The Two Major Reasons Why NSA Needs to Spy on US:

[truedelphi]

One is that we the common everyday people are a thorn in the side of the PTB. Regardless of all the efforts of the CIA and NSA to remake this nation into a nation of full time supporters of Big Energy, Wars, Financial Gain only for Big Financial Firms, and to re-shape the Two Party System into One Big Money Party, we little people still create groups like Occupy, and we still protest everything from Wall Street policies to Fracking, to the XL Pipeline to Monsanto.

Just as Gollum grumbled about how Frodo kept tight hold of "The Precious," our major members of the military and the Political Class grumble over how we middle class and lower middle class folks refuse to give up on our right to free assembly and our right to free speech. What better way to intimidate all of us than to keep records of everything we say or email or type into our computer. Since that information can be reconstituted into the conversations that we have had, even years down the road, the fact remains that those of us who do protest what the One Percent is trying to do are not sleeping quite so well. Of course, there aren't any historical records that exist to instruct us about about what misfortune or calamities might occur when a government spies on us, so we will just have to wait and see what happens ( <---- Sarcasm alert for last sentence.)

The second reason is the money. The vast monetary resources of the MIC are being diverted from crude and barbaric items like weapons to Surveillance. Over the next five years, my bet is that the budget for All Things Surveillance will easily exceed the amounts of money spent on the Iraq War (three to six trillions of dollars is what experts say that war cost us.) Of course, this information is usually kept "classified" so good luck on finding out what it really takes monetarily to do all this.

For instance,it would not be possible for me to doubt for one moment that Senator Di Feinstein is making it possible for her husband Richard Blum to handle another set of contracts similar to those he handled after George Dubya's Shock and Awe campaign of 2003. Richard Blum made some 27 millions of dollars then - I bet the Golden State couple are hoping to make five or six times that amount on surveillance. Lucky for them that she holds the top position inside the US Senate Committee of Intelligence Oversight.

[GeorgeGist]

1. In the game of chess ...

pawns never win.

[truedelphi]

2. Actually in the game of chess, pawns become queens, who then

Kick ass and rule.

I would love to play you in chess. I assume I'd win. The pawns you have get sacrificed for no reason, and my pawns become royalty and win the game for me.

[think]

4. Turning the tables....

[zeemike]

10. If they make it to the other end of the board.

But half of the pawns can be hired to kill the other half, leaving the royalty and it's court to rule.

[99th_Monkey]

5. But this isn't a game of chess

Chess would mean there is a level playing field -- with one set of
rules that APPLY TO ALL, EVERYone -- which we both know is an
absurdity to believe.

But your point is taken as well. Yes .. it's actually impossible for a
pawn to win, unless of course the pawn gets magically transformed
into a queen, by reaching all the way to the other side of the board. <-- can be complete game changer.

[BobbyBoring]

7. Does that apply to

Multi Dimensional Chess?

[cascadiance]

3. And threat of blackmail also intimidates our government officials and makes them useless...

... which is why we have our government moving towards fascism now, which is what the PTB are using this spying as a tool as a way to solidify their power too.

[truedelphi]

32. Excellent point.

Of course those people who tell us that all of this is just "a typical and normal way for a modern government to operte" would tell you of the many safeguards built into the system, and yada yada yada.

[gateley]

6. Charles and Bill K?

[Cleita]

8. I wish DiFi would realize it's time for her to retire.

It's the only way we will get rid of her.

[RufusTFirefly]

9. Once her husband has sold off most of the country's priceless post offices...

... perhaps she'll finally call it quits.



Glen Ellyn, Illinois



Knoxville, Iowa



Rockdale, Texas

[truedelphi]

24. i didn't know about that aspect of her life.

And i don't doubt it. But for my skeptical friends, do you have links?

[RufusTFirefly]

28. Soitenly

In charge of selling the facilities for the Postal Service is CB Richard Ellis Group, one of the world's largest real estate companies, chaired by San Francisco financier Dick Blum. CBRE, which has worked with the post office since 1997, was awarded the exclusive contract to market Postal Service facilities in 2011. Blum is married to Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-Calif., a relationship some critics of the post office have duly noted.

