Police State

All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama

"Even if all the critics were proved wrong, even if the CIA, NSA, FBI, and every other branch of the federal government had been improbably filled, top to bottom, with incorruptible patriots constitutionally incapable of wrongdoing, this would still be so: The American people have no idea who the president will be in 2017. What we know is that the people in charge will possess the capacity to be tyrants -- to use power oppressively and unjustly -- to a degree that Americans in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000 could've scarcely imagined. To an increasing degree, we're counting on having angels in office and making ourselves vulnerable to devils." Continue reading →

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Hawaii’s Forgotten Internment Camps

"While the Roosevelt administration's internment of Japanese-American citizens on the West coast is well-documented, the story of Hawaii's internment camps was buried for years. Jane Kurahara, a researcher at the Japanese Cultural Center of Hawaii, made it her personal mission to uncover as much as she could about Hawaii's mysterious internment camps. And, amazingly, Kurahara and the cultural center eventually discovered ruins of a long-forgotten camp on Oʻahu. Reason TV spoke with Niiya and Kurahara about the history of Hawaii's internment camps and visited the newly discovered ruins, which will be open to the public soon." Continue reading →

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Supreme Court affirms Rumsfeld’s immunity from torture lawsuits

"U.S. military officials who engaged in ordering or carrying out the torture of individuals in custody can now rely upon an across-the-board legal defense that protects them from being sued for committing what amounts to an international crime, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling on Monday. The court affirmed an earlier ruling by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals, which held in 2012 that former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld could not be sued for personally approving torture techniques used against prisoners held during the Bush administration’s terror war." Continue reading →

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The NSA’s Secret Cops, Known as “Q Group,” are Hunting Down Edward Snowden

"The people tasked with hunting down Edward Snowden work for the Associate Directorate for Security and Counterintelligence, reports The Daily Beast. The directorate is sometimes known as 'the Q Group.' The security and counterintelligence directorate serves as the NSA’s internal police force. It has the authority to interview an NSA contractor or employee’s known associates, and even to activate a digital dragnet capable of finding out where a target travels, what the target has purchased, and the target’s online activity, reports DB. Bottom line: The data collection that Snowden leaked about is now being used to track him." Continue reading →

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Where Was Mainstream News While the Surveillance State Was Expanding?

"An honest report would explain how what is obviously one of the biggest stories of the modern era has gone unreported by Reuters and by the mainstream media in general. An honest report would address the aggregate courage of the alternative media in covering the rise of the surveillance state while being marginalized by the formal media and disparaged as being agents of 'conspiracy theories.' But instead, we get articles like this one, reporting that is good and serious as far as it goes ... but it surely doesn't go very far. What's needed is investigate reporting. Instead, we are presented with a kind of catalogue." Continue reading →

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Ron Paul: Should We Be Shocked At Government Spying?

"Some of us were arguing back in 2001 with the introduction of the so-called PATRIOT Act that it would pave the way for massive U.S. government surveillance — not targeting terrorists but rather aimed against American citizens. We were told we must accept this temporary measure to provide government the tools to catch those responsible for 9/11. That was nearly 12 years and at least four wars ago. We should know by now that when it comes to government power-grabs, we never go back to the status quo even when the 'crisis' has passed. That part of our freedom and civil liberties once lost is never regained." Continue reading →

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Intelligence officials overheard joking about how Glenn Greenwald should be ‘disappeared’

"A group of intelligence officials were overheard yesterday discussing how the National Security Agency worker who leaked sensitive documents to a reporter last week should be 'disappeared.' Foreign policy analyst and editor at large of The Atlantic, Steve Clemons, tweeted about the 'disturbing' conversation after listening in to four men who were sitting near him as he waited for a flight at Washington's Dulles airport. According to Clemons, the men had been attending an event hosted by the Intelligence and National Security Alliance." Continue reading →

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