Loss of Privacy

Coalition of the Billing: An Interview with Jeremy Scahill from Cultures of Resistance on Vimeo.

COALITION OF THE BILLING: AN INTERIVEW WITH JEREMY SCAHILL

Award-winning journalist Jeremy Scahill discusses the growing use of mercenaries by the United States government.

When the Bush administration chose to invade Iraq, it assumed that the war would be short and decisive. Yet by early 2010 the war had already cost over $700 billion, much of which went to corporations that profit from the conflict. Jeremy Scahill, best-selling author of Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army, has been a leading voice in opposing the war and in denouncing the radical privatization of the military. According to Scahill, at the time of this interview there were 630 companies on the U.S. government’s payroll in Iraq. More shocking are the 170 mercenary corporations operating in Iraq. Despite repeatedly committing criminal violations, these companies have been immune from prosecution and have repeatedly been rewarded no-bid contracts. Cultures of Resistance sat down for an exclusive interview with Scahill, in which he discusses the most recent stage of the military-industrial complex’s evolution.

From Daily Kos:

I visit Rosie O’Donnell’s blog almost every day, I enjoy her. I am always amazed at the nasty, sometimes violent reaction she brings out in some people. But I want to pass this on, Rosie printed it on the home page of her blog, it was sent to her. I’m sending it as a reply to every anti-Obama email I get. It’s civil and just a little frightening to see in print. Most of the comments are amazing! I am adding a few to the diary, but read the comments, well worth the time!

You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President.

You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy.

You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got outed.

You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.

You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us.

You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war.

You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq.

You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people.

You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans.

You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden.

You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed.

You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown.

You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich.

You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides.

You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark.

“You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh “hell no you can’t!”

Rudy Giuliani went on record, stating that there was never a domestic attack on the United States under George W. Bush. He makes a point of stating that one has occurred under President Obama. Apparently, after spending the entire 2008 presidential campaign constantly referring to 9/11, he has forgotten when it happened and, possibly, that it happened at all. He has also forgotten about Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, the DC sniper, the anthrax attacks, and several others.

The Mr. Giuliani has made a clarification, claiming what he said wasn’t what he meant. It’s a little difficult to take the clarification at face value given that Dana Perino is claiming the exact same thing and Mary Matalin saying that Bush inherited 9/11.

Comments from Rachael Maddow:

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

President Bush has submitted a new bill via the DOJ that will create large, and dangerous, changes to the 1978 Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. If the bill becomes a law, it will eliminate the need for the government to obtain individual warrants before an American citizen could be spied upon.

For more than five years, President Bush authorized government spying on phone calls and e-mail to and from the United States without warrants. He rejected offers from Congress to update the electronic eavesdropping law, and stonewalled every attempt to investigate his spying program.

To heighten the false urgency, the Bush administration will present this issue, as it has before, as a choice between catching terrorists before they act or blinding the intelligence agencies. But the administration has never offered evidence that the 1978 law, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act, hampered intelligence gathering after the 9/11 attacks. Mr. Bush simply said the law did not apply to him.

Again, we are told that this sort of law needs to be implemented to help prevent terrorism. We should all know by now that “preventing terrorism” really means “we want to spy on every single American and keep them under our thumbs.”

Mr. Bush’s motivations for submitting this bill now seem obvious. The courts have rejected his claim that 9/11 gave him virtually unchecked powers, and he faces a Democratic majority in Congress that is willing to exercise its oversight responsibilities. That, presumably, is why his bill grants immunity to telecommunications companies that cooperated in five years of illegal eavesdropping. It also strips the power to hear claims against the spying program from all courts except the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court, which meets in secret.

According to the administration, the bill contains “long overdue” FISA modifications to account for changes in technology. The only example it offered was that an e-mail sent from one foreign country to another that happened to go through a computer in the United States might otherwise be missed. But Senator Feinstein had already included this fix in the bill Mr. Bush rejected.

