Hmm

Sorry it's been awhile since I last blogged...my life has been pretty boring lately, and hence I've been too bored to actually write a blog post. Although, in my defence, I was out of town from Thursday to Sunday night (actually, Monday morning if you want to be technical), and so I couldn't blog.

So...in the news this week, local police officers are now going to have even more license to make eternal nuisances of themselves, as their job descriptions are now going to be expanded to "watching for precursor activity to terrorist activities" or something like that. (And an hilarious image of Barney Fife trying to apprehend a terrorist just popped into my head...)

From this article: "But this initiative represents the administration’s first thoughtful steps in fulfilling President Obama’s commitment to defining a lasting rule of law for this brave new world. We must make it work."

We "must"? Oh yeah, that's right. So we can be safe, yada yad. Right. I forgot that part. Of course, there are other options. Like, you know, we could, like stop bombing and invading sovereign nations without cause and stuff. You know. Be smart and courteous and all that good stuff. Stop hitting other children on the playground.

But oh wait. That would be the smart thing to do. We're Americans. We aren't smart, so we're not needed to be. That's right.

In that same vein, our government is now trying to control the internet- oh wait. Not control it...just make sure...you don't say something stupid, using the vehicle of fear. There goes half of my Facebook activities. Sarcasm? Out the window. Joking references to terrorism and your plot to blow up the 2011 Comic-Con? Don't even think about it.

You see, apparently the government has decided that Americans don't use phones enough anymore. We've all migrated to the internet, so now, naturally, the government is going to have to start imposing rules upon the internet. Well, to be fair, not quite rules. They just want to team up with social networking sites to get information about their widdle citizen's activities. Because we all need to be babysat, of course.

"Essentially, officials want Congress to require all services that enable communications — including encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct “peer to peer” messaging like Skype — to be technically capable of complying if served with a wiretap order. The mandate would include being able to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages."

Mm-hmm. Because it's always good to tie the hands of independent companies that operate on the free world of the internet so that they have to cooperate. At least Google went into willingly.

Once again along that tack, the Obama administration (which is, of course, for terrorists and against anything akin to intel gathering or the wars) wants to have more control over banks, not for the purpose of money, but so that banks have to report money transfers out-of-country.

But always remember- Obama is soft on terror.

In a rather ironic twist, atheists and agnostics score the highest on a poll on American religious knowledge.

Right.

That's sad, Christians.

The midterm elections are approaching, which is rather...well, not exactly exciting, per se, since I am fixing to make a prediction about who's going to take the Congress. Before I do that, I'd just like to say that this prediction kind of stinks.

Because I'd really rather the Democrats lose their majority, but the Republicans not gain one.

I dream of a better world where the true interests of the people are represented by a four, five, six party Congress...

I dream big, in case you couldn't tell.

There's lots more I could talk about. But I don't really want to. I'm already depressed enough.

NSA Wiretaps Illegal

Finally, finally, someone is actually realizing that maybe (just maybe) the stuff our government has been doing in the name of our "safety" is wrong. A federal judge found that the NSA wiretaps done during Bush's reign were illegal. (Like imagine that- NSA has to get a warrant! *gasp*)

Of course, this also shows, once again, just how little difference there is between the Bush policies and current Obama policies: both insist upon maintaining the nationalist idea that America can do whatever she wants both to the international community and to its own citizens, and that anything goes in the quest for "safety."

Furthermore, they are also akin in that they both have and are insisting upon claiming superiority to every law, Constitutional and otherwise, on the books merely because they happened to have a face the media liked. Mmm-hmm.

"“Judge Walker is saying that FISA and federal statutes like it are not optional,” Mr. Eisenberg said. “The president, just like any other citizen of the United States, is bound by the law. Obeying Congressional legislation shouldn’t be optional with the president of the U.S.”"

So perhaps, just maybe, somebody in the actual framework of our government is starting to wake up. Would be nice.

