Program Archive
from PBS:
". . . full, chronological listing (based on original airdate) of FRONTLINE programs since the launch of the series in 1983. You can also browse reports by subject area. For programs since the 1995-96 season, you'll find a link to the companion website and to the program transcript. For more recent programs, you may also see a link to watch online, allowing you to view the entire report in streaming video format."
comment from Paul Woodward
@ The War in Context:
Definitions of terrorism easily get confused by focusing on the perpetrators and the methods of violence that they employ, but the essence of terrorism is the use of fear to achieve political aims. The Pentagon's own definition is this:
The calculated use of violence or threat of violence to inculcate fear.
When President Bush or Vice President Cheney suggest or imply that their opponents might be "weak on terror" they are using the threat of violence to inculcate fear. This is an act of political terrorism.
Obviously a head of state with all the instruments of government and unparalleled access to the media does not need to explode a bomb, or have anyone else do so, in order to inculcate fear and exploit that fear to achieve political aims. We live at a time where there is no shortage of people willing to articulate threats upon which others are then only too eager to take a political ride.
So long as we remain clear that fear as a political instrument- and not the particular methods used to generate that fear- is the defining characteristic of terrorism, then it's much easier to understand why terrorism is not simply a tool of asymmetric warfare. "Terrorism" is really the only fitting name for the politics of fear.
If one considers the degree to which George Bush, Dick Cheney, and their cohorts have successfully exploited fear in order to control the deployment of massive economic and human resources in the service of political agendas whose nature often remains obscure, then this cadre of besuited operatives rank as truly the most successful and powerful terrorists the world has ever known.
For the next 15 months or so, it might be wise to ditch the cell phone.
Democrats running for office (especially campaign strategists and support staff)- you're wired, they're probably listening.
oh- and also...
"A 2003 lawsuit revealed that the FBI was able to surreptitiously turn on the built-in microphones in automotive systems like General Motors' OnStar to snoop on passengers' conversations. When FBI agents remotely activated the system and were listening in, passengers in the vehicle could not tell that their conversations were being monitored."
Thanks to the Blue Dogs and a few Democrats in the Senate, there is now a shiny, brand new, just-vague-enough legal framework for Gonzales to play with.
". . . the FBI has the ability from a remote location to activate a cell phone and turn its microphone into a listening device that transmits to an FBI listening post, a method known as a 'roving bug.' Experts say the only way to defeat it is to remove the cell phone battery.
'The FBI can access cell phones and modify them remotely without ever having to physically handle them,' James Atkinson, a counterintelligence security consultant, told ABC News. 'Any recently manufactured cell phone has a built-in tracking device, which can allow eavesdroppers to pinpoint someone's location to within just a few feet,' he added."
source: abcnews.com - Dec 2006
source: zdnet.com - Dec 2006
"roving bug" - hilarious!
- glassfrequency
New Law Gives Government Six Months to Turn Internet and Phone Systems into Permanent Spying Architecture
By Ryan Singel | 6 August 2007 | Wired Blogs: Threat Level
5 August 2007:
"There are many mythologies about what are the defining beliefs and motivations of bloggers and their readers and the attendees at Yearly Kos. One of the principal myths is that it is all driven by a familiar and easily defined ideological agenda and/or a partisan attachment to the Democratic Party. That is all false.
The common, defining political principle here- what resonates far more powerfully than any other idea- is a fervent and passionate belief in our country's constitutional framework, the core liberties it secures, and the checks and balances it offers as a safeguard against tyrannical power. Those who fail to defend that framework, or worse, those who are passively or actively complicit in its further erosion, are all equally culpable.
With each day that passes, the radicalism and extremism originally spawned in secret by the Bush presidency becomes less and less his fault and more and more the fault of those who- having discovered what they have been doing and having been given the power to stop it- instead acquiesce to it and, worse, enable and endorse it."
read more
