July 1, 2013

Plus there is NO fib. Snowden discussed how he could act the way any person inside an

Organization acts.

H e says he had th e ability to grab a hold of a person's personal information and target that person. He probably did have that power. What is in the slides that the Wash Po published is how the individuals inside the NSA should do their jobs. However, the individuals who are trusted at an agency are not necessarily dong things according to that chart. If you can get into the computer system, you probably have the power to do as Snowden says he could do.

The entire nation just realized that IRS personnel did not bother to follow their flow charted, administrative/operational chain of commands. They choose to target specific groups of people based on political affiliation.

It is apparent that once an individual has a job, as long as their computer is up and running, and their computer is tied into the data on their network, they probably have the goods on whatever information or individuals falls under their scrutiny. Many DU'ers realize this - which is why there have been two OP's in two days about how the NSA and CIA can use the data they are gathering to make book on the stock market, or in even more nefarious manners regarding the purchasing of a business or businesses.

July 1, 2013

I did read the OP and I did observe the slides.

However, think about it. He has the proven ability in some position to take away as much data as he did.

When i was 21 years old, I was an underwriter for a moderately sized insurance company. I had the goods on anyone who had insurance at that company. I had abilities the file clerks who worked on my floor did not have; I had abilities the typists didn't have. I could request a file and review it (or not!) and then cancel that person's insurance. Maybe because I saw in your file you had too many car accidents and too many DUI's, or maybe because I didn't like you.

We underwriters collectively agreed to grab ahold of any application requesting "umbrella protection" that involved Washington DC persons. Anyone who applied for "umbrella protection" on account of working in the Nixon White House was denied. No one in my group told our bosses. Those Republicans were all denied. We underwriters had agreed on a very few short sentences, something to the effect that "Due to concerns about the stability of the position you hold, our company declines to insure you at this point."

Okay, sothink about this. Yes, our bosses could have found out that us super radical underwriters were denying decently paying insurance policies. The year was 1973. It was not obvious that Nixon's personnel would be resigning or out of jobs soon. But we did what we did because we wanted to.

If this example is not enough to make you think about it, then here is another one - there is an entire operations code for IRS personnel regarding the fact that they are not to target specific groups according to party affiliation, or according to political stance. Yet those of us reading the news over the last few months have come to learn that certain rogue elements inside the IRS have indeed targeted specific groups, although that is not what the administrative/operations manual tells them.

I think that this is something many others here on DU understand. Right now, at this moment in time, there is an excellent OP up (by HiPointDem) about how there is a strong possibility that NSA and CIA personnel are playing games with their info, for their own profit on the stock market using information they have at hand. Granted this is speculative - but this is the second OP in as many days in which someone is saying what I am saying - that once you are inside the halls of power, the office of information, the storage center for data, you have the power. I had it. My colleagues had it. We used it in a way none of our bosses suspected, but in the end, if they ever found out about it, I bet they were glad we denied all those umbrella policies to Nixon's personnel.

And if you want to say -well look there are safeguards, and an insurance agency isn't what the NSA is - then how is it that Mr Snowden did what he did and is still a free man? And if what he is telling us is not significant, then why is there all the outrage??????

Also if what he is saying is not true, then why the hell is he being considered the most treasonous bastard of the last five years? And that categorization of Snowden is scarey on its own kmerits - if he is a traitor, and the entire definition of a traitor is that they give aid or information or comfort to the enemy - then that means that you and Iand everyone else are the damn enemy! Except of course, the military and the Top Members of society and Top Political Class personages

June 30, 2013

Surveillance Totalitarian State - Legal or Illegal. If Illegal, why did Obama

Spend so much time over the last years going to the heads of other nations and telling them their violation of their citizens' rights via massive surveillance was not a good thing?

The soldiering of their forces in Colonists' homes was legal under the laws of Great Britain. And it was illegal for Franklin, Washington, Hancock, Jefferson, et al to rebel. And it was illegal for one third of the colonists to support them.

is there a moral imperative or not? And notice this young Senator from Illinois spell out his opposition to Bush's ILLEGAL (his word, not mine) spying on Americans.

Funny that over the last three years or so, now that he has secured the office he was seeking back in 2007, he now lectures the American people on our "traditions." Mr President, eating ham on Easter, or eating turkey on Thanksgiving is a tradition. My liberties are not "traditions" - that is PNAC speak. Those liberties are just that - my liberties. They are self ordained (God given, Higher power enabled) and not subject to the whims of our puppeter rulers.

June 27, 2013

You and everyone else are allowed your various opinions on this.

However anyone in the country who understands the meaning of the Fourth Amendment, and who understands what happens, when the governmental interests decide to spy on its own citizens, as demonstrated by many regimes back in the Twentieth Century, including a Reich my dad had to fight physically for several years of his life, feels differently. And we don't care one wya or the other about the popularity of opinions such as yours.


The last time I looked, the liberties and freedoms granted by our Constitution are ours. The liberties I hold as an American don't exist on account of a popularity contest.


If this nation goes down the road of accepting the idea that "War on terror means we tear up the Constitution, and give 1.2 million people over at Booz the ability to spy on American citizens" in part so that people like Richard Blum, (Di Feintein's husband,) can have a most profitable year, then democracy is officially over.

