11–20 of 64 posts
Do I really need to download this massive PDF to find out what the useless title of this submission means? Mods, please edit.
There are 'law enforcement' agencies that operate outside the law, and they fight to keep their very existence from being exposed in court. Thats crazy.
To hell with these people.
The simple truth is this: Anyone who supports the war on drugs as it is currently being run has abandoned what the US stood for at its founding regarding liberty, freedom, and the rule of law.
Even while framing the constitution the controlling landowners of the US, i.e. the "US", were aware of the internal enemy that needed to be controlled.
"The framers of the constitution made the determination that America could not allow functioning democracy, since people would use their political power to attack the wealth of the minority of the opulent"
http://www.chomsky.info/interviews/19970303.htm
Where the "opulent" are the class from which the framers originated.
This is not a new development.
It's chilling that they explicitly mention parallel construction on page 12: When a complete set of CDRs are subpoenaed from the carrier, then all memorialized references to relevant and pertinent calls can be attributed to the carrier's records, thus "walling off" the information obtained from Hemisphere. In other words, Hemisphere can easily be protected if it is used as a pointer system to uncover relevant numbers…
"However, when the mention of Hemisphere data in official documentation or court testimony is unavoidable ... Hemisphere analysts might advise the investigator on issues such as report writing, presentation to the prosecutor, and the trial phase." (p14)
Just extraordinary.
Our country is full of police departments that fund themselves through seizures of drug money, that they know about by using data our intelligence services collected on us. I wonder who's using the phone data to buy and sell stocks? Maybe that's what they'll get into once we legalize marijuana.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-ph...
Obviously, this is deeply fucked up.
This is a story NYT broke in 2013: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/02/us/drug-agents-use-vast-ph... Obviously, this is deeply fucked up.
The simple truth is this: Anyone who supports the war on drugs as it is currently being run has abandoned what the US stood for at its founding regarding liberty, freedom, and the rule of law.
I agree with the main thrust of your comment but perpetuating the 'immaculate conception' myth of the US as a government of, for, and by the people is counterproductive. In particular the war on drugs absolutely goes against the ideas 'espoused' at that time. But that still holds. Ask any senator what America stands for and they will say something like "liberty, freedom, and justice for all". That doesn't mean it is…
My point wasn't that this didn't happen or the US was some magical egalitarian wonderland (though the foundational period of the US had a surprisingly level of wealth equality compared to some other periods).
Rather, my point was the manner in which they did this was to construct a system of law that protected the private individual from the instruments of government, and that we're slowly undoing that precise social contract - not stealing their wealth in exchange for restraint on government powers.
It's hard to argue even though the founding of the US wasn't perfect, and that these instruments largely came about as a protection for the wealthy, that it didn't significantly raise the profile of the citizen-as-having-rights-to-be-protected form of government or that the US doesn't have a long history of viewing such policies as important, even if there have been historic violations.
I think you'd even have trouble finding periods similar to the 50-70 year long ratcheting we've seen meant to undermine those exact same rights, or that their infringement has crept so far up the social ladder.
Writing my representative and senators now. To hell with these people.
That will accomplish absolutely nothing, except to legitimize those who have overseen this reprehensible development, and all the other political and social catastrophes of the past 30-40 years.
Our...political...system...is...fundamentally...broken.
Voting, writing your congressman, and helping elect another corrupt politician are all activities that do nothing to improve the status quo. Voting in particular helps maintain the facade that America is a functioning democracy, when in fact our only choices are two sides of the same coin.
The sooner the citizenry understand that, the better we'll all be.
Instead, work toward educating your fellow citizens about these problems, and why they're happening.
Refrain from spending your money on companies that back up the status quo. It's a hard task, but there are some major offenders (defense industry and banking industry are two big ones).
If you're entrepreneurial or technical, consider developing technical solutions to these political problems, that work around the problems or help solve them. This recent ycombinator company offering "justice-as-a-service" is a good example of this approach:
http://www.cnn.com/2014/02/20/tech/mobile/fixed-app-parking-...
They're starting small (parking tickets), but you have to start somewhere.
And there's lots of room for growth in the injustice sector.