Mobilization Of Resentments

The email with an attachment came to me Christmas morning. The forwarded message was titled, “I am honored to do this”. It was from a well-intentioned Christian friend. Unfortunately my friend was not as well informed as he could have been.

The radical right-slanted message presented two horrible lies about the ACLU while hiding behind the sacrifices of the military. Once again we see the dishonest and cowardly treachery of hateful “conservative” Americans. Their hatred for the ACLU, and for liberalism itself, is as blind as it is intense.

The words jumped out in huge letters.

Did you know that the ACLU has filed a suit to have all military cross-shaped headstones removed and another suit to end prayer from the military completely. They’re making great progress. The Navy Chaplains can no longer mention Jesus’ name in prayer thanks to the wretched ACLU.

This was followed by photos of cemeteries, and photos of mourning troops at memorial services for their fellow soldiers who paid the ultimate price. The fallen were most likely victims of Cheney’s and Bush’s trumped up war in Iraq. Notice how their hatred is not directed at the politicians who sent the soldiers to their needless deaths.

They died because Bush, Cheney, the Neocon warmongers, sycophantic media, and all the other war profiteering politicians frightened the American people with lies. Those soldiers gave their lives because they were told Saddam had weapons of mass destruction. They are dead because they were told they must go to war, because Iraq had a nuclear weapons program. Remember those scary aluminum tubes?

They were slaughtered because they were told Iraq had chemical and biological weapons, and would share them with Al Qaeda. They went to war because they were told Saddam had ties with Al Qaeda. Then they were sent to die in order to kill the Iraqis that would otherwise have come to kill us in America. Remember we had to fight them over there so we wouldn’t have to fight them here.

Operation Iraqi Freedom was really for neither Iraqis nor freedom. The war in Iraq was used for political gains for the Republican Party, and profit for Bush/Cheney cronies.

Now those troops are told to fight and die over in Muslim lands to protect our freedom. To protect our freedom? What freedom is that? Our freedom to scream medical care is socialism, communism and fascism? Our freedom to say our president is a secret Muslim who wants to destroy America? Our freedom to say the president is giving aid and comfort to the enemy? Our freedom to continue the lies of those who started the war? Our freedom to advocate racial profiling? Our freedom to be under warrantless surveillance?

That’s a lot of freedom for somebody. That’s a lot of freedom to scare and blame. That’s a lot of freedom to accuse, bully and threaten. That’s a lot of freedom for powerful economic elites to facilitate Nixonian “mobilization of resentments”.

This forwarded piece of propaganda is a classic example of mobilization of resentments.

Is this the freedom our troops are fighting to protect?

Republicans mobilized the resentments of angry white voters during the civil rights struggle. Republicans are employing the same strategy today with angry white voters. Resentment is being cultivated for an African American president and his entire party. Resentment is fueled by frightening terms like fascism, communism, and death panels. Resentment is mobilized toward the removal, and destruction, of all political opposition to the radical right.

The party targeted by obstruction and mobilization of resentments is the conservative party of the American government. That party would be the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party ifs fairly conservative, likes the status quo and looks after many of the interests of Big Money. Democrats, as a party, didn’t want to step on the toes of the insurance and pharmaceutical industries in the health care debacle.

On the other hand, there’s the party of the radical right. The Republican Party works completely in lock step for the top one percent economic elite of the country. They always support wealthcare for billionaires, and war is often their first choice in foreign policy. The Military Industrial Complex Eisenhower cautioned against is a prime mover, beneficiary, and benefactor of the radical right Republican Party.

This is the purpose of free speech as utilized by right wing interests. It is intended for nothing short of complete nullification of the process of democracy represented by the majority of American voters. Radical right wing ideology is intolerant of any rule outside its narrow interests. It will obstruct, demonize, slander and libel any proponents of civil liberties and government service working for the public good. Education, healthcare, collective bargaining, environmental concerns, and the preservation of American jobs are all targets for the radical right. And their voices have dominated the media through the access provided by their vast wealth and economic leverage.

We have a grossly unbalanced information network dominated by indoctrination from radical right interests. A significant part of the population doubts the American birth of the president. A significant part of the population believes Obama and the Democrats are socialists, communists, and even fascists. A significant part of the population believes in death panels. A significant part of the population believes universal health care is a Nazi-inspired conspiracy.

