Dear massive government intelligence agency,

How are you? I am fine. I hear on the news that you seem to be busy. The report says that we have noticed a lot of chatter amongst the terrorists. There is as much, said the report, as was before 11 September 2001. That must be a lot.

My question is, if we noticed that much traffic in 2001, why weren’t we ready to do something on 11 September 2001?

I know that people who want to record all Internet and voice traffic want to have a good reason to do so, because otherwise it looks like a set of tools to preserve the power of the status quo in the face of the oppressed classes. Being able to say, “See? We have a big terror threat!” certainly looks like a good reason. I have to question if it’s an engineered solution, though, given that we are recently asking many questions regarding both its necessity and efficacy.

You know very well where I stand on this issue. I try to speak clearly whenever I’m near the lamp by my bedside. I know I’m not so good with voice activation software, but I am making an effort in this case. But if you’re going to record everything I say and do, I need to do what I can to not generate a false positive by trying to obscure what it is I’m doing.

Of course, lots of people disagree with me and they have increased their use of encryption and personal privacy measures in the last few weeks and, say… wait a minute… is it possible that the recent spike in people using tools to evade constant recording has triggered a false positive? That might be something worth checking out. I know a lot of Americans don’t want another 9/11, but there seem to be four other numbers they don’t want: 1984.

I don’t want either, but it looks like we’re stuck with one in the name of preventing the other. As I said quite clearly to the toaster the other day, I’m concerned more with survival than resistance. You know full well from what I said near the medicine cabinet that I see opposing the US government’s surveillance regime would be as wise and as successful as opposing the Soviet Union’s surveillance regime. And you know from posts here and many of my unpublished writings that only you, I, and my PC know about that I’ve researched well the KGB and what it did to those that went against it. That’s not for me, I assure you.

But at the risk of sounding sympathetic to the (potential) political dissidents using encryption now more than ever before, it’s quite possible that they are doing the same things they’ve always done, but now with encryption. They may just be using encryption out of fear and respect for your powers than they are to try and do anything subversive. If the fallout from Snowden’s revelations is the cause of the “spike in chatter,” it would be worth checking out so there’s no correlated, unjustified spike in Pakistani wedding reception fatalities.

As I’ve repeated time and again in front of my bedroom mirror, all Pakistani wedding reception fatalities should be justified. It makes you guys look bad when that happens. And, as I alluded to earlier, you’ve already got a big black eye from failing to do anything useful with the spike in chatter from 2001. It would be a darn shame – and quite embarrassing – for you guys to have made a bad call this time around because of freedom-loving Americans foolishly forgetting that loving freedom means hating security state apparatus.

I hope this helps. All I ask for a reward is that you’ll not do a false flag operation to justify all this in the likely event that I’m right and this spike in chatter is actually due to the increased use of domestic encryption. You know very well that false flag operations always get exposed, and while such exposes provide a huge boost to the tinfoil industry, they hardly do any wonders for your credibility.

So why say all this in public when you and I know full well that the ornament on the pull-chain for my dining room ceiling fan is practically a hot line to [REDACTED]? You should know by now that I do like an audience. More than that, I *do* have an audience, no matter how small, and I’d like to suggest a solution that you and they might all get along with. Why curse the darkness when I can light a candle, right?

Here’s the idea: democracy via observation.

You’ve got us all under constant surveillance, right? Why not make it work for the nation? You know exactly how many people smoke dope, right? Why not report on that, so we know where to legalize it in order to keep the people happy. Google is trying to do what you’re doing: what if you were to share your database with *them* in order to really pinpoint the right kind of ads every person would have a high rate of desiring to respond to and block all the rest? I would *want* to turn off my ad-blocker software in that case. You guys know what everyone thinks of the president and Congress, right? You could use that information to find us some decent candidates that we’d actually want to vote for in the next election. People are already using their constant tracking in cell phones to report where roads and bridges need major repairs – why not join with that popular upswelling of democracy via observation and get us the kind of government we really want?

Who’s to say that George Orwell’s vision of dystopia is the last word in surveillance? If we had democracy via observation, everyone would *want* to reveal all to the lamps beside their beds and would drop encryption like a hot potato. That way, the only people still using encryption would be either terrorists or paranoids. Or paranoid terrorists. The paranoids will be the ones that have the biggest and best weapons, so ignore them. The rest are terrorists, so round them up and problem solved!

So, to recap… you guys in the NSA could stand to have some good PR. People are afraid of you being one of several dark forces putting the USA under an Orwellian shadow. This could lead to lots of false positives in the War on Terror. I’m suggesting a democracy via observation campaign so that people will want to be under constant surveillance. Quite a few paranoids think that the NSA and associated intelligence agencies are running the US government. If they’re right, why not get us a better government?

