Thursday, January 19, 2012
Homeland Security Given Permission to Monitor (a.k.a. spy on) American Journalists
Freedom of the Press? And how do you define "the Press"? Are bloggers and social media mavens part of the Press? And what if the government starts collecting information on those it deems are "the Press"?
Freedom of the Press is a nice principle that isn't really encoded in any laws. It's not like Freedom of Speech that's so important it was the first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Freedom of the Press should mean that those of us who self-identify as Press can go about our business without government interference. There are plenty of examples from around the world, both modern and in the past, of governments afraid of the stories reported by journalists, and they used all sorts of legal leverage against journalists, and in some cases unfairly imprisoning for supposed anti-government sentiments or whatnot, not to mention all the journalists killed under mysterious circumstances. Freedom of the press is meant to counter that tendency of governments and other powerful people to try to stop certain stories from being published.
RT News is somewhat disingenuously reporting on an effort by the U.S. Homeland Security Department to gather publicly visible information about 'news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”'
This is a really broad definition of people because those who keep an audience "situationally aware and informed" includes anybody who routinely posts links to articles on social media networks. Posting links to those networks is a highly common activity and is undertaken by anybody seriously interested in building an audience.
The project scours the social networks for information, but the DHS claims it is not collecting "Personally Identifiable Information" (PII) .. "While this Initiative is not designed to actively collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII), OPS is conducting this update to the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) because this initiative may now collect and disseminate PII for certain narrowly tailored categories." While they aren't collecting PII they can collect it if necessary such as: "For example, in the event of an in extremis situation involving potential life and death, OPS will share certain PII with the responding authority in order for them to take the necessary actions to save a life, such as name and location of a person calling for help buried under rubble, or hiding in a hotel room when the hotel is under attack by terrorists."
The authority cited is Section 515 of the Homeland Security Act (6 U.S.C. § 321d(b)(1)
Where the RT News report becomes disingenuous is when they say this:- "The department says that they will only scour publically-made info available while retaining data, but it doesn’t help but raise suspicion as to why the government is going out of their way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that helped bring news to the masses."
In other words, RT News is demonstrating a belief that this is somehow new behavior on the part of the U.S. Government. In truth the Government has been working on what they call "open source intelligence" for years. Namely, collecting publicly available information for intelligence gathering purposes. The social media networks make this easy because many of us actively want to be found on those networks which is great if we want to build an audience, but that audience may include Big Brother government agents snooping on our every tweet.
I've written about this plenty of times before:-
However it is troublesome. For a reason why ponder a factoid about the Jewish Holocaust. The Nazi government contracted with the IBM subsidiary in Germany to develop machines to assist with gathering and tracking information about the ethnicity of the population. This was the 1930's and the technology were simple punch cards and automated machines for processing the punch cards, but there's no way in heck you could call these machines "Computers" because those didn't start to come into existence until the 1950's. In any case no matter how rudimentary the machines IBM could supply at that time, it did enable the German government to efficiently find Jewish people to send to the Concentration camps.
Fast forward to the marvelous computers we have today ..
Some supporting documents:-
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/supporting-documentation-for-homeland.html
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/april-2010-bp-oil-spill-response-social.html
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/2010-winter-olympics-social-media-event.html
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/haiti-social-media-disaster-monitoring.html
Freedom of the Press is a nice principle that isn't really encoded in any laws. It's not like Freedom of Speech that's so important it was the first Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Freedom of the Press should mean that those of us who self-identify as Press can go about our business without government interference. There are plenty of examples from around the world, both modern and in the past, of governments afraid of the stories reported by journalists, and they used all sorts of legal leverage against journalists, and in some cases unfairly imprisoning for supposed anti-government sentiments or whatnot, not to mention all the journalists killed under mysterious circumstances. Freedom of the press is meant to counter that tendency of governments and other powerful people to try to stop certain stories from being published.
RT News is somewhat disingenuously reporting on an effort by the U.S. Homeland Security Department to gather publicly visible information about 'news anchors, journalists, reporters or anyone who may use “traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed.”'
This is a really broad definition of people because those who keep an audience "situationally aware and informed" includes anybody who routinely posts links to articles on social media networks. Posting links to those networks is a highly common activity and is undertaken by anybody seriously interested in building an audience.
