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OPPOSE HOMEGROWN TERRORISM PREVENTION ACT

 The goal of H.R. 1955, it would appear after a
cursory look, is to constrain to some degree civil
and environmental activism and social protest. It has
long been a goal of the American right wing to resist
in every conceivable way the culture, values, and
behaviors associated with the labor movements of the
Keynesian era and the social protest movements of the
1960s and 1970s. This is just more of the same. The
activist community is really rather vigilant about
these issues, as evidenced by the efforts of the CCR
here.

Honestly I am not overly worried. I can't imagine
that the reactionary march towards fascism will
persist for much longer. The misadventure in Iraq,
the outsourcing of the domestic production base to
China, and the uncontrollable deficits have caused
the right to lose a lot of steam. The Third Estate
has plenty of reason to realize that its real enemy
is the domestic nobility and clergy, and not
Wahabbis, Moors, and Saracens. So long as we remain
active, thoughtful, and self-aware citizens we can
combat legal encroachments on public power and
restrictions of civil liberties. But we have to be
willing and able to present a serious threat to the
establishment, by whatever means that are
appropriate. And we have to strike whenever the
pendulum swings the right way, seizing upon the
momentum of fluctuating public opinion.

Personally I have been attacking them where they
feel it the most, their pocketbook. I have been
trying to start a socially responsible investment
program here at the university I attend. Its not unreasonable
under the logic of corporatism either. There are
still laws out there, and the way to hedge one's
investments against the legal costs and reputational
risks of doing business irresponsibly is to invest in
a socially, environmentally, and democratically sound
way. I am trying to get the university to let me
manage a portion of its endowments in a manner that
shows respect for a broader awareness of social,
economic, environmental and political consequences.
So far they have been very receptive.

That's the key, really. At least in my opinion.
Disrupt business as usual. Change the calculus of
rational decision-makers by influencing the
parameters. That's what civil disobedience is about.
Though civil disobedience is just one tactic. And it
is a very costly tactic; I know from personal
experience because I am the only one at my university who
every engages in civil disobedience to my knowledge.
The police came by my room last night about 1:00 a.m.
and banged on my door. They said they received a
noise complaint and told me to turn my music down.
Now it was Saturday night and people listen to loud
music and party in their rooms and in the hallway
until 5:00 a.m. sometimes, but it was an unusually
quiet night and I was listening to my music at a
reasonable volume. It could barely be heard in the
hallway outside my door--I checked with the police.
They had their hands on their weapons the entire time
we talked. Maybe it is standard operating procedure
for them to index their weapon systems while
responding to an incident. But I see them plenty of
times with their hands not on their weapons.

I am not worried though. Actually a bit
encouraged. When people begin using state violence to
accomplish their objectives, it means the persuasive
power of their philosophy of operations is on the
decline. If institutions can't market and sell their
ideas and instead have to force them on people, it is
much costlier and riskier to do business. That's what
techniques like H.R. 1955 are about: the
self-awareness of a failing operational apparatus. We
just have to make sure that informational context is
not lost in a sea of informational content, and that
people understand the failures of our society are do
to the weaknesses of the overarching logic of our
times: neoliberalism.

Corporations have been too cavalier in buying debt
and assuming credit risk. Now they are reeling and
are going to be wary of all the boogey men risks out
their. Especially the one they fear the most: the
power of organized labor. Meanwhile the government is
suffering from a shortage of labor, because they
overestimated their capabilities and went into a
multi-front Global War on Terrorism undermanned. That
is part of the logic of free market fundamentalism,
use technology and capital-intensive assets and try
to stay light of labor so you can operate more
flexibly. Now the fact that teenage Arabs and
Persians with small arms and makeshift explosive
devices are successfully defying the most powerful
military force in history has ruined the reputation
of neoconservatives, Zionists, and other hawks in the
field for which they are most respected: security.

You know chaos theory says that large, complex
systems will eventually break down due to small
deficiencies in the systems programming (the greatest
problem of the human race is the inability to
understand the exponential function). Well, that is
exactly what is happening to the empire of America.
Let us not fiddle while Rome burns.

In solidarity,
   -Nate The Cheshire Cat   

Ranting is Impossible... for all things are connected.

To Fight for the Land
Wyoming Tribune - Cheyenne,WY,USA

Sage runs ahead, stopping to point at a grouse in the underbrush before it flies into a tree. Reed's a relatively quiet man, striking up a conversation here ...

