 50 percent of these goods being hazardous materials."(Will This Float Your Boat - 8). Obviously the camps will have to be activated, and the policies mentioned above will be implemented (think Japanese Interment Camps of the 1940's, but on a much more massive scale).
I hope you can envision the reality that SLR is a big-time game changers (at only ~1m / 3 ft.), because it is a trigger for causing a mega-domino cascade (Will This Float Your Boat - 10).
The World Bank's own figures on civilization-sustaining trade @ world ports should make it clear that the most serious of worldwide recessions/depressions, at best, would result (Merchandise trade (% of GDP), Imports of goods and services (% of GDP)).
All of the international trading nations of this civilization will be impacted.
Don't forget to compute those damages as if they were choreographed at an ongoing Groundhog Day movie set, because the SLR is not going to stop just because we become uncomfortable (Will This Float Your Boat - 9).
The maximum stopping point is 263.5 feet of SLR.
I could go on, but I am sure you get the gist of it, so let's get back to the dynamics of SLR.
IV. Another Contributor To Greenland's Ice Demise
 |
| Warm water sources impact Greenland |
I focused on that area because of their proximity to Greenland's impact, and because they have already experienced the planet's highest SLR (Why Sea Level Rise May Be The Greatest Threat To Civilization).
Furthermore, there are new dynamics of warming that are joining older ones to imperil the Greenland Ice Sheet even more (Arctic's Hudson Bay Warming Rapidly, at Tipping Point, “If this warm blob of water in upper Indian Ocean is transported all the way to North Atlantic, that could affect the melting of Arctic sea ice," - Heat is Piling Up in the Depths of the Indian Ocean).
To close this section, I will urge you to watch the two short videos below (if you haven't already).
V. Conclusion For The 1%
Highly organized groups are still hunting down and prosecuting the NAZI architects in a society that killed some six million people in death camps.
By all indications, they will continue to hunt down those NAZI criminals as long as the hunters still have breath.
How do you in the 1% think you will fare should they determine that you did far worse than those NAZI mass murderers?
See you in the camps (Pentagon Warning).
The next post in this series is here.
HBO Vice: "Our Rising Oceans", with Dr. Eric Rignot:
-----------------------------------
2:43 - "One meter [of SLR] would be a global catastrophic event, 3 meters would remap the world as we know it?"
2:50 - "Yes, absolutely."
Thursday, May 7, 2015
ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 13
The court chose to rule on the statutory side of the equation, as the Supreme Court has directed in the past ("don't rule on constitutional issues when you can resolve the case on a statutory basis" - paraphrased).
The court wrote: "The district court held that § 215 of the PATRIOT Act impliedly precludes judicial review; that plaintiffs‐appellants’ statutory claims regarding the scope of § 215 would in any event fail on the merits; and that § 215 does not violate the Fourth or First Amendments to the United States Constitution. We disagree in part, and hold that § 215 and the statutory scheme to which it relates do not preclude judicial review, and that the bulk telephone metadata program is not authorized by § 215. We therefore VACATE the judgment of the district court and REMAND for further proceedings consistent with this opinion. VACATED AND REMANDED." (emphasis added)
I have been covering this case for a long time:
NOTE: the court also ordered that the caption be changed, because the only one still in office now is: James "I told the least biggest lie under oath" Clapper.
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 12
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 11
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 10
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 9
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 7
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 5
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 4
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 3
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 2
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller
The case is now ACLU v CLAPPER, ROGERS, CARTER, LYNCH, and COMEY.
UPDATE: The usually right-wing House of Representatives is on the same page as the court on this issue (House rejects NSA collection of phone records with vote to reform spy agency).
The previous post in this series is here.
Tuesday, November 25, 2014
Must Be The Season of the Witch
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| 162,000 DOJ Grand Juries produced 11 no-bills |
That statement elucidates the weak threshold that "probable cause" connotes ... but ... "all by himself", it was police officer Darren "Serve & Protect" Wilson, (the police officer who fired 12 shots at an unarmed citizen who did no-nos that
 |
| "I am not a ham sandwich" |
The jury returned a "the not-a-ham sandwiches have it" no-bill.
