Tag: Police State

Aug 07 2009

The Wild Wild Left Radio Show # 30 – Animal House Edition

Diane is on a well-deserved break this week, but Ed Encho and Gottlieb (along with the adult supervision of M_A) persevere through a nutjob nation  gone wild. We’ll tackle:

1: Blackwater’s (Now Xe) Erik Prince and the story in the Nation by Jeremy Scahill and accusations of murder against political enemies. Prince, a nutjob extraordinaire, is not a patriot or interested in our security, but a racist hater and disciple of extreme violence. In other words; another in a long line of impotent cowards.

2: The Brown Shirt model for the Republican operatives disrupting health care Town Halls. Holy Nutjob Batman, are these freaks for real? They make Pavlov’s dogs at dinner time look positively somnambulant. But for the Pavlov’s on the right like Beck, Limbaugh et al and assorted Republican kool-aid-crack-heads exhorting and inciting violent behavior by couch-potato losers these dumb-animals would be scratching their balls, waiting for a Milk Bone and wondering whatever happened to Monty Hall..

3: Right wing racist losers exploding like Fourth of July’s from Hell like the guy who murdered innocents in a Pennsylvania fitness center because he couldn’t get laid and the near daily human time-bombs from the right who light up the fear and loathing meters better than al Qaeda ever could.

4: The march toward American Totalitarianism – the threats pile up: domestic terror (not coincidentally incited by right wing media moguls), foreign terror by ex-CIA operatives, disease pandemics and mass vaccination/quarantine programs, social unrest due to Depression Era stress and any excuse which can be brought to bear to limit freedom and the power of the people to mobilize against oppression.

Join Gottlieb, Ed Encho and M-A tonight at 6pm EDT on Wild Wild Left Radio, via BlogtalkRadio, for an interesting hour of Political Reporting and Commentary.

The call in number is 646-929-1264

Listen to The Wild Wild Left on internet talk radio

The live chat link will go live around 5:30.

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Apr 30 2009

Rising Swine: Pandemic or Propaganda?

Is it just me or has the swine flu pandemic panic been a very fortuitous occurrence for one Richard B. Cheney and his fellow war criminal scum. It was only last week that the horrors of the torture memos were the order of the day and a pitched battle was being fought by activists and patriots over the waffling Obama administration’s ongoing failure to enforce the law. But then the word went out that we were all going to die and the media mongrels quickly snapped up the bullshit biscuits and stood on their hind legs begging for more. The torture memos are now a part of history, cast down the memory hole. It’s time to just move along as the Pope of Hope says, nothing to see here. We have work to do on our national rejuvenation you see and any sort of restoration of the law would be seen as a partisan witch hunt and reek of vengeance. Besides, our very own Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, your illustrious and feckless Democratic leaders were privy to it all anyway.

Feb 27 2009

Soylent Red, White and Blue

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Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin to slit throats.

-H. L. Mencken

I: Republican Ratfucker Dead-Enders

“May you live in interesting times” goes the familiar and eerily relevant Chinese curse and America circa 2009 is an eerie example of what whomever came up with that one had in mind. The economic collapse is gaining in momentum with the fraudulent markets in freefall, the ripple effects of the implosion of the FIRE economy now spreading into the real economy and the system desperately trying to save itself even if it must destroy the country itself in order to do so. In a land gripped by growing madness the dead-enders of the fascist Republican party become more angry, irrational and outright seditious with each passing day. The latest outrage this week is the ugly public tantrums of several Republican governors who are shamelessly and publicly balking at accepting funds for some programs from the diluted economic stimulus package that was signed into law last week by President Barack Obama. It is once again political party before country for these miscreant thugs, the whores of the oligarchy and their religion of tax cuts for the wealthy, an endless fountain of corporate welfare and a dumbed-down and desperate populace that is more easily controlled.

Feb 01 2009

Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government (Pt.3)

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I: WATCH LISTS, BLACK LISTS, ENEMIES LISTS…..HIT LISTS?

