By Judith Gayle | Political Waves
Oh, to be young again, sizzling with juice and in love with the drama of epidemic scandal! Oh, to be so witless and trusting that it never occurs to you that it’s YOUR life that’s being remodeled by every vote and/or obstruction of a dysfunctional congress! Oh, the shock to learn that the data mining of the bad guys’ communiques, exhaustively combed through by government worker bees, includes your phone calls to Grandma and your credit card splurges at Amazon!
And last but not least, oh, the horror of discovering the country you love has betrayed you, even if you’ve smelled the perfume and turned a blind eye to the lipstick stains for seven — count ’em — long years.
Settle down, America, there’s nothing new to see here, move along. Lawmakers like Dianne Feinstein have made it perfectly clear that what’s going on in the National Security Agency today is the same stuff that’s been going on for years in an effort to ‘protect the nation.’
If we’re suddenly outraged and aghast at the level of information collected, or the fact that it’s been done covertly, we’re a day late and a dollar short by damned-near a decade.
I hear your anguished cry: by Gawd, they know what we buy and where, they know where we’re going and when, they access our photos, our videos and our e-mails! Yawn. Anything else got yer goat today?
You will have to pardon my cynicism but if all this comes as a surprise, shame on you for being as dense as the undiscovered bagel that rolled behind the refrigerator last November. If you’re in elementary school, you can be forgiven for not knowing the Patriot Act has us by the short hairs, but if you’re older than twelve, you must have heard about the National Security Agency and its access to the private communications of the average citizen.
And given the speculations toyed with for more than a decade of questionable governance, the angst of libertarians everywhere, and even the excessive paranoia of right-wing NRA card-carriers who are sure the Fed has their name on record next to their list of weapons, you can hardly be shocked to hear that anyone purchasing service from AOL, Apple, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, Skype, YouTube and Paltalk is subject to data mining.
Study the ads on your ISP and you’ll discover how that looks. Shopping for a vibrator, a bong, fat pants or a better job on line and don’t want anyone to know? Then don’t open your e-mail in public. The ads along the margins define your taste and your interest, specific to your buying habits. You’ve been “targeted,” and it’s similar to inviting the boss/minister/cops to browse through your underwear drawer on their way to your medicine cabinet, only now that you’re aware that they’re snooping, you can’t un-invite them to the next house party.
Hey, look here. (That’s my Uncle Si impression. What? You don’t watch Duck Dynasty?) Anyone with a Facebook account or a blog has already given up a good bit of their privacy. What’s a little more, eh? You can’t possibly trust Google, given their imperfect record. And if you’re just awakened to the fact that you’ve placed the most personal details of your life upon the altar of perceived ‘safety,’ I haven’t got much sympathy for you. A little, maybe. I don’t want to appear too harshly critical of my fellow citizen, even the foot draggers. There have been tidbits of information on government spying revealed this week that many of us find unsettling if not surprising, so I’ll forgive a bit of squeal and spittle.
We’ve learned about a covert surveillance program called Prism that has collected billions of e-mails, supposedly ignoring those of American citizens while tracking patterns to and from foreign addresses, but collecting them all. Meanwhile, the leaked authorization to collect Verizon’s phone records — all major carriers’ records, for that matter — has cast a wide net, tapping a miles-wide river of personal information that proponents insist is not designed to target anyone in particular but everyone in general, a gush of data from some three billion phone calls a day, years on end, zipped for reference.
The calls and e-mails, say the agencies — and the President, in televised comments meant to soothe the pandemonium — are not screened for content, which would require further legal authorization. Rather, they are collected meta-data: the larger picture, long on numbers, short on details. But even if that’s true, at minimum such information acts as a GPS tracking-device in each of our lives. Our privacy has been compromised, even if we don’t know it.
So yes, such covert intrusion on our privacy is a dramatic discovery, but let me ask you this: what, exactly, did you think those quarter-million Homeland Security employees were hired for? The majority of them are sitting in cubicles in front of computers. Did you speculate on how such a job description might keep the nation safe? Has it occurred to you that the web pages you visit might be tracked, the contributions you make noted, the particulars of your lifestyle profiled? Is it possible that you might get caught up in a net of misinformation, somehow implicated by six degrees of separation, and unfairly targeted? And if any of that is worrisome to you, have you joined in protest over your lost privacy?