Rumors have it that Wilson also brought his "guitar" to the show.
Accompanied by the McProsecutor, they presented a début of his new folk song.
Sung to the tune of "Garbage, Garbage, Garbage", Wilson's "Remember, My Bubbas Will See You on the Streets and Call Your Name" made an impression on the 12 person grand jury.
He also wished them all Season's Greetings and gifted them with an autographed copy of the photo shown at the top of this post.
And wouldn't you know it, the world knows nothing about ham sandwiches:
The killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., by police officer Darren Wilson has made the Midwestern U.S. city a focal point for the world's media. It shone a spotlight on what the world perceived to be America's deep, entrenched problems ... British news outlets covered the night extensively: In the past few months, a number had sent war correspondents to cover the violent protests and the militarized police response ... In Germany, the criticism was harsher. The conservative newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung argued that the underlying reasons for the violence in Ferguson are deep in American society ... France's leftist Liberation newspaper took a similar focus. "A predominantly white jury chooses not to pursue another white, accused of murdering a black in a predominantly black city," the newspaper wrote, concluding that Ferguson raises yet again the question of racism and police brutality in the United States ... The paper's centrist competitor Le Monde was equally concerned about Ferguson's segregation. "Michael Brown's death had highlighted a racial divide in a city which is undergoing a demographic transition and where blacks are now majority, while municipal institutions remain dominated by whites," the paper writes ... In France, the situation also saw a political reaction, with Justice Minister Christiane Taubira also wading into the controversy:(Washington Post). They pick on American "fascism," but don't they know that only 27% of American presidents have owned black slaves (The Germ Theory - of Government - 7), and that only a few black slaves were required to build the White House and Capitol (Black Slaves Built White House & U.S. Capitol)?
How old was #Mickael Brown ? 18. #TrayvonMartin ? 17. #TamirRice? 12. How old next? 12 month? ‘Kill them before they grow’ Bob Marley ChTCloser to home, the Canadian newspaper the Globe and Mail wondered what was next for their neighbor. "After Ferguson, America’s conversation about race has only just begun," an op-ed in the paper read. The same paper had previously used the events in Ferguson to marvel at how effective its own policing was in comparison ... In India, a reporter for NDTV, the cable news channel, said that “the case epitomized race crimes in America” and that the photos of protesters evoking the images from Tiananmen Square ... In Turkey, a country that has seen its own heavy-handed response to protests criticized by the international community, there were reports that the country's official press agency Andalou News had sent war correspondents to Ferguson ... Iran's state-owned Press TV ran stories that focused on the protests in 90 other U.S. cities, which it noted started "after St. Louis County prosecutor Robert McCulloch said that white police officer Darren Wilson would not be indicted and that he would not even face charges for killing the unarmed African American." ... Ferguson also gained the attention of the United Nations human rights chief Zeid Ra'ad Al Hussein, who released a statement asking that U.S. authorities review the "deep and festering" distrust in the country after the shooting and grand jury decision ...
— Christiane Taubira (@ChTaubira) November 25, 2014
UPDATE: The Ferguson prosecutor conspired with racist perjurers to obstruct justice (The Smoking Gun).
by Donovan
Friday, September 12, 2014
ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 12
It is about a nation with a government that is consistently losing its way (Warrantless Searches - Unreasonable).
Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has followed the case all along the way,.
We have blogged about similar cases, including the one in the D.C. Circuit, so here are links to the previous posts in this series, spanning from the most recent to the original that was posted soon after the case was filed:
This case went to oral argument in the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit on 9/2/14 (see video below).
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 11
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 10
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 9
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 7
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 5
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 4
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 3
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 2
- ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller
The unusual took place at that hearing, in the sense that the court allowed the oral argument to be videoed for the benefit to public knowledge.
The appellate judges were quite compatible with a video version, and let the argument and discussion continue for far longer than courts usually do.
Don't mistake the three appellate judges' interruptions and questions as hostile, it is just that they want to understand the issues clearly, the issues presented in the briefs and pleadings.