June 26, 2013

robert scheer - "Praise the Whistleblower-Privacy, Freedom and the Surveillance State"

Scheer's recent response to the US PTB stance on "traitors." He offers a history going back to the Nuremberg Trials, to the 1950's and 1960's, heightened cold war on communism, now being replaced by the War on Terror. Especially interesting is his assessment that Daniel Ellsberg was much more of security threat, in his release of the Pentagon Papers, than Bradley Manning:

http://www.truthdig.com/avbooth/item/robert_scheer_praise_the_whistle-blower_20130624/

June 24, 2013

That's not the media - That's Kim Kardashian's ass -

http://greenshadowcabinet.us/statements/top-secret-deal-between-11-countries-will-affect-your-life

June 22, 2013

A bit of good news for employment and money

Apparently, unpaid interns have taken to the courts to get restitution for their services. And judges are agreeing that not being paid for work is mere slavery.

Whether this works out for money in the pockets of those plaintiffs taking up such lawsuits or not, I don't know. Often it is the attorney(s) that profit when matters are taken into court.

But in any event, here is one link to what is going on:

http://www.theatlanticwire.com/national/2013/06/ungrateful-unpaid-interns-sue-gawker-and-nick-denton/66504/

June 11, 2013

A Little Tyranny Can't Be All that Bad...

A little Tyranny can't be all that bad.

It enables us to have Monsanto-fortified GM foods on our plates, and who cares if farmers find they must send all their profits to Monsanto, as long as we can believe the PR that it is helping to feed the world's hungry?

It enables us to have a Too Big To Fail system of monetary control wherein the Largest Financial Firms can do under-handed LIBOR practices, and also launder the drug cartel monies, while the rest of us have to look over our shoulder when we light that joint. And although some of the punks among us might resent that currently forty nine cents out of every dollar of profit generated in the USA goes to the coffers of the Biggest banks, we must remember that they need that money to keep control of the politicians. Buying a government continues to be expensive; inflation has cost the PTB that much more each year.

Tyranny means you can frame policies with impunity that leave over one million dead in a nation that never harmed us, and also drone away at the brown colored folks in the nations of Afghanistan and Pakistan. But I mean - does the world really need all those brown skinned people?

Tyranny shoves aside the older, weaker, sicker, less educated, and those run down prematurely by their decades of being working schmucks at lower paying jobs. Again, does our society really need older, weaker, sicker, less educated, and those who have been run down by life prematurely, when the higher classes of humans dress better and are more fun to be around?

Tyranny is proving to possess a more sophisticated well thought out system of "logic" that eternally is enabling itself, rather than silly old democracy ever did. If classifying the details needed to prove the existence of a program means no one can prove its existence, then how logical is it to return to the days of openness and transparency? Back when a policy either existed or didn't exist, but it couldn't be hidden from plain view, our various security agencies had to be rather devious. Do you remember Iran Contra? Do we really want the likes of Ollie North in our face every time we watch the news? Some here on DU want us to return to the Nixon era, when a President taped the conversations occurring in the WH, but if we returned to that time, wouldn't Al Queda be hearing things that might endanger us all? Once you think about all the unintended consequences of transparency, it's obvious that Tyranny might be easier, and then the Big Financial Firms might be able to launder less drug cartel monies, since they won't have to buy as many politicians.

Plus with all that transparency floating around, how would Glenn Greenwald make a living? Whistle blowers like Bradley Manning and Mr Snowden would have to find other methods of coming to national attention, such as making a video of themselves with a cat doing a stupid pet trick. Again, I think it is obvious from spending time on Facebook that we do need more folks doing stupid pet tricks.

Tyranny also makes it harder to tell the difference between the Two Parties. And since people want to spend their time watching stupid pet tricks on Facebook, that makes it simpler come election time. We need to forbid the money from Corporate Interests regarding the campaign coffers of candidates. Abolish both Parties. Just put it out there that if you wanna be President, get a pretty cool pet trick happening between you and your cat (or dog.) The person whose video scores the most YouTube votes gets the Oval Office.

Since the NSA dictates how the President, (er, I mean Top Corporate Spokesperson,) spends his or her time anyway, and much of what the President does is simply to make us Americans feel good about all the exciting things that are happening around the world, like the proliferation of Monsanto GM foods, the slaughter of brown skinned people by drones, and the elimination of many here in the USA through austerity programs, including lack of jobs, housing, education and health care, I think it's easy to see that having a President accomplished in pet tricks might be the next best thing since eliminating privacy.

Too much privacy has always allowed people to focus on themselves, which probably led to depression, and that led to all those annoying commercials about which anti-depressant to take. The Lord knows we would all be better off without those commercials.

Some of you might be opposed to this, but consider this: Elizabeth Warren seems smart enough to find herself a really cute pet and develop a killer dance set with a chihuahua and one or two movie stars. I am suggesting a chihuahua, because then, if elected, she can point out the dog's name is Paco, and that way, Taco Bell can pay her salary for the four to eight years she holds down the top spot in the nation.

After all, with Tyranny going hand in hand with Privatization, it won't be possible to pay for a President using money from the Federal Government. "Paco" will be key.

June 3, 2013

Worse that Communism _ Monsanto A Documentary on GMO a must watch

I grew up during the Nineteen Fifties, when the "Red Scare" was at its height. I still remember the propaganda - that when the Godless Communists took over, the average American would not have any rights,including the right to trial in a court room when they were wronged, and no right to private property.

Apparently what has occurred over the past decade, within our government, as its agencies have been taken over by Corporate Interests, indicates to me that in many respects, we average folks are in the same situation we would have been if there had been a Communist takeover. we now must watch as farmers lose the right to their property:

Monsanto A Documentary on GMO a must watch

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June 2, 2013

Police in water cannon tank kill Turkish protesters by running them over

At least two people killed, and one in intensive care.

Video here at link:

http://intellihub.com/2013/06/02/turkish-police-run-over-crowds-of-protesters-with-large-tanks-warning-graphic-video/