None of this — not even allegations of whistle blowing on super-secret security programs — is new business. We’ve had plenty of warning about this tendency to Orwellian measures and threat to civil liberty since 2006, and well before. Over at Political Waves, we called it Spygate and it generated hundreds of posts, most begging for plain old common sense in the face of the xenophobia and paranoia that were pushing us into Big Brother’s arms. That conversation only took place among the lefties in those days, as the righties marched in lock-step toward the Bushie plan to liberate the world and its people to the joys of consumerism. The parties did not face off because the right had the left in a headlock.
But no more. Today, cable news channels are having a loud, unruly conversation about security vs. privacy, long LONG overdue. This is, say advocates for the covert programs, necessary intelligence gathering, while others think this is misinterpretation of the Patriot Act and presidential overreach. Meanwhile, Obama says he and his team inherited the system and made necessary adjustments to the programs when he took office, including adding public safeguards. He insists that the rules are strictly adhered to regarding not listening to phone calls or reading private e-mails.
Not good enough, say two Dems — veteran Senator Ron Wyden and newbie Mark Udall, both members of the Senate Select Intelligence Committee — who have been loud opponents of the surveillance programs, concerned that there has been “secret interpretation of a body of law,” sans public awareness. Not so fast, say Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Henry Waxman and a handful of others who honor the old-fashioned notion of personal privacy, continuing to bang the drum for reform and accountability on data mining. Al Gore, speaking earlier this year, warned against the growing culture of surveillance when he said, “The government is about to complete this $2 billion facility in Utah that can sweep up everything from phone calls to emails … and the Supreme Court just ruled you can’t sue.”
Let’s be clear: these voices have been ignored by the press, the public and their contemporaries, and if we took a vote today, we would still be erring on the side of safety rather than liberty. We didn’t want to know just how vulnerable we were back then and we still don’t, so this will not be an easy conversation to engage in, with the nation split along radical lines. But now that classified information has leaked, we have finally come to a point of awareness that requires us all to both look and think, and I hope we can raise that to an intelligent level.
I fear that we’ll be like the guy who demanded that the government keep its grubby hands off his Medicare. The balancing act between the nation’s demand for security and the state’s need for surveillance is nuanced (and you know only some of us are good at that!). The solution is within the question itself, but it will require good sense to find it. We’re pretty short on that, these days, as well as patience.
The left is highly critical of the continuation of policies they eschewed under George Bush and they question Obama’s cred as both a liberal and Constitutional scholar. Meanwhile, the right is thrilled that what George W. started has come to roost, claws drawn, on the neck of the black guy. Rudy Giuliani showed up on cable yesterday to loudly question such heinous overreach of presidential authority, but that wasn’t the song he sang in 2004, ’05 or ’06. If Romney was in the catbird seat, you can bet there wouldn’t be a split in the Republican ranks over the justification for wiretap and its necessity in a dangerous world. A recent look at what Romney had planned for the nation — renamed AmeriCo. Inc. I presume — shows their ambitious agenda to rework the Republican brand and restore American exceptionalism.
I hope we’re ready for a national security conversation, but part of our problem is how very very broken this system is. How can we have that discussion unless we also review our Pentagon budget and troop placement and plans for Syria? How do we fix one piece of the fabric if the thread is coming loose all around? That’s the challenge of our time, not just this little piece of it. We’ve gone far afield from our beginnings. Spying on the public is just one little thread in a weave gone erratic and flawed. Can we, a nation split, come together to repair, to restore?
As we move into another restless summer, I’m praying we aren’t sinking into the mire of scandal mongering for the whole of the season. Seems like every summer, the conversation becomes more stupid, the attitude less flexible and the public more disenchanted. I hope these last two days — these last few weeks — aren’t portent for the hot months ahead.