This is a very important case for civil liberties in a growing police state.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Saturday, July 12, 2014
On The Origin of Security - 5
So, I am called a "conspiracy theorist" (On The Origin of "Conspiracy Theory" - 3) until what I post comes to pass years later, at which time I am called "subversive" by the fascist subversives of the coup (see e.g. A Tale of Coup Cities - 11).
The social disease involving Authoritarian Type B cognition, a.k.a. Stockholm Syndrome, has led these rogue servants of the Epigovernment to think that all the world is a paradise of trusting souls who believe their every word ---which is a foreign policy ignorance that has caused some worse-than-bad foreign policy practices.
Recently some of that bad policy has blown up in the face of the ignorati who are hiding in those dark holes of the federal bureaucracy (The Queens of Stalingrad - 4).
For example:
It's been a common scene at recent encounters between American and German officials. But behind the perfect façade, relations are cracking. Even as workers were decorating Tempelhof Field with pennants and small flags last Friday, a report was making the rounds in the German capital that could very well drag relations between Washington and Berlin to a new low.(Der Spiegel, "Germany's Choice: Will It Be America or Russia?"). Such contemplation has not existed for some six decades until now.
During questioning, an employee of Germany's foreign intelligence agency, the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), told German authorities he had sold secret documents to the Americans. Given that special encryption technology was found during a raid of his apartment, it seems highly unlikely that selling the classified information was his idea.
This Wednesday, the spying scandal took on a new dimension when investigators with the Federal Criminal Police Office raided the home and offices of a Defense Ministry employee whom officials also suspect may have spied for the Americans.
The developments are only the latest tussle in a relationship between Germany and the United States that has suffered in recent years. German Chancellor Angela Merkel has already abandoned hope that the United States will come to its senses and rein in its intelligence agencies. During Merkel's last visit to Washington, US President Barack Obama wasn't even willing to commit to a no-spy agreement guaranteeing Germany a modicum of security.
Merkel Fears Growing Anti-American Sentiment
The chancellor did, however, expect the Americans to at least refrain from involving her in any further embarrassing incidents -- she has no interest in seeing a continued rise in anti-US sentiment in Germany, a development that would ultimately offer her no choice but to distance herself from the Americans once again. But that point may have already been reached.
As of the end of last week, the BND had not yet fully investigated the spy scandal. But if the story turns out to be true, it will mean that the Americans paid a mole to copy documents for them, some of which were even intended for the German parliamentary committee set up to investigate the NSA's activities in Germany. It would represent a new level of audacity.
The initial reports alone were enough to enrage key members of Germany's coalition government composed of Merkel's conservative Christian Democrats and the center-left Social Democrats (SPD) -- so much so that some now feel US intelligence agencies are capable of anything.
The American people as well as the German people found out at the same time, because of Edward Snowden's revelations to the press, that they (the people) were the targets of the military NSA (ACLU vs. Clapper).
The reason for this subterfuge, traitorous cognition, and back stabbing obscenity has a transparent purpose even though its machinations have not been transparent:
William Binney is one of the highest-level whistleblowers to ever emerge from the NSA. He was a leading code-breaker against the Soviet Union during the Cold War but resigned soon after September 11, disgusted by Washington’s move towards mass surveillance.(Guardian, "... goal of the [military] NSA ...", emphasis added). The morph of the U.S.eh? into a new authoritarian personality is out now.
On 5 July he spoke at a conference in London organised by the Centre for Investigative Journalism and revealed the extent of the surveillance programs unleashed by the Bush and Obama administrations.
“At least 80% of fibre-optic cables globally go via the US”, Binney said. “This is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores.”
The NSA will soon be able to collect 966 exabytes a year, the total of internet traffic annually. Former Google head Eric Schmidt once argued that the entire amount of knowledge from the beginning of humankind until 2003 amount to only five exabytes.
Binney, who featured in a 2012 short film by Oscar-nominated US film-maker Laura Poitras, described a future where surveillance is ubiquitous and government intrusion unlimited.
“The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control”, Binney said ...
