Left out of the Debates

Is that our country is becoming a totalitarian police state. Not only do we have the
National Defense Authorization Act under which you or I can be imprisoned indefinitely without charge and likely tortured, but the building of an intrusive domestic spying system continues with the largest government project since the moon landing. I can think of government projects we need like a new power grid or a new national rail system but instead they are using our taxes and resources to build a giant NSA spy center capable of monitoring every communication and transaction of every one of us.


Below is an interview with William Binney, a 32-year veteran of the National Security Agency who helped design a top-secret program he says is broadly collecting Americans’ personal data.




This needs to be exposed and stopped but in the present, we need to be aware of it and not take the privacy of cellphone communications or plastic transactions or internet postings for granted. In fact, we should use more cash, communicate more directly and use our own coded language for activism. The grid has been hacked, time to get off of it as much as possible.

Other subjects left out of the debates include the most important one of all. While Obama didn't even call Romney on his "I love coal" statement, we are facing the greatest crisis in human history as the environment collapses but both candidates are too beholden to the energy industry to really say or do what is necessary. Romney is especially tied to big oil via the Koch Brothers and is pushing for evisceration of weak EPA standards along with the XL pipeline.

Neither candidate will be asked about their support of the Drone terrorism and neither will acknowledge that the US economic crisis is part of a much larger crisis of the global failure of capitalism. Neither will really get into the economic disparity that has resulted which is why Obama didn't bring up Romney's "47%" comment.

Sadly, while Obama is the better of the two, neither will address the greatest issues facing us or do what is necessary to prevent the collapse of civilization or the ecosystem on which our survival depends. Corporatist politics is inadequate, it is a game of by and for the 1%. Moving beyond it is up to us. As Arundhati Roy said, "Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness, and our ability to tell our own stories…" We are the 99%.