Approaching The Tribulation (VII)

Again, we go where the news takes us, and today, once again it's all about creeping tyranny as we approach the Tribulation:

U.S. Administration WANTS You To Know Big Government Is Watching You

Personally, I have suspected this all along. And we can also take note that no one has been punished or fired (really) for these offenses:

To be clear NOTHING is ever done to stop the ongoing rape and pillage of individual rights in Obama’s Amerika.

“We are Watching You” is the new mantra of the day.  It is what the government wants you to think.
Where is President Barack Obama when the privacy of private citizens is being raped and plundered?  Playing the rich playboy in Ireland, with his wife searching for their “Irish roots” on their way to a $100-million South African trip that bests the Queen of England for most money spent on any single trip.

Deliberate Marxist misery wants you to know that Big Government is watching you.

Does it look to anyone else like Edward Snowden is the agent sent out to deliver Obama’s message?

The desired outcome? See below:

Living In Fear

Back in the ’80s when, on a couple of occasions, I visited the Soviet Union, I always wondered what was it really like to live in that godforsaken place. But it didn’t much matter. For all the creepy spying that was going on, I realized I’d be out of there in a week or two.

Now I know what it was like. It’s come home.

I live in fear.

I don’t want to admit it, but it’s true. Every phone call I make, every email I send, every text I message, every article I write including this one, I imagine being bugged or recorded.

1984 is here and it’s not pretty.

It infects everything we do.

For example, I want to criticize the IRS with every breath I take, but in the back of my head I worry — what if they come after me? What if I’m audited and have to spend the next few years and untold dollars on accountants and attorneys? Is this fair to my family? Is this how I want to spend my life?

Just today I was going to follow up on some information about the wretched prevarications surrounding Benghazi and hesitated. Should I email the source? Telephone? Send a letter? Snail mail would take too long.

What about buying one of those throwaway phones at Radio Shack? But then I would be compromising the recipients of my calls. I would be implicating them.

A few weeks ago CBS reporter Sharyl Attkisson phoned me to ask about my Benghazi contacts. I assumed the call was being recorded. Now I read that her computer is bugged. It turns on and off by itself in the middle of the night.

Mine doesn’t. At least I don’t think it does. I tend to be asleep at three a.m.

Still, I live in fear. And I don’t think I’m the only one. I think a lot of people do now, in various degrees. They want to think they don’t, but they do.

It’s not a terrified fear. I don’t cower under my desk. It’s a nagging fear, a trepidation. Something that never goes away.

Someone is watching me, monitoring whatever I do. If I make a mistake, I will pay for it. My future will be bleak.

Basically, I am being silenced. And so are you. Purposefully or not, they are trying to shut us down and shut us up.

They say they’re not, but they are.

They don’t believe they are, but they are.

They have protective mechanisms in place, but who knows if they function?

We have to rely on the beneficence of our overseers, but how can we believe in that?

How can we believe in anything? Everything is too big. We are just cogs in the wheel. Winston Smith had it better than us. The technology was not as efficient in his day (1984).

So I live in fear.

And here’s the big problem: it’s hard to see how it’s going to get better.

Without Waiting For Proof, Edward Snowden Foes Begin Spreading Smears

It’s the question on everyone’s lips: "Why is Edward Snowden in China?”

The implication is that spookiness is the only plausible explanation for why the NSA whistleblower would have absconded to Hong Kong. “Why flee the country?” is the accusation du jour. “I'm deeply suspicious obviously because he went to China,” said the man-most-likely-to-accuse-you-of-being-a-spy, Dick Cheney.

CBS’s Bob Schieffer accused Snowed of cowardice, taunting: “I don’t remember Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks running off to China.” 

Let me suggest an alternative explanation: Bradley Manning.

The trial of the man who handed over classified information to Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is a cautionary tale for all wannabe whistleblowers. While being held for nearly three years before his trial finally began, Manning—who had committed no acts of violence—was kept in solitary confinement for 23 hours a day, checked every five minutes, and stripped naked at night. More than 250 U.S. legal scholars signed a letter of protest, arguing that his "degrading and inhumane conditions" were illegal and unconstitutional. Human rights groups protested

Here’s another possible answer to the accusation-cum-query: Thomas Drake.

Drake is another NSA whistleblower, who did exactly what the insiders are claiming Snowden should have done. He followed the rules. He went through the “proper channels.” He paid dearly for it. Wrote Drake in The Guardian, “I understand why Snowden has taken his course of action, because he’s been following this for years: he’s seen what’s happened to other whistleblowers like me.” Drake shared everything he knew with Congress only to see it go nowhere. He says that after he shared nonclassified info with a reporter, the FBI raided his house, he was threatened with jail for the rest of his life and he was under government surveillance. Writes Drake: “Snowden can expect the worst; he knows that. He went preemptively overseas because that at leastdelays the prying hand of the U.S. government.”

Sadly, the first impulse of the government and their defenders seems to have remained consistent over time: don’t address the critical information that has been leaked. Instead, dig up dirt and destroy the whistleblower’s credibility and if possible, life.