Hi All,

It seems many Wyomingites have yet to fully discover the ease and power of commenting online following an article such as this. I will comment later this evening and I invite folks outside the state to comment as well. The Wyoming Range includes hundreds of thousands of National Forest and Bureau of Land Managment (BLM) lands (your land). If all the voices in Wyoming collectively shouted 'keep oil and gas development off our public land!" that may not be enough to stop the Dick Cheney cabal from developing anyway.

Thanks for lending your voice. You can comment online at end of the rather poignant article entitled "To Fight for the Land." (linked above & below)

To see an aerial view of what the gas & oil companies seek to do to the Wyoming Range go to:

http://skytruth.mediatools.org/content/images/photo.acs?object_id=10897&photo_id=14415

Just in case you might think the simulated aerial view of the Wyoming Range is an exaggeration, go to:

http://skytruth.mediatools.org/objects/view.acs?object_id=4419

Here you will see a time lapse of natural gas and oil development in the now infamous Jonah Field near Pinedale AZ. Just ask Mike McRoy... an Illinois resident who has visited this area several times. When Mike discovered I was moving to Wyoming he warned me I would smell gas and oil if I visited what has historically been a pristine sage brush steppe and mountain region around Pinedale, WY. Mike was right. Locals are livid but does anyone in the Cheney coterie care? Of course not.

No more or less than the Appalacians need outside help so do Wyomingites. Wyomingites have long resented outside interference to their culture (even if offered as genuine help) but they need help. This is not a Wyoming problem. Like mountaintop removal, this unbridled stampede of energy extraction is a national disaster. It won't take long before both the gulped-down energy reserves and the land, water, and air destroyed to get at those reserves are gone... and forever. Our kids will love us for gulping down their future energy reserves and for destroying any hope of enjoying clean air and water, pristine lands and the wildlife we so enjoy today. I keep asking myself... "who are we?"

This white-bread raised kid used to stand on the sidelines while my teenaged friends marched to end an unjust war. I used to secretly admire their courage. I felt and was, in fact, constrained from participating in this necessary grand social "acting out."

Now I am an adult. Now I act out. Now, when the stakes, to my personal life, are greatest, I act out. Folks where have all the hippies gone.... long time passin'? Here we are... in the midst of another Vietnam... only worse in many ways. We have an unjust war and corporate takeover of our government taking place right before out eyes. Where are those teenagers who used to question and challenge authority? Did the stakes get to high for them? Robert Hoyt wrote a song, "I Hate Money." If you think do or don't hate money you might want to listen to the words of his song.

While singing the evils of money Hoyt includes the deepest truth of all, "I hate money, it's that carrot on a stick... I hate money, as I turn another trick... I hate to think that they would take away mine... And that's ALL it takes to keep me in line!" duh duh duh duh dut! Isn't that so true. But again I ask, "who are we?" We are watching our communities, our regions, our nation, our world slip into corporate fascism and because they haven't yet quite enough power to take full control of all our money or our lives and we can still enjoy TV and air-conditioned couches we sit in silence... hoping we either outlive the bastards or that we die before the great fall comes. But... what happened to caring about the world beyond our own personal comfort? What happened to fighting for principles that extend beyond our own noses? What have our children become? Pawns in our tax returns? Feathers in our parental caps? Friends, we are leaving them a mess they did not create. Who do we blame? I used to blame the prior generation. But guess what! As I look around... I discover a sobering thought... I am now part of what I used to call "that prior" generation. Here I am about to turn over a world to my children that is far less attractive than the world that "awful prior generation" handed to me. We are turning over global military instability, global economic instability, unthinkable US debt to a nation many consider the greatest threat to our economy and way of life (China), and in my view, I am turning over the worst of the worst to my children.... a collapsing global ecology. None of the above matters one bit if my children have not... fresh air to breathe, clean water to drink, healthy food to eat or a natural world that they can retreat to when the all else in world is simply too painful to endure.

The worst trait we are bequeathing our children is our example of apathy. Corporate economics have crippled our imagination, thus rendering us hopeless, that a community can exist without absentee ownership. We have abandoned the idea that we can supply each other with the healthiest food, most durable goods, and most genuine services without shipping McDonald's hamburgers from South America, Africa, or Asia into every village across the US. Not to disparage the foreigner (God bless 'em all), but we believe we cannot have a clean, healthy, and happy home unless a foreigner cleans it. We believe we cannot get from point A to point B without EXXON-Mobil.