The project scours the social networks for information, but the DHS claims it is not collecting "Personally Identifiable Information" (PII) .. "While this Initiative is not designed to actively collect Personally Identifiable Information (PII), OPS is conducting this update to the Privacy Impact Assessment (PIA) because this initiative may now collect and disseminate PII for certain narrowly tailored categories." While they aren't collecting PII they can collect it if necessary such as: "For example, in the event of an in extremis situation involving potential life and death, OPS will share certain PII with the responding authority in order for them to take the necessary actions to save a life, such as name and location of a person calling for help buried under rubble, or hiding in a hotel room when the hotel is under attack by terrorists."
The authority cited is Section 515 of the Homeland Security Act (6 U.S.C. § 321d(b)(1)
Where the RT News report becomes disingenuous is when they say this:- "The department says that they will only scour publically-made info available while retaining data, but it doesn’t help but raise suspicion as to why the government is going out of their way to spend time, money and resources on watching over those that helped bring news to the masses."
In other words, RT News is demonstrating a belief that this is somehow new behavior on the part of the U.S. Government. In truth the Government has been working on what they call "open source intelligence" for years. Namely, collecting publicly available information for intelligence gathering purposes. The social media networks make this easy because many of us actively want to be found on those networks which is great if we want to build an audience, but that audience may include Big Brother government agents snooping on our every tweet.
I've written about this plenty of times before:-
- Total Information Awareness project spawns big brother system to read and translate twitter traffic
- Twitter Tapping - government agents tracking public information
- Massive privacy violation by U.S. government
- Re: Software Being Developed to Monitor Opinions of U.S.
- Federal Reserve looking to launch "sentiment analysis and social media monitoring" program
However it is troublesome. For a reason why ponder a factoid about the Jewish Holocaust. The Nazi government contracted with the IBM subsidiary in Germany to develop machines to assist with gathering and tracking information about the ethnicity of the population. This was the 1930's and the technology were simple punch cards and automated machines for processing the punch cards, but there's no way in heck you could call these machines "Computers" because those didn't start to come into existence until the 1950's. In any case no matter how rudimentary the machines IBM could supply at that time, it did enable the German government to efficiently find Jewish people to send to the Concentration camps.
Fast forward to the marvelous computers we have today ..
Some supporting documents:-
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/supporting-documentation-for-homeland.html
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/april-2010-bp-oil-spill-response-social.html
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/2010-winter-olympics-social-media-event.html
http://politics.7gen.com/2012/01/haiti-social-media-disaster-monitoring.html
Sunday, January 8, 2012
Occupy Martin Luther King's Birthday .. an Occupy oriented candle-light vigil on Jan 15 2012 honoring Dr. King
How does a global scale leader-less open source no owners movement coordinate a global call for action on a given day? Say if there is an interest in organizing a global candle-light vigil on Martin Luther King's birthday (Jan 15) how do all the individual branch organizations individually and collectively decide to take part? Why, someone organizes a conference call, organizes one or two events in their own city, then sends out tweets announcing the conference call, and enrolling the people who show up on the call.
Here I am, I just got off a conference call organizing a global candle-light vigil honoring Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday on Jan 15, 2012 and I'm super excited about the vision and wishing to tell people about this thing.
First, it's very simple. Candles.. people.. a place to gather at 7pm local time on Jan 15, 2012 .. that's the basic ingredients. The rest is up to individual groups, in that they pick out locations that make sense for them, they pick out activities to do during the vigil that makes sense for their location, etc.
For example in the call I just listened to, a group in Cincinnati spoke up saying they have sites in Cincinnati related to the Underground Railroad (the path for freedom for black slaves in the early 1800's) and that's the location they're planning to use for their version of the candle-light vigil. Cool.
A question stated related to this is -- if Martin Luther King were still alive today and Occupy Wall Street were going on, what would he do? Why, he'd be there with the Occupy movement, right? He spoke at length numerous times about economic and social justice, which are the core items of concern in the Occupy movement.
Another aspect of this event is the Occupy movement itself demonstrating it can still organize events even though it's winter-time and most of the encampments have been shut down.
The place(s) to find out more are:-
http://www.j15global.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/J15global
https://www.facebook.com/J15global
You'll notice the theme - J15Global - J15 meaning Jan 15, and Global meaning, well, a global scope and reach to the event. Their vision is to have a world-wide series of actions around the world as each time-zone hits 7pm local time on Jan 15.