Yes, as extreme and delusional as this seems, the abuse of free speech has successfully sown the seeds of anger, ignorance, and hatred. We hear them tell us Obama and the Democrats are socialists.

We hear from the same voices the line that Hitler and his henchmen were socialists. Never mind that every extremist in the last century, whether communist or fascist, claimed to be socialist. This is because democratic socialism was the middle ground between fascism and communism. This was what people wanted. The Great Depression taught them the lessons of unregulated capitalism. There had to be a better way. FDR”s New Deal was attacked as socialism but it gave many people jobs, and helped turn our country back from the abyss.

Now the radical right is crowing about Hitler the socialist.

Not much has changed. The radical right wingers still believe what Hitler said. The old Nazi still dupes ‘em.

Those concentration camps were filled with Jews, liberals, educators, socialists, communists, and anyone else who was not a war profiteering Nazi capitalist or enabler.

Or, maybe I’m wrong, and every government that promotes employment, education, and health care is a Nazi regime. Such is the absurdity of the radical right’s twisted logic.

But then, what would we call a regime that launched a war based on lies, without provocation, while profiting financially and politically from such action? What kind of regime would demand obedience and loyalty while imposing warrantless surveillance on dissident civilians in its Fatherland, or “Homeland”?

What kind of regime would have its chief law enforcement official warning, “Americans need to watch what they say”?

What kind of politician would accuse the other party of giving aid and comfort to the enemy? These are tough questions for anyone who can’t remember anything that happened over a year ago, or didn’t hear Dictator Dick recently on Fox propaganda.

Any sane, objective, or informed non-authoritarian personality will see the obvious fascism in the American radical right.

The radical right certainly reduces the freedom of speech to the level of vulgar and hateful propaganda. Where’s the counter balance to all this? Free speech cries out for the cause of equality and Constitutional liberty. But that free speech in support of democracy is in short supply in our corporate dominated media.

There are some progressive voices out in the corporate media, but they are a minority.

Who has the resources, time and access to the legal system to fight for the public’s civil liberties and right to know what the government is doing? This brings us back to the “wretched ACLU”.

Here’s what Glenn Greenwald said about the ACLU.

I can say with certainty that most of the evidence now in the public record has come from compelled disclosures by the ACLU’s FOIA litigations:

DOJ documents authorizing the “use of military force inside the U.S.”

The notorious Yoo and Bybee memos purporting to legalize torture in gruesome detail.

The CIA Inspector General’s Report describing the brutality in how those techniques were used.

The funny thing about this forward was a comment down in the chain from a guy named Mike saying, “You should check some of this stuff out. Snopes.com says this is false and the ACLU (as stupid as they can be at times) have never sued over this issue.”

Yet more proof the radical righties don’t care to read, as much as they don’t care about passing along falsehoods.

Knowing well enough that few would read what I wrote, I still added my two cents and hit “reply all”.

If you read below, you see Mike is right.

Anger and hatred is contagious. It is much easier for angry Right Wingers to spread lies and get other people angry, than it is to investigate the reality of an issue. This is one reason why Dick Cheney is not in prison.

Instead of blindly hating the ACLU, remember they even defended the likes of Rush Limbaugh and Ollie North when they saw their Constitutional rights threatened.

The ACLU is defending through the courts the SAME BILL OF RIGHTS and Constitution our troops defend. If you support the troops, shouldn’t you also support what they swore upon oath to defend?

We have a Constitutional Democratic Republic, not a theocracy. Wrapping oneself in the flag, in religion, and in militarism is NOT conducive to freedom and equality for all.

By the way, you can thank the ACLU for recently stopping the strip searches of your daughters in school. (One girl was accused of possessing a motrin tablet and strip searched for it.)

Please, people, join us and support the ACLU. Become a freedom fighter, because freedom can’t protect itself.

Crossposted at Freedom Rants.

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Undermining The First Amendment By Creeping Christian Prostelyzation

The first amendment to the Constitution of the United States reads as follows:

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.

It is generally interpreted and generally agreed that the Establishment Clause in the first amendment establishes freedom of religion and also establishes that there shall be no state religion. This interpretation has stood the test of time and in fact, been upheld by the United States Supreme Court.