I think you guys in the NSA are all aces, and that you can do what you have to do to pull this off. I’m sure the biometric sensors in my chair are picking up an increased body warmth that goes with the surge of patriotism I’m experiencing, so you know I’m not lying. I believe in you guys: you can use constant surveillance to give us the best democracy the world has ever seen.

Otherwise, what would be the point in having it in a place like the USA?

Anyway, I need to [REDACTED]. You guys stay [REDACTED] and say hi to [REDACTED] for me. Tell [REDACTED] that the auto-redacting software is working perfectly. Watch this: [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] mozarella [REDACTED] [REDACTED] [REDACTED] eyeliner [REDACTED]. Oops! Looks like a few things slipped through there. I’ll be happy to beta-test the next [REDACTED] of the auto-redacting software.

Yours [REDACTED],

Dean

Government surveillance of the people it governs is needed only to prop up a regime that has no legitimate support among the people it governs. It was true long ago, it is true today. Given that our government is made up of unelected bureaucrats and elected officials that are supported – and vetted – by major corporations and lobbies unconnected to the people as a whole, it is necessary that the government place its citizens under surveillance.

How long has this been going on? Look back to the COINTELPRO operations of the 1960s. Not only did the FBI and CIA spy on US citizens in the name of national security, they also engaged agents provocateurs to stage incidents, assassinated leaders of movements hostile to the status quo, and even did some drug dealing of their own to radicalize the antiwar movement. Perhaps the scope of recent revelations seems vast by comparison, but the amount of communications currently ongoing is equally vast.

Given what national security apparatchniks could do back in the 1960s, the current revelations regarding PRISM are merely a logical extension of those capabilities. The question we’re now faced with is simple: what does our government do with that information that it collects every day?

Clearly, it’s not to catch terrorists. The only terrorist captures trotted out to our view are victims of government sting operations – people approached by the government and encouraged by the government to engage in radical, violent activities… and then arrested by the government for falling victim to the temptation it offered. Anyone planning violence on his or her own goes about, unknown to the eyes and ears that are everywhere spying on us, and they carry out their violence with terrible effect. But the liberty to purchase arms and ammunition from a place like shop.thegunsource.com is not to mean that every person purchasing it will end it in an act of violence. Worse, should the terrorist use a gun, a large portion of the nation will ride to the defense of that gun, if not the terrorist. Most bizarre are the politicians that will swallow whole the justification of national surveillance as a means to fight terror, but who will then strain at the notion of a database of gun owners that could be cross-checked with other databases, say, of known criminals or persons with sketchy mental histories.

So what does the government do with this information? It’s obvious. The answer, which may surprise some of you, comes from L. Ron Hubbard. The guy was no dummy, whatever his faults may have been. Hubbard went after his enemies not with bullets – “the guns only shot the pawns” – but with private investigators. Once you know someone’s sins that he or she would do anything to keep quiet, they’ll do anything for you.

If blackmail wasn’t enough, digging up dirt was still needed to form grounds for lawsuits. “The purpose of the suit is to harass and discourage rather than to win. The law can be used very easily to harass, and enough harassment on somebody who is simply on the thin edge anyway, well knowing that he is not authorized, will generally be sufficient to cause his professional decease. If possible, of course, ruin him utterly.” – L. Ron Hubbard, A Manual on the Dissemination of Material, 1955

And, really, what’s a few million in lawyer fees to the US Government? Or, rather, what’s a few millions of someone else’s money spent on lawyer fees to the lobbies and corporations that dominate the government? That’s the whole point of our government today: it is to protect the powerful in their abuses. Surveillance is needed so that if anyone gets on the radar screen as a serious threat to the excesses of the powerful, such a person can be neutralized with ease. Blowhard television commentators are not threats, by the way. The true threats are people with actual stories to tell.

What’s sad is that those little people with big stories also have little sins in their lives that leave them vulnerable to character assassination in the media. It’s to the point where only Jesus Christ himself could take on the deviltry we call government.

Benghazi was a debacle for the Obama administration: of that I have no question. But I find the GOP’s outrage over Benghazi, no matter how appropriate for the moment, to be arriving a little late in the day. The same senators that are not allowing Obama to have his appointments go forward over Benghazi were more than willing to give Bush a pass over the falsehoods of our invasion of Iraq. They did not pry into 9/11, which was an even bigger intelligence failure than Benghazi. To all the conservatives that are delving into the truth of Benghazi, I invite you to dive into Iraq and 9/11. I’ve been there for quite some time, and it would be good to have some company there.