Here I am, I just got off a conference call organizing a global candle-light vigil honoring Dr. Martin Luther King's birthday on Jan 15, 2012 and I'm super excited about the vision and wishing to tell people about this thing.
First, it's very simple. Candles.. people.. a place to gather at 7pm local time on Jan 15, 2012 .. that's the basic ingredients. The rest is up to individual groups, in that they pick out locations that make sense for them, they pick out activities to do during the vigil that makes sense for their location, etc.
For example in the call I just listened to, a group in Cincinnati spoke up saying they have sites in Cincinnati related to the Underground Railroad (the path for freedom for black slaves in the early 1800's) and that's the location they're planning to use for their version of the candle-light vigil. Cool.
A question stated related to this is -- if Martin Luther King were still alive today and Occupy Wall Street were going on, what would he do? Why, he'd be there with the Occupy movement, right? He spoke at length numerous times about economic and social justice, which are the core items of concern in the Occupy movement.
Another aspect of this event is the Occupy movement itself demonstrating it can still organize events even though it's winter-time and most of the encampments have been shut down.
The place(s) to find out more are:-
http://www.j15global.com/
https://twitter.com/#!/J15global
https://www.facebook.com/J15global
You'll notice the theme - J15Global - J15 meaning Jan 15, and Global meaning, well, a global scope and reach to the event. Their vision is to have a world-wide series of actions around the world as each time-zone hits 7pm local time on Jan 15.
Friday, December 23, 2011
CNN: CIA report: No issue with spy agency's partnership with N.Y. police
According to a CIA investigation, the CIA is doing no wrong by collaborating with the NY Police Department in "covert surveillance" of Muslims in NYC. "The CIA inspector general has completed a review of the CIA's
relationship with the NYPD and has found no violation of law or
executive order on the part of CIA," said agency spokesman Preston
Golson. "The IG also found no evidence that any part of the agency's
support to the NYPD constituted 'domestic spying.'"
Um.. so, we can trust the CIA to police itself? Really?
Maybe something got lost along the way between Sept 11, 2011 and the Homeland Security Department and other things.
The CIA is supposed to only be for use outside the U.S. and its use inside the U.S. is supposed to be illegal. The phrase above, 'domestic spying', is key as that's what would be illegal.
There is a slippery slope situation that's akin to the old rules for financial institutions that kept various financial services in separate companies. One part of the financial collapse was the repeal of those old rules, and the subsequent merger of financial institutions allowing services that should have been kept in separate companies to be done by single companies. While that probably contributed to some kind of efficiency in the financial institutions, it gave financial institutions opportunities to screw with the system and commit questionable practices that eventually messed things up. I'm sorry, I didn't say that very well.
In any case the thing here is to draw a sharp distinction between the agencies that fight off threats from foreign countries, and the agencies that maintain internal stability within the country. There are distinct policy and strategical differences between being focused on external enemies, or focused on your own people. It's inappropriate to use the forces who are trained to fight enemies on your own people, because your own people are not enemies.
Well, except, that is, there's been an effort to label Muslims who live in the U.S. as potential enemies. That's a sad side result of the Sept 11 attacks.
CIA report: No issue with spy agency's partnership with N.Y. police
Doing a little searching turned up: NYPD And CIA Had Secret “Mosque Crawlers” Operation
The NYPD has developed a massive domestic spying operation and is operating well outside the boundaries of NYC. NYPD police officers are getting training from the CIA on spying techniques. The CIA is working with NYPD.
The targets are minority communities, especially Muslims.
The article describes it as "trolling", namely just scanning everything in the minority neighborhoods. The NYPD is quoted with a denial of this, and says they're "simply following leads".
A key person in this is David Cohen, a retired 35-year veteran of the CIA, who became the NYC police department’s first civilian intelligence chief. He had been a high ranking CIA officer. Cohen’s tenure as head of CIA operations, the nation’s top spy, was so contentious that in 1997, The New York Times editorial page took the unusual step of calling for his ouster.
After Cohen came on board, the CIA Director George Tenet assigned Larry Sanchez to serve as a CIA officer, on CIA payroll, but operating inside the NYPD. He had full access to CIA resources, as an operative working inside the NYPD.
There had never been an arrangement like it, and some senior CIA officials soon began questioning whether Tenet was allowing Sanchez to operate on both sides of the wall that’s supposed to keep the CIA out of the domestic intelligence business.
