NSA Wiretapping

Mike Stark has posted videos here.

By David Swanson

As John Yoo's visit to Mr. Jefferson's university here in Charlottesville approaches, one is tempted to ask the same question people around here ask about everything: WWJD? What would Jefferson do?

Of course, it's almost taboo among the most serious peace and justice advocates to cite positive precedents from Jefferson, because he was a slave owner. But Jefferson's views on the structure of a government don't actually become less admirable (or more) when we remember the horrors he inflicted on the people at Monticello.

By Dave Lindorff

So much for economic “green shoots.”

The Obama administration and the Federal Reserve, along with the servile corporate media, have been quick to grasp at and trumpet every little suggestion that things might be improving, as they did when the Labor Dept. announced last week that new unemployment claims had dropped to “just” 434,000, from a high of 684,000 in the week ended March 28 or last year.

Or when the Commerce Dept. reported last month that November housing starts had risen by 8.9% compared to the prior month.

By Dave Lindorff

President Obama, in his visit to China, held a “town meeting” with
Chinese students in which he praised openness and lectured them on the
value of freedom of information, saying that he is a “supporter of
non-censorship” and that open access to information was a “source of
strength.”

And yet America is hardly free of censorship. Heck, the president
himself has gone to court to prevent the release of photographs of US
troops torturing captives in Iraq, Afghanistan and at Guantanamo. Talk
about censorship! But it goes way beyond just such crude, totalitarian
style control over information.

In this video (full length 1:13:15) scroll ahead to 53:55 to hear veteran CIA analyst Ray McGovern question Congresswoman Jane Harman on her vote for the Authorization to Use Military Force. McGovern also asks her about her rather dramatic shift two years ago to a position of opposing warrantless spying and civil liberties abuses, and whether that shift should be credited to the primary challenge made by Marcy Winograd, which Winograd is renewing next year.

At about 1:01 Harman responds. She claims not to have altered her views whatsoever, which is of course demonstrably false. As McGovern points out, her initial response to the publication of a report on warrantless spying was that it should have been kept secret. On the Authorization to Use Military Force, Harman claims great gullibility and ignorance. She points out that only Congresswoman Barbara Lee voted against it, and claims no one could possibly have known what horrors it would be used for. This is the same law President Obama claims gives him the power to imprison people without charge.

By Dave Lindorff

Next time you see a junkie sprawled at the curb in the downtown of
your nearest city, or read about someone who died of a heroin overdose,
just imagine a big yellow sign posted next to him or her saying: “Your
Federal Tax Dollars at Work.”

Kudos to the New York Times, and to reporters Dexter Filkins, Mark Mazzetti and James Risen, for their lead article
today reporting that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of Afghanistan’s
stunningly corrupt President Hamid Karzai, a leading drug lord in the
world’s major opium-producing nation, has for eight years been on the
CIA payroll.

By Dave Lindorff

Los Angeles Police Chief William Bratton and other big city cops
are calling for a new system of “citizen watch” programs, allegedly to
help them spot hidden terrorists. I view this new call for a nation of
private spies with a deep suspicion born of experience with the LAPD
and its historic penchant for spying on law-abiding residents of that
city.

It's time to repeal telecom immunity for illegal spying, restore privacy protection to library and bookstore records, and roll back the worst abuses of the PATRIOT ACT.

Repeal telecom immunity and roll back PATRIOT ACT abuses