Folks, the fact that you might now be considering me out of touch with reality is testament to the fact that we have lost our image of communty, of true communal self-reliance. We have become toddlers, helpless to resist the commands of our new parents, corporations and their illegitimate offspring they (and we) call "democracy." We the people are no more the central component of U.S. Democracy than the U.S. economy is the central component of Wall Street.

I have, true to form, digressed. But there is a method to my madness and naturalist, John Muir, best explained both my method and my seeming madness. Muir pointed out, "When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it is tied to everything else in the universe." John Muir (1838-1914) U. S. naturalist, explorer.

Oil and gas development is at the heart of corporate fascism and we, therefore, cannot not pick it out without picking out all that is connected to it. We cannot save or natural world without picking out that which is destroying it whether that be political corruption, corporate or personal greed, inhumane treatment of the poor and helpless (including countless plants and animals struggling to survive), or perhaps worst of all our own apathy. We must pluck deadly apathy from the fragile web of life that exists only in a thin film across the surface of one planet earth. The depths of earth is not our home and it cannot sustain us. Only the surface do we have upon which we can live and reproduce. Only rock and remnants of catastrophic death, something we call fossil fuel, exists below the thin living surface of our planet. We have been hoodwinked into believing if we exhume the dead of the past and consume their remains (fossil fuels) we are somehow advancing the human race. NO. We are simply advancing our own journey to lie with the dead in the form of coal or oil. One thin film covering planet earth is the domain of life. Yet when we think of earth sustaining us, we think of a giant blue ball and, unconsciously or not, we think of the entirety of this big blue as life sustaining. Nothing could be more untrue. Think! Protect this very limited and finite thin film scientists, at least, understand is the only source of life on planet earth. Protection includes the dismantling of powers that deceive us into believing we can eat, drink, and breathe gas and oil. I hope Muir's point is clear in my rant. "All things in the universe are connected" and I might add, "finite."

As always... recipients of this, my rant, need least to endure my words. But please glean what you can and pass on to shock addicts who may enjoy the "shock" of it all. Our shock addicted world needs to be shocked back into reality... quite opposite the kind of shock our so-called "reality TV" offers.

You know, Bush sold a shell-shocked US citizenry a bill of goods that included the notion that "Shock & Awe" would, overnight, transform Iraq into some form of paradise. Of course it didn't and, of course, a shell-shocked US citizenry has had four years to rationalize away its guilt for supporting such a naive and heartless invasion of Iraq. It is time we transform US foreign policy from "shock & awe" to "talk & aha!" It is time our domestic and foreign policies value the shock and awe that comes with understanding each other and the wonders of our natural world. No bomb will ever be designed by engineers, manufactured by factory workers, and dropped by a bombardier that can shock and awe an Iraqi student, sitting studiously in a classroom, more effectively than a single bit of shock and awe information presented by his or her teacher. Anyone that has witnessed that spark in any student's eye when a new and fascinating truth about the world in which he or she lives creates that priceless moment when suddenly the student's world makes much more sense, knows what I am talking about! This is the kind of shock and awe our world needs... a form of shock and awe we can be proud of rather than ashamed.

Please don't forget my plea offered so many paragraphs ago. Comment to save Wyoming from Dick Cheney's rape and pillage of his own home sate, Wyoming.

Duane

To Fight for the Land
Wyoming Tribune - Cheyenne,WY,USA
Sage runs ahead, stopping to point at a grouse in the underbrush before it flies into a tree. Reed's a relatively quiet man, striking up a conversation here ...

---

Apathy

Apathy, the worst crime today.

I'm Back

I am back to stay.

Past Seven Minutes 'til the End of the World

Humankind has become an endangered species. Perhaps due to natural forces in a barbarous cosmos and unstable volcanic planet, both of which are beyond our control. Perhaps and even more plausible cause of human extinction is by the threat of strategic weapons of mass destruction.

Thanks to technological advances, human aggression, which was once a potential multiplier of survivability, may now lead to the extinction of the human species. Our aggressive behavior, as Stephen Hawking puts it, is “not calculated to aid the survival of the species.” The harnessing of the power of the Sun is probably humankind’s greatest technological achievement. It is that power of the Sun that is responsible for life on the planet. And it is that power of the Sun in the hands of humans that may be responsible for the end of life on the planet.