The many Dredd Blog series, such as Will The Military Become The Police (2, 3, 4), does not seem so "radical and conspiracy theory-ish" now does it cowboys and cowgirls?
The government's idea of security is so depraved they can't determine "security" from a "human crisis" at times:
Plaintiffs are eight immigrant children, ranging in age from ten to seventeen. The Government has begun proceedings to deport each of them; they will soon be called to appear before an Immigration Judge. In court, the Department of Homeland Security (“DHS”) will be represented by a trained lawyer who will argue for the child’s deportation. But no lawyer will stand with the child. Each will be required to respond to the charges against him or her, and, in theory, will be afforded an opportunity to make legal arguments and present evidence on his or her own behalf. But in reality those rights will be meaningless because children are not competent to exercise them. Each child has attempted to find representation through pro bono legal service providers, but none of them have found anyone with the resources to take on their cases. Absent this Court’s intervention, these children will be forced to defend themselves pro se under the immigration laws – a legal regime that, as the courts have recognized, rivals the Internal Revenue Code in its complexity.(J.E.F.M. a minor, vs. Eric Holder, line #s removed). That will go over about as well as the other policies discussed in this post.
The previous post in this series is here.
Cold Play, "Viva La Vida"
Wednesday, June 25, 2014
The Queens of Stalingrad - 8
 |
| Protesters as Blair, Bush II, & Brown (AP/Lefteris Pitarakis) |
Another aspect of this series is the attempts to treat the illness of the U.S. government in the courts.
There are several Dredd Blog series that overlap some of the subject matter of this series new readers might also be interested in (e.g. A Tale of Coup Cities, Will The Military Become The Police?, Epigovernment: The New Model, The Germ Theory of Government, American Feudalism - 6).
For those who think Dredd Blog is a wee bit radical, check out some quotes from a journalist that gives this blog a run for its money:
The black-clad fighters of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant, sweeping a collapsing army and terrified Iraqis before them as they advance toward Baghdad, reflect back to us the ghoulish face of American empire. They are the specters of the hundreds of thousands of people we murdered in our deluded quest to remake the Middle East. They are ghosts from the innumerable roadsides and villages where U.S. soldiers and Marines, jolted by explosions of improvised explosive devices, responded with indiscriminate fire. They are the risen remains of the dismembered Iraqis left behind by blasts of Hellfire and cruise missiles, howitzers, grenade launchers and drone strikes. They are the avengers of the gruesome torture and the sexual debasement that often came with being detained by American troops. They are the final answer to the collective humiliation of an occupied country, the logical outcome of Shock and Awe, the Frankenstein monster stitched together from the body parts we left scattered on the ground. They are what we get for the $4 trillion we wasted on the Iraq War.(Goulish Empire, by Chris Hedges, emphasis added). There is little if anything that can be done to change what the warmongers among us did to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya.
The language of violence engenders violence. The language of hate engenders hate. “I and the public know what all schoolchildren learn,” W.H. Auden wrote. “Those to whom evil is done do evil in return.” It is as old as the Bible.
...
We are not, as we thought when we entered Iraq, the omnipotent superpower able in a swift and brutal stroke to bend a people to our will. We are something else. Fools and murderers. Blinded by hubris. Faded relics of the Cold War. And now, in the final act of the play, we are crawling away. Our empire is dying.
There might be something we could change about the fact that we are committing suicide slowly, just as the empires of the past have done, after they poisoned themselves with the toxins of power:
"In other words, a society does not ever die 'from natural causes', but always dies from suicide or murder --- and nearly always from the former, as this chapter has shown." - A Study of History, by Arnold J. Toynbee(Dredd Blog Quotes Page). Both tyranny and oppression have been brought to this land in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy.
"It is forbidden to kill therefore all murderers are punished unless they kill in large numbers and to the sound of trumpets." -Voltaire
"If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy." - James Madison
This has clearly been shown by Dredd Blog in this series and others (see e.g. Dredd Blog Series Posts).
Court cases have not yet corrected the mad infection (see e.g. ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller).
But there is one ray of hope to share with readers today.