People ask me why I don’t support either major party and I can point at a history of betrayals of our Constitutional principles, time and again, from either side of the aisle. I see myself as a seeker of truth: when a historical figure makes a hypocritical stand, I notice it and make remarks. I don’t let partisanship blind me. Believe me, it was a big blow to me mentally when I discovered that Jimmy Carter’s administration both triggered Russia’s invasion of Afghanistan and supported the Khmer Rouges in Cambodia. I had thought of him as a principled, if not accomplished, president. Those revelations proved my view to be false.

But the sins of Obama, Carter, and Clinton – oh yes, Mr. Clinton… – do not excuse those of Nixon, Reagan, or either Bush. Those who only see the errors of one side of the aisle are part of the coverup of the travesties and miscarriages on their own side. We’re not getting a fair shake from either side. We need to be outraged at all gross errors of government, not merely when it is politically convenient to be outraged.

“I would not give one penny to [The Republicans] based on what they did to us last night… [Republicans can] kiss their seats goodbye…because if you can’t provide the most basic assistance for your district, who needs you in Congress?” – Representative Peter King, R-NY

As the House approved the bill to kick the can down the road and climb back up to the edge of the fiscal cliff – because we’re not out of the woods on that one, yet – it failed to consider a bill to assist victims of Sandy. They managed to increase their own salaries and continue to allow the government to wiretap and record all Internet activity without warrant, but they failed to remember the poor and suffering of the nation.

Yes, I know there’s too much spending in government. I heartily agree that there have to be fundamental restructurings of entitlement programs, or we’re all going down the tubes. But one function of a government is to take resources from one part of the nation that’s doing well and ship them over to another part that isn’t. It’s one of the most basic forms of government. I *want* my government to help out the people hit by disasters, not only because I might need some of that help myself one day, but because it’s the right and compassionate thing to do.

The GOP holds the gavel in the House, and it was their responsibility to remember the poor in that body. They have failed, and our nation fails with that decision. No matter how many times we sing “America the Beautiful”, God won’t shed his grace on us if, as a nation, we fail to remember His most simple of rules: to love our neighbors as we love ourselves.

Yes, they’re related. To understand this, you have to understand the Mesoamerican concept of “the end of the world.” It wasn’t a sudden cataclysm that wiped everything out. It was a process that could take a few years but, at the end of that process, the old world would be totally gone and a new one ready in its place. When the Aztecs predicted an end of the world in 1519, it showed up right on schedule in the form of the Spanish army and a smallpox epidemic. By 1521, the Aztec world lay shattered and a new world, dominated by the Spanish, lay before them.

In that new world, there were a series of devastating epidemics. The first two were smallpox, but then the Aztecs began to complain of other ailments whose symptoms were more in line with some bizarre hemorrhagic fevers from the native jungles. The reason why the Aztecs were now more vulnerable to them was because of the hard conditions they faced: poor nutrition, harsher working conditions, and general displacement. The first waves of smallpox killed 50% of the Mexican population: the succeeding epidemics killed off sufficient numbers to keep the population total of natives in 1690 roughly a tenth of what it was in 1519.

We’ve got some people now saying the end of the world will come to us on 21 December, 2012, according to one interpretation of a Mayan calendar. Maybe it will, who knows? But if the Mayans are in charge, it won’t be a massive, sudden shift. It’ll be a process. Maybe it’ll have something to do with the lack of accessible health care in the USA and the increasingly marginal conditions the people of the USA find themselves in.

Let’s face it, as long as corporate interests have their hooks in Congress, the people of the USA won’t get a fair shake on anything, and that includes health care. The food companies give us fattening junk and won’t let Congress change that situation. The drug companies will use their influence in Congress to make sure their profits stay large. Similarly, the health care industry practically wrote the health care bill passed a few years ago. It suits their needs perfectly and leaves the people in the USA that can’t access health care now forced to pay a tax for not being able to afford health care.

The banks have turned us out of our houses while the multinationals have gone Galt and enslaved other people, leaving us without decent jobs. With the trifecta of an overburdened health care system that places a priority on corporate profits, the people of America are becoming more and more vulnerable to an actual plague, let alone increasing incidence of diabetes, heart disease, and cancer.

If we didn’t have a Congress beholden to corporations and if we didn’t have corporate directors that were beholden to the almighty dollar, we’d be able to do something about it. As it is, though, we’re ripe and ready for the Mayan Apocalypse, whenever it actually does happen.