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by Paul Craig Roberts
It has been public information for a decade that the US government
secretly, illegally, and unconstitutionally spies on its citizens.
Congress and the federal courts have done nothing about this extreme
violation of the US Constitution and statutory law, and the insouciant
US public seems unperturbed.
In 2004 a whistleblower informed the New York Times that the National
Security Agency (NSA) was violating the Foreign Intelligence
Surveillance Act (FISA) by ignoring the FISA court and spying on
Americans without obtaining the necessary warrants. The corrupt New
York Times put the interests of the US government ahead of those of the
American public and sat on the story for one year until George W. Bush
was safely reelected.
By the time the New York Times published the story of the illegal
spying one year later, the law-breaking government had had time to
mitigate the offense with ex post facto law or executive orders and
explain away its law-breaking as being in the country’s interest.
Last year William Binney, who was in charge of NSA’s global digital
data gathering program revealed that NSA had everyone in the US under
total surveillance. Every email, Internet site visited and phone call is
captured and stored. In 2012 Binney received the Callaway Award for
Civic Courage, an annual award given to those who champion
constitutional rights at risk to their professional and personal lives.
There have been a number of whistleblowers. For example, in 2006 Mark
Klein revealed that AT&T had a secret room in its San Francisco
office that NSA used to collect Internet and phone-call data from US
citizens who were under no suspicion.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/homefront/interviews/klein.html
The presstitute media handled these stories in ways that protected
the government’s lawlessness from scrutiny and public outrage. The usual
spin was that the public needs to be safe from terrorists, and safety
is what the government is providing.
The latest whistle blower, Edward Snowden, has sought refuge in Hong
Kong, which has a better record of protecting free speech than the US
government. Snowden did not trust any US news source and took the story
to the British newspaper, the Guardian.
There is no longer any doubt whatsoever that the US government is
lawless, that it regards the US Constitution as a scrap of paper, that
it does not believe Americans have any rights other than those that the
government tolerates at any point in time, and that the government has
no fear of being held accountable by the weak and castrated US Congress,
the sycophantic federal courts, a controlled media, and an insouciant
public.
Binney and Snowden have described in precisely accurate detail the
extreme danger from the government’s surveillance of the population. No
one is exempt, not the Director of the CIA, US Army Generals, Senators
and Representatives, not even the president himself.
Anyone with access to a computer and the Internet can find interviews
with Binney and Snowden and become acquainted with why you do have very
much indeed to fear whether or not you are doing anything wrong.
James Clapper, the lying Director of National Intelligence, who would
have been perfectly at home in the Hitler or Stalin regimes, condemned
Snowden as “reprehensible” for insisting that in a democracy the public
should know what the government is doing. Clapper insisted that secretly
spying on every ordinary American was essential in order to “protect
our nation.” http://news.antiwar.com/2013/06/07/us-spy-chief-slams-reprehensible-leak-of-nsa-surveillance-scheme/
Clapper is “offended” that Americans now know that the NSA is spying
on the ordinary life of every American. Clapper wants Snowden to be
severely punished for his “reckless disclosure” that the US government
is totally violating the privacy that the US Constitution guarantees to
every US citizen.
President Obama, allegedly educated in constitutional law, justified
Clapper’s program of spying on every communication of every American
citizen as a necessary violation of Americans’ civil liberties that
“protects your civil liberties.” Contrast the lack of veracity of the
President of the United States with the truthfulness of Snowden, who
correctly stated that the NSA spying is an “existential threat to
democracy.”
The presstitutes are busy at work defending Clapper and Obama. On
June 9, CNN rolled out former CIA case officer Bob Baer to implant into
the public’s mind that Snowden, far from trying to preserve US civil
liberties, might be a Chinese spy and that Snowden’s revelations might
be indicative of a Chinese espionage case.
Demonization is the US government’s technique for discrediting
Bradley Manning for complying with the US Military Code and reporting
war crimes and for persecuting Julian Assage of Wikileaks for reporting
leaked information about the US government’s crimes. Demonization and
false charges will be the government’s weapon against Snowden.
If Washington and its presstitutes can convince Americans that
courageous people, who are trying to inform Americans that their
historic rights are disappearing into a police state, are espionage
agents of foreign powers, America can continue to be subverted by its
own government.
This brings us to the crux of the matter. What is the purpose of the spying program?
Even if an American believes the official stories of 9/11 and the
Boston Marathon Bombing, these are the only two terrorist acts in the US
that resulted in the lost of human life in 12 years. Far more people
are killed in traffic accidents and from bad diets. Why should the
Constitution and civil liberty be deep-sixed because of two alleged
terrorist acts in 12 years?
What is astounding is the absence of terrorist attacks. Washington is
in the second decade of invading and destroying Muslim governments and
countries. Civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya are
extremely high, and in those countries that Washington has not yet
invaded, such as Pakistan, Yemen, and Syria, civilians are being
murdered by Washington’s drones and proxies on the ground.
It is extraordinary that Washington’s brutal 12 year assault on
Muslim lives in six countries has not resulted in at least one dozen
real, not fake FBI orchestrated, terrorist attacks in the US every day.
How can something as rare as terrorism justify the destruction of the
US Constitution and US civil liberty? How safe is any American when
their government regards every citizen as a potential suspect who has no
rights?
Why is there no discussion of this in American public life? Watch
the presstitutes turn Snowden’s revelations into an account of his
disaffection and motives and away from the existential threat to
democracy and civil liberty.
What is the government’s real agenda? Clearly, “the war on terror”
is a front for an undeclared agenda. In “freedom and democracy”
America, citizens have no idea what their government’s motives are in
fomenting endless wars and a gestapo police state. The only information
Americans have comes from whistleblowers, who Obama ruthlessly
prosecutes. The presstitutes quickly discredit the information and
demonize the whistleblowers.
Germans in the Third Reich and Soviet citizens in the Stalin era had a
better idea of their government’s agendas than do “freedom and
democracy” Americans today. The American people are the most uninformed
people in modern history.
In America there is no democracy that holds government accountable.
There is only a brainwashed people who are chaff in the wind.
About Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for
Economic Policy and associate editor of the Wall Street Journal. He was
columnist for Business Week, Scripps Howard News Service, and Creators
Syndicate. He has had many university appointments. His internet columns
have attracted a worldwide following. His latest book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism and Economic Dissolution of the West is now available.
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2013/06/11/what-is-the-governments-agenda-paul-craig-roberts/
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