Source: sfgate.com ("Grim outlook for post office buildings&quot

Also:

Selling off the Post Office: Berkeley calls out Richard Blum

And this, from the Save the Post Office site:

The Postal Service’s contract with CBRE has become the subject of considerable controversy. Postal lessors — the people who own the 24,000 properties housing post offices — have complained about various aspects of the new arrangement, including the commission they must pay CBRE when leases are renewed. CBRE is also the Postal Service’s real estate agent for the sale of postal facilities, so it’s been targeted by critics for its role in the sale of historic post office buildings. The fact that the Chairman of CBRE’s Board of Directors is Richard Blum, husband of California Senator Dianne Feinstein, has fueled the controversy.

[Civilization2]

11. With the limited resources left to us, it is sad that we let the 1% waste so much,. of our world.

We really do need to be thinking further down the road, and reacting to the coming realities.

As the fossil fuels wind down, civilisation should be working to build systems that will provide for our future without this nearly free energy we have had for the last 100 years. War and surveillance are the willful destruction of wealth and resources, pure waste.

Degrowth, Permaculture, Slow Money, Relocalize, etc.

These are the things we should be working towards, building up of biological capital in the soil and biosphere, designing and constructing passive energy accumulators, and systems that will provide for our children,. instead we just keep building weapons and destroying useful infrastructure,. pathetic.

[marions ghost]

14. This is the Big Picture

I often wonder about what we could be doing as a nation, as a society, if we weren't engaged in these stupid backward-looking projects controlled by the 1%.

War and surveillance = pure waste. You said it!

[Civilization2]

18. Glad at least one person gets it!

So much could be done to ease the crashing empire, to soften the coming waves,. alas people want to waste time and resources in denial, just playing silly partisan games,. life is too important to pretend it is a dumb game.

[NoMoreWarNow]

35. a lot of people get this

just it's hard to get organized to exert any meaningful action.

[winter is coming]

12. IMO, a lot of the anti-Snowden propaganda is to keep people from asking the dreaded question:

How much of this security shit do we really need?

[Jackpine Radical]

21. I think the real question is "What do we need it FOR?"

To update Pogo, the NSA has met the enemy, and they is us.

[Dustlawyer]

13. What I think we need to be doing is to massively protest foe COMPLETE CAMPAIGN FINANCE REFORM (CCFR)

We need publicly funded elections and term limits. This takes away their current method of campaign bribes to run the government. Term limits make them have to keep bribing new politicians which would be risky and illegal.
Realistically, it will take a lot of people to get the attention, and they will face a prepared foe this time. OWS caught them off guard, this NSA thing is so they won't be surprised.

[cantbeserious]

15. Thank You Truedelphi - Said Very Well - I Think You Are Right

eom

[Octafish]

16. Little Sister

Sen. Feinstein

http://littlesis.org/person/13284/Dianne_Feinstein


Mr. Blum

http://littlesis.org/person/6203/Richard_C_Blum


The resource says Mr. Blum is on the Fed board in SF. Gosh...

[xtraxritical]

17. Feinstein's days are numbered in Congress.

I'll never again vote for her either.

[Savannahmann]

27. Sure you will.

We be democrats. If given the choice between a Rethug, and a crappy Democrat, we'll pick the Democrat in the hopes that the majority will keep our own slobbering warmongers in check.

[cascadiance]

29. Now I wish she'd run in the Gray Davis recall election...

She very possibly could have beaten Arnold, and probably at least have done better than Arnold as governor, and we'd have had a better Democrat in the Senate by now instead of her. And she'd have been term limited out o the governor's spot by now and likely have still had Jerry Brown as governor again too.

[truedelphi]

39. I believe she has far more fun, and gets far more satisfaction

Monetarily from handling so many aspects of the California gubernatorial process. She decides who runs for that office.



It was also very important to her personally for Bustamante, her hand picked Governor candidate, to lose, as only by his losing was she assured of completing her work on getting the PG & E/Enron ripoffs to remain in the coffers of the rich. Like the coffers of her own husband, Richard Blum. (That ripoff was worth 60 billion dollars to PG & E.)

I suspect that the couple would have been losers in terms of capital gains if Bustamante actually had won against Schwarzenegger.

