Just Another Day in Police State USA!

For those of you who still don't get it (not that you ever will), here are 3 more examples of how this country has morphed into a police state. (Oops -- guess I'd better watch out -- I might be subpoenad and gag-ordered like the poeple in the first story were, especially since I write under my own name all over the blabbosphere and have written publicly, many times, that I wish I believed in Hell so I could hope certain people, such as John Pistole and Dick Cheney, would rot there.) Land of the Free my ass. For your delectation:

How the Feds Asked Me to Rat Out Commenters

Reason.com, the website I edit, was recently commanded by the feds to provide information on a few commenters and not discuss it. Here’s why we’re speaking out.

by Nick Gillespie

Is there anything more likely to make you shit your pants out of a mix of fear and anger than getting a federal subpoena out of the blue?

Well, yes, there is: getting a gag order that prohibits you from speaking publicly about that subpoena and even the gag order itself. Talk about feeling isolated and cast adrift in the home of the free. You can’t even respond honestly when someone asks, “Are you under a court order not to speak?" . . . .

AND:

Pentagon rewrites ‘Law of War’ declaring ‘belligerent’ journalists as legitimate targets

AND:

Protest Is the New Terror: How U.S. Law Enforcement Is Working to Criminalize Dissent

Citizens, Not Subjects, by Chelsea Manning

Chelsea (formerly Bradley) Manning in The Guardian. Of course we have to go to a UK paper to read this, since the press in the US is too busy with baseball season, deflated footballs, and hawk Hillary.

We're citizens, not subjects. We have the right to criticize government without fear.

. . . The government argued that there was no distinction to be made between any media organizations that provided information to the public, if the government felt would “aid” the enemy: whether such information was published by a small-time blog, a controversial website like Wikileaks, a national newspaper like the Washington Post, or an international one like the Guardian, to the government, they can all be “aiding the enemy.”

After 9/11, a dedicated office of lawyers specializing in novel applications of law for national security issues, the National Security Division (NSD), was created; and now, with a small caseload and an enormous amount of resources, this division of the Department of Justice has been waging a quiet war against the media, their sources, and the right to free speech and a free press, using the growing national security and surveillance apparatus to prosecute various cases and, occasionally, target the media.

Consider the Department of Justice’s admission in May 2013 that they had secretly seized sensitive office, home, and cellular telephone records from more than 20 reporters working for the Associated Press while investigating a leak leading to a 2012 AP news story reporting on an operation foiling a terrorist plot. The president of the AP, Gary Pruitt, called the actions a “massive and unprecedented intrusion” and noted that the government’s actions were creating a profound chilling effect on sources and members of the press. The president personally defended the actions of the Department of Justice, saying: “I make no apologies.” 

Julian Assange and Wikileaks

Obushma

DHS Keeping A List, Checking It Twice

It's pretty common these days to have your resumé/curriculum vitae publicly available on a website. Most people use LinkedIn, which I can't abide (it plunders your private email account, sends invitations without your knowledge to everybody under the sun to "link" to you, pretends to get you jobs, and other things not worth going into), so I use a site called Brand Yourself instead. 

My profile there contains my resumé, the briefest of biographical info, and a contact link. It's also more visually appealing than LinkedIn, which, if you appreciate aesthetics, is a plus. 

Edward Snowden, Hero

(Click to enlarge.)

Maybe

From the Guardian, by Trevor Timm: 

UPDATE to Cecily McMillan Case

A couple of updates to the case of the injustice carried out against Cecily McMillan, which I wrote about earlier today. 

The updates are from the UK paper the Guardian, which has given this story comprehensive coverage throughout, unlike the American mainstream press, which, if it covers it at all, usually buries it -- in the case of the New York Times, in the NY Region section, even though it's a case with national implications. 

(Oh, and I'm still looking for it at NPR, whose website shows nothing about the case. Surprise, surprise.)  

Cecily McMillan, Victim of Police Assault, Found Guilty, In Jail

In the continuing cavalcade of innocent people put in prison in this country -- the vast majority of whom are poor and/or people of color -- we now add Cecily McMillan, an Occupy activist who was assaulted by a New York City cop and who is now in jail for it.

You read that right. She was assaulted by him. Yet she is in jail. And he -- with a history of committing abuse -- is walking free.  

