NSA Says: "Trust Us, We Won't Violate Your Privacy."

Emperor Alexander, after repeating his unsubstantiated claim that the NSA has disrupted 54 terrorist plots, claims that although the NSA is collecting every bit of communications that Americas make (other than the contents of sealed letters) we can trust them not to violate our privacy.

"Trust me" is not our governmental system. We are not free if the cops don't come tramping through our houses. I'll bet that 99% or better of Russian households during the Soviet era were never searched by the KGB, but that didn't mean they lived in freedom. But that's precisely the argument that Emperor Alexander is making.

What the NSA is doing is operating an electronic Panopticon. They have access to everything that we do online (unless you personally encrpypt it). They broke the encryption system for online banking. They broke (or they were given the keys) the encryption backing secure browsing. We have only the assurances of functionaries whose stock-in-trade is lying and disinformation that NSA employees/contractors aren't looking through your shit.

Hell, if the NSA's protections were so robust, how the fuck did Ed Snowden walk away with all the shit that he did?

Freedom and liberty are nonexistent when the NSA or the cops leave you alone because they don't think that you're worth their time. Freedom and liberty exist when they can't bother you without getting a warrant, and not just a blanket "go ahead, wiretap the fucking planet" warrant from the FISA court. The Congress since 2001, both Presidents Bush and Obama and the Supremes since long before then have eviscerated the Fourth Amendment to the point that the cops only need a search warrant when they feel like they probably have the time to get one. The judicially-created exceptions and exemptions to the Fourth Amendment have rendered it a shadow of its former self.

And we already know that the NSA has been feeding information to the cops and telling them to lie about where they got it. (They call it "parallel construction".)

Collecting our telephonic and online communications is a violation of our privacy, whether notr not anyone at the NSA ever looks at them. We have only the assurance of the NSA that some loyal Bushie or Obamadroid hasn't been looking at records for political purposes.

That's not good enough. We need robust and independent oversight of the NSA, not just the cookie-cutter FISA Court or DiFi's Committee.

We must demand that the NSA (and the DEA) stop electronic surveillance of American citizens without a warrant that is issed by a neutral and detached magistrate for every instance, not the blanket "go ahead and wiretap everyone" orders of the FISA Court.

Otherwise, we all might as well just go watch "Survivor" or any of those other vapid reality shows and forget about all those freedom and liberties that so many people have fought and died for over the last 240 years.

(Shout: "All hail Emperor Alexander.")

Chinese Pollution

One of the things that is interesting to me are the stories about pollution in China. Not because of the fact that the Chinese are polluting their nations, but because it shows the resilience of human intractability to facts.

Almost all of the Chinese fuckery, be it air pollution, water pollution, tainted food, poisonous toys, you name it, all of that has happened before in the countries that began their march to industrialization over 200 years ago. We've had our killer smogs. There was a time when people could tell what color cars were being painted in an auto plant by looking at the river.

You'd think that the Chinese government would have said to themselves: "We can learn from what those stupid gweilos did. We can avoid their errors."

But sadly, no.

Craven GOP Cowards in the Senate Apologize to Tea Party For Not Destroying the Government and Thereby Bringing on the Economic Ruin of This Formerly Great Nation

If there is another way to look at this:

Twenty-seven Republican senators voted with Democrats on Oct. 16 to lift the debt ceiling and avert a catastrophic default. And each one of those 27 senators voted Tuesday to "disapprove" of their own votes.

I am open to considering it. Salon (annoying pop-up alert) thinks that this is a cynical move to fool the more impressionable imbeciles in the Tea party.

I don't think so, for I doubt if the Tea party hard-liners are impressed. No, I think that those Senators are just a batch of gutless fucking weasels, the lot of them.

Take Clapper's Lies For What They Are Worth

The firestorm of criticism facing the National Security Agency from Capitol Hill has created "an erosion of trust" within the U.S. intelligence community, according to the community's top official.

The repeated criticism and second-guessing by Congress over the agency's operations has hindered intelligence community leaders from doing their jobs, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper told lawmakers on Tuesday.

First, Clapper has a track record of lying under oath to Congress.

Second, what he's saying is right, but not in the way that he means it. We can't trust Clapper and his ilk to tell the truth about anything. Everything in any statement from Clapper should be treated as a lie, including the punctuation.

But oh, poor little Jimmy the Perjurer's feelings are hurt because he's been caught lying and people no longer trust him??

Don't let the screen door hit you on your way out, Jimmy. You can probably get a cushy job with Rudy Giuliani's "Rent-a-Fascist" company.

