by J. M. Porup
Guest Writer, Dandelion Salad
www.JMPorup.com
The View From Abroad
February 6, 2014
Image by Stephen D. Melkisethian via Flickr
America’s freedom is under assault — by the very people who are supposed to protect it.
Under the guise of “fighting terrorism,” the secret police have staged a silent coup. The NSA, CIA, and the rest of the security apparatus now judge us in secret, and condemn us to harassment, imprisonment or death without trial or due process.
It’s time for us to fight back.
We have a choice: Destroy the security apparatus and regain our liberty, or succumb to tyranny, and live the rest of our days under a totalitarian dictatorship run by spies.
Too few people in America perceive the true nature of this threat. Why? Because political discourse in America today is little more than an echo chamber — a fishbowl in which everything gets distorted. What’s needed in perspective.
As an expatriate foreign correspondent who’s lived abroad for the last fifteen years, I can offer you that perspective. To echo Norwegian playwright Henrik Ibsen:
“Never have I seen the true life of my homeland so clearly, and at such close range, as when I was far from it.”
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A boot on your face for the rest of your life.
Technology changes everything.
The printing press made journalism possible — and thus modern democracy. The Internet threatens to destroy journalism, and end our few, brief centuries of liberty.
The NSA has commandeered the Internet and put us under martial law. We now live in a panopticon, a global world-prison of gigantic proportions, and most of us don’t even know it. A world in which we are guilty until proven guilty. A world of totalitarian dictatorship.
We are entering a new Dark Age. We may not be able to stop it. But I do know this: I will not go gently into that darkness.
J. M. Porup Biography: I’m an American-born, American-raised foreign correspondent. I left the U.S. in 1999 and since then have lived in Australia, New Zealand, Colombia, Canada, and now Uruguay. I’ve traveled in and covered twenty more. I authored numerous Lonely Planet guidebooks to Latin America, and currently contribute to The Economist. As a former computer programmer, I bring a depth of experience to NSA/surveillance coverage that most journalists lack.
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Subscribe to The View From Abroad (support a journalist covering the NSA)
see
Only the American People Have the Power to Stop The Imperial Machine by William Blum
Chris Hedges and William Binney on Obama #NSA Guidelines, Part 1 + Transcript
Science Fiction Is Over–But The Future Is Now by J. M. Porup
Dandelion Salad 
‘I don’t get involved in politics’ has greatly contributed to this malaise. Having the right (so far) to vote every two or four years a democracy does not make. Democracy has to be nurtured every single day. Your choice.
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This is right on J.M. Porup. But in this process we must first or simultaneously destroy the two party duopoly in this country which is responsible for our ills. They are totally controlled by the corporatists (corporatist fascists) who write our laws and execute them through the executive branch. This is the subject of the article I wrote in December and also published here:
https://dandelionsalad.wordpress.com/2013/12/15/why-americans-must-demolish-the-two-party-duopoly/
I realized what Ibsen meant when I studied at the University in Heidelberg, West Germany in ‘ 77-’78 and was peripherally involved in the revolutionary student movement out of which grew the RAF. When I returned home, my parents didn’t recognize me and expressed regret at having sent me away to college. Now that the NSA/CIA surveillance programs have made the West German Federal Criminal Office look like child’s play here in my own home country, it is time to act.