It seems, though, that certain segments of the American public, and certain officials (both government and military) are either not aware of this component of the Bill of Rights, or deliberately choose to ignore it. We have seen examples of this in civil life as government officials, who are first and foremost politicians always pandering to what ever special interests get them elected, enact various rules, policies and laws to intermix matters of religion in to state governance.  This country was founded by people escaping religious persecution and domination, so that its citizens could each, by his own free choice, determine what, if any religious practice he or she would subscribe to.

A great segment of our society seems to have either never learned this lesson of our history, or simply choose to ignore it in their misguided belief that their religion commands them and all other men and women to conform to their one way of life and religion.  They do not understand that no religion that forces its will, or what it believes is its God’s will on the entire human race is something that is sacred, justified or a moral imperative, but rather an unjustified, morally repugnant imposition of their personal will on another human being.  No human being has the right to do that, whether in their God’s name or any other name.

Something that the last eight years should have taught us, and something we may be falling prey to as we move forward in to a new era,  is that the active prostelyzing by any religious group delivered via the offices or channels of government is a recipe for disaster.  Ironically the “War on Terror” is a religious war, started and fomented by religious fundamentalists who would impose their beliefs, their will, upon the rest of the world, believing only in utter conformance to their particular religious and social values.  This is what we have been fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2003.  Yet our government officials, motivated by their personal desires to retain political power and office and subsequently our military officials, who take their lead or their orders from the politicians, have destroyed our credibility as the world paragon of religious and political freedom.

As told by Jason Leopold at The Public Record in his recent story titled “Military Entangled In ‘Extreme Missionary’ Christian Reality Television Show” our elected, and appointed government and military officials have permitted, in fact seemingly encourage, fundamentalist religious groups to prostelyze their particular religious values to citizens of another country that we occupy.  Does it not occur to any of our government officials that by our forcing our own religious and moral values upon Afghanis we are doing the same thing as the Taliban.  We are making the imposition of our will on other people, whether invited by those people or not, just as Al Qaeda tries to impose their values on the rest of human kind.  How incredibly stupid and short sighted it that?

In his article, Leopold relates how fundamentalist religious groups have succeeded in “embedding” themselves in to military units on station in the war zone:

The popular reality series, “Travel the Road,” aired on the Trinity Broadcasting Network and featured Will Decker and Tim Scott, two so-called “extreme” missionaries who travel the globe to “preach the Gospel to the ends of the earth and encourage the church to be active in the Great Commission.”

The other cable program green-lit by the Pentagon is “God’s Soldier,” which aired in September on the Military Channel, and was filmed at Forward Operating Base McHenry in Hawijah, Iraq. It features an Army chaplain openly promoting fundamentalist Christianity to active-duty U.S. soldiers in Iraq in violation of the U.S. Constitution…

Part of the second season of “Travel the Road” was filmed on location in Afghanistan and aired in April 2006, where Decker and Scott were embedded with the Army, and shows numerous scenes of the men accompanying U.S. Army soldiers on patrol.  The missionaries are also filmed evangelizing the local Afghans by distributing New Testaments to them in their native Darri language.

In one scene, an Army Chaplain named Capt. Brad Hanna of the Oklahoma National Guard, talks about the possibility of a “revival” in Afghanistan and says he frequently speaks to Afghans about converting to Christianity. Hanna was made a full-time support chaplain for the Oklahoma National Guard after he returned from Afghanistan.

Additionally, Decker and Scott prominently cite SSgt. Sheldon Hoyt, who was stationed in Afghanistan with the Oklahoma National Guard’s 45th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Battalion, 179th Infantry Regiment, as playing a hands-on role in helping the missionaries facilitate their proselytizing as opposed to simply being a tour guide of sorts…

Earlier this year, U.S. military personnel launched a major initiative to convert thousands of Iraqi citizens to Christianity also by distributing Bibles and other fundamentalist Christian literature translated into Arabic to Iraqi Muslims…

The distribution of the Bibles and Christian literature came at the same time that U.S. Marines guarding the entrance to the city of Fallujah handed out “witnessing coins” to Sunni Muslims entering the city that read in Arabic on one side: “Where will you spend eternity?” and “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16″ on the other…

“God’s Soldier” was co-produced by Jerusalem Productions, a British production company whose “primary aim is to increase understanding and knowledge of the Christian religion and to promote Christian values, via the broadcast media, to as wide an audience as possible.”

