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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsChomsky:The White House seems determined to demolish the foundations of our civil liberties"
In the past several months, we have been provided with instructive lessons on the nature of state power and the forces that drive state policy. And on a closely related matter: the subtle, differentiated concept of transparency.
The source of the instruction, of course, is the trove of documents about the National Security Agency surveillance system released by the courageous fighter for freedom Edward J. Snowden, expertly summarized and analyzed by his collaborator Glenn Greenwald in his new book, "No Place to Hide."
The documents unveil a remarkable project to expose to state scrutiny vital information about every person who falls within the grasp of the colossus - in principle, every person linked to the modern electronic society.
Nothing so ambitious was imagined by the dystopian prophets of grim totalitarian worlds ahead.
It is of no slight import that the project is being executed in one of the freest countries in the world, and in radical violation of the U.S. Constitution's Bill of Rights, which protects citizens from "unreasonable searches and seizures," and guarantees the privacy of their "persons, houses, papers and effects."
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Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)until the illegal spying stops. We cannot call ourselves a democracy when transparency is demanded of the people while our government operates in the dark. It's supposed to be the other way around.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)It would be so good to have pols that actual care.
Rockyj
(538 posts)This isn't about personalities its about the supposed freest country in the world slowly becoming a police state (if not already).
alarimer
(16,245 posts)We need a zillion spy agency spying because...Why exactly? Isn't one enough? And why shouldn't the American people have oversight? Why should we just trust the fascists at the NSA and CIA? I ask these question and am branded "naive". Well, probably, but so what?
Yeah, it's a big bad world out there, but a lot of it has been because of things we have done.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)The excusing apologists aren't going to like this one. Criticizing Obama or implying he sold out and carries water for republican causes is not allowed here.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)billhicks76
(5,082 posts)Facts are facts though you are correct. One thing totally annoying is when people tried to tarnish those searching for the truth about 911 by labeling them Truthers and making it a negative thing. That is right out of Orwellian, 1984 nomenclature. And then conflating bat shit crazy birthers with them by similar sounding labeling? C'mon...that was complete misdirection and deflection.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)fairly good discussions about 9/11 here, then suddenly all talk of it was banished to the dungeon. Posts about 9/11 stopped showing in the Latest threads and that was basically the end of any serious discussions about it. The posters that keep trying are bullied and insulted continuously there now by posters that I rarely see anywhere else on DU except the dungeon.
Orwell would be impressed, and completely horrified, at how far it has gone...
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)NYT said many of those kind of commenters were sock-puppet profiles managed by one person sitting at a desk at a NSA, CIA or Military contracted firm who are paid to " manage" public opinion. HuffPost has a scandal internally regarding this. They love flagging opposing opinions too. We are so easily manipulated. Ever see a thread on Politico??? It's unbelievably horrible the hatred and frauds perpetuated there. If we paid a firm to manage a series of sock-puppet profiles to tote our causes we would be found out and banished immediately. Granted we don't have the money at our disposal like military contractors and Wall St do but we should be able to be smarter than them.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)billhicks76
(5,082 posts)We are our own worst enemy
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)and there are a special few who seem to monitor that forum constantly and always jump into the conversation trying to suppress any questioning of the official conspiracy theory. But it is failing in my opinion. There are over 2100 scientists, engineers and architects of various political persuasions that are pushing for an investigation. They realize once they really look at the evidence that we have been lied to and the truth is being hidden. And more see the deception every day. No wonder the NSA/FBI/CIA wants to watch everyone's communication. They can see in advance who may be getting to the truth and they begin their campaign of discrediting and ridicule if the person starts to get any attention.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)few posters are rarely ever seen anywhere else on this board, almost as if they have ulterior motives... 
I give you much credit for your persistence in the face of such bullshit! 
wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)anyone should care what we think, they sure can't control what people talk about in RL and they DO talk. I have not met a single person in RL who believes the 'official' story of 9/11. No one trusts this government anymore.
nyabingi
(1,145 posts)believed the official 9/11 story for a long time and I was quickly dismissed as a "crackpot", associated with Alex Jones, a "kook" and told to shut up basically.
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)It is verboten here, except in Creative Speculation, to speak of doubts of that event. I quit posting in the 'DUngeon' quite a few years ago, too many sheeple trying to stop discussions.
nyabingi
(1,145 posts)I've always thought that the failure of the American public to demand a real investigation into 9/11 was the beginning of the end of this country's progress forward, and everything that has happened since then (wars, militarized police force, non-stop surveillance, loss of privacy, etc.) has reinforced that thought.
Truly sad...
Mnemosyne
(21,363 posts)plan and of the down-slide Raygun ensured with his sick policies.
I had such hope for this country when I cast my first vote for Carter in 1976.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)They wanted no investigation and then only Kissinger the war criminal heading the panel. If that doesn't say lies and conspiracy what does? Btw a Zogby poll said 60% of New Yorkers believe in a government cover up with 911. I think we should defer to New Yorkers and not military contracted blowhards from Texas and Alabama.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)Those that shut down debate are suspect no matter what it is.
malokvale77
(4,879 posts)I'm glad you're here.
In all fairness, it is difficult for some to wrap their heads around the fact that their own government is involved in scamming us.
By "government" I'm not talking about the allusion that is passed off as "The Government of The United States".
Bless their hearts, some of them still believe the Warren Report.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)Whether it's profiting from something or protecting their fragile belief systems from having to reorganize.
malokvale77
(4,879 posts)That'll learn ya. But he understood that I was capable of learning. Boy howdy have I.
wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)murder! It was goddamned murder! 
malokvale77
(4,879 posts)And it was from within.
It is sad that so many here will excuse it and pretend otherwise.
yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)“When the people fear the government there is tyranny, when the government fears the people there is liberty.”
So which is it?
jtuck004
(15,882 posts)
bvar22
(39,909 posts)You will know them by their WORKS.
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)yallerdawg
(16,104 posts)One of our Founding Fathers, Jefferson helped design a government answerable to the people.
I believe our government does fear us.
The NSA is trying to find a way to keep us safe. All those Bush people who failed to keep us safe are pariahs in this country.
If the "security state" is trying to control us, it is out of fear of what we will do to them if they fail again. They are trying to keep us from getting hit again in such an absolutely awful way again.
They are absolutely afraid of us!
PoliticalPothead
(220 posts)The doctrine at once suggests a few questions: security for whom, and defense against which enemies? The answers are highlighted dramatically by the Snowden revelations.
Policy must assure the security of state authority and concentrations of domestic power, defending them from a frightening enemy: the domestic population, which can become a great danger if not controlled.
indepat
(20,899 posts)violation of the Bill of Rights. Not that such unconstitutional activities should bother any good little American. 
SammyWinstonJack
(44,130 posts)
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)Great post. Chomsky nails it, again, although I would personally edit one word just for the benefit of those who miss subtlety in language: Edward Snowden did not fail to understand the maxim (bolded below); he deliberately chose not to pay obiesance to it.
The principle was lucidly explained by the policy intellectual Samuel P. Huntington, who instructed us that "Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate."
Huntington added a crucial illustration. In his words, "you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine" at the outset of the Cold War.
....
From that day forward, in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home, state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting.
Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim.
In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Yawn.
Post something from him when he stops being the quintessential self-parody of a hate filled kook, sympathizing with the Khmer Rouge simply because people in the U.S. had the temerity to point out their genocidal atrocities.
Nothing is so sad as to see a brilliant mind with such a glaringly obvious short-circuit in it, dedicating his life to overwrought wankery, almost as bad as when Schottky went off on his racist tirades.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)elias49
(4,259 posts)rhett o rick
(55,981 posts)just dont want to know.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)If he was wrong about that which I'm not educated on I still have no doubt he's right about this. It's just too obvious.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)No surprise to see a Conservative Democrat catapulting that propaganda.
Hitchens wrote a great piece on the anatomy of those smears:
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/1985----.htm
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)They never give up and have wealth on their side so we need to fight more than ever against these conservatives.
Luminous Animal
(27,310 posts)Here is Hitchens, in 1985, soundly debunking this lie about Chomsky
http://www.chomsky.info/onchomsky/1985----.htm
David Horowitz and Peter Collier were wrong, in the syndicated article announcing their joint conversion to neoconservatism, to say that Chomsky hailed the advent of the Khmer Rouge as "a new era of economic development and social justice." The Khmer Rouge took power in 1975. In 1972, Chomsky wrote an introduction to Dr. Malcolm Caldwell's collection of interviews with Prince Norodom Sihanouk. In this introduction, he expressed not the prediction but the pious hope that Sihanouk and his supporters might preserve Cambodia for "a new era of economic development and social justice." You could say that this was naive of Chomsky, who did not predict the 1973 carpet-bombing campaign or the resultant rise of a primitive, chauvinist guerrilla movement. But any irony here would appear to be at the expense of Horowitz and Collier. And the funny thing is that, if they had the words right, they must have had access to the book. And if they had access to the book.... Well, many things are forgiven those who see the error of their formerly radical ways.
The Richard West-William Shawcross fork also proves, on investigation, to be blunt in both prongs. Chomsky and Shawcross have this much in common: that they both argue for and demonstrate the connection between the Nixon-Kissinger bombing and derangement of Cambodian society and the nascence of the Khmer Rouge. It is not the case that Chomsky borrowed this idea from Shawcross, however. He first went to press on the point in 1972, seven years before Sideshow was published, with an account supplied by the American correspondent Richard Dudman of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Dudman is one of the few people to have been both a prisoner of the Khmer Rouge and a chronicler of his own detention. His testimony indicated a strong connection between American tactics in the countryside of Cambodia and the recruitment of peasants to the guerrilla side. (Imagine the strain of composing an account that denied such a connection.)
This more or less disposes of West, who has simply got the order of things the wrong way about and added some random insults. The case of Shawcross is more complicated. In his The Quality of Mercy, he quotes three full paragraphs apparently from Chomsky's pen, though he does not give a source. The three paragraphs do not express "skepticism" about the massacres in Cambodia, but they do express reservations about some of the accounts of them. They also argue that the advent of the Khmer Rouge should be seen in the historical context of the much less ballyhooed American aerial massacres a few years earlier -- a point which the author of Sideshow is in a weak position to scorn. Finally, the three paragraphs convey a sardonic attitude toward those who claim that it "took courage" to mention the Khmer Rouge atrocities at all.
But mark the sequel. The three paragraphs as quoted do not appear anywhere. They are rudely carpentered together, without any ellipses to indicate gaps in the attribution, from the summary and introduction to Volume 1 of The Political Economy of Human Rights, which was written by Noam Chomsky and Professor Edward Herman of the Wharton School of Business. The book went to press in 1979, after the forcible overthrow of the Pol Pot regime. Thus, even if the paragraphs were quoted and sourced properly, and even if they bore the construction that Shawcross puts on them, they could hardly have contributed to the alleged indifference of civilized opinion "throughout 1976 and 1977 and especially in 1978" or inhibited the issue from reaching "critical mass." Since Shawcross lists the book, with its date, in his bibliography, the discrepancy can hardly be due to ignorance.
As for the gratuitous insinuation about protest over Chile, I can't help recording that one of the anti-Khmer Rouge blockbusters with which the American public was regaled came in TV Guide (circulation 19 million) in April 1977 and was written by Ernest Lefever. Lefever had earlier told Congress that it should be more "tolerant" of the "mistakes" of the Pinochet regime in attempting to "clear away the devastation of the Allende period." He also wrote, in The Miami Herald, of the "remarkable freedom of expression" enjoyed in the new Chile. In 1981, Lefever proved too farouche to secure nomination as Reagan's Under Secretary for Human Rights.
William Shawcross enjoys his reputation for honesty. And so I have had to presume that his book represents his case at its most considered. Why, then, if he has room for three paragraphs from Chomsky and Herman, does he not quote the equally accessible sentences, published in The Nation on June 25, 1977, where they describe Father Francois Ponchaud's Cambodia: Year Zero as "serious and worth reading," with its "grisly account of what refugees have reported to him about the barbarity of their treatment at the hands of the Khmer Rouge"?
Chomsky and Herman were engaged in the admittedly touchy business of distinguishing evidence from interpretation. They were doing so in the aftermath of a war which had featured tremendous, organized, official lying and many cynical and opportunist "bloodbath" predictions. There was and is no argument about mass murder in Cambodia: there is still argument about whether the number of deaths, and the manner in which they were inflicted, will warrant the use of the term "genocide' or even "autogenocide." Shawcross pays an implicit homage to this distinction, a few pages later, when he admits that Jean Lacouture, in his first "emotional" review of Father Ponchaud, greatly exaggerated the real number of Khmer Rouge executions. These errors, writes Shawcross, "were seized upon by Noam Chomsky, who circulated them widely. In a subsequent issue of The New York Review, Lacouture corrected himself. Not all of those who had reported his mea culpa published his corrections. Chomsky used the affair as part of his argument that the media were embarked on an unjustified blitz against the Khmer Rouge."
If this paragraph has any internal coherence -- and I have given it in its entirety -- it must lead the reader to suppose that Chomsky publicized Lacoutre's mea culpa without acknowledging his corrections. But in The Political Economy of Human Rights there is an exhaustive presentation of the evolution of Lacoutre's position, including both his mea culpa and his corrections and adding some complimentary remarks about his work. Incidentally, Lacouture reduced his own estimate of deaths from "two million" to "thousands or hundreds of thousands." Is this, too, "minimization of atrocities"?
Ironies here accumulate at the expense of Chomsky's accusers. A close analysis of Problems of Communism and of the findings of State Department intelligence and many very conservative Asia specialists will yield a figure of deaths in the high hundreds of thousands. Exorbitant figures (i.e. those oscillating between two and three million) are current partly because Radio Moscow and Radio Hanoi now feel free to denounce the Pol Pot forces (which now, incredibly, receive official American recognition) in the most abandoned fashion. Chomsky wrote that, while the Vietnamese invasion and occupation could be understood, it could not be justified. May we imagine what might be said about his complicity with Soviet-bloc propaganda if he were now insisting on the higher figure? For both of these failures to conform, he has been assailed by Leopold Labedz in Encounter, who insists on three million as a sort of loyalty test, but, since that magazine shows a distinct reluctance to correct the untruths it publishes -- as I can testify from my own experience -- its readers have not been exposed to a reply.
Chomsky and Herman wrote that "the record of atrocities in Cambodia is substantial and often gruesome." They even said, "When the facts are in, it may turn out that the more extreme condemnations were in fact correct." The facts are now more or less in, and it turns out that the two independent writers were as close to the truth as most, and closer than some. It may be distasteful, even indecent, to argue over "body counts," whether the bodies are Armenian, Jewish, Cambodian, or (to take a case where Chomsky and Herman were effectively alone in their research and their condemnation) Timorese. But the count must be done, and done seriously, if later generations are not to doubt the whole slaughter on the basis of provable exaggerations or inventions.
Maurice Cranston's letter to The Times Literary Supplement, with its unexamined assumption that Chomsky was a partisan of North Vietnam, falls apart with even less examination. In 1970, Chomsky wrote up his tour of the region for The New York Review of Books and said:
It is conceivable that the United States may be able to break the will of the popular movements in the surrounding countries, perhaps even destroy the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam, by employing the vast resources of violence and terror at its disposal. If so, it will create a situation in which, indeed, North Vietnam will necessarily dominate Indochina, for no other viable society will remain.
I think of that article whenever I read wised-up Western newsmen who dwell upon the "ironic" fact that the North Vietnamese, not the NLF, now hold power in Ho Chi Minh City. It takes real ingenuity to blame this on the antiwar movement, but, with a little creative amnesia and a large helping of self-pity for the wounds inflicted by the war (on America), the job can by plausibly done.
Finally, to Fred Barnes, recruited to The New Republic from The Baltimore Sun and The American Spectator. I wrote to him on the day that his article appeared, asking to know where he heard Chomsky say such a thing. I received no reply until I was able to ask for it in person two months later. I then asked him to place it in writing. It read as follows:
I sat next to Noam Chomsky at a seminar at Lippmann House (of the Nieman Foundation) of Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass., in 1978. On the matter of Genocide in Cambodia, the thrust of what he said was that there was no evidence of mass murder there. As I recall, he was rather adamant on the point. He had, by this time, I believe, written a letter or two to The New York Review of Books making the same point. Chomsky seemed to believe that tales of holocaust in Cambodia were so much propaganda. He said, on another point, that there was an effort underway to rewrite the history of the Indochinese war -- in a way more favorable to the U.S. Perhaps he thought the notion of genocide in Cambodia was part of that effort.
Since this meeting took place in the year after Chomsky and Herman had written their Nation article, and in the year when they were preparing The Political Economy of Human Rights, we can probably trust the documented record at least as much as Mr. Barnes's recollection. And there was no letter from Chomsky about Cambodia in The New York Review of Books. It is interesting, and perhaps suggestive, that Barnes uses the terms "genocide," "holocaust," and "mass murder" as if they were interchangeable. His last two sentences demonstrate just the sort of cuteness for which his magazine is becoming famous.
Here is the story, as far as I can trace it, of Chomsky's effort to "minimize" or "deny" the harvest of the Khmer Rouge. It will be seen that the phony "credibility" of the charge against him derives from his lack of gullibility about the American mass killings in Indochina (routinely euphemized or concealed by large sections of the domestic intelligentsia). From this arises the idea that Chomsky might have said such things; was the sort of person who could decline to criticize "the other side"; was a well-known political extremist. Couple this with the slothful ease of the accusation, the reluctance of certain authors to prove they are not unpatriotic dupes, and you have a scapegoat in the making. Dr. Arbuthnot was right. Nobody would believe that Chomsky advocated a massacre. But they might be brought to believe that he excused or overlooked one.
Here is the link to Chomsky's and Herman's original article from that inspired so much flights of fancy from Chomsky critics...
http://www.chomsky.info/articles/19770625.htm
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)Take the least convincing critique, the one that overreaches the most, by the least intellectually honest critic, and portray that as the only critic.
No one who is not already too far gone for reason, can look at Chomsky's venomous attacks on people who were pointing out the Kampuchean Genocide, as anything but being an apologist for it. He repeatedly attacked not only the New York Times, but Le Monde, and a host of other newspapers. In "Distortions at Fourth Hand" he decried press bias in the murder of 1 million Kampuchean people by bringing up the Pinochet regime's murder of about five thousand people, even though that was vastly more covered, and specifically tried to claim that reports of mass slaughter were false - simply because they only witnessed the aftermath, and didn't see them directly themselves.
Among the vast majority of Democrats, Chomsky is a sad joke. His name was even used as the a punchline in the comedy routine President Obama recently gave at the correspondents dinner.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
Marr
(20,317 posts)you are on the right edge of the party.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)is very telling about how right wing the Democratic party has become. Of course, I can understand why you would support that.
The Third Way is not the Democratic way, it's the corporate, right wing, fascist way.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)...but the very idea that you're calling Democrats "fascist" shows how extreme you are. And that you're really not a Democrat yourself. You clearly don't believe that you are fascist.
But since, in your own words, Democrats have "become" fascist, I do wonder when you think Democrats weren't. The 1940s, when we actually fought real fascism, while making a number of panicky mistakes having to do with Japanese-Americans? The 1950s, when Democrats were still tied to the hip to racist Dixiecrats who wouldn't ever vote Republican because Lincoln freed the slaves? The 1960s when LBJ, in addition to all the Great Society programs, jumped whole hog into the Vietnam War? The 1970s, with Jimmy Carter who (I specifically remember), was hated by the hard left of the party, and signed off on a disastrous hostage rescue program? Maybe the 1980s! No - I remember frustrated Communists being upset that Reagan received respect due the office from Democrats. Maybe the 1990s, when Clinton was in office. Nope - remember that "fascist" was bandied about even then.
The truth is this: we are a more free society than we've ever been in our history. Open displays of racism are mocked. Gays are being allowed to marry. And far from 200,000 people being killed in a single attack as happened routinely in WW2, we're now so peaceful that people like you can get all up in arms when the President personally signs off on the literal handful of terrorists we still do target. We are, in short, considerably closer to the ideals of this country today than we were when this nation was founded.
And still you call us fascist. It is self-evident that you don't know the meaning of that word. North Korea is fascist. We're human.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
JackRiddler
(24,979 posts)The crazy thing is that the U.S. supported the Khmer Rouge through China, after Vietnam invaded Cambodia to overthrow them and stop the genocide in 1979. But what does history matter?
For decades the right-wing has engaged in a vicious smear campaign to suggest, falsely, that Chomsky supported the Khmer Rouge. It's no surprise to hear this old lie coming from a "Conservative Democrat," emphasis on the conservative. After all, Wolfowitz and Perle and Co. started as staffer to the insane hard-line cold warrior, Sen. Henry Jackson, a Democrat. Some Democrats were neocons before there were even neocons -- a tradition that goes back to Truman.
What Chomsky actually did was to compare U.S. press coverage of atrocities by Khmer Rouge to those of the simultaneous atrocities by the U.S. client state dictatorship, Indonesia, in East Timor following the visit there by Ford and Kissinger in 1975. Coverage of the Khmer atrocities was plentiful because they were "communists," even though they later received U.S. government support once the Vietnamese communists overthrew them and stopped the genocide. Coverage of similar atrocities in East Timor was almost non-existent. By pointing this out, Chomsky was apologizing for the Khmer Rouge, at least in the insane logic of the American right wing.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)hard to imagine that anyone on DU wouldn't know the origin of the "reality-based community" quote.
mudy waters
(41 posts)on a Democratic website, I might put Democrat in my name.
malokvale77
(4,879 posts)But he/she is still here, because they cheer all the "right" ( double entendre) posts.
Tierra_y_Libertad
(50,414 posts)
daleanime
(17,796 posts)but don't want to bother explaining why?
KG
(28,751 posts)L0oniX
(31,493 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)but maybe that's the clever inside joke in your alias since your proud membership in "the reality-based community" is a well known Karl Rove-ism.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)The "reality based community" were the people that Karl Rove was criticizing, because to him the Bush administration were making their own reality in Iraq.
The aphorism "Proud Member of the Reality Based Community" was originally coined by Markos Moulitsas (who also coined the term "Purity Troll" as well, which so aptly describes so many in the D.U.) I don't always agree with Mr. Moulitsas, but I do respect him.
However, even though you got it exactly reversed, you do get props from me for at least trying. The number of idiots who challenge me over this phrase in the D.U. is absolutely depressing, since it's entire history is just a google search away. Real Democrats are not supposed to just be the ideological inversion of Tea Party lunatics - we're supposed to actually care about facts before launching into diatribes.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)…"we create our own reality." Therefore many rightly or wrongly attribute it to him. The Markos thing is almost as obscure as references to regional post-punk lyrics of the early 80s.
Also, you're probably getting challenged on it in the context of posts that attack progressive values and/or perpetrating longtime right wing meme, such as with the Chomsky is "anti-American" idea you post above. Show people that you're more Democrat than Conservative and you'll be less depressed as people won't ding you for your tagline.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)And I will call him out as much as I'd like, since he is also clearly anti-American.
You are also literally the first person who has challenged me over the "Reality Based Community" tagline who actually was at least partially aware of the quote when you made your challenge. The two dozen or so other times, I've been attacked about it, it was clear that the writers knew nothing about even Rove. People just start typing away without ever bothering to check facts.
Believe it or not, there are more "Conservative Democrats" in the Democratic party than there are "Very Liberal" Democrats(*). The D.U. consists of mostly Very Liberal Democrats, and a whole hell of a lot of non-Democrats who spew bile on President Obama because he's not socialist (as Democrats are not).
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
(*) Moderate and Liberals make up the bulk, of course.
LanternWaste
(37,748 posts)You've made some rather creative, yet unsupported allegations about Chomsky... a Hedda Hopper-style editorial, almost.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)There are many references to show how much of an apologist he was for the Khmer Rouge. Here's just one:
Chomsky neglects to mention that the evacuation was not under the control of the journalists — the foreigners were captives of the Khmer Rouge, and Schanberg concluded that the reason they saw no corpses was because the Khmer Rouge made sure they did not. Schanberg also tells us that the Khmer Rouge nearly executed him for seeing what little he did see.
Schanberg on not seeing corpses:
We suddenly turned right- that is, west-down the road to the airport, and this was puzzling because we were supposed to be heading north and northwest toward Thailand.
We did not know it yet, but this was to be the detour that kept us from seeing that early stretch of Route 5 north of Phnom Penh that had been clogged with refugees forced out of Phnom Penh and may now be dotted with bodies.
Our convoy started south west out of the capital down Route 4, then cut north along a rutted secondary road until we picked up Route 5 near Kompong Chhnang.
Cazaux does indeed remark he saw no dead bodies, though the context was not that he was scornfully suggesting that it was ridiculous to suggest that there were dead bodies, but rather in the context that “all that is certain is that none of the foreigners who saw the start of the revolution will be able to witness its progress.”
In the same newspaper article from which Chomsky quotes Cazaux the chief surgeon at Calmette Hospital in Cambodia's capital, a Frenchman who came out with the last group of westerners, said that he had seen three hundred bodies with their throats cut in the capital's central market, consistent with Barron and Paul's remark about “bodies bloating in the hot sun”
More Chomsky agitprop:
Notice that Chomsky and Herman strangely neglect to tell us where the words of any of these important witnesses to the innocence of the Khmer Rouge can be found. I managed to find Olle Tolgraven, LA Times, 1975 May 9, page 9. The LA Times quotes various people who were imprisoned in the embassy, and subsequently sent out of Cambodia on the same trucks as Cazaux and Schanberg, and he was one of them.
Phnom Penh was described by many of the returnees as a “dead city,” littered with decomposing bodies, and abandoned household goods and populated by a few forlorn pets and a few Khmer Rouge soldiers.
One Frenchman said last Thursday the Khmer Rouge had come to his house and ordered him to leave or be shot. He recalled:
“On the way to the embassy I saw several dead bodies rotting in the street. Some of them apparently had been shot, but some had their heads crushed and appeared to have been beaten to death.”
A Swedish journalist, Olle Tolgraven of Swedish Broadcasting, said he did not believe there had been wholesale executions. But he said there was evidence the Khmer Rouge had shot people who refused to leave their homes in a mass evacuation ordered the first day of the takeover. This was corroborated by others.
One Cambodian woman said many old people died on the trek out of the City “because it was too hard for them to walk.”
Again, Chomsky evasively avoided actually saying what every reader would think him to have said. It sounds as if Chomsky and Herman gave a citation to contradictory evidence, but they did not. By complaining of all those Barron and Paul do not mention, he implies that these sources provide contradictory evidence, while avoiding any actual statement that Tolgraven and the rest provided contradictory evidence. It sounds like a citation pointing to evidence proving Barron and Paul to be liars, when it merely points to a trail of breadcrumbs in a dark forest.
-------------------
Research not mine, though clearly well done.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
p.s. It's rich to hear such a full throated defender of genocidal maniacs pretend that the United States is so evil.
truebrit71
(20,805 posts)...then you throw Chomsky under the 'Anti-American' bus...
Careful...your disguise is slipping...
sabrina 1
(62,325 posts)huge difference when you describe someone accurately and when you don't. People who love this country DO criticize policies that are harmful to this country.
It is those who support harmful policies who are Anti American.
There, all fixed now.
Chomsky is a brilliant mind.
Sabrina, very proud NON member of the fictitious 'reality based community' a fallacy construed in order to attack the Left, the implication being that the Left is delusional, emanated from a Think Tank somewhere for the Third Way whose hatred for the Left is even more intense than that of the Far Right.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Post something that responds to Chomsky's arguments. A statement about Chomsky is OK in the context of an argument that deals with the issues raised in his article.
Ad hominem comments suggest to me that the author of the post containing the ad hominem attacks is not intellectually capable of responding to ideas and must resort to cheap personal attacks. The personal attacks serve no purpose but to express frustration on an emotional level.
I was a good student in geometry. The kid behind me was not good in geometry and used to wait until the class was quiet and the teacher writing on the blackboard, and then he would tickle me under my arms. I was very ticklish and would squeal. The teacher would look around at me. Because I was such a good geometry student, I didn't get into trouble but she would give me a look like, "What was that all about." Someone who resorts to ad hominem attacks is like the kid who used to tickle me. Not very bright and jealous of those who are. The ad hominem attack is intended to make the intellectually brighter people around the less gifted person feel humbled.
Ad hominem attacks tell me that the person who posts them a) has very little intellectual ability and cannot think of a better argument (like the kid in geometry who could not keep up) and b) has a mean streak.
So now, if you want to participate in this discussion, demonstrate your intellect. Why do you disagree with Chomsky? What is the substance of your argument?
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)The D.U. is absolutely filled with Ad Hominem arguments, nearly all targeted against Democrats. Yet you remain silent about all of those, keeping your powder dry until now, with this inappropriate attack when the credibility of the speaker is absolutely cogent to the analysis?
Let me be clear. Chomsky's diatribe cannot be challenged any other way, because he makes no reasoned argument. Argument by assertion "X is Y - because X is Y" is not an argument. And Chomsky doesn't even bother with the "because". All he ever ends up with is "the United States is a poopiehead", where "poopiehead" is whatever ludicrously overwrought calumny he can think of at the moment, with literally no more analysis to it than the equivalent kindergarten insult. In such a situation, when the speaker offers absolutely nothing but his own opinion as the only verification, their credibility is the only thing left on which to judge the statement. Rarely, it can be acceptable: if Jimmy Carter says that an election was held in a fair manner, or not, his argument carries weight, because of who he is. But don't imagine that Chomsky can escape his fifty years of anti-Americanism, any more than Sarah Palin can escape her ill-disguised racism when commenting about President Obama.
So, to be clear. When faced with an Appeal to "Authority", pointing out that the "Authority" is hardly authoritative is not an "Ad Hominem" attack. Your objection fails.
I eagerly look forward to seeing your scoldings about Ad Hominem arguments to all the others who wrote in this thread, refusing to address my own factually referenced arguments because they can't. Not to mention everyone who bashes President Obama without reasoned argument constantly on the D.U., many of whom are the same people so pricked because I've spoken about Chomsky's lack of credibility. Or will you fail to do so, simply due to double standards?
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)Thanks for explaining your point of view.
I do get sick of all the ad hominem comments because they are a waste of broadband, but then I consider who makes them.
But from you who is a self-descdribed "proud member of the reality-based community," I expect more.
Most DUers who repeatedly post ad hominems are not that proud, and often for good reason. Ad hominems are annoying.
ConservativeDemocrat
(2,720 posts)...I discuss those. I think you will find those of us who commonly take positions unpopular with posters on the D.U. (regardless of whether they're actually majority positions in the Democratic party as a whole), try to argue the point. Because I do agree with you that those who respond to reasoning, and/or citations of fact that they'd prefer not to be true, with childish insults and appeals to tribalism, are essentially conceding that they've lost the argument.
But here, there is no option to do so. Chomsky isn't debating. He's asserting. And the people who quote him on the DU are doing so because he has a reputation for making overwrought and unsupported assertions that they agree with. So it is entirely fair to point out that he's done so previously in defense of vile regimes, simply because the U.S. opposed them.
- C.D. Proud Member of the Reality Based Community
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)But I like the fact that he makes assertions that can be discussed, right or wrong.
gratuitous
(82,849 posts)There; I've saved about 60 posts in this thread. No need to thank me, just doing my job.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)in how the intelligence community and intelligence bureaucracy works.
Poppy Bush's network which included Cheney would have had far more power to control the intelligence community than Obama does. Why should threats to American's civil liberties be equated fealty to this particular president? Why not just admit that there's likely much this president doesn't know, isn't made aware of, and doesn't have *immediate* control over?
Then, at least we could agree on the principle that civil liberties are what makes being an American valuable -- and get on with the task of reeling in the parts of the intelligence apparatus that aren't working, and keep the stuff that we need.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)than Obama ever will. ESPECIALLY Cheney, now that he has his new lease on life.
But that's okay with POTUS....haven't seen him kick up any fuss about it. He still whitewashes the NSA and appoints BFEE minions with abandon.
After all, with the Secret Service, whose loyalty has never been in doubt, even when JFK was assassinated while in their care, at his back, our President must feel positively.....intimidated.
Probably takes his frustration out via the Drone program....
Because, boys and girls, that's EXACTLY how the intelligence community and intelligence bureaucracy works.
GliderGuider
(21,088 posts)nt
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)This is what the real discussion should be in our community. But we let others set the whitewashed discussion topics from the top down which are filled with fluff or easily agreed upon issues.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)i think it was Geithner's recent book that we get the observation that Obama never saw himself as a populist (despite the community organizer background, etc). a populist would JUMP on the opportunity to right the ship on this. they'd make the distinction between necessary and sufficient levels of intelligence and would absolutely fight against dragnet intel gathering on American citizens.
i remember when Bush Jr was leaving office and there was discussion of bureaucrats in various agencies, but especially intelligence/ops "burrowing" in. that many operatives were left in positions of power and could be counted on by the NeoCons to continue their project/s.
this is where we as Dems make the strongest argument against this bullshit: these people aren't OUR people. this is not how a Democratic administration oversees the power of the intelligence community. we have to make the distinction, or else we lose the ability to make the argument that our candidates can do better. we lose our brand, we lose elections and most importantly we lose our civil liberties.
although I warned in 2008 that Obama was a Reagan admirer. That should have tipped us off.
Let's not fall for another neo-con in Democratic clothing.
I'm not a total fan of Chomsky but he has interesting ideas even though I do not always agree with him.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)People aren't saying Obama is worse in general. It's because he's in power now and things get worse every year regardless who is selling out at the time. Bush Sr.'s buddies are still in power and controlling things yes. But they seize a little more every year regardless of who is president but ONLY because that president lets them get away with it without any position and even vocally supports it. My Conclusion? Guys like Clinton and Obama are willing puppets of guys like Bush Sr. What made them agree to this is anyone's guess.
nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)as a rhetorical matter, the point should be made that we need intelligence, but we need intelligence that's working for us rather than against us. And that's something that Snowden went to great lengths to underscore in his NBC interview. I thought it was one of the best moments of the whole piece.
Also i think this is where the most power resides for us to create change. this administration needs to fix this or else the party gets stuck with their re-branding us as Republican-lite.
on clinton -- many people here are fond of saying that Obama never campaigned as a progressive populist. maybe he didn't (I remember differently). But one thing for sure is that he campaigned as not-Clinton. once elected he turned absolutely Clintonian and then some. this is not what/who we voted for.
billhicks76
(5,082 posts)Someone wrote an editorial saying 80% of liberals support the presidents policies and if you don't then you are an obvious, racist infiltrator. Can you believe this divisive crap??? This reminds me of the narcs in previous decades trying to weave strife throughout a movement gaining strength.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)
Capt. Obvious
(9,002 posts)we know that Obama's hands are tied.
Anyone who doesn't see that is a fake liberal and most likely a racist.
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)Democratic Underground....not the President Barack Obama Underground. My mistake.
Demeter
(85,373 posts)and it's damned annoying that the bifurcation is permitted to continue, because the BOG seriously impairs discussion on points both trivial and deadly serious with knee-jerk reactions to any perceived slight upon their idol.
snappyturtle
(14,656 posts)
mimi85
(1,805 posts)nashville_brook
(20,958 posts)edit to add -- didn't see the /sarcasm thingy.
L0oniX
(31,493 posts)You know they are here.
840high
(17,196 posts)stupidicus
(2,570 posts)in this case represented by our personal bodyguard known as privacy that we thought we had.
While BHO is to be lauded for the content of his recent speech regarding war and big sticks, it is really a bit incongruous that he promotes using one against his fellow Americans such as this.
mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)morningfog
(18,115 posts)According that OP.
Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts)I can't believe I am seeing that on DU these days, "un-american".
edited to add ma'am and avoid being labelled misogynistic.
morningfog
(18,115 posts)Before you can really embrace double-thought you have to give up critical thought. It helps to be an ass, too.
mindwalker_i
(4,407 posts)For not supporting spy-on-everyone. Yikes.
Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts)DU has entered The Twilight Zone. The other variant I saw was "anti-american" .
McCamy Taylor
(19,240 posts)not because they give a fuck how we are gonna vote.
Puzzledtraveller
(5,937 posts) bvar22
(39,909 posts)from the link posted by the OP:
These exposures lead us to inquire into state policy more generally and the factors that drive it. The received standard version is that the primary goal of policy is security and defense against enemies.
The doctrine at once suggests a few questions: security for whom, and defense against which enemies? The answers are highlighted dramatically by the Snowden revelations.
Policy must assure the security of state authority and concentrations of domestic power, defending them from a frightening enemy: the domestic population, which can become a great danger if not controlled.
<more>
http://truth-out.org/opinion/item/24071-noam-chomsky-edward-snowden-the-worlds-most-wanted-criminal
DURec!
ProSense
(116,464 posts)No "anguish" was expressed over the fact that he has been held without trial for 12 years in Guantanamo, one of many victims of the leader of the Free World, who claims the right to hold prisoners without charges and to subject them to torture.
...is this about Bush or Obama? President Obama has never claimed that "right." I mean, he has been trying to close Guantanamo.
Look at the freakout over the prisoner swap.
White House statement on Adam Smith amendment to close Guantanamo Bay detention facility
http://www.democraticunderground.com/10024983568
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)Sometimes you are so obvious.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"Sometimes you are so obvious."
Yeah, it was "obvious" that I posted a response.
It's also "obvious" that you're highly concerned with my comments.
LondonReign2
(5,213 posts)What a pathetic attempt to distract and disrupt.
ProSense
(116,464 posts)"What a pathetic attempt to distract and disrupt. "
...you need to look in a friggin mirror.
nolabels
(13,133 posts)but about that link to the other tread you posted, it's like after all these years hasn't anybody seen the pattern here? POTUS says one thing and at the same time is taking in offers of water-down or twisted versions of the same things he said he wasn't going to do.
Color me stupid if you want, but, until the stuff gets really deep or there is an upending in our major forms of governance, nothing concerning just about everything that most of what government does will be getting done for the betterment of the People's life 
P.s. about o.p. about Chomsky is brilliant and i am pretty sure i (or most others that have been around DU for awhile) could have told him the same thing that he just said at least two decades ago 
ProSense
(116,464 posts)but about that link to the other tread you posted, it's like after all these years hasn't anybody seen the pattern here? POTUS says one thing and at the same time is taking in offers of water-down or twisted versions of the same things he said he wasn't going to do.
Color me stupid if you want, but, until the stuff gets really deep or there is an upending in our major forms of governance, nothing concerning just about everything that most of what government does will be getting done for the betterment of the People's life
...see whatever "pattern" fits their narrative, and many don't seem to be paying attention. I see the same pattern the ACLU has seen.
NEW YORK – At a press briefing today, President Obama restated his belief that the prison at Guantánamo should be closed. Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union, responded to the president's comments by detailing immediate actions the president could take.
"We welcome the president's continuing commitment to closing Guantánamo and putting an end to the indefinite detention regime there," Romero said. "There are two things the president should do. One is to appoint a senior point person so that the administration's Guantánamo closure policy is directed by the White House and not by Pentagon bureaucrats. The president can also order the secretary of defense to start certifying for transfer detainees who have been cleared, which is more than half the Guantánamo population."
"There's more to be done, but these are the two essential first steps the president can take now to break the Guantánamo logjam," Romero said. "We couldn't agree more with President Obama's statement that the 'idea that we would still maintain forever a group of individuals who have not been tried – that is contrary to who we are, it is contrary to our interests, and it needs to stop.'"
http://www.aclu.org/criminal-law-reform-human-rights-national-security-prisoners-rights/aclu-statement-presidents
WASHINGTON – President Obama today appointed lawyer Clifford Sloan as the State Department's special envoy in charge of closing the military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
"The appointment of a new envoy at the State Department for closing Guantánamo puts in place one of the last pieces of the puzzle for getting the prison closed," said Laura Murphy, director of the ACLU Washington Legislative Office. "The president now has ordered the restart of transfers out of Guantánamo, lifted the moratorium on transfers to Yemen, and appointed top officials at the White House and State Department to get it done. Once President Obama makes the necessary appointment at the Pentagon to begin transferring detainees out of Guantánamo, he should immediately begin doing so. With more than half of the detainees already cleared for transfer or release, and dozens more being held without ever being charged or tried, it's time to start sending these men home."
http://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-comment-appointment-envoy-close-guantanamo
WASHINGTON – Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel today appointed Paul Lewis as the special envoy for closing the Guantanamo Bay detention facility. In his new position, Lewis will work with the State Department on transferring detainees out of the prison to other countries.
Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office, had this comment:
"The American Civil Liberties Union is pleased that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel has filled the important position of Defense Department envoy for closing the Guantanamo detention facility. We had been concerned about the lengthy delay in filling this critical job that the president ordered created as part of his National Defense University speech in May,” said Anders. “Paul Lewis has three decades of experience working on national security and rule of law issues at the highest levels of government. In his new position, he will play a critical role in carrying out the president’s commitment to close Guantanamo for good."
https://www.aclu.org/national-security/aclu-comment-appointment-envoy-close-guantanamo-bay-detention-facility
WASHINGTON – The Senate late last night passed the National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal year 2014, which will ease transfer restrictions for detainees currently held at the military detention camp at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, most of whom have been held without charge or trial for over a decade. The bill, which passed the House of Representatives last week, cleared the Senate by a vote of 84-15. The improved transfer provisions were sponsored by Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman Carl Levin and were strongly supported by the White House and the Defense Department.
"This is a big step forward for meeting the goal of closing Guantánamo and ending indefinite detention. For the first time ever, Congress is making it easier, rather than harder, for the Defense Department to close Guantánamo – and this win only happened because the White House and Defense Secretary worked hand in hand with the leadership of the congressional committees," said Christopher Anders, senior legislative counsel at the ACLU’s Washington Legislative Office. "After years of a blame-game between Congress and the White House, both worked together to clear away obstacles to transferring out of Guantánamo the vast majority of detainees who have never been charged with a crime."
The current population at Guantánamo stands at 158 detainees, approximately half of whom were cleared for transfer to their home or third-party countries by U.S. national security officials four years ago. Also, periodic review boards have recently started reviews of detainees who have not been charged with a crime and had not been cleared in the earlier reviews. While the legislation eases the transfer restrictions for sending detainees to countries abroad, it continues to prohibit the transfer of detainees to the United States for any reason, including for trial or medical emergencies.
"There has been a sea change on the Guantánamo issue, both in Congress and at the White House. With the president’s renewed commitment to closing it, and the support of Congress, there now is reason to hope that the job of closing Guantánamo and ending indefinite detention can get done before the president leaves office," said Anders. "As big as this win is, there is more work left to be done. The Defense Department has to use the new transfer provisions to step up transfers out of Guantánamo, and Congress needs to remove the remaining ban on using federal criminal courts to try detainees."
President Obama is expected to sign the defense bill into law before the end of the year.
https://www.aclu.org/national-security/senate-eases-transfer-restrictions-guantanamo-detainees
By Julian E. Barnes
WASHINGTON—The Pentagon said it has transferred the last three ethnic Uighur Chinese nationals from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to Slovakia in what it called "a significant milestone in our effort to close the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay."
Pentagon press secretary Rear Adm. John Kirby said in a written statement that Yusef Abbas, Saidullah Khalik and Hajiakbar Abdul Ghuper are "voluntarily resettling in Slovakia," leaving 155 detainees at Guantanamo.
The three men were the last of 22 ethnic Uighurs captured in Afghanistan in 2001 and ordered released from Guantanamo under an Oct. 7, 2008, federal court ruling. The 22 men have ended up being resettled to six different countries, the Pentagon said.
Andrea Prasow, senior counterterrorism counsel for advocacy group Human Rights Watch, said the transfer was an important moment. "The Uighurs had nothing to do with any conflict with the United States," she said. "It is a stark symbol of what was wrong with Guantanamo, with what was wrong with just sweeping people up and detaining them in an offshore facility."
- more -
http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304361604579292270871879140
Fortunately and finally, at the end of 2013, the Uighurs--a persecuted religious minority from China--have left Guantanamo.
https://www.aclu.org/national-security/free-uighurs
MONTEVIDEO (Reuters) - Uruguay has agreed with the United States to accept some prisoners held in the much-criticized detention center at the U.S. military base of Guantanamo Bay, President Jose Mujica said on Thursday.
The Obama administration, which wants to close the center used to imprison people captured after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, has been talking to several countries about relocating inmates.
The South American country had accepted the request by Washington to take some prisoners and would consider them refugees, Mujica told journalists while attending an unrelated farming event.
"It's a request for human rights reasons," Mujica said.
Mujica said Obama "has asked a bunch of countries if they can take some and I told him yes."
Weekly newspaper Busqueda reported that Uruguay had accepted a U.S. proposal to take five detainees from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba base for two years. The 78-year-old ex-guerrilla Mujica agreed after speaking to Cuban President Raul Castro and sending delegates to visit the detention center, the report said.
- more -
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/03/20/us-uruguay-guantanamo-idUSBREA2J1Z220140320
nolabels
(13,133 posts)Even a three year old could tell you a square peg won't fit into a round hole. Also nothing personable about anybody. What i see is just cogs on wheel, or splines on a gear. Are you tough enough to stop it? or will just roll over when the next meeting comes around to yoke you and do it's bidding?
That's really not of my concern much anyway, i was just kind venting and describing what i see.
I got places to go and things to do now, but thank you for the reply
Uncle Joe
(58,342 posts)Thanks for the thread, Oilwellian.
Enthusiast
(50,983 posts)There is good reasoning behind that. The Founding Fathers in their wisdom........................
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)Sad.
DisgustipatedinCA
(12,530 posts)There oughtta be a law.
ucrdem
(15,512 posts)But seriously he's free to vote how he wants and I wouldn't hold it against him. It's what he says and writes that I take issue with.
Android3.14
(5,402 posts)How long has Chomsky been a racist, and why didn't our textually incontinent authoritarian personalities tell us?
treestar
(82,383 posts)need to not title their articles, or make statements, that are absurd exaggerations.
The WH is not determined on any such thing.
Leme
(1,092 posts)But there seems to be an effort to diminish civil liberties, and has been for some time. Whether the White House is determined to abet this, or is a liaise-faire participant or other is a question of sorts.
grahamhgreen
(15,741 posts)geretogo
(1,281 posts)America today .
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)
George II
(67,782 posts)Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)Tell me, do you work for free?
George II
(67,782 posts)....(cough cough) of others. He's the most obvious at doing this for money. And if he is doing it for the self-professed "good of mankind", why doesn't he use the spoils he's earning to change the system?
That's what martyrs do.
Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)George II
(67,782 posts)Oilwellian
(12,647 posts)There are very few journalists who are willing to tackle the important issues.
wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)chewwwww! Excuse me please. I'm allergic to bullshit. 
George II
(67,782 posts)wildbilln864
(13,382 posts)aspirin is not for allergies AFAIR!
Pholus
(4,062 posts)Those computers and storage facilities built by the beltway bandits aren't cheap you know.
nikto
(3,284 posts)There's nuthin' to worry about.
nikto
(3,284 posts)It'll cost ya'
your freedom.
nikto
(3,284 posts)...to give up your freedoms to keep your freedom.
Otherwise, are you really free?
FiveGoodMen
(20,018 posts)nikto
(3,284 posts)
