Will We Be 'The Hollow Men'? Will Fear Win? Will Liberty End "Not With a Bang But a Whimper"

The fact that the spooks are spying on you isn't news. The facts that Glen Greenwald and others have been publishing have been an open secret for decades. The news is that a number of heroic people have leaked certain documents that corroborate what has up until now benefited from a thin veil of plausible deniability.

The fact is that as the Common Dreams email a few minutes ago says, "The Bush/Obama administrations have been building a dossier on you - on all of us. But don't worry, they say - they are only trampling on the US Constitution to keep you safe from the terrorists.They have all your emails. All your credit card transactions. All your Google searches. All the websites you visit. All your phone calls. All your text messages. All your online activity."

Once again, this shouldn't be news. James Bamford published a report, based on research and whistleblower information, 13 years ago about a software program named ECHELON. His report concluded that ECHELON was capable of interception and content inspection of telephone calls, fax, e-mail and other data traffic globally through the interception of communication bearers including satellite transmission, public switched telephone networks (which once carried most Internet traffic) and microwave links by searching for certain keywords and phrases.

Just in case you've missed them, here's 3 great and moving articles just out the last few days: 'NSA Collecting Phone Records of Millions of Americans Daily' by Glenn Greenwald, 'NSA Taps in to Systems of Google, Facebook, Apple and others, Secret Files Reveal' by Glenn Greenwald and Ewan MacAskill and 'The Bill of Rights Exists: An Open Letter to Dianne Feinstein' by Norman Solomon which quotes the The Bill of Rights where the Fourth Amendment to the US Constitution says, “The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

Then earlier today,  Friday, June 7, 2013, Glenn Greenwald wrote an even more important article titled, 'On Whistleblowers and Government Threats of Investigation'. The Mud Report stands behind the heroic whistleblowers who put themselves at great risk to expose the truth.

Over half a century ago my parents, along with millions of others, put their lives on the line to fight the tyranny of fascism. Many brave and heroic people have died defending 'liberty and justice for all' . Now we face a new generation of tyrannical fascists spouting the same old McCarthyism by making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason to restrict the dissent or political criticism of whistleblowers. In the 50s the bogeyman used to control people was the fear of Communism, today it's Terrorism.

For awhile the Red Scare worked on many minds, but as time went along more and more people recognized that this was exactly the same tactic Goering's quote refers to and became determined not to fall into its trap. In these last few days the same drama has been unfolding in the streets and homes of good people everywhere. Some folks understand the precipice we stand on, see clearly that the idea of 'liberty and justice for all' teeters in the balance.

Many others seem willing to bend to Goering's type of fear tactics. Today, Friday, June 7, 2013, and the next few will be pivotal days in history. Will we choose to be, as T. S. Eliot called them, 'The Hollow Men' ? Will we let this be...
"...the way the world ends
Not with a bang but a whimper"