Cohen created a secret squad that would soon infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods, according to several current and former officials directly involved in the program. This involved assigning NYPD police officers from specific ethnic backgrounds to infiltrate neighborhoods with matching ethnic backgrounds. These officers were called "rakers" and were charged with hanging out, observing, looking everywhere for "hot spots".
Cohen said he wanted the squad to “rake the coals, looking for hot spots,” former officials recalled. The undercover officers soon became known inside the department as rakers.
Um.. so, we can trust the CIA to police itself? Really?
Maybe something got lost along the way between Sept 11, 2011 and the Homeland Security Department and other things.
The CIA is supposed to only be for use outside the U.S. and its use inside the U.S. is supposed to be illegal. The phrase above, 'domestic spying', is key as that's what would be illegal.
There is a slippery slope situation that's akin to the old rules for financial institutions that kept various financial services in separate companies. One part of the financial collapse was the repeal of those old rules, and the subsequent merger of financial institutions allowing services that should have been kept in separate companies to be done by single companies. While that probably contributed to some kind of efficiency in the financial institutions, it gave financial institutions opportunities to screw with the system and commit questionable practices that eventually messed things up. I'm sorry, I didn't say that very well.
In any case the thing here is to draw a sharp distinction between the agencies that fight off threats from foreign countries, and the agencies that maintain internal stability within the country. There are distinct policy and strategical differences between being focused on external enemies, or focused on your own people. It's inappropriate to use the forces who are trained to fight enemies on your own people, because your own people are not enemies.
Well, except, that is, there's been an effort to label Muslims who live in the U.S. as potential enemies. That's a sad side result of the Sept 11 attacks.
CIA report: No issue with spy agency's partnership with N.Y. police
Doing a little searching turned up: NYPD And CIA Had Secret “Mosque Crawlers” Operation
The NYPD has developed a massive domestic spying operation and is operating well outside the boundaries of NYC. NYPD police officers are getting training from the CIA on spying techniques. The CIA is working with NYPD.
The targets are minority communities, especially Muslims.
The article describes it as "trolling", namely just scanning everything in the minority neighborhoods. The NYPD is quoted with a denial of this, and says they're "simply following leads".
A key person in this is David Cohen, a retired 35-year veteran of the CIA, who became the NYC police department’s first civilian intelligence chief. He had been a high ranking CIA officer. Cohen’s tenure as head of CIA operations, the nation’s top spy, was so contentious that in 1997, The New York Times editorial page took the unusual step of calling for his ouster.
After Cohen came on board, the CIA Director George Tenet assigned Larry Sanchez to serve as a CIA officer, on CIA payroll, but operating inside the NYPD. He had full access to CIA resources, as an operative working inside the NYPD.
There had never been an arrangement like it, and some senior CIA officials soon began questioning whether Tenet was allowing Sanchez to operate on both sides of the wall that’s supposed to keep the CIA out of the domestic intelligence business.
Cohen created a secret squad that would soon infiltrate Muslim neighborhoods, according to several current and former officials directly involved in the program. This involved assigning NYPD police officers from specific ethnic backgrounds to infiltrate neighborhoods with matching ethnic backgrounds. These officers were called "rakers" and were charged with hanging out, observing, looking everywhere for "hot spots".
Cohen said he wanted the squad to “rake the coals, looking for hot spots,” former officials recalled. The undercover officers soon became known inside the department as rakers.
The case of Ron Paul and the bigoted libertarians
Seems that Ron Paul has some serious baggage in his background, that has been known for years. That in the past he published a political newsletter which routinely printed, under his name, bigoted screeds that include saying all black (afro-american) people are criminals, and such things like advice from a supposed ex-cop to carry a gun with you at all times to protect yourself from black criminals, but not any old gun but an unregistered gun bought from an unregistered dealer so the gun can't be traced to you and you can easily wipe the gun clean and dispose of it if needed. Seems like some of the most horrid sort of race bating bigoted idiocy you can think of, completely illegal advice, and going out in a newsletter with Ron Paul's name on it.
Now that Ron Paul is a front-runner the allegations have resurfaced - and Ron Paul is denying responsibility for the bigoted stuff that was published in his newsletter, the one with his name at the top. Supposedly Conservatives/Libertarians are all about personal responsibility being the law of the land, but maybe personal responsibility doesn't extend to when you want to later run for high political office?