Before “God’s Soldier” aired on Sept. 10, the Discovery Channel, which owns the Military Channel, advertised the program by stating that it would feature several Army Chaplains from a wide variety of denominations discussing their work in the military.

“Follow a group of U.S. Army Chaplains from different faiths on a tour of duty in Iraq as they comfort wounded and dying soldiers, reassure panicked and depressed soldiers, as well debriefing those soldiers that return from their tours of duty,” the marketing literature for “God’s Soldier” said.

Instead, “God’s Soldier,” zeroed in on one chaplain, Capt.. Charles Popov, who appears in the first scene of the program in a godlike pose looking down upon the military base and urging soldier to attend Christian Bible study. [Astute readers will note that the Popov family name is a familiar one in terms of religious fundamentalists and tent meetings. -B.F.]

“Hey this is God,” Chaplain Popov says. “Come to Bible study tonight at 1900. Purpose Driven Life. You only have 25,000 days in your life, and probably half of it’s gone.”

The author of the book, “Purpose Driven Life,” that Popov referenced is Rick Warren, the leader of a fundamentalist mega-church in Southern California. In a recent interview with Fox News pundit Sean Hannity, Warren said, “the Bible says that evil cannot be negotiated with. It has to just be stopped…. In fact, that is the legitimate role of government. The Bible says that God puts government on earth to punish evildoers. Not good-doers. Evildoers.”

For the full context of all of this, Leopold’s full article is a must read.  But don’t stop there, in a follow-up story, Leopold reports that this de facto policy of encouraging prostelyzation may continue in the new administration being sworn in on January 21.  In his story titled “Prostelyzing In the Military Likely To Continue Under Obama”, Leopold relates:

But, now that Obama has decided to keep Robert Gates on as Secretary of Defense—and he’s embraced Warren—it is virtually guaranteed that fundamentalist Christianity will continue to permeate throughout the military just as it has during George W. Bush’s eight years in office.

Despite being named in several lawsuits filed against the Pentagon for allowing military chaplains to proselytize to soldiers fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the numerous letters he has received  from civil rights organizations and government watchdog groups since he was tapped as Defense Secretary two years ago, letters demanding that he launch investigations into widespread proselytizing, Gates has failed to issue a response of any kind to these groups and has refused to take steps to address the matter. Meanwhile, soldiers continue to have fundamentalist Christianity shoved down their throats.

Of the nearly 11,000 soldiers that have lodged complaints about proselytizing with just one of the various government watchdog groups, the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, reports that about 96 percent have identified themselves as Christian, however, there are numerous cases in which atheist and Jewish soldiers have said they were subjected to  Christian prayer sessions and proselytizing by chaplains despite their objections.

This is all terrifying to freedom loving, individual Americans, who rightly fear the establishment of any religion as “the state religion”.  Religion has a place in each individual’s life at a time and a place of each individual’s choosing, but it has no place being forced upon anyone.  The recent brouhaha on these pages about Rick Warren performing an invocation at the presidential inaugural maybe be viewed as a bit over reactive by some, and when it comes down to it, I can ignore that small interlude, as I have done so in similar situations for my entire life, but why should it be foisted on me in the first place during an act of state ceremony, and it does make me fear what else religious extremists might want to force upon me, will I, one day be forced to wear a religious insignia on my clothing, have all of my worldly possessions seized, have my friends and family torn away from me, and find myself marching to a gas chamber, all in service to some one’s skewed belief that their God is God and is the only God?

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Why bother with a Constitution?

More Power to you, Mr. President? Actually, we the American people do not think so. We believe we still have the constitution.  According to Matt Berman, who writes “The Daily Muck” (9/15/08) at TPM Muckraker,

A new AP-National Constitution Center poll shows that a majority of Americans are opposed to giving more power to the President, even at the expense of national security or the economy. The poll shows that two-thirds of Americans are opposed to shifting the balance of government towards the executive, evidence of wide-ranging skepticism of the advances in executive power during the Bush years. The poll also found more of a split when Americans were asked if Congress should be awarded greater power in times of economic or national security hardships. (AP)

I am a Constitution Voter Campaign — At the ACLU Blog, , 9/15/08, Caroline Fredrickson on Salon Radio, on the Constitution Voter Campaign talks about how useful it would be to have the presidential candidates talk about Constitutional issues. To quote:

Today on Salon Radio with Glenn Greenwald is an interview with Caroline Fredrickson, Director of the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. Caroline talks about the launch of our new campaign, “I’m a Constitution Voter,” our effort to get candidates to discuss constitutional issues during this election season.

