Dissidence in a time of "terrorism" - John Kirakou discusses our loss of freedom

[truedelphi]

http://otherwords.org/how-the-government-made-me-a-dissident/
Dissidence in a time of "Terrorism" - John Kiriakou

OtherWords columnist John Kiriakou is an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies and the winner of the 2015 PEN Center USA First Amendment award. OtherWords.org.


When the government hired me in 1988, it was widely understood that if the National Security Agency intercepted the communications of an American citizen — even accidentally — heads would roll. Congress had to be informed, an investigation would be launched, and the intercept had to be purged from the system.

Today, the NSA has an enormous facility in Utah big enough to save copies of every email, text message, and phone conversation made by every American for the next 500 years. You can bet they intend to.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t want my government trampling my civil liberties like this.

Still, people sometimes ask me why they should care if the authorities read their email or listen to their phone calls. “I have nothing to hide,” they say, “so why should I worry about it?” (Much more at above link)

After reading the article, I realized that a friend sending me a significant quote probably made by Karl Rove was all the more chilling:




from Daily Kos posts on 9/11 --
http://www.dailykos.com/stories/2015/11/13/1449558/-Politico-Bush-administration-ignored-far-more-detailed-warnings-about-9-11-that-previously-revealed#comment_58275664

The aide said that guys like me were "in what we call the reality-based community," which he defined as people who "believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.* "That's not the way the world really works anymore." He continued "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality—judiciously, as you will—we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors … and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

*Rove speaking/paraphrased. Wiki 2, clarification:

The source of the term is a quotation in an October 17, 2004, The New York Times Magazine article by writer Ron Suskind, "Faith, Certainty and the Presidency of George W. Bush," quoting an unnamed aide to George W. Bush (later attributed to Karl Rove )

[Thinkingabout]

1. After the events in Paris it will be necessary to step up the pace of surveillance, we do not live

in the 50's anymore. Violence has overtaken our peaceful ways.

[truedelphi]

6. A society held in the thrall of a negative but powerful force like fear cannot

prosper as a culture. Fear can only suck the life out of the inhabitants of that society, making the people all much less than what their true potential might offer.

But with the philosophy that you mention, the military industrial surveillance complex will certainly continue in adding a lot of money to its coffers.

BTW, it is pretty much the McCarthyism of the 1950's that we are returning to.

[Thinkingabout]

7. Prosper, how in the hell are we going to prosper with a group like ISIS killing and

Creating the height of violence? Prosper is being able to walk freely on the streets, able to have a job to provide for our families. How prosper with a bullet riddled body?

[truedelphi]

13. AND JUST where the heck did ISIS come from?

And if it is such a damn extremist, anti-everyone-who-is-not-Orthodox-Muslim, then why no attacks against their number one enemy Israel?

Something about the whole thing stinks to high heaven.

[Thinkingabout]

14. We know what they are, we know they are violent beyond reason, now that we know this what is your

Your next suggestion which will nit stink to high heaven?

[truedelphi]

15. One big irony is that the very people whose neo con thinking brings them to the

Point where they could care less about whether or not they have civil liberties, that group would be taking to the streets if our government tried to shut down their cell phones, texting devices, GPS devices and selfie ability.

What a strange group of people most Americans now happen to be!

[Thinkingabout]

16. Let me ask you this, if we can not walk down the streets, etc, do what we want, would this be

Denying our freedoms? It will be to me, I would like to hear a valid suggestion on how to accomplish preventing a group like ISIS from denying our freedoms. BTW, have you ever served in combat?

[truedelphi]

18. Your argument doesn't hold weight, largely because all we do is

Put money into security.

Did the thirty one trillions of dollars, thrown into our Nation's Defense Funds from late fifties until 2001, prevent terrorists from attacking on Nine Eleven?

Did all the vast amounts of monies given to various agencies across the globe stop the terrorists last week?

[Thinkingabout]

21. I would rather be safe than sorry, if we had not changed airport screening there would be more

Problems. Changes was made after hijackings, there will be more changes. If security does not do any good then why are you so against security measures, apparently it is a waste of time by your standards so it does not hurt.

[99th_Monkey]

2. Yep. The People's voice-of-last-resort is to take to the streets, like OWS did.

and we saw how that worked out, with agent provocateurs infiltrating, aggressive FBI &
police surveillance, and finally forcefully and brutally crushing it.

[Thinkingabout]

8. Take to the streets, and this is going to stop ISIS, how?

[99th_Monkey]

9. I'm much more worried about the 1st Amendment & civil liberties, than I am about ISIS

The War on Terror, like all war, is a racket, ginned-up to glut the MIC,
bankrupt the US Treasury and undermine civil liberties.

Which btw is why OWS took to the streets.

[Thinkingabout]

10. The christian group on the mountain may not have known about ISIS, it did not stop ISIS from

Attacking them, killing the men, kidnapping the women and girls to be raped and subject to violence. I like my rights also, life liberty and a pursuit of happiness.

[Octafish]

3. Thank you, truedelphi. These are par'lous times for Liberty.

Why:

The goal of wholesale surveillance, as Arendt wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” is not, in the end, to discover crimes, “but to be on hand when the government decides to arrest a certain category of the population.” And because Americans’ emails, phone conversations, Web searches and geographical movements are recorded and stored in perpetuity in government databases, there will be more than enough “evidence” to seize us should the state deem it necessary. This information waits like a deadly virus inside government vaults to be turned against us. It does not matter how trivial or innocent that information is. In totalitarian states, justice, like truth, is irrelevant.

-- Chris Hedges, http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_last_gasp_of_american_democracy_20140105

Wonder what list we're on, just for knowing who Kiriakou is?

[truedelphi]

19. The notions that Arendt was mentioning

Are exactly what chill me to the bone.

The fact that we are entering into a new era of RoboCop and drones implementing security measures doesn't help assure me either.

[Octafish]

20. Consider those with whom they've done business.

"Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit." -- Edwin Black

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

[struggle4progress]

4. This is the John Kiriakou who made a name for himself by going on TV

a few years back as an apologist for Bush's torture program, busily explaining to us all how torture was making us safer



There's every reason to regard him as an unprincipled opportunist

[JEB]

5. All that watching and listening and recording and could not stop Paris.

Extremist repression is winning. Corporate media is whipping up the fear. Stock market smells another war.

[truedelphi]

12. Excellent point.

And then, real cynics like me remember how all through the 1980s when bombs ripped through portions of Italy. Results were always the same - innocent civilians killed, never big wigs of rival parties, just civilians.

The media told us that the incidents were the result of activities of the damn extremist members of the Communist Party.

The bombings always happened just in time to throw the election to the RW Italian party.

Then in the 1990's, it all came out that the Italian bombings were under the control of the CIA.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

11. Erect bogeyman, wave flag, sound tough, send in the troops and cheerlead.

Works every time.

[truebrit71]

17. And the fact that we have so many on DU that buy in...

...is just depressing...