HORTON: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the National Surveillance State

[L. Coyote]

This article is double-barreled, loaded with two choice KIETH OLBERMANN VIDEOS. Enjoy.

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How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the National Surveillance State
Scott Horton - February 19, 2008 - http://harpers.org/archive/2008/02/hbc-90002441


For those, like Joe Kline and a large part of the mainstream media, who can’t be bothered to actually understand the debate over FISA (“it’s just too complicated!”) and who are convinced that everything a Bush Administration representative says must be true (even if you know somehow it really can’t be), here’s Teddy, the National Surveillance Teddy Bear. He’s a product of the fertile imagination of Marc Fiore, the piece is entitled “The Spies Who Love You,” and the only word for this is “brilliant.”

>>>>> VIDEOS >>>>>

Olbermann wades deep into the relationship between the telecoms and the Bush Administration. What does this tell us about Bush’s use of national security concerns? And what does it tell us about Bush’s manipulation of fear for political purposes. Has this at length simply become too crude to work? That’s what the president’s polling numbers reflect.

My one bone to pick: Olbermann uses the political “f”-word with respect to the Administration’s cooption of telecommunications. He should remember that an obsession with their citizens’ private lives is a common feature of all totalitarian states and all totalitarian wannabes, not just the fascists. On the other hand, the cooption of corporate interests to undermine civil liberties does have a strong feeling of the last shuddering days of the Weimar Republic about it.

Finally, some words of praise are appropriate for Silvestre Reyes, the congressman from El Paso who now chairs the House Intelligence Committee ........