Anyone who’s been watching the subject knows government secrecy, even in areas not related to national security, has been on a steady rise. The Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) has been the best tool we have to get information out of the government, to find out such silly questions as… “why?” Or, “just who was involved in doing that?” Or, “how can you justify doing such a thing?”
When it was enacted, the FOIA went a long way toward forcing our government agencies to consider their actions carefully before doing anything, because they were much more likely to be held accountable. However, as we know, government agencies under the Bush Administration have been practically free from having to fulfill FOIA requests any more. They will just delay responding to the requests indefinitely, ignore them, slap an arbitrary “national security” stamp on it that cannot be verified, or just fulfill the request by giving a mostly blacked-out document.
Many agencies, most recently the national laboratory at Los Alamos, have decided that all of their documents are unavailable unless specifically noted as being available. This, instead of documents being available, unless specifically noted as being secret.
Also, FOIA requests can be burdensome on government agencies – they require personnel to work to fulfill the requests. Personnel do not like having to be bothered with these requests. I’d do the world’s tiniest violin thang, but all I have is letters here.
Recently, the entire Congress has become united in their desire to strengthen the FOIA in light of the recent unjustifiable secrecy that is just continuing to grow, unchecked. Both houses fairly well unanimously support Senate Bill 849 that forces agencies to respond more timely, hold them more accountable, and forces them to justify far more stringently withholding any information, amongst other things. You can’t really blame them because the Congress themselves often run up to Executive Branch Agencies that are stonewalling them as they try to gather the information they need.
The bill was scheduled to be voted on yesterday, but it wasn’t. I haven’t been able to find anything about this in the news. The reason it wasn’t voted on is because an anonymous Republican Senator put a secret hold on it so that it couldn’t reach the floor. Freedom of Information Act — secret, anonymous hold. Go figure.
At least we can read the Congressional Record that relates to the incident, though, for all the good it does. Ironically, they were calling it, internally, Sunshine in Government.
The Society of Professional Journalists has created a little mechanism to help, though. People can call their senators and ask if they put a hold on it. They will be tabulating the results of people’s calls. Apparently, this tactic has worked before to flush out this type of slimy person.
Also, a lot of talking is starting up about “Terrorist Precursor Crimes”. That is, within the United States, selling of drugs, non-profit organizations, etc, that help support terrorists. Now, the Patriot Act gets real fun… 
I’m so sick of hearing this: Democrats don’t have enough votes to override the President’s veto, so they have no choice but to fund the war. They don’t need any votes. All they have to do is stop any funding legislation from passing. There, it’s taken care of. No money for war, troops come home. If you’re all concerned about the troops, does it help them to give the military industrial complex more money, or to bring them home? They can stop the war, today, themselves. But they’re not. They have not been clear and forthcoming about that, and have, in fact, been using smoke and mirrors for some reason.
But they want to fund it for some reason, while saying they don’t want to. Could it have anything to do with the new legislation that gives control of 80% of Iraq’s oil to multinational energy companies? It’s not to help the Iraqi people, like they used to say. More of them are dead now than under Saddam.
And, it seems duplicitous to me that Congress can act all paranoid about us using private security companies like Blackwater, which itself has more force and machinery than many nations of the world, when these same Congresspeople have used our own military personnel as a force that is just handing over multiple trillions of dollars of Iraqi oil to multinational corporations.
Do the Democrats think that sucking off these multinationals will make those multinationals lend their resources and support to them, instead of to the Republicans? Sure, we can see how well this works by looking at Cheney’s Halliburton company, which is taking billions more and moving out of the United States to Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.
Multinationals are not interested in the welfare of any nation, including the United States, unless their interest is drawn there by a potential problem that might impact their profits. All the Democrats are doing is making themselves, and the United States, more irrelevant, while making multinational corporations stronger.
How ironic that I used consider as paranoid the postmodernist obsession with the militarization and rule by corporations of all people. I like to think of myself as someone who has long sight, but in this, the years are proving me to be utterly foolish.
For those of you that do not know, Blackwater is a corporation that provides military services — highly trained soldiers with the latest equipment, for hire. They poured tons of money into the Republican stuff, including the Christian fundamentalists. There is an excellent book about them if you’d like to know more called “Blackwater: The Rise of the World’s Most Powerful Mercenary Army” by Jeremy Scahill. One of my favorite things is they say that they work so closely with the US Military that they, too, need to have the military’s Sovereign Immunity protections against lawsuits, while at the same time saying that they are not the US Military, so they do not need to follow US Military Law, nor have their people subject to the Military Courts. Basically, I guess they don’t want to be bothered by law at all — after all, they have peacekeeping work to be done.
