Academia Signs Up to Track Down Dissent (Chris Floyd-Truthout)

[DemoTex]

Sentimental Education: Academia Signs Up to Track Down Dissent
By Chris Floyd, TO UK Correspondent
t r u t h o u t | Report

Tuesday 17 October 2006

I.

Why is the United States government spending millions of dollars to track down critics of George W. Bush in the press? And why have major American universities agreed to put this technology of tyranny into the state's hands?

At the most basic level, of course, both questions are easily answered: 1) Power. 2) Money. The Bush administration wants to be able to root out - and counteract - any dissenting noises that might put a crimp in its ongoing crusade for "full spectrum dominance" of global affairs, while the august institutions of higher learning involved - the universities of Cornell, Pittsburgh and Utah - crave the federal green that keeps them in clover.

But beyond these grubby realities, there are many other disturbing aspects of this new program - which is itself only part of a much broader penetration of American academia by the Department of Homeland Security.

As with so many of the Bush measures that have quietly stripped away America's liberties, this one too is beginning with a whimper, not a bang: a modest $2.4 Department of Homeland Security million grant to develop "sentiment analysis" software that will allow the government's "security organs" to sift millions of articles for "negative opinions of the United States or its leaders in newspapers and other publications overseas," as the New York Times reported earlier this month. Such negative opinions must be caught and catalogued because they could pose "potential threats to the nation," security apparatchiks told the Times. (More .. :scared: )

http://www.truthout.org/docs_2006/101706A.shtml

A day of truly bad news. And few - very few - "get" it. We are a hair away from this nation being totally lost to any peaceful means of repair. I do hope there are some good military men and women studying this shit .. and planning. Planning. Planning.

[nam78_two]

1. yikes/nt

[scarletwoman]

2. Nah. There's no fucking hope. This is one seriously fucked up country.

My only "hope" is that there will eventually be such an overwhelming ecological breakdown on this planet that it will render all the geo-political machinations of the militarist/corporatists moot.

The U.S. is a country in such deep denial of its true nature as an ignorant barbaric genocidal culture that I find no reason to believe that an awakened consciousness can develop absent a truly massive upheaval.

The only "hope" we have is what we can create for ourselves -- learn how to survive with minimal resources, pass all you know of the truth onto your children, live your life in love with life.

sw

[tom_paine]

3. Wow, I think we are deep in mid-transition phase now

Transition from freedom to tyranny, that is.

(Are my semantic intentions plain enough, Busheviks?)

A triggering event, that is all that remains. Then the bars snap up over the doors and windows, metaphorically-speaking.

Yes, DemoTex, may God help us all, the only question remaining is how bad will it get in the end.

There is still the hope that things can be restored. Always the hope. If the flame of liberty must flicker dimly let it do so in the hearts and memories of millions who preserve Old America more so than the bloated, rotting carcasses of great institutions now cravenly bending the knee where Free People once debated and jostled in the 'turbulent sea of liberty', as several of the Founding Fathers called it.

Jeez, I'm o-rating already, but I guess if this isn't an occasion for lofty words, the dying out of the greatest nation in modern times, then what occasion is?

A sadness so powerful, even on the eve of what would DEFINITELY be a HUGE victory if votes were freely cast and properly counted, it defies full description.

Even if the Democrats take both houses of the Imperial Congress, there is still so much work to be done to repair the Constitution and the very fabric of the United States of America. JOB ONE: De-privatize and fix the voting system! Make voting a national holiday. How about tax credits for participating in an election as an observer? This will lure more party neutral people to the jobs.

Anyway, I am rambling. And the chances are small that the Democrats will be permitted to take even one house of Congress.

[LibertyorDeath]

4. Chris Floyd is a realist he paints a very bleak future

based on the FACTS he see before him.

Thanks for this

Big Rec!!

[Diane R]

5. kicked and recommended n/t

[leveymg]

6. Does anyone here remember the Smith Act & Tailgunner Joe?

Things were far worse in the early 1950s. There was a consensus then that the Constitution had to be flayed to protect America from the International Communist Menace.

Today, there's no such national consensus. The Right is in steep decline. People are waking up. The black cloud of tyranny is just the unpleasant smog of GOP farts trying to outrun criminal indictment or political extinction.

We'll make it through this one, too. Be of good cheer, brothers and sisters.

[Karenina]

7. Kick!

:kick: