Denmark Vesey: The Knowing - Understanding Gap

Sunday, December 13, 2009

The Knowing - Understanding Gap

1 comment:

makheru bradley said...: As we all know the Patriot Act is COINTELPRO on steroids. The only thing currently missing is the type of violence J. Edgar Hoover directed against Malcolm, Martin, Bunchy Carter, Fred Hampton, etc. But that does not mean that the TPTB are not ready to pull the trigger.

"Obama quietly backs Patriot Act provisions"

[The parts of the Patriot Act due to expire on Dec. 31 deal with:

• National Security Letters (NSLs)

The FBI uses NSLs to compel Internet service providers, libraries, banks, and credit reporting companies to turn over sensitive information about their customers and patrons. Using this data, the government can compile vast dossiers about innocent people.

• The “Material Support” Statute

This provision criminalizes providing “material support” to terrorists, defined as providing any tangible or intangible good, service or advice to a terrorist or designated group. As amended by the Patriot Act and other laws since Sept. 11, this section criminalizes a wide array of activities, regardless of whether they actually or intentionally further terrorist goals or organizations.

• FISA Amendments Act of 2008

This past summer, Congress passed a law that permits the government to conduct warrantless and suspicionless dragnet collection of U.S. residents' international telephone calls and e-mails.

The House of Representatives Judiciary Committee approved a version of the legislation containing several significant reforms. In a 16-10 party-line vote, the committee's version curbs some of the government's controversial surveillance powers.

But with the apparent approval of the Obama White House and a number of Republicans—and over the objections of liberal Senate Democrats, including Russ Feingold of Wisconsin and Dick Durbin of Illinois—the Senate Judiciary Committee has voted to extend the three provisions with only minor changes.] -- finalcall.com; Dec 14, 2009, 12:57:00 AM

"There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized."

The founders of the American state understood that the proper functioning of a democracy required an educated electorate. It is this understanding that justifies a system of public education and that led slaveholders to resist the spread of literacy among their chattels. But the meaning of "educated" has changed beyond recognition in two hundred years. Reading, writing, and arithmetic are no longer sufficient to decide on public policy. Now we need quantum mechanics and molecular biology. The knowledge required for political rationality, once available to the masses, is now in the possession of a specially educated elite, a situation that creates a series of tensions and contradictions in the operation of representative democracy.

Margaret Sanger. Woman, Morality, and Birth Control. New York: New York Publishing Company, 1922. P

Lord Bertrand Russell, The Impact of Science On Society (Routledge Press: New York, 1951).

"At present the population of the world is increasing at about 58,000 per diem. War, so far, has had no very great effect on this increase, which continued throughout each of the world wars.. War has hitherto been disappointing in this respect, but perhaps bacteriological war may prove effective. If a Black Death could spread throughout the world once in every generation, survivors could procreate freely without making the world too full. The state of affairs might be unpleasant, but what of it?"