Our current president (OCP) started ignoring the Constitution by spying on Americans without a legal warrant some time ago.  A great post illustrates an example.  It cleverly and succinctly summarizes the new Barton Gellman material, with a “quick stock of some of the vitals,” the five main points of the revelations. It came from ACLU Blog, and was written by Amanda Simon (9/15/08): “Ashcroft Defends Constitution in Spying Clusterfrack. Happy Opposite Day!”

Our current president (OCP) had massive help from the private sector in shredding our Constitution privacy protection — At the website, Dandelion Salad [by Tom Burghardt, of Global Research, September 11, 2008], using another source, “Antifascist Calling…” comes the sordid story: “Multibillion “Homeland Security” Market: Telecoms Assist in NSA Spy Operations.”  To quote:

What do the NSA’s warrantless wiretapping program and enterprising capitalist grifters have in common? Workarounds…and lots of them. The kind that aren’t covered by any law.

Two highly-disturbing reports by CNET and the London Review of Books describe how government intelligence agencies and niche telecom providers have teamed-up to subvert our privacy rights-while providing security agencies with real-time cell phone tracking capabilities.

. . . And with a swarming multitude of new companies crawling out of the woodwork to “service” the “homeland security” market, why its a snap. Firms such as ThorpeGlen, VASTech, Kommlabs, and Aqsacom all sell what CNET’s Chris Soghoian describes as “off-the-shelf data-mining solutions to government spies interested in analyzing mobile-phone calling records and real-time location information.”

Called “passive-probing” data mining, these companies are carving-out lucrative niche markets. Only there’s nothing “passive” about these intrusive operations undertaken in concert with a veritable army of state and corporate spooks.

. . . And there you have it. Niche telecom providers are the latest players in the West’s burgeoning “terrorism industry,” one that “keeps us safe” by destroying our privacy and our rights with hefty profits all around. Call it another seamless victory for the market’s “invisible hand” that clenches as it morphs into the state’s iron fist wrapped in American flags and blood-drenched corporate logos.

Congress has sometimes been complicit with OCP in the business of warrantless wiretapping, even when Democrats were in charge.  To give them their due, however, they have held many hearings revealing some the truth, about the extent of damage to the principles of the Constitution’s Bill of Rights.  For example, hats off to Senator Russ Feingold (D-WI) for recently holding this Judiciary subcommittee hearing: “Restoring the Rule of Law#.” It was this desire to dial back the executive power overreach that was Bush’s primary governing philosophy that led Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) to call together nearly a dozen experts Tuesday morning for the Judiciary subcommittee hearing.  To quote:

Some Democrats — frustrated at banging their heads against a wall much of these last eight years, as they’ve watched George W. Bush run roughshod over the Constitution and the rule of law — are determined to return some semblance of order once the president leaves office next year.

The FBI became the agency charged with domestic intelligence gathering during the post-9/11 reorganization of the government’s intelligence and homeland security programs. But like other organizations in the executive branch, they have become less and less interested in civil liberties over the years. The following story is an illustration of what Congress is trying to do about that.  “Mueller Grilled Over Claims New FBI Powers Amounts to Racial Profiling, More Spying,*” by Robert Chlala for The Public Record on September 19, 2008. To quote:

. . . what the new framework Mueller described would actually do is allow agents to begin “assessments” and surveillance without first obtaining factual evidence. Additionally, the guidelines would permit agents to use race and ethnicity as a factor for triggering investigations.

Despite the concerns raised during the hearings and pressure from civil rights groups, Attorney General Michael Mukasey plans on signing the guidelines into law on Oct. 1.

These guidelines represent only some of a series of changes in law enforcement set in place the last year, increasing the power of federal, state and local authorities. Other new policies include the proposal to eliminate restrictions on local and state law enforcement intelligence gathering, the recruitment of over 15,000 new informants, and the creation of local-level “fusion centers” that gather and monitor masses of criminal and non-criminal information on individuals.

