...and how the spying can be--and likely is being--used to smear/intimidate/blackmail all kinds of people, and ruin their lives and potential influence, just by that means alone--the NSA has the capability, now, to PLANT data into personal computers of which the individual is completely unaware, that can result in prosecutions and imprisonment, if the NSA doesn't like you, or as a 'favor,' say, to prosecutors who need to up their crime busting stats, or for other purposes, such as tampering with the judicial system (say, changing witness testimony).
We also don't know--and probably can't know, our government has become so secretive--WHO the NSA is WORKING FOR. We certainly know, generally, that they are working for the profit of "military-industrial complex" but all sorts of 'favors' may be handed out to private transglobal corporations or even individual billionaires, to smear, intimidate, blackmail and ruin people THEY don't like, with personal info or with dirty tricks.
Our government isn't our government any more. It has been PRIVATIZED--from the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines to the trade secret drone bombers. The privatization of government, especially of the military, has been going on for some time now. It's what President Eisenhower warned us against in his famous last speech in which he entered the phrase "military-industrial complex" into our political language. But, with the Bush-Cheney-Rumsfeld junta, it has been made SO MUCH worse than it ever has been. There is no longer ANY distinction between government and corporate. We are governed BY corporations FOR THEIR OWN PROFIT. And these buggers who make up the "National Security Agency" are part of a "revolving door" of servants to corporate PROFIT.
In addition to a mishmash of 'personal' favors that are being doled out by the spying/dirty tricks agencies, we need to worry about who/what is behind all this--behind the ruination of our democracy that we can plainly see, every day--for instance, in a Congress with a SINGLE DIGIT approval rating (8%, was it, recently?).
I don't think it's just a wild chaos of personal profiteering--though I do think that there are contending parties and rivalries within the MIC that make it seem wild and chaotic at times. (For instance, the war between the CIA and the Bush Junta that reached a crisis during Katrina, mostly out of sight, and resulted in Rumsfeld being ousted and Cheney being curtailed in 2006, mostly over Iran; or, another, for instance, the current war between the military/police state profiteers of the "war on drugs" and Monsanto, et al, who are ready to legalize, GMO-ize and monopolize the trillion+ marijuana trade). I strongly suspect remote powers, guiding hands, trillionaires on fortified islands somewhere (nope, global warming might swamp them--say, in fortified ranches, say in Paraguay, smack in the middle of the richest resources on earth, with no threatening oceans in sight, but lots of aquifer). (Ha-ha-ha.)
Whoever they are, they have been choosing our presidents, and playing our system like a piano, since they offed JFK. We can tell from the TREND of things--all toward fascism and billionaire/trillionaire profit--that there just about has to be a "guiding hand" group behind it all. But who they are may be impossible to find out. It's likely an international group, for one thing. (In the CIA/Bush Junta war, I think the Chinese were involved, or, at least, Bush Sr.'s Chinese interests, opposed to the nuking of iran, because Iran supplies China with a lot of its oil.)
It may not be important WHO is doing all this--from the privatization of our voting system to the privatization of everything else--that is, who exactly is doing it, who's plan it is. It may be more important simply to recognize that there IS a plan, and to begin attacking/dismantling it, piece by piece. I would start with the 'TRADE SECRET' voting machines, partly because "we, the people" still have theoretical power over voting systems, in our states and counties. Likely, the moment such a movement gets momentum, the Diebold Congress would take that power away formally. But it would be worth the fight, since vote counting is SO fundamental. Without transparent vote counting--vote counting in the PUBLIC venue--no other reform is possible, as we have seen recently and over the last decade.
We also need to become suspicious of EVERYTHING we read or get told on TV/radio by the corporate press, because of their inherent pro-fascist, pro-corporate bias, but also because they are being USED, by the NSA and related entities, to smear/ruin/prosecute people who may have no ability to defend themselves, along with other kinds of "Big Lie" propaganda. I'm thinking particularly, right now, of that bullshit about Julian Assange being "wanted by Sweden for questioning on rape charges." That was the compleat dirty trick, if there ever was one.
When you become suspicious, for good reason, about everything you read/see from the corporate press, it is tempting to become paranoid or passive. That we must not do. South Americans have shown us that democracy CAN be restored and CAN work--no matter how much oppression has gone before. We need to follow their example, fix our broken voting system, and get on with it. It's not easy, God knows, but it CAN be done.
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- A plague on all the bastard's houses.......
