REMEMBER WHEN ONLY SEVEN DIRTY WORDS WOULD GET YOU IN TROUBLE?

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

Revealed: Hundreds of words to avoid using online if you don’t want the government spying on you (and they include ‘pork’, ‘cloud’ and ‘Mexico’)

By Daniel Miller/ The Daily Mail/ May 26, 2012

  • Department of Homeland Security forced to release list following freedom of information request

  • Agency insists it only looks for evidence of genuine threats to the U.S. and not for signs of general dissent



Revealing: A list of keywords used by government analysts to scour the internet for evidence of threats to the U.S. has been released under the Freedom of Information Act

The Department of Homeland Security has been forced to release a list of keywords and phrases it uses to monitor social networking sites and online media for signs of terrorist or other threats against the U.S.

The intriguing the list includes obvious choices such as ‘attack’, ‘Al Qaeda’, ‘terrorism’ and ‘dirty bomb’ alongside dozens of seemingly innocent words like ‘pork’, ‘cloud’, ‘team’ and ‘Mexico’.

Released under a freedom of information request, the information sheds new light on how government analysts are instructed to patrol the internet searching for domestic and external threats.

The words are included in the department’s 2011 ‘Analyst’s Desktop Binder‘ used by workers at their National Operations Center which instructs workers to identify ‘media reports that reflect adversely on DHS and response activities’.

Department chiefs were forced to release the manual following a House hearing over documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit which revealed how analysts monitor social networks and media organisations for comments that ‘reflect adversely’ on the government.

However they insisted the practice was aimed not at policing the internet for disparaging remarks about the government and signs of general dissent, but to provide awareness of any potential threats.

As well as terrorism, analysts are instructed to search for evidence of unfolding natural disasters, public health threats and serious crimes such as mall/school shootings, major drug busts, illegal immigrant busts.

The list has been posted online by the Electronic Privacy Information Center – a privacy watchdog group who filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act before suing to obtain the release of the documents.

In a letter to the House Homeland Security Subcommittee on Counter-terrorism and Intelligence, the centre described the choice of words as ‘broad, vague and ambiguous’. (ARTICLE CONTINUED HERE)

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE: THE LIST OF KEYWORDS IN FULL

List1

List

list3

 

 

 

Posted in civil liberties, crime, government, law, law enforcement, Terrorism | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

The Bill of What?

Posted on May 27, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

dollarvigilante.com
Posted in civil liberties, law, Uncategorized | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

THAT QUEASY ELECTION FEELING

Posted on May 26, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

Even Best-Case Election Scenarios Not Very Promising

By Arlen Grossman/ The Big Picture Report

dailycal.org

Do you hold the belief that no matter how the 2012 election turns out America’s future is bleak? You have good reason for feeling that way. Let’s examine the possible election outcomes:

**WORST CASE ELECTION SCENARIO: Romney wins, and Republicans Take the Senate and the House.

RESULT: America moves at a rapid pace toward a theocratic police state corporatocracy.

**NEXT WORSE SCENARIO: Romney wins, Republicans and Democrats each capture one house of Congress.

RESULT: Democrats slightly slow down our descent into a theocratic police state corporatocracy.

**BETTER SCENARIO: Obama Wins, Republicans and Democrats each capture one house of Congress.

RESULT: As is the case now, the country continues its gradual descent into a theocratic police state corporatocracy.

**BEST CASE ELECTION SCENARIO: Obama Wins, Democrats sweep Congress.

RESULT: The most unlikely outcome, but if it happens the country would continue moving toward a theocratic police state corporatocracy, at a slower pace.

I wish it were otherwise, but based on current political and economic conditions, the United States of America seems destined to continue its inevitable decline. Because consumerism and a rapacious economic system dominate and control our political/cultural lives, a change of course is unlikely.

Because both the Republican Party (completely) and the Democratic Party (mostly) are dependent on greedy corporate benefactors, and unlimited money is the rule, the wants and desires of the average American run a distant second to the wishes of the One Percent.

Until and unless money is removed as the driver of our elections and political process, which would require the passing of a constitutional amendment, the negative results of these election scenarios are inevitable. A change from this course will require an outraged citizenry taking to the streets and demanding it, which is something this country hasn’t seen since the Vietnam War era forty years ago.

Until and unless conditions deteriorate to the point that the Occupy movement grows exponentially and a desperate electorate takes to the streets in massive numbers (not likely to happen this year), only then might the Owners of America (as George Carlin famously called the wealthy elite) be forced to make changes and give up some of their power. Barring that, the queasy feeling you get in the pit of your stomach thinking about this year’s election will return for many elections to come.

