The NSA, etc.

The federal judge holds NSA telephone surveillance unconstitutional. This is a historic time. A federal judge in Washington, D.C. on Monday did it. The judge declared the NSA's collection of telephone "metadata" from virtually every call made to, from or within the United States violates the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Amendment is the constitutional provision that protects the “right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." Judge Richard J. Leon granted the plaintiffs' request for a preliminary injunction. It ordered the government to stop collecting data on their telephone calls and to destroy their call records. Yet, he stayed his ruling pending an appeal by the White House. The White House argued in court in defense of the program. This effectively allows the government to continue spying on the calls on the plaintiffs while the case winds its way through the federal appeals courts and every likely makes it way to the U.S. Supreme Court. This process could take years. The case is Klayman v. Obama. It was brought up ironically by 2 conservative activists. One is Larry Klayman. He founded the libertarian Freedom Watch Organization. The other is named Charles Strange, whose son was a Navy Seal killed while on a mission in Afghanistan. Their suit is based on the information shown by the controversial whistle-blower Edward Snowden as those underlying American Civil Liberties Union vs. Clapper (which was argued in a New York federal court last month). Leon was appointed by President George W. Bush to the U.S. District Court. This court has been viewed as the most influential trial court in America. The reason is that it hears many disputes regarding the legality of official U.S. government actions. Leon was nominated the day before the September 11, 2001 attacks. These attacks allowed the ruling to carry forward the dismantling of democratic rights in the name of the evil war on terrorism. Judge Leon issued a 68 page ruling. The ruling criticized the White House's anti-democratic argument in dealing with the NSA. The judge believes that the NSA telephone metadata program violates a cornerstone of the Bill of Rights. Both major parties have members that agree with police state spying programs (like some in the corporate controlled media). The White House wants cosmetic changes to the NSA. Judge Leon called the NSA program unconstitutional. Yet, Judge Leon deferred to the military/intelligence establishment by staying his ruling, saying he did so in recognition of the “significant national security interests at stake in this case and the novelty of the constitutional issues.” The Supreme Court dismissed an earlier lawsuit last February on the disingenuous basis that no particular person could establish legal “standing” because the NSA kept its targets secret. We know that the NSA is collecting telephone metadata on everyone. The seed action of the NSA can find different telephone numbers easily. The judge pointed out that even with this virtually unlimited remit, the NSA defied the secret court authorizing the program. He wrote: “Judge Reggie Walton of the FISC concluded that the NSA had engaged in ‘systematic noncompliance’ with FISC-ordered minimization procedures… and had also repeatedly made misrepresentations and inaccurate statements about the program to the FISC judges.” “The threshold issue,” Leon wrote, “is whether plaintiffs have a reasonable expectation of privacy that is violated when the Government indiscriminately collects their telephone metadata along with the metadata of hundreds of millions of other citizens without any particularized suspicion of wrongdoing, retains all of that metadata for five years, and then queries, analyzes, and investigates that data without prior judicial approval of the investigative targets.” Leon’s response to his own rhetorical question is worth quoting at length: “I cannot imagine a more ‘indiscriminate’ and ‘arbitrary invasion’ than this systematic and high-tech collection and retention of personal data on virtually every single citizen for purposes of querying and analyzing it without prior judicial approval. Surely, such a program infringes on ‘that degree of privacy’ that the Founders enshrined in the Fourth Amendment. Indeed, I have little doubt that the author of our Constitution, James Madison, who cautioned us to beware ‘the abridgement of freedom of the people by gradual and silent encroachments by those in power,’ would be aghast.” The Judge found that the NSA violated the Fourth Amendment rights of virtually every person in America. The injunction is limited to the telephone records of the two plaintiffs.