The outbreak of a terminal nuclear war is actually highly plausible. It is a constant threat that could potentially destroy the world at any moment. “In the past Russian automated response systems have come within a few minutes of launching a nuclear strike, barely aborted by human intervention. By now the systems have deteriorated. US systems… are (also) extremely dangerous hazardous. They allow three minutes for human judgment after computers warn of a missile attack, as they frequently do. Then Pentagon has also found serious flaws in its computer security systems…” (Noam Chomsky Hegemony or Survival page 243)

There are amongst the population voices that seek to address the issue of nuclear weapons. Though these voices are largely unheeded, they continue call for urgent action to combat the escalation of behaviors that may lead to the destruction of the planet Earth. One such organization of prescient individuals who can foresee the potential catastrophe that lurks in the future is the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists.

A public release from the board of directors of the Bulletin plainly states that they “urge the United States and Russia to commit to reduce their nuclear arsenals to no more than 1,000 warheads each by the end of the decade.” They advocate this as a measure that could likely avert the total planetary destruction that is currently a very possible and perhaps probable scenario, however nightmarish it may be. The organization also encourages the recognition of détente by stating that they “also urge the United States and Russia to finally recognize the end of the Cold War by abandoning the practice of maintaining thousands of nuclear weapons on high alert, ready to be fired within minutes.”

The release goes on to say that “reductions must include tactical nuclear weapons as well,” which are short-range, often land-based, nuclear weapons used for deterrence (http://www.thebulletin.org/doomsday_clock/current_time.htm).

This comprehensive strategic to avert disaster is highly practicable by the US government. However, where the motivation to undertake such measures would derive from in the current batch of government leaders and high-level planners is, sadly, hard to discern.

To all those optimists who believe that the future will be a better place for subsequent generations, I urge a rational look at the threats humans as a species face. I also urge immediate action to raise awareness and political will to combat these dangers, because it is highly plausible that future will never come to pass.

The New Left Manifesto

The campaign focus for both parties has been the war against Iraq. Saddam Hussein, a brutal and violent dictator by the accounts of virtually all articulate opinion, succeeded in "hoist(ing) half the country's population into the middle class..." This is something neither of our political parties is able to accomplish domestically. Saddam accomplished this feat before economic sanctions, largely imposed by the U.S., destroyed his country and caused the child mortality rate to double. What does this mean? This means that U.S. leaders are likely responsible for the deaths of more Iraqi children than Saddam ever was.

Saddam, the tyrant, did make concerted efforts to make sure that his population was fed in the face of these devastating sanctions, and the Iraqi system of food distribution was described by a UN World Food Program official as "the best distribution system that he had every seen in his life, as a World Food Program official." This is analogous to Cuba's excellent system of healthcare, and it demonstrates that nations that are devastated by U.S. imposed economic terrorism are catalyzed into making remarkable achievements in domestic policy in response to unchecked U.S. aggression.

The Shia numerical majority did greet the U.S. as liberators, in spite of the fact that many of them were surely aware of the horrors that they have faced as a result of U.S. foreign policy. This was because with the toppling of Saddam, the Sunni minority would no longer remain in control. These are people loyal to their religious agenda over their own social welfare. However, as the bitter taste of U.S. occupation remains in their collective mouths, they no longer support our presence, as polls of the Iraqi people have indicated. I have written about this before, so I will not go into detail.

Some may say that, in spite of my criticisms of U.S. foreign policy, I have offered no solutions. This is false. The solutions I am offering are clear: if the U.S. wants their to be less terrorism in the world, it can make a significant decrease in the amount of world terrorism by no longer terrorizing the world.

I would like, however, to identify a deeper problem, the fact that there is so much concern about Iraq and foreign policy by the major political parties and mass media, but so little concern about domestic policy. This is sure to serve the interests of the establishment. But there are obvious and considerable domestic problems. For example, we Americans live in the only first-world nation on the planet without a system of socialized healthcare (other than the quasi-socialized emergency room system). One in nine of America's children do not have any healthcare coverage at all, while we perennially flirt with having the highest infant mortality in the first world. So, not only are our leaders responsible for the deaths of large numbers of Iraqi children, but they are responsible for the deaths of large numbers of our own children.

There is a fundamental issue at the heart of all of our domestic problems, the concentration of wealth into the hands of a few private sector elites. The era of corporate governance is upon us, and while the government assists large multinational corporations in the concentration of wealth to the detriment of the vast numerical majority of the population, the legitimacy of that government derives largely from the consent of the disaffected majority. This tenuous hold on power by the elites is only possible because of the public relations campaign by the corporate mass media, which hold at the very least ideological connections to those with political power, to "engineer consent" of the masses that elitist President Alexander Hamilton called "the great beast."