With the long overdue departure of the Bush administration from the White House it is the hope of many that the myriad of transgressions against the Constitution and the people of America will begin to seep out into the public domain: it took a remarkably short time. The day after the helicopter hauled ole George away like so much rubbish a major story broke. In an astonishing shot across the bow directed at the shadow government the first significant whistleblower has already come out with a story (once again ignored by the corporate media) and delivered a devastating blow to the premise that the massive illegal domestic spying programs of the Bush administration were undertaken in order to protect America from terrorism in the aftermath of September 11th, 2001.

Oct 19 2008

Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government (Pt.2)



“In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can’t spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can’t look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won’t be there. We won’t build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line.”

-Earling Carothers ‘Jim’ Garrison

Oct 03 2008

Main Core, PROMIS and the Shadow Government



“Over the last two weeks I have encountered just such an apocalyptic situation, where I and the Department of Justice have been asked to be part of something that is fundamentally wrong.”

(Excerpt from Deputy Attorney General James Comey’s draft letter of resignation to President Bush, dated March 16, 2004, which Comey did not in the end send.)

“Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull”

(George Orwell: 1984)

I: Main Core and PROMIS

Suppose that the United States Government, or more likely an unaccountable privatized intelligence colossus empowered by the reaction to the 9/11 attacks and fueled by the rampant cronyism of a system long ago gone rotten had a surveillance tool capable of peering into the most private aspects of American lives on a whim. Now suppose that the new growth industry of a previously unthinkable futuristic police state was already in place, is fully operational and has in fact been online being actively been being utilized for illegal domestic spying for years before those two airplanes even slammed into the World Trade Center. The ‘terrorist’ attacks were used as the justification for every unconstitutional reigning in of civil liberties ever since that heinous September morning seven years ago when the reset button was hit on two and a quarter centuries of American history and we all stepped forth into the brave new world of perpetual war, fear, suspicion and vengeance into a parallel reality in a place that would come to be known as The Homeland. What if this surveillance industrial complex was in possession of a database that was so large and so powerful that not only could it instantly process and retrieve the most minute or intimate aspects of a citizen’s lives but was also able to utilize extremely sophisticated artificial intelligence capabilities to actually predict likely patterns of future behavior.

Aug 15 2008

Gitmo On The Platte: The Police State Lives In Denver (Updated)

cross-posted from The Dream Antilles

Just in case you thought that exercising your Constitutional Right to assemble in Denver,  engage in non-violent protest and perhaps participate in civil disobedience at the Democratic National Convention was going to be easy and humane, the NY Times informs in an article entitled, “Grim Warehouse Set To Process Convention Arrests,” that is not to be the case.  The Government has set up a mini-Gitmo to handle pesky protesters who get arrested in Denver.  And they’re telling you about it now, so you’ll reconsider your plans.  And maybe stay home.

Individuals arrested at the Democratic National Convention will be processed at an industrial warehouse with chain-link cells topped by razor wire, a facility some have compared to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay. /snip

The Denver sheriff’s office, which operates city and county jails, insists anyone taken to the center will be there only a few hours while they’re fingerprinted, issued a court date and released after posting bail. Others will be transferred to facilities designed for longer detentions.

”Of course if the numbers are overwhelming, that’s all going to be out the door,” said Capt. Frank Gale, a sheriff’s spokesman. ”If we’re inundated with a bunch of civil unrest, it doesn’t matter how well we prepare. If we get severe numbers it’s going to take us forever” to process those in custody. /snip  A sign [at the facility] read: ”Electric stun devices used here.”

Gale said each cell will be about 20-by-20 feet. He refused to say how many people could be processed there.  /snip

ACLU-Colorado legal director Mark Silverstein said city officials told him detained protesters will be taken by bus to the facility, about 2 miles northeast of downtown. Those who are unable or refuse to post bail will be taken to a downtown city jail to await a court date.

