Knowledge is power, and absolute knowledge is absolute power
Big Brother in the form of an increasingly powerful government and in an increasingly powerful private sector will pile the records high with reasons why privacy should give way to national security, to law and order […] and the like.
― William O. Douglas, Points of Rebellion , 1970
Each person knows something they don’t want other people to know about. That they will give almost anything to conceal.
Be they a saint, be they a libertine or someone who lives a very public life, still there will be something.
It might not be a secret sin. It might be a memory of a lost love. Or knowledge of a crime for which the wrong person went to jail. Or a family issue of incest or abuse. Or any of a long litany of small horribles.
This is the danger represented by the US Other Government Agencies (and there are a lot, not just the familiar three letter ones). By compiling transactional and source data a profile can be built for a person by which their secrets can be revealed. Even the fear that this *might* happen will be a a strong motivator for most.
The data being gathered by these agencies and their civilian counterparts like Choicepoint, Palantir, Berico, ManTech, Stratfor, Booz Allen, Equifax, and Lockheed Martin when made available through a single conspectus view, means that essentially there are no secrets. At least no assurance of secrecy.
A democracy, or any political system but a tyranny, cannot survive the existence of an elite which arrogates to itself the power to know everything about everyone all the time, and the means to keep that knowledge secret from everyone else.
Copyright © 2013 Henry Edward Hardy
Ted Cruz and the Birthers
You know all the birthers who are attacking Ted Cruz and demanding documentation of his citizenship?
Exactly.
They don’t mind that his father was Cuban. They don’t mind that he really was born outside the US. They don’t ask any questions about his citizenship status.
So that brings us to ask, what was the issue again with President Obama? Was it really his nationality, or all along was it the color of his skin?
Copyright © 2013 Henry Edward Hardy
Blunder-headed US Republicans can’t find a way out of the mess they created
I continue to watch with astonishment at the juvenile, dunderheaded tricks the Republicans are playing.
First they force a shutdown of the federal government and the unimaginable scenario of unwarranted and unnecessary bankruptcy of the United States and subsequent collapse of the world economy to try to force the Democratic majority in the Senate to retroactively defund the Affordable Healthcare Act. Then they decide that defunding healthcare isn’t achievable. And declare they will continue the shutdown and forcing a default anyway!
That is demented, irrational, and verging on treasonous.
The 14th Amendment says that “The validity of the public debt of the United States, authorized by law, including debts incurred for payment of pensions and bounties for services in suppressing insurrection or rebellion, shall not be questioned”
That is a Constitutional Amendment. It trumps what is in the main text of the Constitution and it certainly overcomes that of statutory requirements of the debt ceiling. The Constitution doesn’t require or impose a debt ceiling, the first one was passed as part of the 2nd Liberty Bond Act of 1917. The debt ceiling has no Constitutional basis, it is statutory law only.
Obama should announce that in accordance with the Constitution there will be no default and to the unruly house, impeach me and be damned!
Copyright © 2013 Henry Edward Hardy
WTF happened to the land of the free and the home of the brave?
The greatest ideological weapon the US used to have is that we could point to the material and ethical benefits of our free, liberal society.
*We* had freedom of speech. *We* had a free press. *We* had full employment. *We* had the right to public education, including affordable or free college education. *We* did not spy on our citizens. *We* did not engage in torture. *We* obeyed and enforced the laws of war. *We* founded the United Nations. *We* had a democratic, pluralistic society in which everyone had a voice. *We* had separation of church and state. *We* had the right to organize and form unions, to bargain collectively, and to strike. *We* had the right to peaceably organize and protest against our government. *We* had free enterprise, where monopolies and cartels were neither tolerated nor legal. *We* had banks which were regulated in the public interest to prevent another economic crash. *We* had an open form of government where the people were in charge and the government did neither fear the people nor did the people fear the government. We had so much leisure time people didn’t always know what to do.
Our people were the wealthiest, freeest, healthiest and happiest in the world.
I am not talking about some never-neverland utopia. I remember this time in America. So does anyone my age if they think back.
What the fuck happened to us?
Copyright © 2013 Henry Edward Hardy
The United States is in a tizzy about chemical weapons in Syria.
The United States is in a tizzy about chemical weapons in Syria.
Is this the United States which didn’t adhere to the 1925 Geneva gas protocol for 50 years?
Is this the United States which lobbied successfully for tear gas and other chemical agents to be exempted from the 1993 Chemical Weapons Convention if used against their own citizens?
Is this the United States which made such extensive use of “nonlethal” chemical munitions in violently suppressing the peaceful Occupy protests of two years ago?
Is this the United States which continues to use mines and cluster bombs in contravention of customary law?
Is this the United States which is preparing to go to war (without a declaration of war) in violation of international law, which prohibits aggressive warfare, which means attacking first. And all in the name of enforcing international law with regard to chemical warfare?
Copyright © 2013 Henry Edward Hardy
About Scanlyze
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Scanlyze is an online magazine of essays, commentary, satire, and analysis. Were we half as clever, for inspiration we would take Mark Twain, Ambrose Bierce, Swift, Montaigne, or Seneca.
“The men who create power make an indispensable contribution to the Nation’s greatness, but the men who question power make a contribution just as indispensable, especially when that questioning is disinterested, for they determine whether we use power or power uses us.”
John F. Kennedy, October 26, 1963
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