With so much energy shifting into Cancer to trine the other water signatures, we would do well to monitor our thoughts lest they rise and fall with the tide of our emotions. There is a difference between emotions and feelings. Emotions are like background noise, always present but stronger from time to time, occasionally rocking the boat of our reality like a sudden storm. Emotions come and go, the tiger pacing the jungle of our minds, our Inner Drama Queen holding a moment’s sway, always a little dangerous, always a bit explosive. Especially in Aries point energy, things can go south quickly if we follow our emotions.
Better to push through to our authentic feelings, tapping our intuitive response, providing us a star to guide us. A Course in Miracles tells us that every thought we think is either host to God or hostage to ego. If we are to bring happiness and healing to ourselves and the world, we must choose love over fear, choose service to the whole of us over defense of our tribe, our personal ambitions or our list of absolutes.
As June plants herself in front of us, announcing a coming summer that is unlikely to provide a smooth ride, neither jumping to conclusions nor revving at a high pitch seems productive. Life is dramatic enough without our adding to it. I think today’s the day for a deep breath and a carefully crafted list of intentions for this Gemini New Moon of ours, seeding courtesy, cooperation and commonality into the ether. This is the day to affirm good sense, this is the month to develop our intuition, this is the year to bring alchemy to the table, to begin to mend the torn fabric of our nation and our world. God or ego, love or fear — as always, the choice is ours.
Edward Snowden made the smartest and safest choice open to him and went public. Now, the entire world knows his name and what he did. The public will be watching.
Yes, very impressive, be — and no surprise the astro-timing suits the moment. Fearlessness doesn’t earn the brownie points this kind of courage does, to put so much on the line because he is compelled by conscience. Thanks for the details, kiddo … you always leave us with more to think about!
Fascinating stuff here about Edward Snowden Judith, thanks for sharing. The article says he packed his bags and boarded a plane on May 20th after completing all his documentation of the SNA spying story. That would put it right between the solar eclipse and the 2nd lunar eclipse when his whistle-blowing was completed. Without rehashing the eclipse charts (other than in the lunar eclipse, Jupiter was conjunct the U.S. Mars and square the U.S. Neptune), I would just remind you that trans. Uranus squared trans. Pluto on the evening of May 20th. But also of importance that day was the Mercury sextile Uranus aspect, the Sun’s entry into Gemini (conjunct last year’s solar eclipse degree) and a Venus square to Chiron who was and still is trine the U.S. Sibly Sun.
Len Wallick recently noted the entrance into Taurus by transiting 1992 QB1, a very important change of sign by this slow moving object. Eric, speaking about QB1 says “there’s a lot here about letting go of fear, which is part of every healing process.” The Guardian story tells us of Snowden’ courage in his act of whistle-blowing, and yet also lets us know he is fighting his fear of what will happen to him and to his family. The above transits for May 20th speak of an opportunity for healing in the Chiron trine U.S. Sun and square transiting Venus (values).
Two days before Snowden boarded the plan for Hong Kong, 1992 QB1 entered Taurus at 0 degrees where it remains today. If Snowden is 29 years old it’s likely his natal Pluto is on or near 0 Scorpio and transiting QB1 is opposite his Pluto.
be
Edward Snowden — you’ll want to remember that name
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/09/edward-snowden-nsa-whistleblower-surveillance
Impressed and even encouraged, this morning, with the quality of the conversation I heard among the ABC Sunday pundits. If that reflects the whole of us — with Greenwald and Mark Udall showing up on Stephanopoulos to criticize NSA, as well as Feinstein and Johnson to defend — we’re beginning to think constructively about what kind of nation we want to be and how much authoritarian (a word Paul Krugman used to excellent effect) power is too much; not only as concerns the executive and security issues, but fiscal issues as well including … gasp … the poor. This is the first week since I don’t remember, when the pundits found as many things to agree on as disagree, tackled possible solutions in a bi-partisan manner and even brought the notion of empathy into the discussion. VERY heartening exchange.
Greenwald indicated that he has more to spill and that there may be more than one leaker — meanwhile, it seems likely that DoJ may go after them although they haven’t yet. This whole topic of whistle blowing is the hot button, and I couldn’t help but think of Valerie Plame this morning, and the left’s apoplexy that Uncle Dick outed her for political convenience, despite endangering her contacts and blowing her cover/career. Novak and Libby paid a price, as did Plame and her family, and Brad Manning is fighting for his life but Uncle Dick is still happily oiling his gun, somewhere, grinning like a deaths-head. WTF!!!
