Turnkey Tyranny

In the spirit of Thomas Jefferson, the greatest American whistleblower of all, and carrying on the honorable tradition of civil disobedience practiced by the likes of Thoreau, Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., Edward Snowden has put his freedom and his life at enormous risk simply by shining a spotlight on what our government is doing. Revealing the "architectural repression" that's been put in place. The "turnkey tyranny" ready for the next Underminer-in-Chief-of-the-Rule-of-Law. What did he gain for his "crime" of revealing the government's sweeping crimes against its citizens? A lifetime of watching his back -- but with a clean conscience. Quite unlike the majority of those in Washington, D.C. As far as Citizen Mofo is concerned, Edward Snowden is a true patriot and a courageous and righteous hero of civil disobedience in the face of great wrong.

Edward Snowden interviewed in Hong Kong:

'When you're in positions of privileged access like a systems administrator for these intelligence community agencies, you're exposed to a lot more information on a broader scale than the average employee. And, because of that, you see things that may be disturbing. But over the course of a normal person's career you'd only see one or two of these instances. When you see everything, you see them on a more frequent basis. And you recognize that some of these things are actually abuses. Over time, that awareness of wrongdoing builds up, and you feel compelled to talk about it. And the more you talk about it, the more you're ignored, the more you're told it's not a problem, until eventually you realize these things need to be determined by the public, not by someone who was simply hired by the government.

Even if you're not doing anything wrong, you're being watched and recorded.

And the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude. It's getting to the point where you don't have to have done anything wrong, you simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody, even by a wrong call, and then they can use the system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you've ever made, every friend you've ever discussed something with, and attack you on that basis to derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.

The gravest fear that I have regarding the outcome for America of these disclosures, is that nothing will change.

People will see in the media all of these disclosures, they'll know the lengths that the government is going to grant themselves powers unilaterally to create greater control over American society and global society.

But they won't be willing to take the risks necessary to stand up and fight to change things, to force their representatives to actually take a stand in their interests.'


EDWARD SNOWDEN DID HIS PART.
NOW WE NEED TO DO OURS.

A Perfect Engine of Fascism

The NSA is building a perfect engine of fascism as the control center of a vast and rapidly growing surveillance cartel that includes 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations across the U.S. This cartel of private companies and their government collaborators has conspired to violate the 4th Amendment to the Constitution as well as numerous other laws in uncountable ways. Under cover of the black shroud of secrecy they are collecting all possible digital data on the activities of all Americans and storing them in massive - and massively expensive - new facilities - just in case. Just in case some unnamed bureaucrat decides that you are a possible threat because of an "anomalous event", such as: "your language is out of place for the region you're in," "you're using encryption," or "you're searching the web for suspicious stuff."

This illegally collected data now comprises a "turnkey tyranny," to use Edward Snowden's phrase, which any tyrant can put to oppressive use against U.S. citizens in a way that is indefensible by us citizens - because, once again, the entire operation is hidden under a black shroud of secrecy. But there is no need to wait for this turn of events - this tyrant to show up. He's already there. The system of illegal surveillance set up by the NSA under the fuck-the-Constitution leadership of General Keith Alexander has already been turned to nefarious purposes against Americans - for attacks and reprisals against whistle-blowers who have exposed some of the NSA's multiple billion-dollar boondoggles; for propaganda and misinformation attacks against critics of the NSA's illegal programs; and to spy on suspected drug dealers and tax cheats.

This is only the beginning of this slippery slope. As long as it gets away with its illegal activity, the NSA will continue to expand its list of targets (who have nothing whatsoever to do with terrorism or national security) and activities, until any routine traffic stop (for example) will result in your entire digital history being analyzed by any one of 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies in 10,000 locations across the U.S., all focused on profit and growth at all costs, funded by taxpayer dollars. This focus on profit and growth that is the engine that drives the surveillance cartel will ensure that we accelerate down this slippery slope of fascism. And I don't use the term "fascism" lightly, but in the sense of Benito Mussolini (quite an expert) who defined fascism as the merger of the government and the corporation. As the NSA builds its perfect engine of fascism, it has replaced the Constitution as its guiding law with the financial bottom line of the surveillance cartel.

