CNET has learned that the FBI is quietly pushing a plan requiring social-networking Web sites, providers of VoIP, instant messaging services, and Web e-mail to alter their code and ensure their products are wiretap-friendly. These so-called ‘backdoors’ would become mandatory should amendments to the existing CALEA wiretap laws be allowed to pass.
Yeah, because that’s just what we need for more security: a secretive government agency with unfettered access into our private lives. (more…)
Libya’s Rebel Commander Abdel Hakim Belhaj – the one who led the Gaddafi-ousting coup in Tripoli – has something of a questionable reputation. If he weren’t the head of the NATO-backed rebellion, he’d likely sit on one of America’s terrorist watch lists.
The former head of a jihad organization with ties to al Qaeda and the Taliban, Belhaj recently told the NY Times that he was tortured and imprisoned for 6 years by the CIA. Whoops! Well, no hard feelings, right?
Still, Belhaj’s bombshell pales compared to that dropped by Former US Congressman Walter Fauntroy, who claims to have witnessed NATO forces storming small villages late at night, beheading and butchering the residents in a campaign of fear.
These allegations surfaced yesterday, and the story has all but dematerialized, which makes it seem unfounded. Maybe Congressman Fauntroy is just getting his affairs in order before releasing the video he shot.
Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m positive the vast majority filling the ranks of NATO – and the military in general – are very good people. But NATO is just another face of the Military Industrial Complex. And this makes it something to be mistrusted and heavily scrutinized.
Consistently, wars are sold to the public for one reason or another – to protect civilians, to defeat terrorists, to ensure freedom – but they always end up being about money and power.
See, there’s tons of money in manufacturing the tools of war, and there’s plenty more moola to rebuild nations, so that’s reason enough for some business people to want to stir up the pot.
But armed conflict goes deeper.
For one, multinational corporations get to divvy up the juicy resources from the vanquished nations. They can also use the opportunity to privatize anything useful from the public commons. On top of this, the successful invaders get to pick the new leaders, like this Belhaj goon, who could end up selling out their own people to foreign interests.
Hey! Here’s an idea! Why not open up the war machine to transparency?
If what the defense industry people are doing is so entirely just, then let everyone see what happens in a war zone. Show us how much it’s costing, and what is being done on a day to day basis. Film the atrocities, and see if the public can stomach what is being done in their name.
No? Can’t do it? Well then, the whole stinking thing is a RACKET!!!
This week, drawing from the Military’s “Manufacture Your Enemies” playbook, the FBI have foiled another terrorist plot masterminded by the FBI themselves, in what has become a pattern.
That’s right, an American government agency has been coercing US civilians to take part in terrorist actions. When their patsy ultimately takes the bait, the FBI swoops in then boasts to the world about the terrorist plot they’ve successfully thwarted.
It seems absurd, doesn’t it? Government agents framing and entrapping their own population… which Orwell novel are we reading here?
What is perhaps more unnerving is the overall lack of dissent over this. Here is another huge red flag that tyranny is descending upon North America. Yet too many people remain unaware, disinterested, or worse, they believe the FBI’s latest shenanigans to be one more necessary step in the struggle to keep Americans safe.
Fortunately we aren’t all that oblivious.
A growing number of us know what can happen when governments, corporations and the system gain too much power. As our numbers grow, so too do our tools to unite, coordinate and mobilize. The threat of totalitarianism is looming, but the means to fend off this threat is blossoming as well.
Let’s be optimists, and believe that humankind will rise to the occasion to ensure an open future for all!