Still, at least for today, I’m pleased that we’re talking among ourselves like adults — but I didn’t watch ALL the pundit shows, so I can’t say for sure! What seems clear is that the nation is in search of answers to its many questions. It’s quite amazing how many “secrets” have been spilled since … gosh … seems like late in 2012 to me, but I may be biased on the side of Shift.
What I can say for sure is that on this day, on these topics — and others that hit the news shows like the congressional investigation on sexual assault in the military — there is a sense of “fact-finding” with an eye toward resolution. This energy doesn’t seem to reflect our usual fist fight, throwing punches from across the political chasm, but more a reasoned discussion. That alone, is a breath of fresh air!
Fe, gotta say I agree, and thanks for passing that along. And bless you, Maria, I appreciate the support. In regard to “why,” I’ve followed along carefully this weekend and I think, if I heard the nuts and bolts correctly, it turns out the meta-data … phone numbers called, times, the same stuff itemized on a phone bill … are NOT stored by carriers because it’s too expensive. Therefore, if the Gov’mnt does a “capture” then they have the info IF they need it later, requesting the court to open the files. Meanwhile, they simply screen for patterns, overseas calls and length of time, yadda. Yer basic profiling, or so they say.
Now — is that all they do? There’s the problem, and the topic of trust came up again and again today. Building on the supposed-politicizing of IRS scrutiny — which I find no fault with, given the breadth of Citizens United and the intent of these groups to politicize despite their tax-free status — this comes as another hit to the trustworthiness of the administration, or ANY admin, for that matter. So, once again, that means our challenge is to decide the limits of government without drowning it in a bathtub (which will take CONSIDERABLY more sunshine on so much that’s covert.)
I’m hopeful that we’re going to consciously CHOOSE a way forward at some point. It suddenly seems possible. Security issues may still pack a fear-punch, but the mere mention of 9/11 isn’t the alarm bell it used to be, sending us all into a cold sweat (despite DiFi’s disturbing mention of bodies flinging themselves from burning towers.) Just THAT maturation in public consciousness will change the tenor of whatever happens next.
Thanks for all the feedback this week, dearhearts. Blessed be, all of you.
I thought the bagel was funny. But you know me and snark.
Where I get impatient is with the outraged cries of “how could they do this to us!” We did and do this to us. Every time you check “I agree” to a terms of service, if you work or shop in a corporation…it’s like stabbing a stale bagel. Data became currency and you pay to play. What interests me now are the why of collecting big data (votes and maintaining power) and creative responses to develop alternatives (punking individual messages not effective, but who knows a way to punk big data?). Got to go carpool now, but Jude, I loved this column.
This is from my friend Jim Hogan, his Facebook comment posted by me on the FB thread Eric started on the topic. He summarizes my feelings exactly:
“My apologies. I usually avoid “political” topics on Facebook, but on this one I can’t bite my tongue. Turns out that the government has been monitoring every telephone call and every email and every other bit of stuff that’s posted on the internet. I’m sure that you read this online or in a newspaper today. Scary? Sure. But we’re being told by a bevy of congresspeople that it’s necessary to fight terrorism.
My question – why do these same congresspeople fight ANY attempt to monitor who buys guns? I guess part of the answer concerns the definition of terror. Do you think the first graders and their teachers at Sandy Hook felt terror as they were being gunned down? But that, and a hundred other incidents that terrorize our lives every week in this country, doesn’t fit into our “War on Terror”.
To fight this phony “War on Terror” we have to display our naked bodies to strangers at the airport, have our emails read and phone calls listened to by strangers. Its all part of a war on….who? We can be reasonably sure that someone in the bowels of the NSA will be reading this very post shortly. The only way I can be sure that the government won’t be monitoring me is if I go to the next gun show and buy an AK-47.”
Eric: have we looked into Atlantis as part of the mix on PRISM and the NSA? Advanced “nonintrusive” surveillance.
The whole thing feels like the government and many of the people have twisted themselves into a Gordion Knot to feel safe. When will the rest of the world feel safe from our terror in turn?
