The government keeping an eye on us

In the process of describing his lawsuit regarding the NDAA, Chris Hedges writes:

There are now 1,271 government agencies and 1,931 private companies that work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States, The Washington Post reported in a 2010 series by Dana Priest and William M. Arken. There are 854,000 people with top-secret security clearances, the reporters wrote, and in Washington, D.C., and the surrounding area 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2011. Investigative reporter James Bamford wrote in the latest issue of Wired magazine that the National Security Agency is building the largest spy center in the country in Bluffdale, Utah, as part of a secret NSA surveillance program code-named “Stellar Wind.” Bamford noted that the NSA has established listening posts throughout the country to collect, store and examine billions of email messages and phone calls.

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Eleven years prior to Rosa Parks refusing to move, Jackie Robinson refused to move

Today I learned from Wikipedia that Jackie Robinson refused to go to the back of a bus 11 years prior to Rosa Parks' refusal, suffering racist mistreatment by the military as a result:

An event on July 6, 1944 derailed Robinson's military career. While awaiting results of hospital tests on the ankle he had injured in junior college, Robinson boarded an Army bus with a fellow officer's wife; although the Army had commissioned its own unsegregated bus line, the bus driver ordered Robinson to move to the back of the bus. Robinson refused. The driver backed down, but after reaching the end of the line, summoned the military police, who took Robinson into custody. When Robinson later confronted the investigating duty officer about racist questioning by the officer and his assistant, the officer recommended Robinson be court-martialed. After Robinson's commander in the 761st, Paul L. Bates, refused to authorize the legal action, Robinson was summarily transferred to the 758th Battalion—where the commander quickly consented to charge Robinson with multiple offenses, including, among other charges, public drunkenness—even though Robinson did not drink.

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Words about War

A DI reader named Mike Baker provided me with his collection of quotes on quite a few topics, including a section he titled "War and Peace." It is largely from Mike's collection that I selected the following quotes: War is not the continuation of politics with different means, it is the greatest mass-crime perpetrated on the community of man. ~Alfred Adler It is always easier to fight for one’s principles than to live up to them. ~Alfred Adler "In war, truth is the first casualty." ~ Aeschylus A great war leaves a country with three armies: an army of cripples, an army of mourners, and an army of thieves. ~Anonymous (German) The terrorist is the one with the small bomb. ~Brendan Behan "War is a quarrel between two thieves too cowardly to fight their own battle." - Thomas Carlyle If you want to make peace, you don't talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies. --Moshe Dayan (1915 - 1981) History teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives. ~Abba Eban It'll be a great day when education gets all the money it wants and the Air Force has to hold a bake sale to buy bombers. ~Author unknown, quoted in You Said a Mouthful edited by Ronald D. Fuchs Peace cannot be kept by force. It can only be achieved by understanding. ~Albert Einstein The world is a dangerous place, not because of those who do evil, but because of those who look on and do nothing. ~Albert Einstein Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children. This is not a way of life at all in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron. --Dwight D. Eisenhower, From a speech before the American Society of Newspaper Editors, April 16, 1953 [More . . . ]

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Joe Rogan discusses American warmongering

Joe Rogan verbalizes many of my concerns about American warmongering. It's not that I agree with everything he says (For instance, I completely disagree with Joe that Building 7 (from 9/11) was a "controlled demolition."). Nor would I express my frustrations exactly the way he does, because I don't believe that it is helpful to the greater cause to call other people "stupid" (I prefer to say that they are ill-informed people who could someday be our allies once they are informed). Despite its faults, this video is powerfully cathartic and it is filled with many undeniable historical facts, especially the fact that American warmongering is unrelenting and that it is fully-engaged with American corporate profit-taking.

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Living without religion campaign

Center for Inquiry has a new ad campaign:

You don't need God -- to hope, to care, to love, to live.

Why is such a campaign necessary? CFI answers:
One popular myth is that the nonreligious are immoral, or at least that they can’t be relied upon to be as good as those with religious beliefs. If you know any nonreligious people (and almost everyone does—see below), you already know this is not true. Human decency does not depend on religious belief. There are good believers and good nonbelievers; there are wicked believers and wicked nonbelievers. You can’t predict a person’s moral character just from knowing his or her metaphysical beliefs.
I agree with this concern, based on the fact that hundreds of people who have no idea what kind of life I am leading are willing to condemn me for my lack of a belief in "god." I've written about this proud ignorant judgment repeatedly.

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