Bush claims he needs NSA wire tapping to break up terrorist networks but terrorists are not using the phone network Bush is tapping. They are using private voice over IP internet phones (VoIP) that can't be tapped. This video explains how it works.

This guy makes great points, unfortunately it goes on a little long and has zero production values. But the points are stellar and boil down to these:

1. Bush's illegal NSA wiretapping can't penetrate properly encrypted calls made to private VoIP networks, because a) the calls are encrypted and even though they could probably be decoded, it would take a while and a huge backlog would develop, and b) the calls don't go through regular telephone networks, like certain cell phones and land lines do.

2. Bush's illegal NSA wiretapping program isn't designed to catch terrorists. As this gentleman says and as I and many others have said, the NSA program is about creeping fascism. It's a way to get the weak-minded and fearful among us (i.e., a lot of people) to allow invasion of privacy as a matter of course. It's the American Big Brother in operation, right now!

Remember, terrorism is a problem Republicans do not want to solve!

In this case, the excuse of "terrorism" allows the Bushies to claim a need to spy on you and me and anyone else they feel like, not terrorists. As this guy points out, terrorists are not going to go sign up for a cell phone account with Cingular and an Internet connection with Comcast and then try to call and email each other. Terrorists are going to go with the most impenetrable, encrypted option they can get their hands on, which is something exactly like what this guy is describing--a private phone network set up with off-the-shelf components. And as he points out, if they can figure out how to detonate an IED with a cell phone, they can figure out how to set up a private network to make calls that can't be bugged.

Please--don't think that Big Brother is something that "can't happen here!" It is happening here, right this moment! Is this the kind of country we were brought up to believe we live in? One where the government can spy on you and the President or his deputy can have you carted off in the middle of the night (or whenever) at thrown in jail for the rest of your life?

This is the situation we now face! It is dire and the bad guys are hoping we don't take it seriously. They hope we watch one or all of Entertainment Weekly's "5 New Shows To Watch Now" and just forget we ever heard about the Military Commissions Act or NSA wiretapping...

Other links I didn't work in:

"Court Told It Lacks Power in Detainee Cases"

"Military Commissions Act Does Affect US Citizens"

NSA WIRETAPPING MARCHES ON

I wondered out loud on this blog a week or so ago about whatever happened to Anna Diggs Taylor's decision that the NSA wiretapping program is unconstitutional. Well, I guess if I read the Washington Post every day I would have known. The headline to its article says it all: "Court Allows Wiretapping During Appeal." And just in time for the election, don'tcha know!!

There was something I forgot to mention about the Hagee broadcast we watched this past Sunday--when they did "God Bless America," lots of people in the congregation were doing the whole Pentecostal-one-arm-lifted-in-praise gesture, as though "God Bless America" was some deep religious song. It was kind of frightening to see that--no wonder so many people buy the argument that church and state should not be separate.

My wife and I were talking about that last night and I noticed for the first time how much the "one arm in affirmation" resembles a "Sieg Heil!" Here and here are pictures of the one arm gesture.

HOUSECLEANING AND WHAT NOT

I was on Mike Malloy's site just now, seeing what his status is and noticed that he had "Support Judge Anna Diggs Taylor" on the top right-hand side of his page. That got me to thinking, as I have off and on over the past several weeks--has the illegal Bush wiretapping been stopped, as per Taylor's decision? I doubt it, but I haven't really seen any stories about it.

But what's to stop the NSA from just saying "Yeah, we stopped the program," and then just going right ahead with it. I mean, what's to stop them from just, you know, lying about stopping the program.

I took a cursory look over the information about the case posted at the ACLU site, but I don't see anything that leaps out and says that the program was stopped. Anybody know anything about that?

February 2001

And then there was the news that Bush may have started the NSA wiretapping program way before 9/11. From what I had read, the program may have begun as early as February 2001. I haven't heard anything about that in a while. This link is what I wrote about that news back in July.

So after writing the above, I looked around for a little more info on the case, which is: McMurray v. Verizon Communications Inc., 06cv3650. Didn't really find anything about the progress of the case, but I did find this stupid comment from one of my stupid senators, Trent Lott (referring to the supposed harmlessness of the NSA program):

"What are people worried about? What is the problem?" asked Lott, a former majority leader. "Are you doing something you're not supposed to?"

Apparently, Pat Robertson said the NSA program was a "tool of oppression." Well, I guess even a stopped clock is right twice a day...oh, and I can't find anything new about the case.

Two Letters To The Editor I'm Not Sending

Because they probably won't print them anyway. They didn't print my last one that I sent them (with a week between each sending), so I figure these won't make the cut either, even though they've published my letters as recently as July of this year.

Oh well, whatever...the first one is finished and was tossed off as fast as I could do it. The second one was more carefully considered and left unfinished because I wanted to be able to say that Democrats would get us out of Iraq if they take the majority in the mid-terms. But then I looked up the official position, which is some mumbo jumbo about "success" in Iraq. So then I just got disgusted with the whole thing...

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Well, hooray for our great "Christian president!"

Thanks to his illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq, he's not only succeeded in creating more terror (as per the recently declassifed National Intelligence Estimate), he's made us all complicit in the deaths of over half a million Iraqis. Are we even yet for 9/11 (which Iraq wasn't involved in)?

The British medical journal "The Lancet" recently updated its study on Iraqi deaths since the invasion and what they found does not paint a picture that Bush's favorite philosopher would be proud of--655,000 more deaths than there would have been under normal circumstances (i.e, Saddam's reign of terror) since the beginning of our illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq.

There are fewer and fewer people who continue to support this president or his horrible, unprovoked, and outrageous invasion of a sovereign country. But if you still do support Bush, please realize that you bear responsibility for the evil, unnecessary deaths of hundreds of thousands of people.

Don't like to hear that? Too bad--until the passage of last month's Military Commissions Act (which eradicates the writ of habeas corpus and legalizes torture), this country was a constitutional republic, which means that we choose our leaders to create the policies we want them to. It then follows that if you voted for Bush, you voted for the Iraq war and its accompanying wanton slaughter of our fellow human beings.

But we have a way out--it won't absolve us of our sins, it won't make everything all hunky-dory, but it'll be a start. And that way out is to vote the Republicans out of power this November 7. If you're truly concerned about children and freedom and democracy and "choosing life," you will help turn the Republicans out of office.

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If the recent news that 655,000 Iraqis have died due to conditions created by our illegal, immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq doesn't convince you to vote for someone besides a Republican on November 7th, then nothing will.

Granted, not all of these deaths are from our bombs and guns, although many of them are. However, they are all directly attributable to Bush's decision to invade and occupy Iraq, a country which didn't attack us and didn't even threaten us to begin with. In other words, if we hadn't gone into Iraq, those 655,000 Iraqis would likely still be alive, as would our thousands of troops who have died.

Bush's Iraq policy has been aided and abetted by the Republican congressional majority at every turn. To be sure, far too many Democrats have also agreed to go along with Bush's Iraq disaster. But it is the Republicans who have been in control of both houses of Congress for the entire duration of this debacle and therefore, the blame for it rests squarely on their shoulders.