Stop the US Government's Attempt to Criminalize Dissent!

Stop the US Government's Attempt to Criminalize Dissent!

By Dennis Loo (6/18/13)

Update:

See this story about the latest polls on Americans' majority opposition to the NSA-Obama spying and support for Snowden.

See this excellent analysis of the Eternal Surveillance State.

What the US government is attempting to do with its ubiquitous warrantless surveillance over all of us and the world is criminalize dissent. This cannot be allowed to go unchallenged. The importance of this fight can hardly be overstated.

In response to the NSA spying scandal that righteous hero Edward Snowden has dramatically revealed, a program that was called in quick order after this scandal broke will be happening Wed., June 19, 2013 beginning at 7:30 pm EST. It will be livestreamed from the Great Hall at the Cooper Union in NYC. For those who can come in person to the Great Hall, come! For those who can't come in person, you can watch it and participate live at ustream.tv/stopmotionsolo.

I will be a co-host of this along with Debra Sweet.

For more information, go to worldcantwait.net.

Those Who Cry Treason

Those Who Cry Treason

By Dennis Loo (6/13/13)

When whistleblowers - such as Bradley Manning and Edward Snowden - reveal that Washington has been lying about what U.S. public officials have been doing for years, officialdom along with some pundits have declared it “treason” and demanded blood, both metaphorically and literally.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, for example, has accused Snowden of “treason.” Right-wing pundits like Jonah Goldberg have openly asked why Wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange has not been assassinated by the CIA.

Apparently, telling the American people the truth can get you killed. This is the message these august leaders are proclaiming and busily realizing in concrete fact.

What these political elites are claiming is that the American people “can’t handle the truth.” Telling the American people what their leaders have been doing and revealing that the American people have been lied to systematically for years by Obama on down, that is what Snowden and Manning are being pilloried for.

What is the penalty for revealing the truth? Manning was tortured for years and faces a possible death sentence and Snowden confronts a similar fate.

What are the consequences, on the other hand, for lying to the American people and causing grave damage to the nation, its people and the world? These particular consequences are not penalties but rewards: the American presidency, Congressional seats, speaking tours, cushy privileges, and immediate access to fawning media outlets that treat your every pronouncements with high regard.

As Mark Twain put it, “It could probably be shown by facts and figures that there is no distinctly native criminal class except Congress.” To which we would have to add to Twain’s comment about Congress: the American Presidency and prominent punditry posts.

Let’s ask the central question here: what is it that al-Qaeda did not already know or had to assume to be true about U.S. surveillance that has been revealed by Snowden and Manning?

The NSA Spying Scandal: To Those Americans Who Say “I Have Nothing to Hide”

The NSA Spying Scandal: To Those Americans Who Say “I Have Nothing to Hide”

By Dennis Loo (6/11/13)

Many Americans think right now that they “have nothing to hide” and that if the government says that it’s necessary for them to be spying on everyone, then all right then, it must be the truth. After all, my government would not lie to me.

There are multiple dimensions to this issue but I’m going to confine myself to just one for the time being.

If you think that the Fourth Amendment against “unreasonable search and seizure” is trumped by the “War on Terror” and that there is nothing “unreasonable” about “search and seizure” and that the government’s searching and seizing everything about everyone is ok and that we may as well get rid of the Fourth Amendment, then you are also saying that you and everyone else in the entire society from now until the end of the "War on Terror" (which will last, according to Cheney, for generations) should give up entertaining, let alone acting on, a desire or need to dissent from what the government is doing for essentially ever.

Why is that?