America — The World’s Newest Dictatorship
Edited extracts from this article by Justin Raimondo,
with comments, pictures and captions by Lasha Darkmoon
“There is no freedom, no democracy, and no government accountability in Amerika, a fascist state.” — Paul Craig Roberts
In a revealing series of interviews on Amy Goodman’s “Democracy Now” program, three individuals targeted by the American surveillance state — William Binney, former top NSA official, Jacob Applebaum, an internet security specialist who works with WikiLeaks, and Laura Poitras,
an Oscar-nominated documentary film-maker whose work has brought her to
the attention of US authorities and led to her harassment by US
government agents — give compelling evidence that America is no longer a free country.
Binney resigned his position with the National Security Agency (NSA) after 40 years in protest at the government’s increasingly totalitarian methods
of data-collection and retention, without judicial oversight. The
government has targeted him: in 2007, his home was invaded by FBI agents
after he went to the Senate Intelligence Committee with revelations
about illegal NSA spying on American citizens: they pointed guns at him, and warned that he would “not do well” in prison.
Applebaum and Poitras have been
detained, searched, and interrogated every time they have re-entered
the US from abroad — Poitras over 40 times — and had their laptops seized and presumably copied.
None of these individuals have been charged with a crime.
The degree to which our constitutionally-protected liberties have been usurped is shockingly described by Binney:
AMY GOODMAN: Do you believe all emails, the government has copies of, in the United States?
WILLIAM BINNEY: I would think — I believe they have most of them, yes.
GOODMAN: And you’re speaking from a position where you would know, considering your position in the National Security Agency.
BINNEY:
Right. All they would have to do is put various Narus devices at
various points along the network, at choke points or convergent points,
where the network converges, and they could basically take down and have
copies of most everything on the network.
While this level of surveillance started during the Bush administration, under President Obama, Binney says:
The
surveillance has increased. In fact, I would suggest that they’ve
assembled on the order of 20 trillion transactions about U.S. citizens
with other U.S. citizens.
AMY GOODMAN: How many?
WILLIAM BINNEY: Twenty trillion.
What are they doing with all those
emails? They’re targeting their enemies, domestic as well as foreign,
and combining this information with “meta-data” — i.e., financial
records, credit card transactions — to create comprehensive profiles of
those on their enemies list.
There’s nothing to stop them from
“leaking” this information to anyone, for any purpose — because it all
takes place in the dark. And if they want to find something on you, they
will find it and use it.
This, in short, is what it means to live in a police state.
An election for President and Commander in Chief of the Military must strive to be above reproach. Our public institutions must give the public confidence that a presidential candidate has complied with the election process that is prescribed by our Constitution and laws. It is only after a presidential candidate satisfies the rules of such a process that he/she can expect members of the public, regardless of their party affiliations, to give him/her the respect that the Office of President so much deserves.
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