Dear Editor,
“To learn who rules you simply find out who you aren’t allowed to criticize”. Voltaire
You might say you’re offended. Being offended is something that happens in your head which others haven’t control over. You choose to be offended. You can do things to injure, but not to offend others. You can’t make another accept your ideas anymore than they should be prevented from offering them. That’s the core of censorship. There’s no reason that ideas must be politically correct. Perhaps we should be schooled on how to be monotonous so none are “offended”.
In America you can’t talk about “burning issues”; race, religion, “conspiracy theories” or politics because/if someone takes offense. Those offended are the problem. Who has the right to stop you from communicating? As long as we allow the “offended” to limit ideas, we can’t be a free country again.
America is frequently offended. Should you investigate beyond the antics of the propaganda parakeets you will see America has become what we once opposed; America’s concentration camp in Guantánamo, killing civilians, drones, and the persecution of whistleblowers, all against our laws. Our constitution allows us to display our disagreement but look at the arrests at demonstrations like Occupy Wall Street, or Moral Mondays.
Venezuela is ending efforts to improve ties with Washington after BroncoBama’s nominee for envoy to the UN said civil society in the “repressive” nation was being attacked. During a conformation hearing, the nominee promised to oppose “repressive regimes” by “contesting the crackdown on civil society being carried out in countries like Cuba, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela”. The whole world is constantly speaking about similar repressive practices carried out in and by, America.
Snowden did American citizens a great service. He told us that our constitutional protections are gone; Washington has a universal spy system intercepting every communication of every American and the rest of the world. Your taxes paid for facilities to store this information as bridges collapse. Without unrestricted information there’s nothing but government lies. To protect its lies from exposure, Washington is exterminating truth tellers. Official story; “because of Snowden, and not previous whistleblowers, “Terrorists” aren’t using Yahoo IM to plan their strikes against The Great Satan”. You would have to be an imbecile with amnesia to believe this crap.
BroncoBama recently told Russia that it mustn’t persecute “individuals and groups seeking to expose corruption”. Simultaneously Bradley Manning faces life in prison for alerting the world to the war crimes and other wrongdoing he discovered as the unprecedented BroncoBama war on whistleblowers rolls on. That lecture to Russia came during American threats to cancel a meeting because Russia refused to hand over whistleblower Snowden to America to face espionage charges for exposing crimes/corruption. America once welcomed “defectors” for similar reasons.
Edward Snowden, and Bradley Manning, charged with “camouflage offences”, to distract us, and cover up embarrassing and illegal activities by “our government”. In the case of Robert Lady we have an American convicted in an Italian court of kidnapping. Unlike the situation with Russia, we have an extradition treaty with Italy, and we generally accept their legal system. Italy demanded the extradition of Lady, who was in Panama’s custody, so “our government” pressured Panama to release him before he could face the legal version of the kidnapping he was involved in. So Lady has been convicted of an actual, obvious crime by a legitimate court in a country we have an extradition treaty with, but we refuse to allow it. In the same week we demand that Russia hand over Snowden who hasn’t been convicted, hasn’t obviously damaged anything but reputations and we don’t have an extradition treaty with Russia. Everyone else in the world sees this and understands the meaning. Only Americans who watch American television miss it.
Whistleblowers are protected by law, but BroncoBama insists that whistleblowers are actually spies, traitors, and foreign agents. Congress and propaganda parakeets repeat the propaganda that whistleblowers threaten America. It’s not the government raping the Constitution but whistleblowers who inform us of the rape who are the threat, we’re told.
Without whistleblowers, America’s government destroys liberty, and impoverishes “consumers” with endless wars for Washington’s and Wall Street’s power. Who believes that by silencing, monitoring or taxing citizens, government provides safety?
Kafka’s “The Trial”, illustrate the results of government that’s only accountable to itself; bureaucratic lunacy and secret accusers are increasingly America’s reality. Americans can be accused of secret crimes without knowing what they might have done, attacked in the night by SWAT, put on a no-fly list unable to travel for reasons undisclosed. They have their communications tapped based upon a secret order from a secret court that already knows your passwords without knowing if/and/or why they’re targeted.
The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution both declare all Americans are free, and to preserve those freedoms, they’ve consented to a government. That was the government they gave us; not power permitting liberty, but liberty permitting power. The Constitution was created by free citizens to define and limit the government to defending but not threaten freedom. Here’s where the modern-day tyrants and government apologists have succeeded in creating confusion. They’ve elevated safety, a goal of government, to the level of freedom, which created the government. This argument makes the creature, safety, equal its creator, freedom.
Craig Dudley