Silverstein said warehouse cells won’t have running water, bathrooms or telephones. Gale said deputies will escort anyone needing those services.

Great.  A mini-Gitmo on the Platte.  20 x 20 cells with an unknown number of people in them, for an unknown period of time, without food, water or toilets.  And the idea that if there are too many people, whatever planning there was would be overwhelmed.  And then those incarcerated would be stuck.

Aug 15 2008

Operation Sentinel

This hasn’t gotten near the coverage in the traditional media nationwide as it deserves:

NEW YORK (CBS) ?  It’s called “Operation Sentinel” and it proves just how far the NYPD will go to protect this city from terrorists. The plan involves some high-tech tracking that is coming under fire from some groups.

New York City is going to great lengths to make sure that bomb-toting terrorists can’t reach us.

This sounds great; a pro-active approach to stopping terrorists.

If you wish to understand the problem with this, follow me onward through the fog…

Aug 14 2008

Are We There Yet? Police State America

“Reasonable” people call it Authoritarianism for the sake of “reasonable” conversation. People who are more interested in describing the trend we have seen over the last eight years of “Authoritarian” rule (not governance) allow their alarm and disgust to utter words that once did seem alarmist and unreasonable in reasonable conversation.  Words like totalitarianism, tyranny and even the dread and semi-forbidden word….. fascism. Or perhaps even worse….Police State. These words have previously been used in The Land of the Free as part of the Cold War propaganda effeort to describe countries and governments behind the Iron Curtain. The thrust of the propaganda effort of course, was to point to America as a bastion of all things free and just and right, particularly individual and human rights. America MEANS Freedom, especially individual freedom.

Not anymore.

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Aug 03 2008

The Crossroads of Destiny: Illegal Search And Siezure Cross Border into Existential Hypocrisy

It’s right there in the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution:

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Amendment IV

The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

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Do not pass go, do not collect two hundred dollars, do not parse, do not fold, mutilate, spindle, tear, gut, burn or shred.

In keeping with policies and procedures consistent with gutting the foundational principles of our Constitution and democracy, the Bush Administration’s Department of Homeland Security has proceeded to ignore the care and handling advice and has engaged in the very actions verboten by those instructions.

May 21 2008

Whoever Controls Our Data Controls Us


We need to take back our data.


Bruce Schneier writes in a commentary on Wired that we have become intimately bound with our data in the information age.  The bits of information about us that are collected and stored in hundreds, even thousands of different spots around the globe determine whether we can get a job, obtain health insurance, have a loan approved, even board an airplane or enter a foreign country.


We leave a data trail wherever we go: when we use a discount card at the supermarket; when we log on to the Internet through our ISP; when we pick up a cell phone call.  Each bit and byte has the potential to affect our future, yet we have no control over who handles it, who gains access to it, even whether we can have a look at it ourselves.

May 19 2008

Police State 2.0: It’s Here

cross posted at The Ohm Project: an exercise in resistance

High resolution cameras covering nearly every inch of public space.  National IDs crammed with biometric data.  Facial recognition software that can’t be defeated even by plastic surgery.  And a massive database to connect the cameras, the IDs, all financial and medical data.

It’s not merely resident in the mind’s eye of a screenwriter of the next dystopian thriller.  According to Naomi Klein in the latest issue of Rolling Stone , China has already implemented much of the above and is only a year or two away from completing this Information Age 1984 with the eager help of U. S. corporations and an American government that looks the other way as anti-export laws are violated.

Klein says that the latest unrest in Tibet was a test for the ever-expanding system, called the "Golden Shield."  And the oppressive infrastructure earned at least an A-.  Dissident cell phones were jammed.  Information favorable to the protestors was blocked on the Internet.  Photos of the participants, especially the leaders, were rapidly disseminated on "Most Wanted" posters on the Internet and the protests were "spun" through Chinese media to make the Tibetans look like violent thugs.

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