This must change. The NSA is the greatest threat to the security of the United States, and it must be defunded and destroyed - and a great many of its employees jailed - before it destroys the America that has thrived under the rule of law for nearly two-and-a-half centuries. The NSA is moving fast to complete its perfect engine of fascism. We must act now. We must restore the primacy of the Constitution.

An Open Message to the NSA

This is an open message to all NSA employees.

For those of you engaged in domestic  surveillance, you need to understand that the surveillance state you're creating is defrauding the American people of our birthright -- namely the rights and liberties guaranteed to the People by the U.S. Constitution.

And, so doing, you are paving the way for an American police state, a "turnkey tyranny" in Edward Snowden's apt phrase, which becomes increasingly inevitable with each new, emboldened stride of the federal government away from the rule of law.

You will disagree with this -- as does any bureaucratic enabler of government wrongdoing as a matter of self-justification through a process of self-deception. For example, your website touts the NSA's "Dedication to the Nation":

"NSA/CSS employees are Americans first, last, and always. We treasure the U.S. Constitution and the rights it secures for all the people. Each employee takes a solemn oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic."

Lovely sentiments indeed. What is quite obvious to most of the rest of us, however, is that this entire statement is as much a calculated falsehood as when Director of National Intelligence James Clapper looked our representatives in Congress in the eye and lied under oath about the very existence of domestic spying. Lying to Congress is a felony punishable by up to 5 years in prison, but of course James Clapper will never serve a day behind bars, because, as we've seen over and over, our government crushes truthtellers and coddles the powerful, regardless of their crimes.

Now I ask you: Do you think we will be inclined to believe what your felonious leader or anyone else in the NSA tells us?

You say you "treasure the U.S. Constitution" -- another palpable falsehood, given that you turn the 4th Amendment upside down every day as part of your job.
Unlike our multi-thousand page laws today, the 4th Amendment is one short paragraph, easy enough to understand.

You have stolen the "right of the people to be secure" and turned it into a "right of the government to spy on the people."

"We've got congressional oversight and judicial oversight," claimed President Obama. Trust us!

But here again, the truth is a different story. The Wall Street Journal reported in June that the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, the critical oversight body, has declined only 11 of over 33,900 surveillance requests by the government in 33 years. That's .03 percent.

"The FISA system is broken. At the point that a FISA judge can compel the disclosure of millions of phone records of US citizens engaged in only domestic communications, unrelated to the collection of foreign intelligence...there is no longer meaningful judicial review."
Marc Rotenberg, executive director of the Electronic Privacy Information Center

The FISA Court itself agrees with this assessment.

"The FISC is forced to rely upon the accuracy of the information that is provided to the Court. The FISC does not have the capacity to investigate issues of noncompliance, and in that respect the FISC is in the same position as any other court when it comes to enforcing compliance with its orders."
FISC Chief, U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton 

And yet YOU need oversight in a HUGE way. A leaked May 2012 NSA audit obtained by the Washington Post identified 2,776 "incidents" over the previous 12 months of unauthorized collection, storage, access to, or distribution of legally protected communications. Apparently you violate the law, by your own admission, over 200 times a month.

"There is no legitimate explanation" for what you do, says Jim Sensenbrenner, author of the Patriot Act -- the law which has been falsely used as the authority behind your illegal acts.

The Bill of Rights was adopted "to prevent misconstruction or abuse of its [the government's] powers." Which describes precisely what you are doing. The 4th Amendment is not optional. It is the people's right, not the government's. We want it back -- just the way it was written by the Founding Fathers.

If the 4th Amendment itself is not clear enough to you, take a look at the 9th and 10th:

Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people.

Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Reserved "to the PEOPLE" not "to the GOVERNMENT."

You've shredded the Constitution. You've stolen our rights. You've lost our trust.

NOW GIVE US OUR FUCKING RIGHTS BACK.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

-Voltaire

A Sonnet on the Financial-Government Complex

by Citizen Mofo

In the financial chaos unleashed by de-reg

The banks raped everyone in sight

With the Democrats holding our left leg

And the Republicans holding our right.

And when the banks were finished with their fun

And We the People lay bleeding on the floor

The Treasury decided we weren’t done

And found new ways to hurt us all some more.

Instead of putting the criminals in jail

They gave them trillions from their victims – us.

The bailout went beyond an Epic Fail

To collusion that borders on treasonous:

The Feds have gutted the Rule of Law, and through

Their collusion with criminals became criminals, too.