ALSO PUBLISHED IN OPEDNEWS.COM (Headline Status) May 26, 2012


Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, elections, government, inequality, Mitt Romney, Occupy, politics, protest, protests, Republican Party | Tagged , , , , , | 7 Comments

A FEW FACTS ARE IN ORDER……

Posted on May 25, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

Obama Spending Binge Never Happened

Commentary: Government outlays rising at slowest pace since 1950s

by Rex Nutting/ MarketWatch/ May 22, 2012

WASHINGTON — Of all the falsehoods told about President Barack Obama, the biggest whopper is the one about his reckless spending spree.

As would-be president Mitt Romney tells it: “I will lead us out of this debt and spending inferno.”

Almost everyone believes that Obama has presided over a massive increase in federal spending, an “inferno” of spending that threatens our jobs, our businesses and our children’s future. Even Democrats seem to think it’s true.

Government spending under Obama, including his signature stimulus bill, is rising at a 1.4% annualized pace — slower than at any time in nearly 60 years.

But it didn’t happen. Although there was a big stimulus bill under Obama, federal spending is rising at the slowest pace since Dwight Eisenhower brought the Korean War to an end in the 1950s.

Even hapless Herbert Hoover managed to increase spending more than Obama has.

Here are the facts, according to the official government statistics:

• In the 2009 fiscal year — the last of George W. Bush’s presidency — federal spending rose by 17.9% from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. Check the official numbers at the Office of Management and Budget.

• In fiscal 2010 — the first budget under Obama — spending fell 1.8% to $3.46 trillion.

• In fiscal 2011, spending rose 4.3% to $3.60 trillion.

• In fiscal 2012, spending is set to rise 0.7% to $3.63 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office’s estimate of the budget that was agreed to last August.

• Finally in fiscal 2013 — the final budget of Obama’s term — spending is scheduled to fall 1.3% to $3.58 trillion. Read the CBO’s latest budget outlook.

The big surge in federal spending happened in fiscal 2009, before Obama took office. Since then, spending growth has been relatively flat.

Over Obama’s four budget years, federal spending is on track to rise from $3.52 trillion to $3.58 trillion, an annualized increase of just 0.4%.

There has been no huge increase in spending under the current president, despite what you hear.

Why do people think Obama has spent like a drunken sailor? It’s in part because of a fundamental misunderstanding of the federal budget.

What people forget (or never knew) is that the first year of every presidential term starts with a budget approved by the previous administration and Congress. The president only begins to shape the budget in his second year. It takes time to develop a budget and steer it through Congress — especially in these days of congressional gridlock.

The 2009 fiscal year, which Republicans count as part of Obama’s legacy, began four months before Obama moved into the White House. The major spending decisions in the 2009 fiscal year were made by George W. Bush and the previous Congress.

Like a relief pitcher who comes into the game with the bases loaded, Obama came in with a budget in place that called for spending to increase by hundreds of billions of dollars in response to the worst economic and financial calamity in generations.

By no means did Obama try to reverse that spending. Indeed, his budget proposals called for even more spending in subsequent years. But the Congress (mostly Republicans but many Democrats, too) stopped him. If Obama had been a king who could impose his will, perhaps what the Republicans are saying about an Obama spending binge would be accurate.

Yet the actual record doesn’t show a reckless increase in spending. Far from it. (CONTINUED)

 Boldface added by BPR Editor
Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, economy, government, Mitt Romney, Republican Party | Tagged , , , | 6 Comments

IT DOESN’T LOOK GOOD

Posted on May 24, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

This Is What Tyranny Looks Like

by Carl Gibson/ Common Dreams/ May 23, 2012

Protesters clashed with police at the NATO summit meeting in Chicago on Sunday. (Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times)

Remember when police beat Tea Party activists with batons, raided homes without warrants, unjustly arrested and strip-searched Tea Party protesters, or attacked and intimidated journalists covering Tea Party rallies?

Me neither. But then again, the Tea Party took to the streets in favor of higher profits and less regulations for the richest 1 percent, whose ranks they hope to but will never join. The media is more than happy to inflate their crowd estimates, and police are more than happy to let pro-status quo protests take to the streets undisturbed. The Tea Party has since phased out street protests to take over a major political party and make it bend to their every radical whim.

While it hasn’t yet taken over a major party, the Occupy movement has successfully exposed the oppressive fascist police state that has reared its ugly head in the past year. If you want to see what tyranny looks like, consider what happened to the estimated 75,000 protesters who took on the military-industrial complex at last weekend’s NATO summit in Chicago, after the mayor revoked protesters’ attempts to lawfully assemble.

