Monday, September 16, 2013

NSA's Dr. Strangelove


Interesting article about the head of our NSA, Gen. Keith Alexander, today in the Manchester Guardian, by Glenn Greenwald. If this stuff is true, it provides yet more evidence of a totally out of control federal agency. The NSA seems cut out of a sci-fi film . . . Dr. Strangelove comes to mind. And Gen. Alexander seems to fit the mindset of that delusional doctor of faraway sci-fi film-making. Every time I hear something about the NSA these days, the report seems to concern something else illegal, or borderline illegal that agency has carried out. The NSA makes the CIA look competent, which is a really scary idea.
I realize that the paranoid-about-government crowd—the teabaggers for example, are always making noises about the EPA, or the FDA, or Obamacare representing an out-of-control federal government. But I do wish they would turn their attention to the NSA, and maybe even the CIA. Now these are agencies that need to be (metaphorically please) blown up, so we can begin anew to figure out how really we need to protect ourselves from the “terrorists.” Frankly, I’m way more scared of the NSA than I am of Al Qaida. Between our banking system that has corrupted our global financial structure such that we are headed fast forward to a two-class society, and the NSA that has assumed Big Brother status, our entire democracy stands threatened—and I mean our entire democracy. I think we are headed rapidly towards a second world semi-feudal society in which we are regrowing the Lords of the Manor, so the rest of us can assume the position of serfs, and our republican party cheers on the shift from the sidelines.
So, read on dear folks. The Greenwald article makes for good scary bedtime reading.
And on that exoplanet Oz, Julian Assange didn’t quite make it into the big time of Oz politics. Seems he was running for office, while remaining safely locked away in his cubicle in the Ecuadoran Embassy in London.  Fancy that. The Aussies rejected him as a serious candidate for political office.

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