America’s greatest export: fear and security, our products drones. And advanced weaponry available locally and easy to buy as an iPhone from Verizon here in the US.
The Lone Ranger is due back in theaters around the 4th of July, Gary, but the talking heads are pissy because Tonto (portrayed as a Paiute in authentic dress by Johnny Depp) has a “dead bird on his head.” Ya just can’t make everybody happy!!!
As to those who wouldn’t surrender their guns, I presume the gritty if deadly Wyatt Earp model was the most effective if you wander through Tombstone and read the inscriptions at Boot Hill. In the white hat/black hat days, Roy had Bullet to bite ’em and Nellybell to run over ’em, and I remember a lot of shooting but I don’t think anybody ever died in those glorious episodes. The difference between then and now? We’re obsessive about death and dying.
Following Real Time on HBO is a new half-hour news show, Vice, produced by Maher, Fareed Zakaria and others, that, honest, makes you want to open a vein after the first fifteen minutes. SO damned dark, but important to watch. Last night the first segment was on Chicago violence and the parts of the city that are dominated by dozens of gangs and daily murders. They interviewed some older gang-members, guys that had managed to survive their youth and age, if not gracefully at least with a perspective on their experience.
They say that ten, twenty years ago there weren’t all these guns, maybe one or two in the neighborhood. People beat the crap out of one another, but they didn’t shoot to kill. Now, they say, the young brothers don’t even bother to argue the point, they just pull the trigger.
A kind of mindless nihilism born of poverty and social breakdown, and full-blown apartheid within the city Rahm Emanuel couldn’t wait to run, schools shut down, hospitals unwilling to take shooting victims — we have a lot to atone for.
And, if you think about it, Hoppy, Roy and the Lone Ranger were probably an earlier attempt to atone for Wyatt. Ain’t nothin’ simple anymore!
Judith, put Butter to the top of the Netflix list — “even the NSA tracking person gave me feedback with a “two thumbs up”! Thanks
Off topic of the day but I was just thinking- most of the RWNJ were tv watching utes– a -youths. Remember when the bad guys rode into town and good ol’ Sheriff Rowdy Rawhide or Festus or whomever used to tell them to drop the guns at the office as there were no guns in town. Well, I bet all of those RWNJ thought that was the right thing to do back then to disarm all of those dastardly gunslinging outlaws. How would they respond now? Sorry sheriff but I have a conceal and carry permit or perhaps respond to the sheriff’s six-shooter with — “that ain’t No gun! with their own six hundred shot rapid fire howitzer. Please come back Roy and Lone Ranger.
Our personal spiritual growth requires us to accept our own dark spots and to integrate them in order for our divine alchemy to work and transform ourselves into something higher. Love is great but, until we are willing to look at the reality of what is happening around us, love will not do. Truth, whatever that truth may be, is the foundation upon which transformation can occur. Until we are ready to face the truth, which some time very soon will be staring us squarely in the eye and at our door, we are not capable of change.
After a Town Hall Meeting in September of 2010 I had a private, pointed and brief conversation with Bernie Sanders. I asked him when he was going to address what was going on behind the scenes. Bernie works very hard for the people of Vermont. He got a little pissy with me and told me to call his office after introducing me to a member of his staff. That was almost three years ago. I have gotten to know some of his staff and called them at 8 a.m. when I first heard of the billion or so bullets purchased by Homeland Security. So much has happened since then, my head spins. If anything, Bernie is even more combative now but I have no doubt that he is frustrated and weary. Who can blame him?
This is Bilderberg weekend. Their members are gathering outside London to discuss the fate of the world. Many of these people are not elected officials, they are capitalists, industrialists. It did not take long for David Petraeus to go from disgraced head of the CIA to Bilderberg attendee/employee of Kroll, another big security company making millions if not billions off of surveillance and keeping America safe. It takes a lot of security to protect all the money these folks are hoarding.
I am not one to squirm, Judith. I see what is happening and spend time virtually each and every day to do something to make a difference. When the time comes I know the position I will take because there is no other position I can take.