Many folks want to lie about the Reagan administration. Yet, we know the truth. Here are the many true facts about the administration of Ronald Reagan. The Reagan administration was known for its corruption. Other corrupt administrations include the administrations of Nixon, Harding, etc. By the end of his term, 138 Reagan administration officials had been convicted, had been indicted, or had been the subject of official investigations for official misconduct or criminal violations. Reagan's Secretary of Interior James Watt was indicted on 41 felony counts for using connections at the Department of Housing and Urban Development to help his private clients to seek federal funds for housing projects in Maryland, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Puerto Rico, and the Virgin Islands.  Watt conceded that he had received $500,000 from clients who were granted very favorable housing contracts after he had intervened on their behalf.  In testifying before a House committee Watt said: "That's what they offered and it sounded like a lot of money to me, and we settled on it." Watt was eventually sentenced to five years in prison and 500 hours of community service. There was the massive fraud and mismanagement in the Department of Housing and Urban Development all over the Reagan years. The scandal was bad and Reagan's allies profited at the expense of the poor (the very people HUD and the federal government were pledge to assist via low income housing). Despite their many public lies about the matter, it was eventually proven that the Sales of weapons to Iran, followed by illegal financial support of the Central American Contras were carried out with the knowledge of, among others, President Ronald Reagan, Vice President George Bush, Secretary of State George P. Shultz, Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, Director of Central Intelligence William J. Casey, and national security advisers Robert C. McFarlane and John M. Poindexter.  Of these officials, only Weinberger and Shultz dissented from the policy decision.  Weinberger eventually acquiesced and ordered the Department of Defense to provide the necessary arms. Reagan, in a speech he gave to a crowd in Atlanta, GA said, "Jefferson Davis is a hero of mine." Reagan, in 1960 said: "Hollywood has no blacklist." –   ( FBI records have since shown that this was a lie, and that Reagan personally informed on several actors, later shown to be innocent, destroying their careers in the process). Reagan, in 1980 said: "Because Vietnam was not a declared war, the veterans are not even eligible for the G. I. Bill of Rights with respect to education or anything." I can go on and on. It is what it is. So, Ronald Reagan as a Governor rose spending and taxes (which I have no issue with at all if done legitimately), yet he is portrayed as some strict conservative. He cut taxes by 60 percent for the super-rich. He increased the national debt faster than the growth of national income. He almost tripled the national debt. He doubled the deficit. He first turned America into a debtor nation. Even the CIA told Ronald Reagan as he took office that the Soviet Union was collapsing from within, so the Cold War was going to be over anyway (it only depending on the duration of the ending of it). Even Richard Nixon told Reagan he could balance the budget with big defense cuts. Reagan ignored his advice. Ronald Reagan also caused almost 11,350 of the Air Traffic Controllers' union (or 70 percent of them) to be fired and barred from ever working in their profession again. So, there were more evil folks than Ronald Reagan. Reagan is the fruit of reactionary propaganda that existed in human history.


The Keystone pipeline can potentially increase more pollution in the North American continent. There is the TransCanada's Houston lateral pipeline. There can be toxic chemical exposure in local communities. There is the issue of the northern half of the TransCanada's Keystone XL tar sands pipeline. TransCanada is preparing for the southern half of the line open for commercial operations on January 22. One issue is that the TransCanada's Houston Lateral Pipeline serves a literal folks in the road of the southern half of Keystone XL's  route to Gulf Coast refineries. It has been rebranded as the "Gulf Coast Pipeline" by TransCanada or the 485 mile southern half of Keystone XL. It brings a blend of Alberta's tar sands crude along with oil obtained via hydraulic fracturing or fracking from North Dakota's Bakken Shale basin to refineries in Port Arthur, Texas. This area has been called a sacrifice zone according to investigative journalist Ted Genoways. Ted described the impacts it had on local communities as the tar sands crude is refined mainly for export markets. Not all of the tar sands and fracked oil roads lead to Port Arthur. This is where the Houston Lateral comes into play. A pipeline oriented westward from Liberty County, TX rather than eastward to Port Arthur, Houston Lateral ushers crude oil to Houston's refinery now. “The 48-mile (77-kilometre) Houston Lateral Project is an additional project under development to transport oil to refineries in the Houston, TX marketplace,” TransCanada’s website explains. “Upon completion, the Gulf Coast Project and the Houston Lateral Project will become an integrated component of the Keystone Pipeline System.” When the Houston Lateral was completed, it can cause a boom for Houston's LyondellBasell refinery. “The company is spending $50 million to nearly triple its capacity to run heavy Canadian crude at the Houston refinery, to 175,000 bpd from 60,000 bpd,” explained a March article in Reuters. LyondellBasell admits TransCanada’s Houston Lateral project is a lifeline ensuring its Houston refinery remains a profitable asset. The other company Valero has a refinery capacity that is currently overflowing with fracked Eagle shale oil is also considering expanding its capacity to refine more tar sands crude. We know the risks dealing with life and death with expanding these refineries. “In a December 2010 report, the Sierra Club linked tar sands refinery emissions to prenatal brain damage, asthma and emphysema,” a March Huffington Post article explained. “A recent Houston-area study found a 56 percent increased risk of acute lymphocytic leukemia among children living within two miles of the Houston Ship Channel, compared with children living more than 10 miles from the channel.” Like Port Arthur, Houston is the headquarters for some of the biggest oil and gas companies in the world. Many local communities are sacrificed in a sick way as a means for petrochemical companies to reap financial wealth (while health impacts harm human beings). We know about how the Keystone XL pipeline deals with the dangers of transporting and extracting tar sands. Living near a tar sands refinery will bear the burden of the refining process. Keystone XL's southern half currently being injected with oil and with TransCanada counting opening for commercial operations in the weeks ahead, neighborhood are in risk of more health complications. So, we should be wise about these things.