That is - Ron Paul portrays himself as a real deal dyed in the wool conservative. Which should mean he practices personal responsibility. Hence, it's his personal responsibility for what got published under his name, right? So why does he deny responsibility? Maybe he's a real deal dyed in the wool hypocrite instead?
Anyway ... there's a couple things I came across to help understand the issue better.
Ron Paul and Libertarianism's Dirty Secret -- Pandering to Racist "Rednecks" to Get Ahead: The idea is that there are several brands of libertarians. Some of them, such as Ron Paul, are truly bigots or else they're pandering to the bigots to get votes. Some of them see the conservative rural bigots as their base, and say what that base wants to hear. Just to get votes.
The Alternet piece includes this 1995 interview with Ron Paul that includes an explanation of the newsletter issue. It was recorded between the two periods he was a congressman. In this video he sounds very reasonable, especially considering it was a softball interview by C-SPAN. It also sounds a bit hypocritical in that he says he believes in term limits, and had left congress in 1984 so he could return to real life, that he wasn't seeking after power, but he's now again been in congress for a long time, has gathered positions of power, and is seeking the Presidency.
The other thing is this report on Rachel Maddow's show last night calling this the skeleton in Ron Paul's closet
Last thing is a video on youtube from 2008 with Ron Paul making several interesting statements about unequal treatment of minorities and especially focusing on the drug laws that end up imprisoning black people disproportionately to drug use or drug law violations. The youtube posting it titled about Ron Paul being caught saying racist stuff on tape. My listening to this - heck - it doesn't sound racist to me. Instead it sounds like a stand on principles that people should be treated equally, etc, etc. It's clear from the information in the latter part of that video, that in 2008 the issue of these newsletters had come up then and he had faced these criticisms before.
Now that Ron Paul is a front-runner the allegations have resurfaced - and Ron Paul is denying responsibility for the bigoted stuff that was published in his newsletter, the one with his name at the top. Supposedly Conservatives/Libertarians are all about personal responsibility being the law of the land, but maybe personal responsibility doesn't extend to when you want to later run for high political office?
That is - Ron Paul portrays himself as a real deal dyed in the wool conservative. Which should mean he practices personal responsibility. Hence, it's his personal responsibility for what got published under his name, right? So why does he deny responsibility? Maybe he's a real deal dyed in the wool hypocrite instead?
Anyway ... there's a couple things I came across to help understand the issue better.
Ron Paul and Libertarianism's Dirty Secret -- Pandering to Racist "Rednecks" to Get Ahead: The idea is that there are several brands of libertarians. Some of them, such as Ron Paul, are truly bigots or else they're pandering to the bigots to get votes. Some of them see the conservative rural bigots as their base, and say what that base wants to hear. Just to get votes.
The Alternet piece includes this 1995 interview with Ron Paul that includes an explanation of the newsletter issue. It was recorded between the two periods he was a congressman. In this video he sounds very reasonable, especially considering it was a softball interview by C-SPAN. It also sounds a bit hypocritical in that he says he believes in term limits, and had left congress in 1984 so he could return to real life, that he wasn't seeking after power, but he's now again been in congress for a long time, has gathered positions of power, and is seeking the Presidency.
The other thing is this report on Rachel Maddow's show last night calling this the skeleton in Ron Paul's closet
Last thing is a video on youtube from 2008 with Ron Paul making several interesting statements about unequal treatment of minorities and especially focusing on the drug laws that end up imprisoning black people disproportionately to drug use or drug law violations. The youtube posting it titled about Ron Paul being caught saying racist stuff on tape. My listening to this - heck - it doesn't sound racist to me. Instead it sounds like a stand on principles that people should be treated equally, etc, etc. It's clear from the information in the latter part of that video, that in 2008 the issue of these newsletters had come up then and he had faced these criticisms before.
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
3 Things That Must Happen for Us To Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy
I'm cleaning out the posts I'd star'd in Google Reader and came across this one from last August. Yes. August. Anyway it's a thought piece outlining what "we" need to do to "defeat corporatocracy" given that we are pitiful weak individuated citizens. It's an interesting read given what's happened since August, namely the campout in Zucotti Park that sparked the Occupy movement. Especially as the Occupy movement is all about the pitiful weak individuated citizens coming together to join forces to in part defeat corporatocracy.