While the FBI guidelines have not been released to the general public, several members of Congress and key staffers from the Judiciary Committees of the House and Senate pressed and received limited access to the draft. Department of Justice briefings and a speech by Attorney General Michael Mukasey in August also shed light on the topic.

Evidently protest is not protected in the copy of the Constitution carried by OCP. The Secret Service is under the Treasury Department in the executive branch.  They are charged with the protection of the President and Vice President, as well as of the candidates currently running for those offices.  They are very good at taking their marching orders from OCP, who ignores Constitutional rights under the guise of maintaining safety.  This is a perfect example: “Secret Service order police to block McCain protesters*” was a post at The Raw Story by David Edwards and Muriel Kane on September 17. To quote:

. . . Leaders of the protest, which had been arranged and publicized by local unions and the Ohio Democratic Party, said that as many as several hundred people had been expected to attend, but police were not letting them through roadblocks surrounding the area.

ACLU Calls for Investigation into Civil Liberties Violations at RNC – During the Republican National Convention there were mass arrests, police raids on private homes and the detention of several journalists. This comes from my ACLU newsletter, and is a reminder why I am so grateful for the ACLU’s long battle to protect our rights under the Constitution. To quote:

“Attempts by law enforcement to squelch lawful political speech and stifle the press have no place in our democracy and are unacceptable,” said Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the ACLU. “Political conventions should be a showcase for free expression, not a venue for bullying and intimidation.”

The ACLU specifically called for an investigation into possible violations of the First and Fourth Amendments, including:

* The arrest of reporters trying to gather the news;
* The mass arrest of hundreds of peaceful protestors;
* The surveillance and subsequent raids on several activist groups and private homes; and
* The confiscation by law enforcement agents of constitutionally-protected private property.

The ACLU affiliate office in Minnesota has assembled legal counsel for many of the reporters and peaceful protestors arrested at the protests and has also filed a lawsuit in federal court calling for the release of boxes of literature that were confiscated during raids.

Why bother with the Constitution at all when Homeland Security, under the cover of Keeping Us Safe, can intrude into Sesame Street, of all things?  I give up.  “Homeland Security, Sesame Style*,” by Jeff Dufour and Patrick Gavin, September 18, 2008, at DC Examiner To quote:

In a move that will make Bush administration detractors bring back those duct tape jokes again, the Department of Homeland Security has partnered up with the famous children’s show.

“We all want our children to feel safe in this world,” said Meryl Chertoff, wife of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, at a ceremony held at the John Tyler Elementary School to announce the partnership. “And who better to do that than our Sesame Street friends, Grover and Rosita!”

. . . As you can imagine, the partnership is aimed at children, and seeks to encourage family preparedness plans in the case of emergencies.

Hat Tip Key: Regular contributors of links to leads are “betmo*” and Jon#.

(Cross-posted at The Reaction.)

My “creativity and dreaming” post today is at Making Good Mondays.

Technorati tags: news news and politics politics bush constitution domestic surveillance fbi aclu bill of rights

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If you’re the wrong color, religion or ethnicity-You might be a terrorist.

Add to that..you don’t even have to be suspected of a terrorist crime. Profiling is fearmongering at its best. To do profiling without even suspecting the individual of a crime first goes against the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. Yet the FBI is considering this method of ‘ferreting out’ terrorists.From Jurist:

The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) Thursday blasted a proposed plan that would allow Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents to consider a person’s race, religion, or ethnicity in deciding whether to open a terrorism investigation. CAIR decried the plan as “unconstitutional and un-American,” saying that it could allow security agents to target Muslims and Arab-Americans for harassment. A US Department of Justice spokesman responding to press reports on the plan – which has neither been finalized nor formally announced – denied that the new guidelines would allow profiling, noting that ethnicity is only one of many factors to be considered and that it is only when all those factors as a whole are deemed suspicious that an investigation can be opened. Under the proposed guidelines as explained to AP by unnamed sources, agents would be able to initiate investigations even in instances where there is no evidence of a crime, something required under current guidelines. AP has more. Fox News has additional coverage.

Rights complaints by Muslims in the US rose 25 percent in 2006, according to an annual report on civil rights released by CAIR last year. The group attributed the jump to a rise in anti-Muslim bias. The majority of reported complaints came against government agencies, including the DOJ.