Also, Reggie B. Walton is the new guy just appointed to the FIS court, which approves searches and surveillance for terrorism. I think I remember a while back the Bush Administration saying that they guess they’ll start running things through FIS again, even though there was never a reason not to. Whether they have yet or not, I have no idea, and honestly with the million other pieces of crap floating around in the toilet lately, I just can’t be bothered to check into it.
Amnesty International just rated the United States as terrible, terrible. Secret prisons in foreign countries, torturing people, etc… and these all things that we have so severely criticized in other countries, and looked upon as unbelievable and barbaric. The US Courts saying that we can’t just hold people in prison, foreign or not, unless they’re charged with something… then our Congress passing legislation saying that the US Courts can’t say that (the MCA (Military Commisions Act)). What??
Ah yes, those are terrorists or enemy combatants. Then, in Oregon just recently, federal prosecutors are trying to get American citizens labeled as terrorists for participating in protests – acts of civil disobedience where nobody was even harmed… Be quiet. Stay in your homes. And I’ll just get catalogued away in some database for writing this.
Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of somebody looking out for me. It’s nice knowing there is someone who has your back, and will protect you. But these are liars, manipulators, torturers, and people willing send us into other countries to take all that country’s natural resources, killing anyone in the way. I don’t exactly feel safe with them watching my back. In fact, I think I’d rather just walk backwards and take my chances with some cliff I might wander off.
Not to even go into the whole 9/11 stuff again, nor the diversions away from Afghanistan… but we just let an actual known terrorist go free. Luis Posada bombed lots of things in Havana, downed a large passenger jet, got arrested in South America the fled to work for Ollie North in the other Bush’s and Reagan’s Iran Contra arms “scandal”, entered the US illegally, lived in a really nice place in Miami, and until he bragged to a local paper that the Department of Homeland Security was leaving him alone, was never even approached by them. Formal extradition requests by foreign governments were filed against him so he could come stand trial for his crimes of terrorism, and the US Department of Justice (which is just so great) has ignored those requests, breaking US Law by doing so, which it is charged with upholding. Even his illegal entry charges got dropped.
Is is just me, or are things no longer functioning?
Oh, here’s something neat. You can browse the shiny 2007 fashion catalog of US Air Force weaponry — well, the declassified stuff. Sexy. You’ll for sure get off before you run out of the 300-some pages.
You might want to check out the Congress’ 2008 Defense Authorizations Appropriations report, too. You’ll see it’s about $650 billion. It even mentions how hard it will be to maintain that level of spending with all the baby boomers retiring and needing their “entitlements”. Imagine how amazing the 2009 military weapons catalogue would be if we could offload those pesky US Citizen entitlements that just keep sucking like leeches! Oo! We could privatize that!
You know, when new Guantanamo torture videos were aired on Australian TV, the nice CNN newslady says, this is a terrible scandal, no videos were ever supposed to be taken there — only official pictures of the prisoners for identification purposes. Yeah, that’s the scandal, showing the pictures – not the torture. The Pentagon says the pictures hurt national security and help nobody, just inflaming Arabs. Yeah, those damn pictures.
I mean, really, there’s something wrong here, yeah? Maybe just some nice technical reading instead. How about the U.S. Army Field Manual on “Identification of Deceased Personnel“? There’s skeletons, and you can learn how to fingerprint water-bloated bodies, and even get fingerprints from stubborn bodies that have their hands in clenched fists with rigor mortis. Sometimes you have to chop off their fingers, though. And Mike, yeah, you Mike this time, not that other Mike, all kinds of stuff about dental records. Even tells you how to gather up the body pieces.
I’m so happy we have a Christian President, put there by so many loving, Christian people. Interested only in the welfare of others. Oh, wait. Welfare. Hmm. Never mind. I mean, interested in the good, happy souls of others.
Oh, and Gonzales? Well, you know, Latinos have it rough. Give the guy a break. He’s got kids to worry about. You know how it is. Can’t blame him for bending US Justice a little, can you?
Suni, Falluja, whalluja, whateva… I’m so sick of hearing about it all. If I’ve got any money left over after helping Exxon reach yet another year of record profits, I’m just going to head over to Starbuck’s buy a creamy hot caramel chocolate whatever and browse some Ebay. Either that, or shoot myself.
Damn health insurance companies. They’d prolly bring me back for more.