Another interesting twist on this story:

NSA Scandal: The Deepest Secret Of The Ed Snowden Operation

Edward Snowden: Truth Is Coming And It Cannot Be Stopped

Edward Snowden kicked off the session by describing the targeted campaign by the US government to paint him as a traitor, “just as they did with other whistleblowers.” The smear campaign, he argues, has destroyed the possibility of a fair trial at home. In this regard, his decision to leave the United States was not based on any desire to evade justice, especially since he believes he can “do more good outside of prison.”

Regarding the former tactic, Snowden argues the fourth estate can verify the veracity of government claims by analyzing how and if the government’s massively expanded powers have resulted in the actual prevention of terror plots.

“Journalists should ask a specific question: since these programs began operation shortly after September 11th, how many terrorist attacks were prevented SOLELY by information derived from this suspicionless surveillance that could not be gained via any other source? Then ask how many individual communications were ingested to achieve that, and ask yourself if it was worth it. Bathtub falls and police officers kill more Americans than terrorism, yet we’ve been asked to sacrifice our most sacred rights for fear of falling victim to it.”

Snowden said the “draconian” campaigns against Manning, NSA whistleblowers Thomas Drake and William Binney, , and CIA whistleblower John Kiriakou would result in even more anti-corruption and government transparency advocates aspiring to greater acts of boldness.

“Binney, Drake, Kiriakou, and Manning are all examples of how overly-harsh responses to public-interest whistle-blowing only escalate the scale, scope, and skill involved in future disclosures. Citizens with a conscience are not going to ignore wrong-doing simply because they’ll be destroyed for it: the conscience forbids it. Instead, these draconian responses simply build better whistleblowers. If the Obama administration responds with an even harsher hand against me, they can be assured that they’ll soon find themselves facing an equally harsh public response.”

Incidentally, Binney told RT last December how the FBI was engaged in widespread surveillance against the bulk of American citizenry, including members of congress.

Left And Right: Uniting Against Tyranny

In recent months, as this administration has been rocked by self-inflicted scandal after self-inflicted scandal, a vibrant, three-dimensional picture of Mr. Obama has begun to emerge. So obvious and outrageous are his abuses of power that many of his sycophantic holdouts are finally taking a second, less-jaundiced look at their Dear Leader.

For example, after it was learned that the Obama IRS was intentionally targeting conservative, Christian and Jewish organizations and individuals for harassment and political intimidation, Jon Stewart, liberal comedian and host of "The Daily Show," did a scathing spot in which he told the president, "You've vindicated conspiracy theorists."

More recently, in response to the IRS and NSA scandals, "Tonight Show" host Jay Leno joked of "Snoop Obama": "We wanted a president that listens to all Americans," he said. "Now we have one."

Both the liberal New York Times and hard-left filmmaker Michael Moore have similarly opined that the Obama administration has "lost all credibility," while left-leaning Politico observed that, "Nothing brings the left and the right together quite like government snooping."

Each of these scandals (Fast and Furious, Benghazi, IRS-gate, spying on the media, NSA spying on the American people, et al.) are, ostensibly, grievous enough, when taken alone, to rise to the level of "high crimes and misdemeanors."

Oh what a difference a couple centuries make. While Benjamin Franklin famously warned, "They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety," President Obama - with his hand caught in your information cookie jar - now assures us that Franklin had it all wrong: "[O]ne of the things that we're going to have to discuss and debate is how are we striking this balance between the need to keep the American people safe and our concerns about privacy," he said, "because there are some tradeoffs involved."

Yikes.

Totalitarianism At The Heart Of Scandals

Top Spying Experts Explain Why You Should Oppose Spying

Top NSA whistleblower William Binney – the former head of the National Security Agency’s global digital data gathering program – has repeatedly explained that just because you “haven’t done anything wrong” doesn’t mean you can’t be severely harmed by spying:

The problem is, if they think they’re not doing anything that’s wrong, they don’t get to define that. The central government does.

Binney explains that the government is storing everything, and creating a searchable database … to be used whenever it wants, for any purpose it wants (even just going after someone it doesn’t like).

And he notes that the government will go after anyone who is on its enemies list:

If you ever get on their enemies list, like Petraeus did, then you can be drawn into that surveillance.

Binney recently held his thumb and forefinger close together, and said:

We are, like, that far from a turnkey totalitarian state

Similarly, in response to the question, “why should people care about surveillance?”, the whistleblower source of the Guardian’s disclosures on phone and Internet spying – Edward Snowden – said:

Because even if you’re not doing anything wrong you’re being watched and recorded. And the storage capability of these systems increases every year consistently by orders of magnitude … to where it’s getting to the point where you don’t have to have done anything wrong. You simply have to eventually fall under suspicion from somebody – even by a wrong call. And then they can use this system to go back in time and scrutinize every decision you’ve ever made, every friend you’ve ever discussed something with. And attack you on that basis to sort to derive suspicion from an innocent life and paint anyone in the context of a wrongdoer.

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