Cassandra, Again

Rather than signposts, I think I want this one to be a brief discussion of the Cassandra stuff. You know, the things we've been telling folks for years, the stuff they wouldn't believe. Let's start with What Gonzales Really Told Us by William Rivers Pitt, over on Truthout.org

For the record, decisions to disrupt elections and voting rights, and decisions to derail investigations into Republicans, are flatly illegal. The first is fraud, the second is obstruction of justice, and both are felony crimes. The exposure of Gonzales on Thursday represents a long step towards pinning legal accountability to the door of a certain Pennsylvania Avenue house, and to the lapels of those persons within who are, at last, running out of excuses.

The new definition of executive privledge on Brilliant at Breakfast

Executive privilege now is defined as "Anything that would get us into trouble if released."

in regard to the White House wanting claiming that e-mails on the RNC server are covered.

This is what happens when the food industry runs amok Jill talks about the
FDA allowing contaminated pet food to be fed to livestock

American pets are just the canaries in the coal mine on this, folks. If we don't demand an end to the FDA protecting the food industry's profits instead of the American people, if we don't demand to know where the components of our food are coming from, soon it'll be American children hooked up to tubes and wires in hospitals, victim to organ failures for what seems to be no reason at all.

This reminds me of Jim Hightower and Molly Ivins writing about the industry protecting FDA inspections that occur under Republican administrations.

Stick in a Thumb at Anything They Say

"the most comprehensive independent study" of Iraq's oil wealth indicates that there may be as much as 100 billion bbls of oil under the western deserts of al Anbar province, effectively doubling Iraq stated reserves.

At a cost of $1 a barrel to pump out of the ground, this is an oil company's dream. The upcoming Iraqi Oil Law was drafted with the encouragement and assistance of the White House. Am I paranoid to believe that the Iraqies will profit from this much less than the oil industry and the US?

And, the most frightening thing I've read in a long time, Fascist America In 10 Easy Steps by Naomi Wolfe.

From Hitler to Pinochet and beyond, history shows there are certain steps that any would-be dictator must take to destroy constitutional freedoms. And, argues Naomi Wolf, George Bush and his administration seem to be taking them all

I was guided here by Godwacker, a blogger with a sure feel for the underbelly of it all.

Which is followed by Culture of Fear: Poetry Professor Becomes Terrorism Suspect by Kazim Ali

A poetry professor in a small college in the Northeast decides to recycle old manuscripts and becomes an object of suspicion***. . .where I explained to the university president and then to the state police that the box contained old poetry manuscripts that needed to be recycled. The police officer told me that in the current climate I needed to be more careful about how I behaved. "When I recycle?" I asked.***My body exists politically in a way I cannot prevent. For a moment today, without even knowing it, driving away from campus in my little Beetle, exhausted after a day of teaching, listening to Justin Timberlake on the radio, I ceased to be a person when a man I had never met looked straight through me and saw the violence in his own heart.

Further examples that the steps toward a police state are being taken is found at Migrants Used to Justify a Homeland Security Police State by Peter Phillips.

Other new police-state programs include US government contracting with Lockheed-Martin to design and develop enormous unmanned airships, seventeen times the size of the Goodyear blimp, outfitted with high-resolution cameras to spy on the Mexican border. The airships are designed to float 12 miles above the earth, far above planes and weather systems. The high-resolution camera will watch over a circle of countryside 600 miles in diameter and could be moved to spy on any region of the US.

The programs described above, combined with two recent changes in US law, make the reality of a full police-state in the US increasingly more feasible. The Military Commissions Act, signed in October of 2006, suspends habeas corpus rights for any person deemed by the president to be an enemy combatant. Persons so designated could be imprisoned indefinitely without rights to legal counsel or a trial. And the Defense Authorization Act of 2007 allows the president to station troops anywhere in America and take control of state-based National Guard units without the consent of the governor or local authorities. By revising the two-century-old Insurrection Act, the law, in effect, repeals the Posse Comitatus Act and gives the US government the legal authority to order the military onto the streets anywhere in America.

Threats of terrorism and illegal immigrants are being used to justify the implementation of police-state programs. But once started, enforcement can be rapidly deployed to any group of people in the US, and we all become endangered. Mass arrests, big brother in the sky and the loss of civil rights for everyone does not bode well for those who believe in democracy, free speech and the right to critically challenge our government without fear of reprisals.