The neo-Reaganites are simply the newest iteration of American political leaders who aid in the concentration of wealth. Just like the original Reagan Presidency, the neo-Reagan Bush II administration has used its economic policies of military Keynesianism to create growth that overwhelmingly benefits the wealthiest portions of the private sector and undermines social welfare programs and institutions of public control like labor unions.

Furthermore, the Bush II administration's use of domestic power to discipline the American population into subservience, with programs such as the Orwellian-titled USA Patriot Act, are reminiscent of historical parallels such as Wilson's "Red Scare" and the actions of Cointelpro during the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon administrations.

It simply has to be the agenda of any legitimate left wing organizations to combat this by supporting socialist programs and the redistribution of wealth. The system of corporate mercantilism fraudulently identified as capitalism has failed. It is time for the true leftists to stand up and support labor and socialism. The legitimacy of the government derives from the consent of the governed, a Lockean ideal upon which the foundations of our Constitution are purported to by lain. Progressives need to be about domestic progress - an increase in the health, welfare, and standard of living of the majority of the population, not about finding solutions to the right wing's illegal war of aggression in Iraq.

Half-cocked programs for social welfare are not the answers; our government should literally rob from the rich to give to the poor and middle class. The concentration of economic resources in America is too extreme, and rivals that of nations like China, which are controlled by overtly totalitarian regimes. Since the American government only uses institutional violence to discipline ethnic minorities, it must use a system of deception and coercion to control most of the domestic population, which it does with the aid of the corporate media's public relations apparatus and the intelligence community's disinformation campaign.

We are the last line of defense, and we can combat disinformation with truth. The truth is on our side in this fight. American laborers need to control the means, method, and results of production. All Americans deserve socialized health care. All Americans deserve adequate food, clothing, and shelter. The government needs to stop using Executive power to discipline the people, and spend trillions of our money fighting wars for hegemony abroad. These are the policies for which we should be campaigning.

To give an example of how insidious disinformation is in the U.S., America is commonly described as having a problem of voter apathy. Sociologist Walter Dean Burnham in studies like "The Eclipse of the Democratic Party, has demonstrated that the segment of so-called "apathetic voters" in the U.S. population is proportional to the amount of votes Socialist and Labor parties would receive in other industrialized countries with free elections. This is an indicator that the Democratic Party in the U.S. is no longer a politically legitimate "party of the people." Voters in America are not apathetic; instead they are “antipathetic.”

This means that a large enough segment of the American people will be on our side if we try to help them, and ourselves, live in a better world. With a history of near-catastrophes like the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is but one example of policies of the American government that almost sparked a terminal nuclear war, our leaders in Washington has brought the human species to the brink of extinction too many times to remain in power legitimately. Our economic system is purported to be designed around self-interest. So, we should act in our self-interest, our right for self-preservation, and campaign for a change in the power structure of American political institutions. If humanity is to have a future, the American population, the freest people in the world, must stand up to the institutions of power in our nation - and we must be successful in our endeavors.

Nathan Jaco
24 December 2006

How to Get a Job in the Bush Administration

Here are some of the key players in the Iran-Contra scandal who are employed by the Bush administration:

Richard "Dick" Cheney - now the vice president, he played a prominent part as a member of the joint congressional Iran-Contra inquiry of 1986, taking the position that Congress deserved major blame for asserting itself unjustifiably onto presidential turf. He later pointed to the committees' Minority Report as an important statement on the proper roles of the Executive and Legislative branches of government.

Robert M. Gates - President Bush's nominee to succeed Donald Rumsfeld, Gates nearly saw his career go up in flames over charges that he knew more about Iran-Contra while it was underway than he admitted once the scandal broke. He was forced to give up his bid to head the CIA in early 1987 because of suspicions about his role but managed to attain the position when he was re-nominated in 1991. (See previous Electronic Briefing Book)

Elliott Abrams - currently deputy assistant to President Bush and deputy national security advisor for global democracy strategy, Abrams was one of the Reagan administration's most controversial figures as the senior State Department official for Latin America in the mid-1980s. He entered into a plea bargain in federal court after being indicted for providing false testimony about his fund-raising activities on behalf of the Contras, although he later accused the independent counsel's office of forcing him to accept guilt on two counts. President George H. W. Bush later pardoned him.

David Addington - now Vice President Cheney's chief of staff, and by numerous press accounts a stanch advocate of expanded presidential power, Addington was a congressional staffer during the joint select committee hearings in 1986 who worked closely with Cheney.

