Jeremy Scahill on GritTV

Beginning almost immediately after September 11th, Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld essential segregated JSOC (about JSOC) from the rest of the military. And the idea there was that they were going to create a sort of stand-alone military force that would reply directly to the administration rather than the military chain of command. So essentially JSOC has an open classified mandate where they can take people — snatch then, they can carry out targeted assassination, and they also run their own bombing campaign inside of Pakistan, I’m told, that runs parallel to the CIA’s. And one of the reasons why this is significant is that all of the actions of the CIA have to be briefed to the so-called “Gang of Eight” — in the intelligence committee, Dianne Feinstein and others — and these operations, I’m told, are not being briefed to the Congress.

In other words, while the United States States trumpets the rule of law, it is by and large a country that routinely circumvents any pesky law that stands in the way of profit, subjugation, or imperialism. (The scary thing is that, where Blackwater are concerned, the US military may actually agree with my sentiments.)

Jeremy Scahill has his own blog, and is an active twitterer.

(via YouTube)

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[The TSA Supervisor on duty] grabbed the baggie as it came out of the X-ray and asked if it was mine. After responding yes, he pointed at my comment and demanded to know “What is this supposed to mean?” “It could [mean] a lot of things, it happens to be an opinion on mine.” “You can’t write things like this,” he said. “You mean my First Amendment right to freedom of speech doesn’t apply here?” “Out there (pointing pass the id checkers) not while in here (pointing down),” was his response.
(via flyertalk.com)

Facing public scrutiny, TSA spokeswoman Yolanda Clark later backpedaled, saying that Bird was free to express his opinion, that writing on bags is not prohibited. “The passenger was never detained by TSA,” she explained. “Local law enforcement briefly interviewed him and determined he had not broken any laws, and he was allowed to fly.”

BoingBoing’s own Cory Doctorow describes his experience with arbitrary seizure of property:

I flew from SFO to LAX yesterday morning, and was robbed at gunpoint by a TSA agent, who stole my cologne, face-wash, and moisturizer. She said that my moisture baggie could only contain vessels of 3 oz or less’ worth of moisture. I pointed out that all these vessels did have less than 3 oz’ worth of moist substances in them, as they were all half-empty, and she said yes, but the vessels were capable of holding more than 3 oz.
(via BoingBoing)

I feel safer already. Don’t you?

(via BoingBoing)

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But it doesn’t require much of an imagination to realize that anyone seeking to bear arms in these times has a charred little hate cinder somewhere beneath their flag tattoo.

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