There is only one individual who doesn't have to kowtow to Di Fi in order to run for an office. And that would be Jerry Brown, who has enough political capital of his own to do without her.

[cascadiance]

40. Yes, she wanted Schwarzenegger to win... Susan Kennedy was on her and his staffs...

Kennedy was her communications director and later became Arnold's chief of staff... Shows you the corporate whoredom that was going on between these so-called "moderates".

Just too bad someone had pushed her harder in to running against Davis so that she would have felt forced politically to do so. Then if she'd won, as noted we all probably would have collectively been better off over the years...

[DeSwiss]

19. K&R

[Coyotl]

20. This sounds like a paranoid John Birch rant, blaming government for everything.

The corporations don't need the government to manipulate the people. You need to discover what the NSA and CIA actually do, and it is NOT remaking the nation.

The right isn't the only spectrum susceptible to pananoid politics, as you clearly illustrate.

[truedelphi]

25. Quote from Bill Casey, an actual CIA director, in the first speech he ever gave to new CIA recurits:

"Over the next twenty years, it is our mission to see to it that not one single thing that the average American believes is true."

If you don't think that the CIA and even the FBI have involvements that stretch far beyond how we average American view them, I have this piece of property near Rockaway Beach that is for sale.

No one running a major advertising firm in the Sixties, Seventies or Eighties did so without major involvement with those two agencies.

[railsback]

26. It is a rant

and the paranoia makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. I'm told that I'm just supposed to believe.

[truedelphi]

33. Yes like I stated in the OP, there are simply no historical records in existence

to inform us citizens of the outcome of what happens to a nation when the government turns to spying on the people, in a massive way, such that the infra structure is falling apart, the schools rare receiving half the money they had three years ago etc.

I mean, if only we had some historical inkling of what occurs under massive government expenditures for the Military Surveillance budgets, and the outcome for people in terms of their lifestyles.

If only we lived in a world where The Third Reich, from 1933 to 1945, and East Germany, from 1948 to 1989, could instruct us by their historical example.

[railsback]

41. Equating the mentality of those 'governments' to the U.S. is absurd.

[snappyturtle]

22. Agree.....hook, line and sinker. nt

[Bake]

30. Sorry, you can only reference The Precious in gun threads

Bake

[truedelphi]

34. Oh yeah - Well,

My Smith and Wesson states otherwise!

[Bake]

37. And mine agrees!

Bake

[truedelphi]

38. I am glad you agree, and relieved. If it came down to a duel, I

Don't know how to use the damn thing - maybe we should just have a Monday Afternoon
of whatever beverage you prefer.

[Hydra]

31. K&R

And the usual people not getting it(on purpose?).

I wonder what it will be like for them to wake up one day and realize how screwn we are by this system, and how much it cost us.

It may wind up costing us EVERYTHING.

[truedelphi]

36. Yep. We do face the loss of

Last edited Mon Jul 8, 2013, 04:46 PM - Edit history (1)

Everything.

Of course, for the One Percent, an those who are clsoe enough to being among that One Percent, as long as some premium department store will accept their platinum Visa card, remain indifferent to how we have lost the free press, the right to assembly, the right to free speech, the right to a trail wherein we are physically treated okay until the trial date, etc.

Occasionally there is small vindication, as when I open the PM system here and find a message from some long time poster here, and they apologize with "I really used to think you were crazy, but then i lost my job, and the bank screwed me and my spouse over, and we had no way to sue them, but meanwhile the neighbor up the street had all their worldly goods confiscated because of "evil marijuana," so yeah, like I'm sorry because you got it before we did, and tried to tell us, and I laughed my nuts off at you, but well, sorry for that."

Of course I would rather have it turn out better than this, then be vindicated.

Of course I was taken down by the system before the total economic collapse of 2008. (Due to medical bankruptcy.) So I was given a "pre-warning."

Something is really wrong in a nation where a mis-diagnosis can almost cost you your life, and the hospital blanks out all the records pertinent to visits that were made, and even if they didn't do that, no lawyer will attempt to sue a big hospital chain. (Except for those "special" lawyers and law firms who have arrangements with judges, so kickbacks all around.)

[WillyT]

42. K & R !!!

[truedelphi]

43. Thanks, WIlly T. n/t