That’s right. Instead of actually creating legislation or modifying existing legislation that might actually help the country, Bush played politics and buried Feinstein’s bill, presumably because she is a democrat and attempted to keep Bush within the law. Bush wants what he has been doing for five years to be made legal. We should be more upset that he’s been subverting the law, and getting away with it, for five years than being shocked that he is even thinking of changing the law.

The FBI already admitted to abusing the powers given them in the Patriot Act. Do you really think that no one is going to abuse any of the newly proposed changes?

The measure would not update FISA; it would gut it. It would allow the government to collect vast amounts of data at will from American citizens’ e-mail and phone calls. The Center for National Security Studies said it might even be read to permit video surveillance without a warrant.

This is a dishonest measure, dishonestly presented, and Congress should reject it. Before making any new laws, Congress has to get to the truth about Mr. Bush’s spying program. (When asked at a Senate hearing yesterday if Mr. Bush still claims to have the power to ignore FISA when he thinks it is necessary, Mr. McConnell refused to answer.)

So, instead of updating and amending the Act again, President Bush has decided to gut it and recreate the law as he sees fit. Americans need to get out from under the, “I’m not doing anything wrong so why should I worry?” mantra. President Bush already has the power to enact Martial Law whenever he sees fit. He also has the power to decide who is a terrorist, while changing what the definition of a terrorist is, depending on the situation. This will, as history has often showed, begin with the legislators, judges, politicians, prosecutors, and political opponents. Once all opponents are out of the way, those in power can continue to do whatever the hell they want to with no opposition to their hair-brained schemes.

This situation doesn’t stop when Bush leaves office. This power has been given to the executive branch, creating an imbalance in the proper checks of our governmental systems. Every single law that has been passed since 9/11 has been touted as “protecting the children” or “to stop terrorists/terrorism.” However, what it really did, is strip individual Americans’ privacy rights. The saddest thing in all this is that the common American has spent more time getting to know the latest American Idol rather than getting to know the bills that are becoming laws and the Acts created to further kill individual rights in this country.

This proposed law from President Bush would create a situation where the government would be allowed to spy on whomever they chose and make it illegal for anyone to know what they are doing. Remember, if we were really fighting terrorists and going after those responsible for the terroristic act of 9/11, we’d be in Afghanistan chasing Bin Laden, looking under every rock for him, until he was captured. Instead, we are told we should accept changes to a law that already works well, so that the President can cover his ass for his past illegal activities.

People are ignoring the fact that Ohio officials are being investigated for tampering with election results, leading one to believe that, again, Bush isn’t a legitimate president. Congress is too busy dealing with their own scandals and thinking of ways to keep their jobs to be bothered with actually caring about their constituents. If the past is any indication, Congress will end up rubber-stamping these idiotic changes.

Most of the so-called terrorist threats against this country for the past five years have come from President Bush pissing off nearly every country in the world, including those that have been our staunchest allies. Not satisfied with that, Bush has moved on to his fellow citizens, to the point that they want him impeached and given a good ass-kicking.

The fact remains that we are not in any more danger now than we were on 9/11. Yes, that was a tragic event and people suffered horrific deaths, but we are in more danger from within than without. If the US government had paid attention to the information they had obtained before 9/11, that crisis could have been avoided. The laws on the books then were, and are, more than adequate in preventing terrible crimes in the United States.

These laws are merely another ploy at grabbing more power to eliminate those pesky people in Congress who might otherwise object. We are not in imminent danger. We should not be living in fear. We should be forcing our Congressmen to get a set of balls and stand up to the President to stop him in changing the United States from a Republic to a Dictatorship.

Mr. Bush, you are the only terrorist threat to this country. Please, for the love of God, stop speaking. Just stay in bed until the 2008 elections and do nothing. The individual citizens of the United States would thank you for it.