-A night before protests even begun, the Chicago Police Department raided an activist’s home and arrested several on unproven allegations of terrorist activity, allwithout a valid warrant.

-At the front of a police line surrounding a NATO gathering, police suddenly start beating unarmed protesters with batons in an eerie video resembling police at Egypt’s Tahrir Square.

-While covering the protests, credentialed journalists are attacked by police who use bicycles as weapons.

-After a day of covering the protests, three livestreamers are surrounded by Chicago police at gunpoint and have their car and property impounded without cause.

But the oppression isn’t coming from just the police. The federal government is now openly embracing totalitarian tactics in suppressing political dissent, including unwarranted surveillance, denial of due process rights, and even psychological warfare:

Salon.com

-FBI agents pressured a group of anarchists in Ohio to blow up a bridge on May Day, going so far as to pick out a target and provide the explosives. They were held without bond after their arrest. White supremacists in Florida planning an actual terrorist attack at a May Day protest were outed by state police, and ignored by federal law enforcement. Their bond was set at $500.

-The Department of Homeland Security assembled almost 800 pages of documents detailing possibly unconstitutional monitoring of the Occupy movement, and collaboration with city governments.

-Congress voted down an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act that would have prohibited the federal government from detaining American citizens indefinitely, without trial, based on pure suspicion. They did so exactly one day after US District Judge Katherine Forrest struck down NDAA detention provisions as unconstitutional. Congress also passed a law allowing protesters to be arrested on felony charges anywhere where there is secret service protection, and is actively seeking to lift a ban on the use of propaganda on American citizens.

-The Supreme Court ruled in a 5-4 decision to allow invasive and humiliating strip searches for any arrest, no matter the charge (like protesting).

So why the violent police oppression and government suppression of rights? As Dan Rather said on Bill Maher’s program, “Big business is in bed with big government.” A great portion of the federal government is sponsored by big corporations, so naturally, nearly every act of Congress and the Supreme Court is done so with the ultimate goal of deregulating industry and maximizing corporate profits at the expense of citizen and consumer rights. These puppets of industry occupying our government will discredit and crack down on anyone trying to stop, delay or reverse the process by any means necessary.

In 1963, JFK famously said our nation was “founded on the principle that all men are created equal, and that the rights of every man are diminished when the rights of one man are threatened.” The historic street demonstrations of 2012 will be meaningless unless citizens use the power of the vote this year to remove the worst offenders from office. They can start with the Representatives and Senators who voted NO to due process rights.

Carl Gibson, 25, is co-founder of US Uncut, a nationwide creative direct-action movement that mobilized tens of thousands of activists against corporate tax avoidance and budget cuts in the months leading up to the Occupy Wall Street movement. Carl and other US Uncut activists are featured in the documentary “We’re Not Broke,” which premiered at the 2012 Sundance Film Festival. He currently lives in Old Lyme, Connecticut. 

Posted in civil liberties, elections, government, Justice, law, media, Occupy, Occupy Wall Street, protest, protests, Supreme Court | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Obama’s Just……. Different

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

BPR Quote of the Day:

“I don’t know whether Barack Obama was born in the United States of America. I don’t know that. But I do know this, that in his heart, he’s not an American. He’s just not an American.”

Rep. Mike Coffman (R-Colorado)

Denver Post report

Rep. Coffman’s “apology”:

“I misspoke and I apologize. I have confidence in President Obama’s citizenship and legitimacy as President of the United States. I don’t believe the president shares my belief in American Exceptionalism. His policies reflect a philosophy that America is but one nation among many equals. As a Marine, I believe America is unique and based on a core set of principles that make it superior to other nations.”

Posted in Barack Obama, elections, politics, Quotations, Republican Party | Tagged , | 3 Comments

COMING TO AIRSPACE NEAR YOU: DRONES

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

BPR Editor’s Note:  Soon more and more Americans will get to know what citizens in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Yemen, and other countries are experiencing: the sight of unmanned aerial drones, sent from mysterious airfields, sent to spy on and sometimes kill people, quite a few of whom turn out to be civilians. The American police state promises to grow and expand in our skies. Groups like the Electronic Frontier Foundation want to expose and restrict drone activity whenever possible.

Local Governments Have the Power to Restrict Drone Surveillance in the US

By Trevor Timm/ Electronic Frontier Foundation/ May 18, 2012

A series of events in the last two weeks have set the stage for how surveillance drones will be operated by local law enforcement in the United States and how citizens can demand privacy protections as domestic use escalates.