A federal district court judge has ruled that the "no-fly list" is applied in a manner that denies constitutional rights:
When prescreening passengers, Congress instructed the Executive to "establish a procedure to enable airline passengers, who are delayed or prohibited from boarding a flight because the advanced passenger prescreening system determined that they might pose a security threat, to appeal such determination and correct information contained in the system." ... As discussed herein at length, the DHS TRIP process does not provide a meaningful mechanism for travelers who have been denied boarding to correct erroneous information in the government's terrorism databases. A traveler who has not been given any indication of the information that may be in the record does not have any way to correct that information. As a result, the DHS TRIP process "entirely fail[s] to consider an important aspect" of Congress's instructions with respect to travelers denied boarding because they are on the No-Fly List.(Latif v Holder, p. 63, PDF). Remember that a prominent member of the Senate, Ted Kennedy, was placed on the no-fly list (Sen. Kennedy Flagged by No-Fly List).
The craziness has spread far and wide, and will take years of effort just to get back to where we were just before the ill-conceived "war on terror" infected foreign and domestic policy, taking us deeper into American Feudalism.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Interview of Senator Bob Graham (Real News):
A House member discusses what Senator Graham mentioned (the "28 pages of truth") which the government hides from the American people:
Thursday, June 12, 2014
Warrantless Searches - Unreasonable - 2
That Supreme Court case affirmed an Arizona state appellate court's opinion that a warrantless search was unconstitutional under the circumstances of that case.
In today's post we consider a case of first impression in the Eleventh Circuit Federal Court of Appeals, which held a portion of a federal statute to be unconstitutional under the Fourth Amendment:
Davis’s Fourth Amendment argument raises issues of first impression in this circuit, and not definitively decided elsewhere in the country. The evidence at issue consists of records obtained from cell phone service providers pursuant to the Stored Communications Act (“SCA”), 18 U.S.C. §§ 2703(c) and (d). Under that Act, the government can obtain from providers of electronic communication service records of subscriber services when the government has obtained either a warrant, § 2703(c)(A), or, as occurred in this case, a court order under subsection (d), see § 2703(c)(B). The order under subsection (d) does not require the government to show probable cause.(U.S. v Davis, 11th Cir., June 11, 2014, emphasis added). This may go to the en banc court, but I doubt it.
...
Davis objected to the admission of the location information in the district court and now argues to us that the obtaining of that evidence violated his constitutional rights under the Fourth Amendment. That Amendment, of course, provides that “no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or Affirmation . . . .” U.S. CONST. AMEND. IV. It is a “basic principle of Fourth Amendment law” that searches and seizures without a warrant “are presumptively unreasonable.” See, e.g., Groh v. Ramirez, 540 U.S. 551, 559 (2004). The SCA does provide for governmental entities requiring records from communication service providers by warrant under subsection (c)(A). However, as noted above, the prosecution obtained the evidence against Davis, not by warrant under subsection (c)(A), but by order under subsection (d). As further noted above, that section does not require probable cause, but only a showing “that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the . . . records or other information sought, are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation.” 18 U.S.C. § 2703(d) (emphasis added).
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Therefore, it cannot be denied that the Fourth Amendment protection against unreasonable searches and seizures shields the people from the warrantless interception of electronic data or sound waves carrying communications. The next step of analysis, then, is to inquire whether that protection covers not only content, but also the transmission itself when it reveals information about the personal source of the transmission, specifically his location.
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Having determined that the privacy theory of Fourth Amendment protection governs this controversy, we conclude that the appellant correctly asserts that the government’s warrantless gathering of his cell site location information violated his reasonable expectation of privacy. The government argues that the gathering of cell site location information is factually distinguishable from the GPS data at issue in Jones. We agree that it is distinguishable; however, we believe the distinctions operate against the government’s case rather than in favor of it.
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In short, we hold that cell site location information is within the subscriber’s reasonable expectation of privacy. The obtaining of that data without a warrant is a Fourth Amendment violation.
More than likely it will go up to the Supreme Court directly from the three judge panel's unanimous decision.
See also: ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8
The previous post in this series is here.