Our Pansy-Assed Spies Are Having Their Feelings Hurt!

WASHINGTON -- The White House and State Department signed off on surveillance targeting phone conversations of friendly foreign leaders, current and former U.S. intelligence officials said Monday, pushing back against assertions that President Obama and his aides were unaware of the high-level eavesdropping.

Professional staff members at the National Security Agency and other U.S. intelligence agencies are angry, these officials say, believing the president has cast them adrift as he tries to distance himself from the disclosures by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden that have strained ties with close allies.

Here's some free career advice to those "professional staff members": Suck it up, Cupcakes. Deniability is part and parcel of the game.

There was a time when we thought that our spies were tougher than that.

But now? Why, they put in a call for the waaabulance!

Don't Worry, NSA, DiFi Has Your Back

This is just a bit of security theater:

The chair of the Senate intelligence committee, who has been a loyal defender of the National Security Agency, dramatically broke ranks on Monday, saying she was "totally opposed" to the US spying on allies and demanding a total review of all surveillance programs.

Sen. Feinstein has been one of the more vocal members of the "Rip Up the Bill of Rights Caucus" that there has been (other than maybe Rep Peter King {R-IRA}). You can bet your next paycheck that by the time any changes to how things are done clear DiFi's committee, they will be akin to renaming "Total Information Awareness" something like "Prism" or "Global Liberty-Sucking Squid".

After all, Emperor Alexander has declared that the First Amendment doesn't apply to him or his agency. They don't have such things in Old Blighty and the British government is signalling that they are going to follow the lead of Valdimir Putin and the Chinese and just end such shenanigans. Because when you're in power, what's the fun of having reporters make life difficult for you?

The Flags of Our Enemies:1776 through 1945

I am ignoring short skirmishes, the Indian Wars and the various "interventions" fought on behalf of the United Fruit Company.  I am also ignoring the more pissant nations in both World War I and World War II.

 With the possible exception of the Quasi-War, these are all full-on fights against another nation.

The Revolutionary War:

The War of 1812:

The Quasi-War:

The Quasi-War was pretty much fought only at sea as a result of "the XYZ Affair".  It ended because the French were more interesting in fighting the British (sort of the reverse of the reason why the War of 1812 ended).

Your Sunday Morning Jet Noise

A Cessna Citation on a very short strip (for a jet):

Obama's War on the First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

I'm pretty certain that having the Department of State Security Homeland Security goons, ably assisted by the Maryland State Police,[1] conduct a pre-dawn raid on a reporter and seizing her notes qualifies as "abridging".

The Stasi DHS conducted the raid apparently because the reporter had the temerity to write bad things about Federal Air Marshals. Besides having no discernible purpose to what they do, the Air Marshals had been lying to Congress[2] and the reporter was covering that.

Which apparently upset the DBP and so they did what all such fascist organizations do: They conducted a pre-dawn raid.

There was a time when middle-of-the-night police raids were regarded as things done in totalitarian countries. Such things did not happen in free states. But the Wars on Drugs and Terror have been boiling away our liberties and protections. Judges sign off on middle-of-the-night raids. Cops dress up in full battle-rattle to go raid the home of a reporter.

We are just about there, folks. Our country has just about finished converting the Constitution into a meaningless text that is praised in public and then ignored in practice.[3] We say we have a First Amendment, but freedom of speech and freedom of the press have shrunken to the point that the Founders would not recognize them. We say we have a Fourth Amendment, but the NSA, the DEA, the FBI and others wiretap us and rifle through our online communications without a warrant. We say we have Fifth and Sixth Amendments, but the government has arrested people, including American citizens, and held them without bringing charges and without permitting them to have access to legal counsel.

We say we have an Eighth Amendment, which is hard to reconcile with a government that has practiced torture and extra-judicial killings.

We do not have a free country if the police leave most of us alone. That's akin to not being shat on by birds-- just because you haven't been pooped on doesn't mean the birds are forbidden to do so.

Our Constitution means very little anymore. Either we do something about it,[4] or we learn to live in a state where freedom is just another meaningless worship word.

(H/T)
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[1] The MSP has a long track record of goonish behavior.
[2] Lying to Congress is only a crime if the witness plays professional sports. It seems to be OK if a witness works for the government.
[3] Much like people who pervert the actions and words of Jesus into license to war, murder and plunder.
[4] We can start by kicking out the statists in Congress. You know how they are.

Caturday

I have one piece of upholstered furniture that does not have a cat bed or a throw or a towel on it.

Guess where Jake chose to lie?