A Limerick for Eric Holder

by Citizen Mofo

Attorney General Eric Holder (in Congressional testimony March 6, 2013): I am concerned that the size of some of these institutions becomes so large that it does become difficult for us to prosecute them when we are hit with indications that if we do prosecute — if we do bring a criminal charge — it will have a negative impact on the national economy, perhaps even the world economy.

Our AG says banks are unprosecutable.

The impact might be international.

There’s just one tiny flaw

In his view of the law:

It’s completely unconstitutional.

A Rhyming History of the Banksters

by Citizen Mofo

We don’t deserve a banking system run by crooks.

Yet that’s just what we’ve got, the way it looks.

They lie, they steal, they double deal, they cook the books,

They claim they’re doing the “work of God”

And Congress is duly shocked and awed.

But I’d say that’s rather odd unless God’s so flawed he favors fraud.

When Congress killed Glass-Steagall was the day

That banks began to see that crime could pay

With no more regulations on predation in their way.

Work hard, play by the rules? “No deal,”

The bankers said. “We’d rather cheat and steal,

And now we’re free, as we should be, to do just as we feel.”

For the government’s been captured, and “We

The People” no longer means you, or you, or me.

It’s “by the bankers, for the bankers” by government decree.

Too big to fail, the bankers act with impunity.

Too big to jail, the banks’ crimes have immunity.

And government, conveniently lenient, provides the opportunity.

Not only did the government defraud

Its citizens to serve its greedy god

It did a quid pro quo on the status quo with the low blow of Frank/Dodd.

Congress was captured being lobby money whores,

The executive branch was captured by revolving doors,

And the SEC and Treasury are full co-conspirators.

We see no diff if the administration

Is Democratic or Republican.

The Bush guys lied; so Obama’s decided that was the way to win.

Paulson was a master of the bait and switch.

Geithner was the bankers’ little bitch.

Both took an oath but nonetheless got filthy freakin’ rich.

So sit down, shut up, it’s my turn to speak.

You may think that you are strong and we are weak.

But right makes might, we’re ready to fight, and it’s justice that we seek.

“Too big to jail” – just another self-serving lie.

Jail the CEO, they’ll just hire another guy.

Put AIG in the penitentiary and no one’s gonna cry.

It’s time to cut the criminal cancer out –

The banks and bankers who brought this mess about

And their admirers and conspirers whom they couldn’t have done without –

Time to cut them out so the system can start to heal;

To put them away for life with no appeal;

To weed out the pigs and break up the bigs that caused this whole ordeal.

We must now re-learn the rule of law.

For if democracy has a fatal flaw

It’s the scale of disaster when the government’s master is Bank of America.

An Elegy for Barack Obama’s Conscience

by Citizen Mofo

Barack Obama was once the lone sane Senator
Who showed discernment and a conscience
By speaking out against that damn dumb war
With simple, forceful eloquence.

And so we made him President.
But his actions since give cause to wonder
Where has that conscience gone, and that discernment?
It’s not that, like Bush, he’s made one blunder

After another out of sheer vacuity.
The things he’s done he’s done with care,
Prepared with intellectual acuity.
It’s just that there’s no more conscience there.

I refer in particular to the drone attacks –
Pure murder, immoral and illegal –
And no lying lawyers can change those facts.
Now, when did we grant the regal

Authority to kill citizens at will
To our President? To kill kids and to kill moms?
He may as well be chalking up each kill
On the White House walls beside Osama’s and Sadam’s.

Gameboy war, this high-tech barbarity
Makes killing pixel people easy, without feeling.
They claim collateral damage is a rarity
But what’s the truth with which we should be dealing?

Let’s check the tally: Four U.S. citizens
Have been murdered by drone to date.
Hundreds of women, nearly two hundred children,
All murdered to fan the flames of hate

And create new jihadists far far faster
Than we could ever hunt them down.
Mr. President, O murder-dealing master,
I wish your conscience were still around.

Unlike Lincoln, who grew in humanity
Through four bloody years of civil war;
Or FDR, who rolled with firm urbanity
Through the Depression and the Nazis and through the door

To greatness – Obama, on the other hand,
Is regressing and shrinking, further and further,
From the Senator who was once the lone sane man
With a conscience. Now he’s steeped in the blood of murder.