John Bolton - the controversial U.N. ambassador whose recess appointment by President Bush is now in jeopardy was a senior Justice Department official who participated in meetings with Attorney General Edwin Meese on how to handle the burgeoning Iran-Contra political and legal scandal in late November 1986. There is little indication of his precise role at the time.

Edwin Meese - currently a member of the blue-ribbon Iraq Study Group headed by James Baker and Lee Hamilton, he was Ronald Reagan's controversial attorney general who spearheaded an internal administration probe into the Iran-Contra connection in November 1986 that was widely criticized as a political exercise in protecting the president rather than a genuine inquiry by the nation's top law enforcement officer.

John Negroponte - the career diplomat who worked quietly to boost the U.S. military and intelligence presence in Central America as ambassador to Honduras, he also participated in efforts to get the Honduran government to support the Contras after Congress banned direct U.S. aid to the rebels. Negroponte's profile has risen spectacularly with his appointments as ambassador to Iraq in 2004 and director of national intelligence in 2005.

John Poindexter - who found a niche deep in the U.S. government's post-9/11 security bureaucracy as head of the Pentagon's Total Information Awareness program (formally disbanded by Congress in 2003), was Oliver North's superior during the Iran-Contra period and personally approved or directed many of his activities. His assertion that he never told President Reagan about the diversion of Iranian funds to the Contras ensured Reagan would not face impeachment.

Otto Reich - President George W. Bush's one-time assistant secretary of state for Latin America, Reich ran a covert public diplomacy operation designed to build support for Ronald Reagan's Contra policies. A U.S. comptroller-general investigation concluded the program amounted to "prohibited, covert propaganda activities," although no charges were ever filed against him. Reich paid a price in terms of congressional opposition to his nomination to run Latin America policy, resulting in a recess appointment in 2002 that lasted less than a year.

Nearly all have assumed key roles in the defense ,intelligence, or foreign policy apparatus of U.S. state power. Positions that would qualify them as what Jim Garrison calls "Praetorian Guard" of our time.

Many of these individuals' involvement includes covering up Reagan's knowledge of the affair - which meant lying to Congress (so they will have no problem doing it again if legitimate investigations into the Iraq fiasco ever occur).

Reagan's knowledge of the affair is undeniable.

On December 1, 1981, President Reagan signed an initial, one-paragraph "Finding" authorizing the CIA's paramilitary war against Nicaragua. A signed Finding confirms that the president has personally authorized a covert action, "finding" it to be in the national security interests of the United States. In this second Finding on covert action in Nicaragua, Reagan responds to mounting political pressure from Congress to halt U.S. efforts to overthrow the Sandinista government. This document defines CIA support for the Contras as a broad "interdiction" operation, rather than an explicit counter-revolution. The language, however, is deliberately vague enough to justify violent actions by the Contras and the CIA and to enable the CIA to work with other nations such as Honduras in the effort to undermine the Nicaraguan government.

It would seem that the "Praetorian Guard" takes care of its own. The fact that these repeat offenders keep getting away with lawlessness is evidence of that. The same names always seem to pop up when there is a major scandal relating to black ops in recent history.

The overarching issue in all of these affairs seems to be the extent of Executive power. This is a battle that has raged on in American poltics since the Founding Fathers began drafting the Constitution.

However, these individuals are not omnipotent or omniscient, as they are commonly portrayed (read: feared) to be. As for the latter, the Echelon program, the purported "corporate espionage" program that listened to people's phone calls was never truly effective. In fact, there were fears in the late 1990s that the NSA was, as LTG Michael Hayden puts it, "going deaf." And the new Patriot Act laws, though they are deplorable and an affront to democracy, pale in comparison to historical analogs of abuses of elite power such as Wilson's Red Scare or the actions of Cointelpro under the Kennedy-Johnson-Nixon administrations.

As for the former, omnipotence, U.S. forces are bogged down in Iraq while the Sandinistas (at least Ortega) are back in power in Nicaragua and overtly anti-American independent nationalists are in power in Iran. These are deja vu for many elites, as the same essentially happened during Jimmy "Weak on Defense" Carter's administration. This sort of thing is not supposed to happen to the bellicose, jingoistic reactionary statist forces of the right-wing elite. Now that the moderate right-wing party of American government, the Democrats are in power in Congress, the world is crumbling down around the right-wing elite, a group that have dictated foreign policy since the "right turn" in American foreign policy that occured beginning with NSC Memorandum 68 in 1950. I, for one, am terribly afraid of what measures to which they may resort in order to stay in power.

http://www.gwu.edu/...
Link to document "Finding":
http://www.gwu.edu/...