Dianne Feinstein the Hypocrite, Part Deux

As I wrote on March 12, 2014, Dianne Feinstein is a hypocrite. She was fine with the egregious, relentless spying on us peons by the "intelligence" agencies, but got her knickers in a twist when that spying was suddenly turned on her.

It's the same with hypocrites everywhere: it's always okay when other people take it on the chin; it's just not okay when you or yours do.

Surveillance by Tom Tomorrow

Click to enlarge.

Dianne Feinstein the Hypocrite

Ya know what -- fuck Dianne Feinstein. For years she's been one of the worst shills for the NSA, CIA, and the entire national security state apparatus. It was okay when everyone else was being spied on and abused, but now that the shoe is on the other foot, suddenly it's not okay.

Funny how people get religion only when they're personally affected. Similar to Gabby Giffords, I might add, who now is all in favor of gun control. But until she got shot, she didn't give a shit.

USA

Predictable: Pauley kills what Leon resurrected

Well, I was my usual fly-in-the-ointment self last week. While people were crowing over Judge Richard Leon's ruling in favor of We The People and against the NSA, I kept saying, "Don't get your hopes up. It's not going to last. It'll be appealed, and the next judge who comes down the pike will strike it down."

Angela Merkel invokes the Stasi in comparison to the NSA

From the Guardian: 

In an angry exchange with Barack Obama, Angela Merkel has compared the snooping practices of the US with those of the Stasi, the ubiquitous and all-powerful secret police of the communist dictatorship in East Germany, where she grew up.

. . . Livid after learning from Der Spiegel magazine that the Americans were listening in to her personal mobile phone, Merkel confronted Obama with the accusation: "This is like the Stasi." 

But when the rest of us say it, we're accused of being "hyperbolic" and "lunatic."

The only lunatics out there are the naysayers who refuse to acknowledge what's right under their noses. To wit, that the U.S. is morphing more and more into a police state with every passing day. Especially if you're young and black, and just waiting for a bus. And the U.K. is no better. Its cops, too, like to Taser people just for the hell of it.

In Pa, Alabama, and Texas, drivers pulled over, asked for blood and saliva

No, this isn't an April Fool's joke. No, it isn't a scene out of a dystopian novel. It's just another day in the good ol' USA.

In Alabama, in Texas, and now in Pennsylvania, drivers have been flagged down by police and told to pull over into a parking lot so that a survey company can "ask" them for blood and saliva.

What exactly are they "surveying"?

Octopus Seal: Looks Like It's From The Onion, But It's Not

Another in our continuing series called WTF.

Really, you can't make this shit up. These people have no sense of themselves other than as characters in a science fiction novel. I don't have words for the levels of inanity, depravity, obliviousness, arrogance, unintentional revelation, and just plain immaturity this represents.

TSA-style gropes at Coachella Music Festival

Another of my TSA News posts, originally published April 24, 2013:

As some of us have been saying for years, and taking no end of shit for it from know-nothing observers, it was only a matter of time before the tactics of the TSA moved from the airport to other venues. And now that day is here.

"DHS Stupidity Mugs" A Crime Against Empire

Really, you can't make this shit up. Every day, actual news in the U.S. reads like something from The Onion. Only it's not from The Onion; it's real. And it's now become typical. Typical police-state stuff. (Oops -- there I go again, using the dreaded "p" word!)

Armed cops raid home of American reporter, seize files

Armed agents bashing down your door before dawn, while you're still asleep in bed or in the shower or on the toilet, pointing guns at you and screaming, scaring the shit out of you and your children, and often, one of their favorites, shooting your family pet? And sometimes, for good measure, raiding the wrong house?

Where does this happen? And how often?

In the USA. Every day. Over 100 times every day.

Don't believe it? Then you don't know what's going on in your own country. Maybe you should watch something other than American Idol or Homeland or MSFuckingNBC and read something more than just emails from MoveOn or your Fearless Leader who sits in the White House.

These raids happen in this country every day. (I know, I know, but it's usually "just" drug dealers or "terrorists," so you don't give a shit.) Even though it's false that it happens to "just" drug dealers or terrorists. Because it happened to computer analyst Thomas Drake. It happened to Cheye Calvo, mayor of a small town in Maryland. It happened to dozens of non-violent peace activists. I could keep listing people, but at over 100 a day, every day, I'd run out of bandwidth.

So it should come as no surprise that the latest home invasion by our fascist overlords -- and yes, that's precisely what they are -- took place at the house of a journalist. An ordinary American journalist.