Love will prevail the day we stop this indiscriminate bloodshed around the planet through endless and aimless wars, unnecessary abortions because people are simply too lazy to practice birth control, the brutality factory farming and the euthanizing of millions of cats and dogs each year because people are too lazy to spay and neuter their pets. It is all interconnected. We live in a disposable society where we take the easy road time and time again. Our culture is one of convenience with a convenience store on every corner.
It is easy to look the other way. Where is our moral courage and our moral responsibility? As I’ve stated before, I do not and will not own a gun. I support every woman’s right to choose but I am responsible for my own body and would not have an abortion if I became pregnant. Len wrote in a recent blog that water and blood are precious. They are. Not in America. And not in other countries as America continues to perpetrate violence around the globe for corporate greed.
The New Age is great. It is also just another drug to let us off the hook if we choose to use it that way.
20 years ago Ross Perot was a third party candidate and was included in the debates. Last fall, third party candidate Jill Stein and her VP choice were arrested and taken away in handcuffs for trying to attend a debate between Obama and Romney. The agenda continues to be rolled out on a daily basis. To what end?
Analyzing the aspects is insightful but it will be feet in the streets that will make a difference. Always has.
Mia
Ouch, indeed, GaryB. I’m not gonna touch that, given the weirdness be spoke of, but for a temporary change of channel, I recommend a little Indy film I saw the other day that made me laugh and laugh: Butter. That’s all, just … Butter. Puts a light touch on all the bullshit of the day — a real hoot.
Ouch!–my short hairs are getting really sore. We are half way through the Uranus/Pluto squares and I am ready for another picture show.
Well, oh shit, oh dear. The bagel reference was an analogy, a snarky one, I admit, and mea culpa if any reader took it personally. Still, a careful read will prove that I didn’t accuse anyone of being dumb. I described the bagel as dense, not dumb. There is a difference. Dumb is slow-witted and incapable of understanding, dense isn’t paying attention or refusing to know.
The slow erosion of our privacy has been going on for much of this century, a “secret” in plain sight. The explosion of outrage and amazement that this latest flap has brought us feels like a bread-and-circus response, at least on the part of some of us who should know better. We aren’t just now becoming a surveilled nation, we ARE a surveilled nation and have been. If we’d stepped up earlier in this century to defend our Fourth Amendment rights and stop, or at least slow, that moving train, perhaps we wouldn’t have a multi-billion buck government spy ring keeping tabs on our every move, all “legally.”
If we have a bank account, a cell phone, an e-mail address, a credit card — whether as a public persona or a private citizen — we can no longer count on privacy, and if we’d read the fine print, or watched television shows like NCIS ping a cell phone or CSI solve a murder with facial recognition software, or even followed the news of the day, we MUST know by now that there is no literal expectation of privacy. EVERYONE’s life attracts surveillance, we don’t have to do anything special to “deserve” it. With everything pointing to that level of ability to intrude on our private lives, I’m amazed that anyone is still surprised by this recent NSA revelation.
The Senators no longer expect privacy, being privy to all they warn about, but they want to recover it and they want us to KNOW we have to engage as citizens to fight to preserve it. I think anyone who has followed this progression understands that the press isn’t dumb, it’s bought and paid for. If it served their corporate interests, sold papers or produced web traffic, they’d be covering the topic.
The notion of personal privacy may be dead as a door nail, anyway — an illusion we want to preserve from simpler times — thanks to technology. That very technology that we all seem eager to own and use owns us. We might love the convenience of a GPS system, but can we extrapolate that to realize our coming and going can be tracked 24/7? We’re happy to plan a trip with Google Maps but are we also aware that strangers can position over our home and spot the dog peeing in the yard? For a few bucks we can hire someone to track down our lost love or vet the background of a blind date. That doesn’t seem intrusive to their privacy but we have expectations about our own? Really?
As for the broken system, it obviously is, and there were a few paragraphs that segued between that concept and the choice for love. It’s easy enough to get frightened as we realize that what we counted on for stability is no longer stable, what we thought was our friend and ally may not be, but fear doesn’t serve to raise the level of conversation. It’s easy enough to get pissed off about the situation, letting anger lead the way, but that isn’t going to give us rational solutions.