In October 2006, President Bush signed the John Warner National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2007, which overturns the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.  The Posse Comitatus Act prohibits federal military personnel from acting as a police force within the United States except when authorized by the US Congress or Constitution.  It was passed to strictly limit the government’s powers.

Quietly slipped into the law at the last minute, at the request of the Bush administration, were sections changing important legal principles, dating back 200 years, which limit the U.S. government’s ability to use the military to intervene in domestic affairs. These changes would allow Bush, whenever he thinks it necessary, to institute martial law–under which the military takes direct control over civilian administration.

The article, however, quotes Sec. 1042 when it should be Section 1076.  Posse Comitatus has it’s pros and cons.  We saw kind of help it could be during the L.A. Riots in 1992.  Most people do not worry and, if we had any other president right now, most people would not be worrying about the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act.  However, we have seen the president continue to strip American citizens of their freedoms and lead them down the path to a police state, that this new act is worrying.

Bush has modified the main exemptions to posse comitatus that up to now have been primarily defined by the Insurrection Act of 1807. Previously the president could call out the army in the United States only in cases of insurrection or conditions where “rebellion against the authority of the United States, make it impracticable to enforce the laws of the United States in any State or Territory by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings.” Under the new law the president can use the military in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack or “other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.”

No doubt, the Bush administration will hold this Act up to the people and say, “see, now if another Katrina happens, we can help.”  The fact is, they could have helped during Katrina because FEMA had the authority to do so but couldn’t be arsed to do anything in a timely manner.  This was partly due to the fact that Bush slashed FEMA’s budget so that he could fund the Department of Homeland Security.  A Katrina incident should not be the responsibility of the military, however, Bush wants it them to be responsible and his overriding of Posse Comitatus does just that.  Are you starting to see a pattern here of Bush’s extreme disdain for the Constitution and the laws of the United States?

The fact is we need Posse Comitatus because it protects us.  A little over a year ago, Bush said that he would institute martial law if there were some sort of outbreak like Avian Flu.  He’d rather turn straight to the police state than get some vaccines, give out free health care, and let the police do their jobs.  George Bush is dismantling all the legalities that restrain the powers of the executive branch and is creating an executive branch answerable to no one.

In 2002, the government created the new Northern Command. This is the first time since the Civil War that the U.S. military has been given an operational command inside the continental United States.

In 2005, the Washington Post reported that Northcom had developed battle plans for martial law in the U.S. One secret document, CONPLAN 2005, envisions 15 different scenarios where these plans could go into effect.

In 2006, the Military Commissions Act was passed which, in addition to legalizing torture, allows the president and military courts to declare anyone an enemy combatant without basic civil rights like habeas corpus.

There is also the massive spying, aided by AT&T, on unsuspecting citizens, and the building of large detention and processing centers to be used “in the event of an emergency influx of immigrants into the U.S. or to support the rapid development of new programs.”  We all need to wake up and smell the police state.

While there are people out there who really care and call and write their representatives, there don’t seem to be enough of them crying out, begging, for these horrible changes to stop sneaking their way into our laws and our lives.  We gave our representatives the power to represent us, not Bush, not some dictator wannabe, not corporations.

I’ve never been a big advocate of having personal weapons.  While I agree we all should be allowed to have them, and that’s protected in the Constitution, I’ve never felt the need to own one, until now.  If not enough people take a stand against this, then we will need these weapons in the near future to protect us from our government and to, hopefully, replace it.

Godwin’s law would usually prevent me from stating this but, after the Reichstag fire, Hitler was able to easily suspend civil liberties with a decree.  I’m not saying that Bush is quite Hitler, however, instead of suspending our civil liberties and society in one fail swoop, he is doing it piecemeal so that no one notices.  He has already put the necessary pieces into place.  All he needs now is to finish dismantling the barriers to an all powerful executive and we will no longer recognize the America our forefathers fought to preserve and that we have come to enjoy and take for granted.