As we know, South Africa is not the land of true social justice and real revolutionary changes yet among all of its citizens. We must continue to speak up and fight for truth. The leadership of the ANC made too many concessions to the then white supremacist apartheid regime. We know that the white racist regime of apartheid created environmental and public health damage in South Africa. The Gore-Mbeki Commission dealt with foreign related policies between America and South Africa. The great Sister Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo has written on this issue a great deal. The South African Freedom Charter is a strong document that South Africans loved and support. The bad news is that the Freedom Charter was heavily compromised in the negotiations after the apartheid regime was rightfully gone. Neo-colonial in South Africa unfortunately is still a reality. The same corporations that financially benefited from apartheid still today benefit from the evils of neoliberalism still harming South Africans today. The Sister Dr. Marsha Coleman-Adebayo (who said that EPA managers felt a solidarity with white Afrikaner officials and suspicious of the new ANC leadership) made known that there are reports of illness and deaths (relating to vanadium mining as cited by black South African union workers. The U.S. heavily ignored the reports). Many workers have suffered their tongue going green, bronchitis, asthma, death, cancers, etc. No serious organization came over these important issues. The environmental corruption has been facilitated by Western owned multinational corporations. Also, the Anglo-American Corporation, the South African Mining Group, South Africa's Synthetic Fuels,  chemicals giant Sasol, the South African Gold Coin Exchange and Standard Bank supported the apartheid regime then. Today, South Africa has huge unemployment and economic inequality. We have multinational corporate control of most of the economy and the mining sector. The private sector has too much power. The Freedom Charter calls for the redistribution of the land. The new constitution protects all private property and eliminates true land reform. South Africa signed to GATT, which made it illegal to subsidize the auto plants and textile factories. Free AIDS drugs are hard to get to townships, because of intellectual property rights rules form the WTO. The Freedom Charter is a glorious document on what South Africa should be. Thabo Mbeki of South Africa hopefully can be inspired to fight against neoliberal since he has compromised to global capital for a while. The good news is that tons of Brothers and Sisters now in South Africa are fighting for freedom and true economic justice. There is nothing wrong with a redistribution of wealth and nationalization of the banking and mining sectors as means to fight poverty among black South African at all. Like always, Nelson Mandela was a courageous man who risked his life in fighting for freedom and justice. The evils of privatization and corporate exploitation of South Africa have been disgraceful. We have to learn from the errors and build a better future in the world. We must never forget how brutes killed 34 innocent striking black striking workers in the Marikana massacre. We have to support them and we are in solidarity with the movement for true justice in South Africa.

Symbolism and popular mainstream culture goes hand in hand. The single eye motif in the industry continues to go strong. The single eye is related to the ancient eye of Horus. There is a poster promoting the season 4B of the TV series, "Pretty Little Liars." The poster was criticized by actress Ashley Benson. She said that: "...Our faces in this were from 4 years ago...and we look ridiculous. Way too much Photoshop. We all have flaws. No one looks like this. It's not attractive." The 4 women have one eye hidden making this image a salute to the establishment industry. During the TV show called "Lady Gaga and the Muppets Holiday Specular" have Lady Gaga doing the one eye sign around many puppets. About 3.6 million viewers saw it on Thanksgiving. Many children have watched the show too. There is the Balmain fashion house showing Rihanna hiding one eye in the photo. There is the image of Kesha wearing an One eyed outfit with an one eyed bandana and an one eyed tattoo on her hand. There is another poster promoting the TV series called "Intelligence." It shows a man hiding one eye with a microchip. The show stars Josh Holloway. He plays Gabriel Vaughn or a high tech intelligence operative enhanced with a super computer microchip in his brain. With this implant, Gabriel is the first human ever to be connected directly into the global information grid. The show talks about the issues of micrcochipping, transhumanism, and brainwashing, which are all issues folks, are dealing with in real life. There is another picture of Pink dressed as Marilyn Monroe. She has one eye hidden. She shows the peace sign. There are many eyes shown in the music industry. The reality is that symbols and other items are exploited by the establishment as a means to distract humans from the truth that materialism, militarism, and economic exploitation must be exposed. The elite in Hollywood are just as wrong as the military industrial complex in advancing those 3 evils of materialism, militarism, and economic exploitation. 


By Timothy