It MAY, however, at least shake the last of us awake, newly aware that we’ve given away our liberty, piece by piece, by not protecting our rights or demanding integrity from our leaders. It MAY take us into the streets where we will find others who will join with us to create a different reality than the one we’ve allowed so far, this century. We MAY find those there that have a brighter vision for the future, one conceived in equality and justice.
And if we’re very VERY lucky, we will gravitate to those who speak with, and for, love — even in the most pragmatic, political sense — because if we are going to manage this very difficult transition, fear and anger and outrage may get us as far as the street but unless we’re fighting for a higher purpose, and with a higher vision, we will not have sufficient heart for the journey.
On a personal note, may I say that once — as regards relationship — I was surely a bagel. It was a transitory period, but I own my bagel-ness. As before, I apologize if I have offended anyone but I also live by the notion that it is as much an error to take offense as to give it. I struggle with neither taking it nor giving it back, and very often, I do that right here on these pages. It serves me, and, I trust, us all.
Come on if you think
you can take us all on
Damn, Eric, wouldn’t that be great, if we were all on the same page! We just seldom seem to get there. But each rotten, shitty thing we discover these days is the goad that gives us the option to get there. I hope we take it, and soon. On Real Time last night, it was suggested that perhaps we have become accustomed to TOO MUCH liberty — too many menu choices, as it were. Interesting thought in a complex topic.
“We will squirm. So be it.” Sounds like Chiron territory, Mia. A cauterized wound heals, if we live through the insult to the flesh and we will, I suspect, sadder but wiser. That’s the kind of summer it’s shaping up to be.
And thanks, be, for a look at how we got here. I only mentioned 2007 because it was reported that this particular surveillance project has been effective since then, there were others prior to that. The Supreme’s handing the nation to Dubby was a SHARP u-turn on the intent of the founders, and I can’t get very excited about Big Dog Bill’s tenure, either. His love of triangulation didn’t serve us well.
Last night, Bill Maher did a mammoth rant on Saint Ronnie the Reagan — whom Fishin’ Jim calls “the jellybean” — that was spot on. Much of what we’re seeing now came to us courtesy of Ron. Seems to me, Nixon shook the foundations and Ronnie harvested from the psychic devastation that followed. If we REALLY want to know how it all got broken, I s’pose we’d have to go back to Ike, who saw the handwriting on the wall (and I suspect the Native American’s would tell us we aren’t going back far enough!)
What a weird day this is turning out to be. All very much information data related too.
So Jude, since you put it that way, I’m all for mending the torn fabric and keeping the torrential emotions in check. Where to start? Well, the only thing I trust and have total confidence in is Astrology (and by that I don’t mean my ability to decipher it but the gathering in of many other(s) interpretations) combined with my own intuitions and feelings and when occasion demands, my thinking, so it seems we need to unravel some threads.
Starting back before the Cardinal Climax, maybe when Saturn was opposing Pluto, or even back as far as when the Supremes handed the presidency prize to GWB, it looked like our country’s government had taken a wrong turn and gotten lost. If that’s unraveling the fabric back too far, then maybe the seven years ago you mentioned would be a good place to start the mending. In 2006, Pluto was travelling the degrees between Sagittarius 24 and 26. On June 1st (this year) transiting Jupiter was at 24 Gemini and will complete the transit of 26 Gemini by the end of this Wednesday. He has no other aspects (distractions) to make between now and then so he is free to concentrate on the two new cycles (conjunctions) he’s recently made with Venus and Mercury and to reflect on his opposition to the work of Pluto in 2006. Venus and Mercury could put a big dent on those needed repairs before they complete this cycle and return to Jupiter.
In 2006, transiting Uranus covered the degrees of Pisces from 7 to 14, a range pretty much being covered now by Neptune and Chiron. Perhaps by tackling that section of the torn fabric it could be unraveled and repaired now. However, the 2006 Neptune section seems more than just torn, it seems to have disappeared. That year Neptune covered the degrees of 15 through 19 of Aquarius.