Thursday, May 29, 2014
The Queens of Stalingrad - 7
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| Secretary of the Surveillance State |
This status quo or worse -backwards- bureaucrat supports the military NSA spying on all Americans and any other people of the world it wants to.
Got fascism?
One wonders why --since he is not running, as far as we know, in the t-bagger infested Republican primaries.
The only take-away from his calling whistleblower Ed Snowden a "coward and a traitor" for exposing the military government's spying on all Americans all of the time (in a manner that the fascist Stasi would have drooled over) is that power corrupts (About Toxins Of Power).
He has morphed and atrophied from a Vietnam era whistleblower who once did the same thing while in uniform:
After returning to the United States, Kerry joined the Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW). Then numbering about 20,000, VVAW was considered by some (including the administration of President Richard Nixon) to be an effective, if controversial, component of the antiwar movement. Kerry participated in the "Winter Soldier Investigation" conducted by VVAW of U.S. atrocities in Vietnam, and he appears in a film by that name that documents the investigation. According to Nixon Secretary of Defense Melvin Laird, "I(Wikipedia, emphasis added). Yes indeed, new circuitry has replaced the old whistleblower circuitry in his cultural amygdala, as the nation's leadership degenerates across the board (Hypothesis: The Cultural Amygdala - 4).
didn't approve of what he did, but I understood the protesters quite well", and he declined two requests from the Navy to court martial Reserve Lieutenant Kerry over his antiwar activity.
You've come a long way Bybee
On April 22, 1971, Kerry became the first Vietnam veteran to testify before Congress about the war, when he appeared before a Senate committee hearing on proposals relating to ending the war. He was still a member of the United States Navy Reserve, holding the rank of Lieutenant Junior Grade.
The day after this testimony, Kerry participated in a demonstration with thousands of other veterans in which he and other veterans threw their medals and ribbons over a fence erected at the front steps of the United States Capitol building to dramatize their opposition to the war. Jack Smith, a Marine, read a statement explaining why the veterans were returning their military awards to the government.
He once protested, as he should have, that millions of civilian Vietnamese where killed or maimed by those destroying them in order to save them:
The title is taken from an order given to the U.S. forces who slaughtered more than 500 Vietnamese civilians in the notorious My Lai massacre of 1968. Drawing on interviews in Vietnam and a trove of previously unknown U.S. government documents — including internal military investigations of alleged war crimes in Vietnam — Turse argues that U.S. atrocities in Vietnam were not just isolated incidents, but "the inevitable outcome of deliberate policies, dictated at the highest levels of the military."(The Virgin MOMCOM - 6). So which is it now --"it is ok if we do it" ... "we were only following orders" or "we are above the law as exceptionalists"?
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Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by "a few bad apples." But as award‑winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of orders to "kill anything that moves."
Drawing on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. In shocking detail, he lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American combat unit all but inevitable.
No wonder the most successful pollster is putting the odds on the democrats losing the Senate and staying the minority in the House.
The NBC newscaster Brian Williams did a good job of neutrality when he interviewed Ed Snowden, Glenn Greenwald, and Laura Poitras (Inside the Mind of Edward Snowden).
The mindless jargon on the administration is not at all phased by its fascist wrongs of becoming spying sickos on steroids, it is only pissed that it got caught.
That is some legacy for you Obama, Kerry, Feinstein, and the other so-called democrats who want to outdo the t-party wing nuts.
Daniel Ellsberg, who Kerry mentioned in his mad rant against Snowden, says:
"As for Kerry saying that -- I'd say a man that I once admired, that was a long time ago -- the statement that he made on [MSNBC] that Edward Snowden is a coward, a traitor, and he betrayed his country is one of the most despicable statements I have heard from a politician or anyone else who I can remember. It is very much to his discredit and I think very much the less of him."(Huffinton Post). It is time for Secretary Kerry to apologize for such t-bagger McCarthy-ism type commentary and discourse.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Meanwhile, war criminals are too big to jail:
Thursday, May 15, 2014
ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 11
Now the military NSA is on the run but they cannot hide either, since their hostility to America is out now.
