'Respond to hackers with military force'

The Anonymous, Occupy And Ron Paul Connection

David Seaman

Business Insider, 

22 Febraury, 2012

Yesterday I appeared again on cable news network RT America, this time to discuss the Pentagon's apparent view that it can respond to hackers -- those who deface and vandalize HTML webpages -- with military force, i.e. drone bombs and covert strike teams. (View the segment below.)

Whereas some see things like NDAA -- which Obama signed into law on New Year's Eve, revoking habeas corpus and a large portion of the Bill of Rights -- and SOPA, Protect IP Act, Enemy Expatriation Act, and HR1981... and so forth... as individual events, I see them as connected.

In my opinion, they are all part of a shockingly rapid, arrogant, and patently un-American descent into actual fascism. They are all a pathetic -- although dangerous -- attempt to keep disparate forces, including the Anonymous hacker collective, Occupy protests, and the Ron Paul brand of Tea Party organizations from gaining mainstream hold.

(It's worth noting that the Tea Party, once the 24/7 darling of FOX News, now barely seems to get any coverage on their network -- all fun and games until Ron Paul's poll numbers become a threat to the GOP establishment players. And the suggestion that the Tea Party has packed up and gone home is ludicrous; they're more vocal than ever. Same with the Occupiers.)

At a certain point, one has to speculate, the American people will wake up. And they won't be happy about some of the things that have been done in our name lately:

- Outrageously expensive wars overseas, of dubious national security value, and which seem to only enrich defense contractor corporations... and send home our young men and women in body bags or with profound psychological trauma, making it hard for them to re-integrate into civilian life.

- A central government that is spying on American citizens, without warrant or cause, on a scale that most people find hard to fathom: according to the ACLU's research, the NSA alone (which has as many employees as the CIA and FBI combined) is intercepting and storing 1,700,000,000 emails, phone calls, texts and other communications every single day. As the ACLU infographic notes, that's equivalent to 138 million books worth of content every 24 hours.

- Due to unprecedented influence of corporate donations, shady "Super PACs" and private wealth, an election process that is all but rigged.

- A complacent corporate broadcast media that fails to alert citizens to issues of national importance, choosing instead to grab the low-hanging fruit, including celebrity overdoses, feuds, etc. And even worse, they are a corporate media that now picks sides (supported censorship bill SOPA, for example, and routinely mock Ron Paul), in clear violation of what journalism at the national network level is supposed to be about. (Could you imagine a Walter Cronkite or Edward R. Murrow declining to cover chilling censorship legislation merely because it might upset a network's corporate parent?)

- A $700 billion bailout of the banking industry, and an expensive bailout of Big Auto, that returned very little to the middle class, and even less to customers: the banks, rather than showing their appreciation for the public CPR they received, devise ever weirder and more devious ways to take depositors' money (consider the failed $5 monthly debit card fee several of the nation's largest banks had wanted to implement). I thought capitalism was about letting failed players and business models, well, fail... or be taken over by a stronger company with a better balance sheet.

- Insider trading by members of Congress. Re-read that sentence.

- And finally, the most damning piece: instead of actually addressing the grievances of an unhappy public, the powers that be quietly draft new laws to oppress, frighten, censor, and maintain the status quo -- when perhaps they should, instead, gracefully allow the next generation of politicians to take the reins. Or, at the very least, not destroy the civil rights protections and institutions that separate America from the lesser powers.

I truly love America and love being an American, but I'm deeply concerned with the way things are headed. And I'm convinced if enough of us spread the word and engage, rather than give up, we can change course.