Bushama the Valiant

Yet more proof that there is really very little difference between Bush and Obama- unless, of course, you count the fact that Obama seems to be more commited to the wars than Bush ever was. Especially given this tidbit from this article (written, by the way, by a republican sympathizer):

"But Obama has rejected this advice and instead increased the Bush defense budget from $513 billion in fiscal year 2009 to $537 billion for fiscal year 2010 and $549 for 2011. If defense budgets are one of the best indicators of the direction of policy, Obama's defense budgets mark him as no leftist."

And so we discover that Obama is not only a quasi-Republican, at least in defense issues, but he's even more Republican defense-wise than Bush was!

Big surprise.

Thanks to Don Emmerich for the link to the article. :)

Bush-ism With a Human Face

By N.S. Palmer, Ph.D.

Waaaay back in the 1960s — yes, during that tiresome decade of Woodstock and flower power and Vietnam — something remarkable happened in Czechoslovakia.

From the end of World War II in 1945 until 1989, Czechoslovakia was dominated by the Soviet Union, which was the 20th-century’s nom de voyage for the Russian Empire. Its official ideology was communism. Its official governing method was oppression.

In 1968, a reformer named Alexander Dubček became leader of the Czech Communist Party, which was the country’s ruling party. He wanted to keep the egalitarian goals of communism (such as equality and social welfare) but get rid of its oppressive aspects. His government allowed free speech, including open dissent from government policies. He reined in the secret police.

Dubček called his movement “communism with a human face.”

Naturally, the Russians couldn’t allow it. They invaded Czechoslovakia and put an end to that experiment.

How little things have changed. In 2009 under President Obama, the United States is now being treated to “Bush-ism with a human face.”

One must admit that it is a slight improvement. Instead of having to endure the smirking, murderous, simian countenance of Dubya Bush, we now hear very similar policies from the serious, calm, intelligent visage of President Obama. It cuts the nausea factor by quite a bit. It’s been months since I threw my shoes at the TV set.

But it’s still Bush-ism: Bail out the Wall Street sharks who wrecked the economy, but not the unemployed whose jobs and lives the Wall Streeters destroyed. Sell out health care reform to the in$urance companies, the drug companies, and their hired lackeys in Congress. Crank up the war against Afghanistan. Slow down the exit from Iraq. Beat the drums about largely imaginary terrorist threats. Provide legal defense for the Bush regime’s chief torture apologist, John Yoo. Leave in place the instruments of oppression established by the Bush regime, such as the Transportation Security Agency, no-fly lists, warrantless wiretapping, and the Department of Homeland Security: instruments that never stopped a real terrorist threat, but hyped plenty of fake ones and beat down the American people into cowed submission lest they be put on a “watch list.”

An article in today’s New York Times recalls the worst paranoia and propaganda of the Bush years, when hapless loudmouths and street thugs were framed as dangerous terrorists. The Times article, “Domestic Insecurity,” uses the same weasel-words that we saw over and over in propaganda from the Bush-Cheney regime: the supposed terrorists were “accused of being drawn into terrorist scheming,” “accused of helping plan the killing spree in Mumbai,” “accused of going to Pakistan for explosives training,” and they “allegedly participated in a rocket attack against U.S. troops in Afghanistan.”

Anyone can be accused of anything, and since the Bush-Cheney regime’s signature event of 9/11, they have been. Jose Padilla was accused of plotting to explode a “dirty bomb,” and was then tortured in an unsuccessful attempt to get any evidence at all that would implicate him in such a plot. The “Miami Seven,” who couldn’t have assembled a bomb even if they’d bought it “ready to assemble” at Wal-Mart, were led by an FBI agent provocateur to take an “oath of allegiance to Al Qaeda” before being framed for a virtually non-existent plot to blow up the Sears Tower in Chicago. There are many more such cases.

Are any of our current “accused people” actually guilty of anything? The Bush years taught us to doubt it. The Obama administration hasn’t given us good reasons not to doubt it.

I still believe that President Obama is trying to do the right things. The problem is that he’s not trying very hard. Instead, he’s “going with the flow.” Since 2001 (and even before that, to a lesser degree), the flow has been in the wrong direction.

Copyright 2009 by N.S. Palmer. May be reproduced as long as byline, copyright notice, and URL (http://www.ashesblog.com/) are included.