Glenn Greenwald has released a book concerning the beginning of his relationship with Ed Snowden.
Interestingly, it also contains the details of how it almost did not commence (Snowden’s Story, Behind the Scenes, Tomgram: Glenn Greenwald, How I Met Edward Snowden).
Meanwhile, in one of the lawsuits the Greenwald - Snowden whistleblower journalism relationship generated, the case this series is about, has a new event to consider, which is that the ACLU has filed its final Reply Brief in the case on appeal (ACLU Appeal Reply Brief).
The government position in the case:
In two significant but almost-completely overlooked legal briefs filed last week, the US government defended the constitutionality of the Fisa Amendments Act, the controversial 2008 law that codified the Bush administration's warrantless-wiretapping program. That law permits the government to monitor Americans' international communications without first obtaining individualized court orders or establishing any suspicion of wrongdoing.(Guardian). Those who cannot see that various coup events, in both domestic and foreign policy, have taken place, in recent U.S. History, likely never will (see e.g. A Tale of Coup Cities - 11, A Tale of Coup Cities - 2).
It's hardly surprising that the government believes the 2008 law is constitutional – government officials advocated for its passage six years ago, and they have been vigorously defending the law ever since. Documents made public over the last eleven-and-a-half months by the Guardian and others show that the NSA has been using the law aggressively.
What's surprising – even remarkable – is what the government says on the way to its conclusion. It says, in essence, that the Constitution is utterly indifferent to the NSA's large-scale surveillance of Americans' international telephone calls and emails:
The privacy rights of US persons in international communications are significantly diminished, if not completely eliminated, when those communications have been transmitted to or obtained from non-US persons located outside the United States.That phrase – "if not completely eliminated" – is unusually revealing. Think of it as the Justice Department's twin to the NSA's "collect it all".
Somewhat related is some news that a new organization is starting up (CFAPA), an online .org which launches with the purpose of perpetuating a free citizen's press in America (Free Press Activism).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Monday, April 21, 2014
A Tale of Coup Cities - 11
It is a plague upon the people and the nation that the officials of government do not obey the supreme law of the land.
Especially when they do so publicly after they take an oath to obey, protect, and uphold that supreme law.
The U.S. Constitution is most abused by the officials of government because they immediately, upon taking the oath, proceed to defend foreign interests and anything else other than what they vowed by taking the oath which does not say that they will protect and defend the nation, the people, or themselves, rather, it says:
I, [name], do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.(5 U.S.C. §3331, emphasis added). The oath that the president takes is similar, to wit:
I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.(Article II, Section I, Clause 8; Constitution, emphasis added). The reason these oaths are taken may not be so obvious to some (especially many who take it).
That reason is: to the extent that the constitution is
damaged, diminished, or demised, is the extent to which the government, the nation, and the people are damaged, diminished, or demised.The beginning of terrorism is anarchy against the constitution which was designed for the people (The Common Good, Racial History).
This series and others have chronicled how an ongoing coup has slowly overthrown the people's government to slowly replace it with a rogue Epigovernment; slowly putting a plutocracy in its place (A Tale of Coup Cities - 2, Epigovernment: The New Model, American Feudalism - 6, The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy - 8, Ayn Rand: Patron Saint of The Plutocracy).
A closing quote:
"For those who work for a living the level of inequality in the U.S. is probably higher than in any other society at any time in the past, anywhere in the world ..."(Capital, a book by Thomas Piketty, see video below).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
On the Plutocracy (they mistakenly call it "oligarchy") - Krugman, Moyers
Wednesday, April 16, 2014
ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 10
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| Military NSA headquarters |
The ACLU v Clapper case was filed in a federal district court in New York.
As it turns out, that case was eventually dismissed by the federal district court judge in New York, thereafter it was appealed to the Federal Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 8).
Since this series began, the world has pretty much turned against the military NSA, not because of the case, but because of the odious nature of the military NSA (ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 9).
The ACLU has already filed its opening brief in the appellate court (Brief PDF).
Now the military NSA has filed its reply brief (Brief PDF).
Here is a page that has all of the ACLU v Clapper documents in this case.