Its wrong on every level m’dear reader.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.-Ben Franklin 1755

On this day in which we ‘celebrate’ uber-nationalism and militarism..think about the Bill of Rights and the signing of our Constitution. Think about what is more important..our freedoms or our perceived safety from those faceless, nameless terrorists that BushCo keeps banging into our heads 365 days a year.

If the top story doesn’t piss you off, then try the next one on for size…also from Jurist:

Federal judge orders Google to turn over YouTube user data in Viacom lawsuit

A judge for the US District Court for the Southern District of New York Tuesday ordered Google to turn over databases containing logs of every time any IP address has accessed any YouTube video. Viacom had requested access to the databases in a lawsuit brought for copyright infringement, arguing that Google and YouTube knowingly made copyrighted material available on their websites without permission. District Judge Louis Stanton rejected Google’s claim that turning over user information would invade users’ privacy in violation of the Video Privacy Protection Act, finding that an IP address or YouTube username alone was not enough to identify users. The court did, however, reject Viacom’s bid to compel Google to turn over larger databases which include user-provided text summaries of hosted videos. Technology and privacy advocates sharply criticized the order, saying that it would set a dangerous precedent for internet privacy. Computerworld has more. BBC News has additional coverage.

Google has recently started to push for stronger online privacy protection after strong criticism by privacy groups. In September 2007, Google called for stronger privacy legislation at a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) conference. In June 2007, Google announced that it would reduce retention of user search data to 18 months in response to a European Commission investigation into whether the company complied with EU privacy rules.

What I took from this is..the EU’s privacy rules are stronger than ours evidently. Go figure..Now, a word from Dennis Kucinich:

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far removed

i am going offline tomorrow. i should have my computer up and running again by the middle of next week. my moving folks are coming tuesday but the cable guy is hooking things up at the new place tomorrow- so i will be here in the emptying apartment sans internets. and you know what? i am not sorry. i continue to be amazed and disgusted at the left’s capacity to embrace the tactics of the right. i never advocate rolling over and taking crap that other people dish out. if you can’t stand the heat, stay the fuck out of the kitchen. bloggers need a thick skin to withstand the sheer volume of ignorance and outright stupidity that’s out there. but you don’t have to resort to right wing tactics to succeed. to do so is classless, tasteless and just plain lazy.

i have blogged before on how very disillusioned i have been by the left wing being little different from the right wing. well, i think that the neo cons have gotten the last laugh because these days- the democratic party is sharing one brain cell amongst the millions of people who belong. i can’t say one single good thing that has come out of this ridiculous sham of a primary. not one. the democratic party is perhaps the lesser of two evils between the two party system- but by how much? dez was right in her speech when she said that we shouldn’t strategize and settle for this system. i am changing my party affiliation to nothing or independent depending on what new york lets me do because i can’t stand any of the political parties out there. they certainly don’t represent me.

this primary has been the nail in the coffin for me because of the bloggers. i expect low blows and dirty tactics from politicians- they are nothing more than corporate toadies with a penchant for power. i expected more from the people who changed the course of the 2006 election cycle. instead, i have been treated to censorship, name calling, smearing, lying, trolling and you name it. any of the right wing tactics we called out in 2006- well, the left wing bloggers rolled them out for this primary. as a whole, i am disgusted and i will not be a part of this anymore. there will be little to no change because you are simply changing the window dressing of the white house. the congress will be the same political hacks that always get elected and the justices remain no matter what. the corporates are simply relabeling everything eco friendly and green in order to continue to trick people into the mindless consuming- and the world is still experiencing ecosystemic collapses at an alarming rate. there has been an increase in greenhouse gases this year alone and we are sniping at each other over whose minister is the worst- or which candidate wears a goddamned lapel pin.

and yet, we, the people,- we, the democratic party,- bought right in. yep. we let clinton and her ilk manipulate us. we let obama and his ‘changeineers’ woo us with rhetoric. we have ignored the secret prisons and the multistate roundups and the continued erosion of our civil liberties because we bought into the distractions. and we committed the same infractions on our blogs. we discriminated and we censored and we bullied.

and we should be ashamed. deeply ashamed. because we were supposed to be better than this. we are supposed to be the party for the ‘little people’- and we are no better than the people who would rule us. and we won’t see that. and we should be ashamed of ourselves.

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