Note from the Editorial Staff: We here at the Slacker News Network are, well...slackers – so you may want to take the 'this just in' with a grain of salt. Maybe two.
I'm proud to be an American because this is the land where all people are considered to be equal and endowed with certain unalienable rights...oh wait.
IRS claims it can read your e-mail without a warrant
The ACLU has obtained internal IRS documents that say Americans enjoy "generally no privacy" in their e-mail messages, Facebook chats, and other electronic communications.
And if it ain't the IRS it's the FBI.
FBI Wants More Money To Spy Online
We defeat SOPA, and they come right back at us with CISPA.
We defeat CISPA and they come right back with more CISPA (worse than SOPA).
This is a full out assault on our right to be private citizens online.
Much of our national discourse takes place online these days. Restricting or repressing free speech online is an assault on the 1st Amendment. Unrestricted government spying will have a chilling effect, not only on the national discourse, but the global discourse.
The Internet weaves the people of the world together in a way never before imagined. Well, maybe not never imagined, but in ways to which we are just now awakening. We are discovering how to use the magic of the hivemind. We are in the early stages of finding ways to harness this combined human energy and unprecedented connectivity to make things better for all of us in a myriad of ways. The potential for the combined efforts of all the clever, insightful and creative people from all nations and cultures from around the world creates an uber-synergy that is a new and potentially very powerful thing. But only if it is allowed to be free. You believe in liberty? Now's your chance to prove it.
"CISPA passed the House, but this isn't over yet. It's time for a massive protest for online privacy."
Tell the U.S. Government: "Violating our privacy is not an option."
The very fact of unrestricted government spying alone will suppress free speech and discourage unpopular activism. All those Quakers out there need to watch the fuck out.
It's a direct threat to all who work for a just society, all who protest war and work for peace. And if they're on to the Quakers, how are they going to be with the civilly disobedient? OWS? It's getting mighty hard to be a revolutionary out here.
We have the right to think as we like and say what we please. We will never surrender these fundamental rights. We are Americans.
But at least those behind this unprecedented attack on the people are making out like bandits...quite literally.
Another view with more recent data:
Corporate profits are at all time highs while school systems are slashing teachers' jobs and pay, the long term unemployed are a major and growing demographic, all services are being sharply cut, insurance premiums raised, coverage slashed, our safety net put in peril and austerity based on magic numbers stuffed down our throats in a manner most ruthless and unkind.
Gather 'round and hear the tale of how some of those who have been robbing us blind are planning to protect themselves from us when the shit hits the fan.
Meet the billionaire survivalists
Is it sad that America is the safe-haven for 3rd world fat cats and capitalist bandidos fleeing the wrath of their own people?
My heart skipped a beat when I first glimpsed the following headline. 'US names human rights Abusers.'
Glory hallelujah! Finally, we're getting serious about human rights abuses. (As long as they occur far from home, as it turns out, by people our government doesn't like.)
U.S. names 18 people as alleged human rights abusers
There, we did it. Named their sorry asses. All 18 of 'em. Surprisingly, none of them former Bush Administration officials.
No. It took the Russians to go there:
Russia bans 18 Americans from country in answer to US list
Former Bush staffers and Guantanamo Bay commanders on list released in response to US Treasury visa bans
The list published in Moscow includes John Yoo, a former US Justice Department official who wrote legal memos authorising harsh interrogation techniques, and David Addington, the chief of staff for former vice-president Dick Cheney. Two former commanders of Guantanamo Bay, retired Major General Geoffrey Miller and Admiral Jeffrey Harbeson, were also named.
But not even the Russians care to hold the big boys accountable. No mention of Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld. They got Yoo though. Named that sorry rat, named him and shamed him. Take that! It may not seem like much but it's better than we've managed to do, here in the land of justice for all. No,
we made him a professor at Berkeley.
And now, as if we hadn't all had a bellyful of George Fucking Bush, here's what we have to say to his multitude of victims at home and around the world, to all the maimed and wounded, the widows and orphans, the friends and relations of people now gone:
Presidents converge to salute one of their own
DALLAS — All the living American presidents past and present are gathering in Dallas, a rare reunion to salute one of their own at the dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
Profound ideological differences and a bitter history of blaming each other for the nation's woes will give way — if just for a day — to pomp and pleasantries Thursday as the five members of the most exclusive club in the world appear publicly together for the first time in years. For Bush, 66, the ceremony also marks his unofficial return to the public eye four years after the end of his deeply polarizing presidency.
So instead of charging and trying George W, we're going to pretend like he's not the war criminal and torturer who lied our country into war and caused the unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people around the world, many of whom were children and other innocents, all while bankrupting our nation with tax cuts for the rich, and the mindless and cruel prosecution of multiple devastatingly costly, unbudgeted and unnecessary wars while savaging at least one sovereign nation which threatened us not - and give him a 'presidential library' as if he was ever anything but a poser and a puppet installed by a corrupt SCOTUS on behalf of the 1% owners of America, INC, a subsidiary of Goldman Sachs.
What a disgusting spectacle. What a disgrace to the Constitution. What a slap in the face to the American people.
Our parting thought for the evening: obscene wealth is an abomination in a world such as this.
Your Honor,
years ago I recognized my kinship with all living beings, and I made up my mind that I was not one bit better than the meanest on earth. I said then, and I say now, that while there is a lower class, I am in it, and while there is a criminal element I am of it, and while there is a soul in prison, I am not free.
Eugene V. Debs
Solidarity.