Faith in Action

If the conviction of Scooter Libby (aka Bush, Cheney, and Rove’s “fall guy”) isn’t evidence enough that the United States Government has run amuck and is being led by gangsters in suits, then perhaps you’d be interested to know that this past weekend another big story broke.  On Friday, March 9, 2007 Attorney General, Alberto Gonzalez, admitted during a Senate Briefing on FBI Surveillance that the FBI has been illegally (don’t miss that word) using the Patriot Act to spy on tens of thousands of American citizens. (i.e. wiretapping, opening emails, obtaining credit reports, and business information, & monitoring anti-war groups)

There’s a reason why this story broke late Friday/early Saturday morning.  It’s called the politics of news placement.  The Fourth Branch of the Government (aka mainstream American media) knows that if you want to slip something by the American people; you don’t publish it on Monday morning.  You wait until Friday when people have their minds focused on weekend plans and are less likely to give energy to heavy news items. That’s not hard to do these days.  Americans by and large are terribly apathetic - choosing to dedicate more attention to the all-important question of who is the father of Anna Nicole Smith’s baby…and how can I forget - the American Idol “controversy”.  (We have no idea of what a controversy is.)

This reminds me of a poster from my 7th grade social studies class.  It read:

THOSE WHO DO NOT STUDY HISTORY ARE BOUND TO REPEAT IT

The “powers that be on earth” rely on the American public’s apathy about these types of issues and our collective amnesia concerning similarly related items from our history. 

Does anybody remember the FBI’s illegal Counter Intelligence Program also known as COINTELPRO?  Better yet - was anyone taught about this in high school?  college?

This program’s goal was to: “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, or otherwise neutralize” the activities of these movements and their leaders.”  People like Martin Luther King, Jr. Malcolm X, Fred Hampton, Marc Clarke, and many others were assassinated with the support and active involvement of COINTELPRO agents.

A major investigation of COINTELPRO was launched in 1976 called the Church Committee.  The final report of the Church Committee concluded:

“Too many people have been spied upon by too many Government agencies and too much information has been collected. The Government has often undertaken the secret surveillance of citizens on the basis of their political beliefs, even when those beliefs posed no threat of violence or illegal acts on behalf of a hostile foreign power. The Government, operating primarily through secret informants, but also using other intrusive techniques such as wiretaps, microphone “bugs”, surreptitious mail opening, and break-ins, has swept in vast amounts of information about the personal lives, views, and associations of American citizens. Investigations of groups deemed potentially dangerous — and even of groups suspected of associating with potentially dangerous organizations — have continued for decades, despite the fact that those groups did not engage in unlawful activity. Groups and individuals have been harassed and disrupted because of their political views and their lifestyles. Investigations have been based upon vague standards whose breadth made excessive collection inevitable. Unsavory and vicious tactics have been employed — including anonymous attempts to break up marriages, disrupt meetings, ostracize persons from their professions, and provoke target groups into rivalries that might result in deaths. Intelligence agencies have served the political and personal objectives of presidents and other high officials. While the agencies often committed excesses in response to pressure from high officials in the Executive branch and Congress, they also occasionally initiated improper activities and then concealed them from officials whom they had a duty to inform.

Governmental officials — including those whose principal duty is to enforce the law –have violated or ignored the law over long periods of time and have advocated and defended their right to break the law.

So we have COINTELPRO and now it’s son called the PATRIOT ACT.  I wonder what the grandson of COINTELPRO will be named.  Oh well never mind.  Americans won’t be paying attention then either.

Our constitutional rights will continue to erode until the American people wake up, kill the “I’ll let someone else do it” attitude, and develope the courage to challenge the criminals that are running the country.