If we lose in that appellate court, it is likely to be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
If we lose there, we are in very dire straits indeed.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Dire Straits
Wednesday, March 12, 2014
The Queens of Stalingrad - 6
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| Headquarters of The Vassal Spies |
Yes, fallen like other relics of a once constitutional democracy.
A once constitutional democracy which has financially descended into a plutocracy (The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy).
A once constitutional democracy that has politically descended into a police-surveillance imperialist state through one policy coup after another over the years (American Feudalism - 6, A Tale of Coup Cities - 9).
The Senate committee which is supposed to oversee spy activities was shocked to find they were being spied on too.
They had not flinched when it was only American citizens who were being spied on, but lo and behold when they found out that they, the bosses, too were being spied upon they experienced what the 99% have been experiencing.
According to Rolling Stone, Diane Feinstein, Chair of the oversight committee, made some shocking, out of character for her, statements about the matter:
1. The initial 2009 Intelligence Committee review found that the CIA had misled Congress about its torture program.(Jaw-Dropping Lines From Dianne Feinstein). Criticism directed toward her was not what she is saying is wrong.
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2. When the Intelligence Committee launched a full-fledged investigation into what Senator Feinstein describes as the "the horrible details of a CIA program that never, never, never should have existed," the CIA unleashed documents as if it were trying to bury needles in a haystack.
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3. In violation of written agreements about the handling of documents, the CIA secretly removed documents that had originally been provided to investigators, and then lied when its actions were detected, saying the order to take back the documents had come from the Obama administration.
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4. Included in the document dump was an something called the "Internal Panetta Review" – evidently an in-agency summary of the torture program for then-CIA chief Leon Panetta, that many in the agency did not want the Senate to see.
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5. The Intelligence Committee's investigation into the "Detention and Interrogation Program of the CIA" does not stop with the Bush White House, and delves deeply into the signature foreign policy achievement of the Obama presidency.
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6. The 6,300-page Senate report is complete. The CIA has read it and disputes "important parts of it." However, many of the disputed claims are, in fact, backed up by the CIA's own Internal Panetta Review.
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7. Distrust is so high between the CIA and the committee that the committee removed an appropriately redacted summary of the Panetta Review from a shared off-site location, and now keeps the document in a Senate safe.
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8. The CIA was so angered by the Senate having its hands on the Panetta Review that it spied on the work of its Senate overseers.
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9. Director Brennan is stonewalling Senator Feinstein's inquiry into this spying.
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10. Feinstein believes the CIA's actions may not only have broken several laws but violated the Fourth Amendment and the constitution's separation of powers.
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11. Senator Feinstein is battling to have the Intelligence Committee's findings declassified. She believes she has the backing of the White House and that the details will shock America into never again permitting such a torture program.
Rather, that criticism is about her not caring when it was being done to the 99%, but she does care now when it is being done to her (Ok to spy on Americans, Not Congress).
Thus, according to some who watch closely, the CIA can use the results of her lack of oversight (for years now), to try to drive a wedge between her and others she will now need as allies (Where the Bodies Are Buried).
The policy coup that General Clarke spoke about is sometimes hidden only in plain sight (A Tale of Coup Cities - 2).
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
Tuesday, February 11, 2014
Today We Fight Back
This in effect supports several ongoing legislative efforts to curtail the rogue activities of the military NSA.
Click on the strip or the "^" character, at the bottom right on the strip, for an enlargement of the pop-up and with fill-in boxes for your relevant information.
Dredd Blog saves none of the information, and a privacy statement is included in the pop-up for your perusal.
The process is being handled by: The Day We Fight Back, so go there to find answers to any questions you may have, or if you want to place this on your website or blog.
Most Americans want the military NSA to be reined in and put back in their proper place in American society.
Your participation will help move us in that direction.
Yesterday's post which has more links and information is here.
UPDATE: As of 2/16/14 @ 4:00 AM Central Time, the count was 90,273 CALLS PLACED 187,620 EMAILS SENT (a total of 277,893 messages sent to congress) ... Guardian Report .... its Not too late to participate
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