SPY

"This Administration also puts forward a false choice between the liberties we cherish and the security we demand. I will provide our intelligence and law enforcement agencies with the tools they need to track and take out the terrorists without undermining our Constitution and our freedom. That means no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens.... No more ignoring the law when it is inconvenient. That is not who we are. It's not what is necessary to defeat the terrorists... Our constitution works. We will again set an example for the world that the law is not subject to the whims of stubborn rulers and that justice is not arbitrary. This administration acts like violating civil liberties is the way to enhance our security. It is not."

This Friday's night tape bomb came not from the administration, which may have run out of scandals to reveal for the time being, but from FaceBook which late in the evening disclosed the extent to which it has been cooperating with the government on spying on its users. Which also changes the public narrative built upon a pyramid of lies and secrecy one more time - recall how one week ago the company tried to wash its hands one weeks ago when Mark Zuckerberg said that "Facebook is not and has never been part of any program to give the US or any other government direct access to our servers." Just indirect. So in what was spun to be a rebellious act by a private company, long-cooperating secretly with the government, FaceBook's general councel posted on the company's news blog that the company is releasing data "including all national security requests." In doing so FB became the first US internet company to reveal the extent of official US government demands to hand over information, including confidential, about its users.

We’ll know more next week Wednesday when the Fed meeting concludes with a language parsing contest. In the meantime, stock market volatility is increasing as we’re experiencing alternating triple digit days now.

Several days ago, in the damage control aftermath of Snowden's NSA espionage conspiracy fact confirmation, Barack Obama took to the TV pulpit where he appealed to the nation, as he always does in times of strife, explaining that one can't have 100% security and 100% privacy. He said some other things, all of which as usual wrapped in rhetorical brilliance, if holding little of pragmatic and realistic value. So who better the debate the president's attempts at damage control than the vice president himself. Here, for your viewing pleasure, is Joe Biden, circa 2013 debating Barack Obama, circa 2013.

"I am going to hit on some of the landmines that you can encounter within order-matching engines, and then I am going to give a forecast on, at least from my perspective, what’s going to happen over the course of 2013"

The rabbit hole just got deeper. A whole lot deeper.

Establishment politicians from both major political parties are rushing to defend the NSA and condemn whistleblower Edward Snowden.  They are attempting to portray Edward Snowden as a "traitor" and the spooks over at the NSA that are snooping on all of us as "heroes".  In fact, many of the exact same politicians that once railed against government spying during the Bush years are now staunchly defending it now that Obama is in the White House. But it isn't just Democrats that are acting shamefully.  Large numbers of Republican politicians that love to give speeches about "freedom" and "liberty" are attempting to eviscerate the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.  The government is not supposed to invade our privacy and investigate us unless there is probable cause to do so. Apparently many of our politicians misunderstood when they read the novel 1984 by George Orwell.  It wasn't supposed to be an instruction manual.

Is there a legitimate security need to monitor the entire world's communications? There are reasonable arguments to be made for and against this proposition, but what's missing is the sense that the nation's citizenry should have a say in these policy decisions. We're supposed to be satisfied that a handful of thoroughly corrupted-by-the-corporatocracy congresspeople have been spoon-fed a thin dribble of intelligence gruel and told to rubberstamp it in the name of democracy. This calls to mind the notion that authorities inoculate the public with carefully measured doses of the operative master agenda and narrative.... By carefully releasing bits and pieces of the program, authorities inoculate the public against outrage or political action; the citizenry soon habituates to the master agenda and internalizes it to the point of self-management: we're spied upon for our own good.... This is precisely the mindset that fueled the 1950s witch-hunts of suspected Communists: guilt by association.

In America today there is a great rushing storm, a swirling hurricane of clashing opinions and ideologies that defy coherent organization and classification.  This social tempest has been triggered by certain revelations among the general public on issues which we in the Liberty Movement have long been aware.  The fact that our government is bought and paid for by international corporate interests, the fact that our government has positioned itself to spy on ALL Americans without warrant and without probable cause, the fact that our government is instituting policy initiatives that target common citizens as enemy combatants, the fact that every one of our Constitutional rights is being deliberately torn away; these things are not news to us, but to many once ignorant people, they are a shock to the system. Open corruption on the part of a criminal establishment has a funny way of politicizing everyone, even those people who go out of their way to avoid the bigger picture.  In the end, no man or woman gets a pass.  Whether you like it or not, one day soon, you will have to choose a side; freedom or tyranny.  There is no middle ground.

Would you be willing to give up what Edward Snowden has given up?  He has given up his high paying job, his home, his girlfriend, his family, his future and his freedom just to expose the monolithic spy machinery that the U.S. government has been secretly building to the world.  He says that he does not want to live in a world where there isn't any privacy.  He says that he does not want to live in a world where everything that he says and does is recorded.  Thanks to Snowden, we now know that the U.S. government has been spying on us to a degree that most people would have never even dared to imagine. Up until now, the general public has known very little about the U.S. government spy grid that knows almost everything about us.  But making this information public is going to cost Edward Snowden everything. The following are 27 quotes from Edward Snowden about U.S. government spying that should send a chill up your spine...

A Roundup of What's REALLY Going On ...

Perhaps you have noted in your life, as we have in ours, that denial is often the preface to justification. For the citizens of our country there is no justification, no national security assertion, that will dissuade us from the premise that our current government, in listening to every phone call and reading every transmission on the internet, is violating the fundamental Constitutional rights of American citizens. As Americans we should say, “You have overstepped your boundaries Sir.” Citizens should stand and state, “No one has given you the authority to spy upon me and my fellow Americans and that you are violating the Constitution in this exercise and it should cease immediately.” It should be said to a Democrat. It should be said to a Republican. We should say this to any man that has undertaken to pervert the rights that we have ascribed to ourselves in the formation of our government. This is where we should stand and we should make our voices heard to the best of our abilities.

• Citigroup Facing $7 Billion Currency Hit on Dollar, Peabody Says (BBG)
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• Obama administration to drop limits on morning-after pill (Reuters)
• ACLU asks spy court to release secret rulings in response to leaks (MSNBC)
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What most undermines the claims of the Administration and its defenders about this surveillance program is the process itself. First the government listens in on all of our telephone calls without a warrant and then if it finds something it goes to a FISA court and get an illegal approval for what it has already done! This turns the rule of law and due process on its head. The government does not need to know more about what we are doing. We need to know more about what the government is doing. We need to turn the cameras on the police and on the government, not the other way around... We should be thankful for writers like Glenn Greenwald, who broke last week’s story, for taking risks to let us know what the government is doing. There are calls for the persecution of Greenwald and the other whistle-blowers and reporters. They should be defended, as their work defends our freedom.

Top NSA Official: Government Tapping CONTENT, Not Just Metadata … Using Bogus “Secret Interpretation” of Patriot Act