Nullify the NSA!

I hate to say it, but I screwed up. I had heard of this event a couple of weeks ago and meant to get involved a whole lot more than I managed to do. I actually heard of it the first time from a post by Gene’O at the Sourcerer Blog. He had a great page on his blog all made up especially for this event (and of course it’ll be an ongoing fight, so check it out and follow it to keep informed).

I wanted to do something to help promote this event. I wanted to rouse people up to take a stand and get involved. I meant to make at least a post of my own (and hopefully a page) about it, but I’ve been so busy lately, the best I could manage to do was to sign the petition, email my congressmen, and post on my Twitter and Facebook pages. I hope at least a couple of people noticed it yesterday and took some action. 🙂

Today I got an email from the ‘Campaign to Stop Government Spying’,  ’cause’ I signed up for it a while back. They sent me an update on how things went yesterday and a reminder that the fight is far from over. Here’s what’s they reported…

The numbers were astonishing.  The Day We Fight Back was featured on over 5,000 websites, generated 84,000 calls, and 172,000 were emails sent while our petition here on Causes reached over 25,000 signatures!

 

In addition to the tremendous online success Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky has filed suit against the NSA in what will surly become a landmark case against mass surveillance.

 

It’s a good start, but obviously not good enough since the congress is not yet willing to completely throw out the NSA (and TSA, and the PATRIOT ACT, and Obamacare, etc) and get back to Constitutional government!

Personally, I wish I could throw out (with appropriate punishment) every one of those politicians who allowed this to happen in the first place. Every single one of them who voted to support the NSA in ANY way.

The NSA is an affront to every principle this country was founded on. Its entire purpose is at war with the 4th amendment (and the 5th)(and all the rest of them too!).

I can hardly believe how far we have come in just MY lifetime. We’ve moved from a place where most of us could all live our lives in (relative) peace and prosperity, almost like in the TV shows “Leave it to Beaver” or Andy Griffiths Mayberry,…

To now we’ve somehow wound up in George Orwells 1984, or Huxleys Brave New World. Maybe a mixture of those 2 with a big bunch of Kafkas Metomorphosis thrown in.  In all reality, we’ve far surpassed even the worst nightmares of those visionary authors.

The NSA (along with the TSA and a bunch of other alphabet agencies) are a BIG part of what’s wrong with America.

I don’t agree with those who say we’ve got the government we ‘deserve’. I don’t believe ANYONE ‘deserves’ a government like this. One that treats us as criminals. One that thinks it has the right to track and CONTROL EVERY aspect of our lives.

Why in the world would ANYONE think anybody deserves that? It reminds me of the self righteous hypocrites who think everyone but themselves are sinners and belong in hell. They get a huge enjoyment out of feeling so smug and superior. But no one is perfect (including them), so they deserve to go to hell (and will) too.

The people who think we deserve this are just the same. So, we deserve this suck ass government we have because of what, exactly?

We’re ALL in the same boat! We need to figure that out and stand together to do something to save ourselves from sinking. We need to throw overboard the ones who are bashing holes in our hull and sabotaging our pumps!

Maybe then we can save ourselves and find a way to repair our country to one that will help better our lives again instead of the opposite.

This campaign was called “the Day We Fight Back”. We don’t need A day we fight back, we need to fight back EVERY DAY until they get off our backs and give us back our freedom!

Illegal government spy programs are not the ONLY things we need to fight. We can START with that, then take on the next. We need to keep going until we have ALL of our freedom back.

I hope I can see that someday. I hope I can even see a serious START to it. I know I’m not the one, but there must be SOMEONE out there who can come up with something effective, some way to make some progress, some way to wake people up to what’s REALLY going on and get them to take an interest…

Anyone?

The NSA Speech: Obama Accepts the Logic of Staying Terrorized

The NSA Speech: Obama Accepts the Logic of Staying Terrorized | Laissez-Faire Bookstore.

SSDD. (Same Shit Different Day). That’s about all I can say for Obama and his ‘promise’ to correct the abuses of the NSA (and the rest of the total surveillance state we live in today). 🙁

Anyone out there who seriously thinks Obama is really going to fix anything or rein in these people to their Constitutional limits, read this again…

1. The phone metadata still exists.

2. It will be kept, at least in the short-term, by the government until Congress figures out what to do with it. (And don’t think the telecom lobby won’t play a role in that.)

3. It will be searched.

4. Searches will be approved by a court with a record of being friendly to the government, one without a new privacy advocate.

5. National security letters can still be issued by the FBI without a court order.

6. Much of this activity will remain secret.

Can anyone really believe that ‘our’ government needs to keep track of ALL of your (personal) information? That any kind of freedom can survive this kind of all out attack? That society will really be better off if we are forced to live under these conditions? That YOUR life will be better?

That they are doing all of this for your safety, rather than their sense of power and CONTROL?

Does anyone seriously believe that they REALLY need to know about (and store forever) every single phone call you make? every single website you visit? everything you’ve ever said online? every single thing you buy (unless you use cash)? every single place you go? every single detail of your medical history?

I’m sure that last paragraph doesn’t cover the half of it. I’m only mentioning what I KNOW they are presently collecting (and keeping).

We are already in a state SO much worse than George Orwell ever imagined! Maybe we don’t have ‘Big Brother’ watching us through our TV sets yet.

But we DO have ‘our’ government watching us through our computers. We DO have them following every move we make through our cell phones (and soon enough directly through our cars). We DO have them watching everything else through financial tracking and the countless cameras invading every public space.

We have TSA agents to violate our RIGHT to travel freely (along with our dignity) every time we travel. We have a ‘Constitution Free zone” extending 100 MILES from every border (which covers about 65% of the American population)!

We have the PC thought police to harass us anytime someone gets a little upset with something we say.

We have the FDA to fine us or throw us in prison if they object to the food we choose to eat or the medicines we prefer to take.

We even have Obamacare to (eventually) imprison us if we refuse to allow un-elected government bureaucrats to control our most personal decisions. We can no longer choose how to manage our own BODIES! (How is this different from slavery? oh yeah, WE have to pay for our own abuse!)

I keep hoping that one day soon I’ll wake up from this nightmare. Or rather, that the rest of the American people will finally wake up and come to their senses!

That they will realize that there is something horribly WRONG with what has been going on here lately (intensely ramped up since 9-11). That they need to put a stop to it before it actually hurts THEM (instead of just that “other guy who must’ve done something to deserve it”).

Here’s hoping that day comes soon.