As EFF has previously reported, Congress passed a bill in February mandating the FAA must open national airspace to drones, despite the extensive and unprecedented civil liberties dangers they pose to every American. The FAA, in new rules announced on Monday, made the authorization procedure easier, stating they have “streamlined the process” for “public agencies”—which includes local law enforcement—to legally operate drones in U.S. skies.

We know that dozens of law enforcement agencies already have drones, based on informationfrom EFF’s Freedom of Information Act lawsuit over the FAA’s initial refusal to release the list of authorizations. And one of the biggest cities with a police department on the list was Seattle.

It turned out Seattle’s city council—which oversees the police department—was just as surprised as many citizens to see Seattle Police Department’s name on the list. The city council learned about the drones through a reporter asking questions related to EFF’s lawsuit, not through official channels. After front page stories in the Seattle Times and an official apologyfrom the Seattle police department, Seattle is now the first city to consider privacy safeguards for drone use by law enforcement.

The ACLU of Washington has asked the city council to pass a legally binding ordinance detailing “what kind of information can be collected, who can collect it, how the information can be used, and how long it can be kept,” along with “an auditing process to make sure the policies are followed.”  The Seattle Times agreed. In an editorial written on May 6, the city’s largest paper urged city council to adopt “usage restrictions, image-retention limits, and regular audits and reviews of drones as a law-enforcement tool.”

Seattle’s Police Department has already pledged drones would not be used for surveillance, and only “for situations like crime scene photography, missing person searches, and barricaded person scenarios.” They’ve also indicated they would work with the FAA to develop privacy policies. But as the Seattle Times noted, privacy safeguards must be implemented by binding ordinance, “not by policy nods, promises and good intentions.”

In a similar incident just yesterday, after the Shelby County Tennessee sheriff’s officerequested two drones as part of a $400,000 Homeland Security grant, the Shelby county commission questioned the Sheriff’s Office on how they would be using the drone and asked them to draw up privacy guidelines. The sheriff’s office promptly withdrew its request for drones. But encouragingly, the commission is still pushing the sheriff’s office for privacy policies. As the Memphis Daily News reported, “several commissioners said they might still pursue setting some guidelines on the use of such surveillance through a memorandum of understanding with the sheriff’s office.”

Responding to an EFF public records request, Miami-Dade County also released information about its drones earlier this week, which it bought using a grant from the Justice Department (DOJ).

The FAA itself estimates that there may be as many as 30,000 drones in the US by the year 2020, and with the loosened restrictions coupled with the Department of Homeland Security and DOJ issuing grants for local police forces to buy drones, it’s imperative that local governments act swiftly to ban surveillance drones outright or institute robust safeguards for their citizens. Americans cannot afford to wait for the FAA or Congress to act.

Does your local police department own and operate a drone? Check out our interactive map here to find out.

EFF would also like your help. In the coming days, we’re going to announce a crowd-sourcing campaign aimed at finding out as much information as possible on each law enforcement agency’s use of drones and how citizens can voice their concerns to their local governments. Right now, if you have any information on how your local law enforcement plans to use drones, email dronesinfo@eff.org. You can get this information by calling your local police department.

And stay tuned for more, as we plan on announcing a detailed campaign soon.

 Boldface added by BPR Editor


Posted in civil liberties, crime, government, law, law enforcement | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Suddenly the Supreme Court Begins to Pay Attention

Posted on May 23, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

Posted in civil liberties, government, health care, law, Supreme Court | Tagged , , , | 2 Comments

What We Don’t Know Can’t Hurt Us, Right?

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

Posted in Economics, environment, government, health care, law, politics, science | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Charlie Chaplin, exploitation, factories, industrialization, and sticking up for the working man…

Posted on May 21, 2012 by Arlen Grossman

leahgraceobrien's avatarvagabonds and villains

The famous factory scene in Charlie Chaplin’s film Modern Times in which his character goes mad, is probably one of my favorite scenes ever filmed. Chaplin plays a factory worker who’s mind turns to mush after longs days spent working on a fast moving conveyor belt. After taking a much needed break, he finds himself reluctant to return to the grueling labor he abhors. He pretends to tend to his nails while a co-worker takes over for him. His short break doesn’t last long. He ends up being sucked down the belt and into the guts of the beastly machine.

In real life, Chaplin made the film as a dig towards factories and their owners, particularly Henry Ford. Chaplin was convinced that most factory workers were treated poorly and overworked. I believe he felt as though there was a loss of individualism, which is always dangerous. Anti-authoritism is a motif that…

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