The article starts with this assertion, using these three points as the outline for the discussion
I suppose this is the first "HUH" piece of this, because isn't the U.S. supposed to be a Democracy anyway? Well, our government is actually a Republic. Remember in the Oath, "... and the Republic for which it stands ..."?
In any case the first step ("knowledge of how we are getting screwed") just strikes me as the first step in a 12-step program, where you first have to admit that you're addicted to the thing. In this case we have to collectively admit that we're collectively addicted to an unsustainable unhealthy undemocratic society and way of life.
Harriet Tubman (the pre-Civil-War activist who freed a thousand or more slaves) is quoted saying “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” Amen, sister, if only more people in the U.S. would admit just how deeply controlled we are. I do object however to applying the word 'slave' to us. I don't know what the correct word is, but I disagree that the correct word is "slave".
It is true that we are "... ruled by so many 'industrial complexes'—military, financial, energy, food, pharmaceutical, prison, and so on" and that the control (rule) is so insidious and ubiquitous that it's difficult for us to truly see the depth of control. There are many decisions being made by corporations that are out of the hands of anybody but the corporations. Governments have been rendered ineffective in their role of oversight over corporate behavior.
The final point, "the energy to do battle", is especially apt considering the lengths to which the Occupy groups have gone, and the Police have gone to undermine the Occupy groups. Several months of camping out full time is not cheap and requires extreme levels of commitment. At the same time the role of the Police is to maintain order, and in many ways it can be said that an Occupy encampment is not exactly order. Or it can be said that the Police are being used as a tool of the corporatocracy to keep the rest of us from gaining any measure of real freedom.
The issues are deeply entrenched and insidiously ubiquitous in our society. To address the issues in any meaningful way will mean a long, very long, perhaps 10 years if we're lucky, process of continual work.
3 Things That Must Happen for Us To Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy
The article starts with this assertion, using these three points as the outline for the discussion
Transforming the United States into something closer to a democracy requires: 1) knowledge of how we are getting screwed; 2) pragmatic tactics, strategies, and solutions; and 3) the “energy to do battle.”Followed by
The majority of Americans oppose the corporatocracy (rule by giant corporations, the extremely wealthy elite, and corporate-collaborator government officials); however, many of us have given up hope that this tyranny can be defeated.
I suppose this is the first "HUH" piece of this, because isn't the U.S. supposed to be a Democracy anyway? Well, our government is actually a Republic. Remember in the Oath, "... and the Republic for which it stands ..."?
In any case the first step ("knowledge of how we are getting screwed") just strikes me as the first step in a 12-step program, where you first have to admit that you're addicted to the thing. In this case we have to collectively admit that we're collectively addicted to an unsustainable unhealthy undemocratic society and way of life.
Harriet Tubman (the pre-Civil-War activist who freed a thousand or more slaves) is quoted saying “I freed a thousand slaves. I could have freed a thousand more if only they knew they were slaves.” Amen, sister, if only more people in the U.S. would admit just how deeply controlled we are. I do object however to applying the word 'slave' to us. I don't know what the correct word is, but I disagree that the correct word is "slave".
It is true that we are "... ruled by so many 'industrial complexes'—military, financial, energy, food, pharmaceutical, prison, and so on" and that the control (rule) is so insidious and ubiquitous that it's difficult for us to truly see the depth of control. There are many decisions being made by corporations that are out of the hands of anybody but the corporations. Governments have been rendered ineffective in their role of oversight over corporate behavior.
"it is also necessary to have knowledge of strategies and tactics that oppressed people have historically used to overcome tyranny and to gain their fair share of power."I suppose what the article says here is that it's useful to have examples of successful revolutions so that we have a glimmer of hope that we, Americans, can throw off the chains of these corporate overlords?
The final point, "the energy to do battle", is especially apt considering the lengths to which the Occupy groups have gone, and the Police have gone to undermine the Occupy groups. Several months of camping out full time is not cheap and requires extreme levels of commitment. At the same time the role of the Police is to maintain order, and in many ways it can be said that an Occupy encampment is not exactly order. Or it can be said that the Police are being used as a tool of the corporatocracy to keep the rest of us from gaining any measure of real freedom.
The issues are deeply entrenched and insidiously ubiquitous in our society. To address the issues in any meaningful way will mean a long, very long, perhaps 10 years if we're lucky, process of continual work.
3 Things That Must Happen for Us To Rise Up and Defeat the Corporatocracy
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