Through the luck of the gods, Queen Juno has been transiting over the 18th degree of Aquarius as she prepares to station retrograde at the 19th degree (19 Aquarius 01). She sextiles the expert weaver Arachne at 19+ Sagittarius who is already retrograde, but just as importantly, Juno has been square the north and south nodes as they transit Scorpio and Taurus, now at 16+ degrees where they have been for weeks and weeks, and will remain there until the 22nd of June. Juno can see where the past (south node) started to disintegrate and how the future’s pattern (north node) will take shape. Arachne, having recently passed over the USA Sibly ascendant (12+ Sagittarius), will return to station direct there in less than 2 months, giving her the time and clarity of design that only the USA’s ascendant could provide this fabric that has lost its intent.
This New Moon’s symbolism speaks of going back to the books, the old “traditional wisdom” and in his book on the Sabian Symbols, Dane Rudhyar says “..the human mind can uncover the foundations of its nature and acquire what might be called SEED-KNOWLEDGE, the knowledge of the structure of cyclic and cosmic manifestations of life on this planet.” Surely we mere mortal Americans can do the same for our country.
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Eric and Judith,
I have no doubt that I am on some list somewhere for speaking up and if they want to read my emails and listen to my telephone calls, they can go for it.
I have been writing here at Planetwaves and elsewhere non-stop about Obama and his administration and now, finally, even the New York Times is calling him out. The system is broken, completely broken. Obama is simply part of the problem. And he is playing to his corporate masters. From day one his administration was business as usual. Just look at the people he surrounded himself with.
We can watch Gaddafi murdered on Youtube but we cannot bring bin Laden to trial. We throw his body overboard. And we buy into it! He was a CIA asset, working for our government. The lies are being exposed left and right and it is for each of us to follow our conscience. That will require something from us. It will feel uncomfortable. We will squirm. So be it.
Chris Hedges is the man. He is the moral example for all of us, speaking truth to power regardless of the consequences. He and his wife have four children. They want a bright future for them, yet they are willing to make a stand. He has been arrested and states that we will all need to be willing to be arrested.
No doubt this summer will require something from each one of us. We need to decide for ourselves what, exactly, that will be.
Mia
My own comments, to Facebook:
I am fishing around for a fun direct action we can do on the Internet to mess with all these spies reading our stuff, allegedly to keep us safe. I am also extremely pissed off at what’s going on. It’s not like I didn’t know about this. I am a guest on today’s Sex Out Loud with Tristan Taormino, which we prerecorded Wednesday before the news broke, and I was talking about exactly this kind of surveillance.
As an investigative reporter and someone active on political and environmental issues, I’ve long assumed that my phones were tapped and that the FBI has kept files on me — ridiculous as that is, I’ve considered it something that comes with the territory of the work that I do. There is also corporate espionage to consider. But I think that in the life of someone who does not mind the government’s or Monsanto’s business, this kind of prying and eavesdropping is disgusting and an outrage.
It’s a gross abuse of power, and today Mr. Obama has been revealed as the total fraud that the right wing has been accusing him of all along. He never looked like a bigger asshole than he did in his press conference this morning telling us that the discussion about surveillance was a sign of a mature society. What a load of horse shit, and what pure BS that they’re not actually listening, only tracking numbers.
And guess what else we learned this week — having the wrong people no your phone bill can get you shot by a drone if you live in Pakistan. This kind of intrusion stirs revolution in my heart.
In the words of Radiohead, from a song I believe was written to Dick Cheney:
Come on, come on
You think you drive me crazy
Come on, come on
You and whose army?
You and your cronies
Come on, come on
Holy roman empire
Come on if you think
Come on if you think
You can take us all on
You can take us all on
You and whose army?
You and your cronies
Comment from one of my mentors:
Certainly you have every expectation of being surveilled, but have all of your readers? Do you have so little respect for them as to call them dumb as stale bagels simply because their lives never attracted surveillance? And shit, Eric, parse out her logic: if you expect privacy and are shocked that it is blatantly violated, you’re dumb as a petrified bagel; Senators Ron Wyden, Mark Udall,Bernie Sanders, Al Franken, Henry Waxman expect privacy and are appalled that it is violated but they’re ignored by the press (presumably because they’re dumb as petrified bagels), and since the whole system is broken it’s up to us to choose love over fear.