{"id":41429,"date":"2013-06-13T08:07:23","date_gmt":"2013-06-13T07:07:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/letters-from-our-readers-3\/41429\/"},"modified":"2013-06-13T08:07:23","modified_gmt":"2013-06-13T07:07:23","slug":"letters-from-our-readers-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/letters-from-our-readers-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Letters from our readers"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\n 13 June 2013
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On \u201cObama defends massive spying on Americans<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a secret. Let it stay so. A secret court is requested in secret, to give a secret decree, to a secret government to find something secret about the people which will be secret to the government.<\/p>\n

And if the government doesn\u2019t like the secrets of any people, a secret operation will secretly whisk away somebody in the night. You might hear it: a yelp, a shout, a call.<\/p>\n

But, the operative mentality is, \u201cIf you\u2019re not doing anything wrong, you got nothin\u2019 to worry about.\u201d Keep yourself dumb. Keep yourself content. Keep yourself watching the television, entertained and happy. That\u2019s how they like their slaves and cannon fodder.<\/p>\n

Michael S
California, USA
10 June 2013<\/p>\n

On \u201cNSA whistleblower reveals identity, exposes US government\u2019s \u2018architecture of oppression\u2019<\/a>\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

As the United States advances further down the path to the status of police state, the Kafkaesque nature of the rationalizations for the spying on American citizens by Obama and his supporters becomes more disturbing with each passing day. The spying is \u201cnecessary\u201d to protect American citizens from \u201cterrorists.\u201d The massive abuses of international law that are the defining feature of American foreign policy and that create those \u201cterrorists\u201d from whom Americans need protecting is ignored by the media.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, the spying goes on essentially unregulated. Whistleblowers such as Edward Snowden have revealed the scope of the spying. Legislation gives the NSA the \u201cpower\u201d to engage in the spying. Organizations such as the ACLU, however, are denied the right to challenge legality\/constitutionality of the legislation that \u201cempowers\u201d the spying on the basis that these organizations lack standing as the people they seek to represent can\u2019t know if they have actually suffered a harm due to the secrecy of the legislation.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, each evening the media gives us interviews with NSA and military personnel seeking to rationalize the spying on the basis that we have already been protected from attacks by the aforementioned \u201cterrorists\u201d but they can\u2019t tell us when, where, or how so we need to simply trust the very people who seek to overturn the free speech and due process protections of the Bill of Rights. Who needs theatre of the absurd when we have the evening news!<\/p>\n

Diane A
Michigan, USA
10 June 2013<\/p>\n

On \u201cBuilding collapse in Philadelphia exposes corruption, lack of government oversight<\/a>\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Thank you for running a follow up piece on this tragedy. When I lived in Philadelphia, I frequented that Salvation Army regularly and was heartbroken to hear about the shoppers and employees killed by criminally negligent developers.<\/p>\n

Just like the West, Texas explosion, there has been an attempt to pin the problem on a low-level patsy, but the roots of these tragedies go straight back to the ruthless demands of capital and complicity of capitalist government.<\/p>\n

David M
11 June 2013<\/p>\n

On\u00a0<\/em>\u201cOnce again, on the filthiness of the makers of Zero Dark Thirty<\/a> \u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Very well reported, David. A defense of the methods of a decayed class, using art as the medium to appeal to conflicting emotions of a public that is trying to come to terms with the deterioration of democracy\u2013this is how I interpret the movie.<\/p>\n

Thushara
9 June 2013<\/p>\n


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This article originally appeared on: World Socialist Web Site<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0 13 June 2013 On \u201cObama defends massive spying on Americans\u201d It\u2019s a secret. Let it stay so. A secret court is requested in secret, to give a secret decree, to a secret government to find something secret about the people which will be secret to the government. And if the government doesn\u2019t like the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-41429","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41429","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41429"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41429\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}