“I think the crucial thing to realize is that hundreds of millions of Americans … in fact, billions of people around the world essentially rely on the Internet exclusively to communicate with one another,” Greenwald said. “Very few people use landline phones for much of anything. So when you talk about things like online chats and social media messages and emails, what you’re really talking about is the full extent of human communication. And what the objective of the National Security Agency is, as the stories that we’ve revealed thus far demonstrate and as the stories we’re about to reveal into the future will continue to demonstrate—the objective of the NSA and the U.S. government is nothing less than destroying all remnants of privacy. They want to make sure that every single time human beings interact with one another, things that we say to one another, things we do with one another, places we go, the behavior in which we engage, that they know about it, that they can watch it, and they can store it, and they can access it at any time. And that’s what this program is about. And they’re very explicit about the fact that since most communications are now coming through these Internet companies, it is vital, in their eyes, for them to have full and unfettered access to it. And they do.”
First they came for the “brown skinned terrorists”. Then they came for the “Ron Paul terrorists”. Then they came for the “Tea Party terrorists”. Then they came for the “OWS terrorists”. Then they came for the “gun owner terrorists”. Then they came for the “Verizon cell phone terrorists”. Then they came for you. They can do no more than we let them do.
THE HANGMAN
By Maurice Ogden
Into our town the hangman came,
smelling of gold and blood and flame.
He paced our bricks with a different air,
and built his frame on the courthouse square.
The scaffold stood by the courthouse side,
only as wide as the door was wide
with a frame as tall, or a little more,
than the capping sill of the courthouse door.
And we wondered whenever we had the time,
Who the criminal? What the crime?
The hangman judged with the yellow twist
of knotted hemp in his busy fist.
And innocent though we were with dread,
we passed those eyes of buckshot lead.
Till one cried, “Hangman, who is he,
for whom you raised the gallows-tree?”
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye
and he gave a riddle instead of reply.
“He who serves me best,” said he
“Shall earn the rope on the gallows-tree.”
And he stepped down and laid his hand
on a man who came from another land.
And we breathed again, for anothers grief
at the hangmans hand, was our relief.
And the gallows frame on the courthouse lawn
by tomorrow’s sun would be struck and gone.
So we gave him way and no one spoke
out of respect for his hangmans cloak.
The next day’s sun looked mildly down
on roof and street in our quiet town;
and stark and black in the morning air
the gallows-tree on the courthouse square.
And the hangman stood at his usual stand
with the yellow hemp in his busy hand.
With his buckshot eye and his jaw like a pike,
and his air so knowing and business-like.
And we cried, “Hangman, have you not done,
yesterday with the alien one?”
Then we fell silent and stood amazed.
“Oh, not for him was the gallows raised.”
He laughed a laugh as he looked at us,
“Do you think I’ve gone to all this fuss,
To hang one man? That’s the thing I do.
To stretch the rope when the rope is new.”
Above our silence a voice cried “Shame!”
and into our midst the hangman came;
to that mans place, “Do you hold,” said he,
“With him that was meat for the gallows-tree?”
He laid his hand on that one’s arm
and we shrank back in quick alarm.
We gave him way, and no one spoke,
out of fear of the hangmans cloak.
That night we saw with dread surprise
the hangmans scaffold had grown in size.
Fed by the blood beneath the chute,
the gallows-tree had taken root.
Now as wide, or a little more
than the steps that led to the courthouse door.
As tall as the writing, or nearly as tall,
half way up on the courthouse wall.
The third he took, we had all heard tell,
was a usurer…, an infidel.
And “What” said the hangman, “Have you to do
with the gallows-bound…, and he a Jew?”
And we cried out, “Is this one he
who has served you well and faithfully?”
The hangman smiled, “It’s a clever scheme
to try the strength of the gallows beam.”
The fourth man’s dark accusing song
had scratched our comfort hard and long.
“And what concern,” he gave us back,
“Have you … for the doomed and black?”
The fifth, the sixth, and we cried again,
“Hangman, hangman, is this the man?”
“It’s a trick”, said he, “that we hangman know
for easing the trap when the trap springs slow.”
And so we ceased and asked now more
as the hangman tallied his bloody score.
And sun by sun, and night by night
the gallows grew to monstrous height.
The wings of the scaffold opened wide
until they covered the square from side to side.
And the monster cross beam looking down,
cast its shadow across the town.
Then through the town the hangman came
and called through the empy streets…my name.
I looked at the gallows soaring tall
and thought … there’s no one left at all
for hanging … and so he called to me
to help take down the gallows-tree.
And I went out with right good hope
to the hangmans tree and the hangmans rope.
He smiled at me as I came down
to the courthouse square…through the silent town.
Supple and stretched in his busy hand,
was the yellow twist of hempen strand.
He whistled his tune as he tried the trap
and it sprang down with a ready snap.
Then with a smile of awful command,
He laid his hand upon my hand.
“You tricked me Hangman.” I shouted then,
“That your scaffold was built for other men,
and I’m no henchman of yours.” I cried.
“You lied to me Hangman, foully lied.”
Then a twinkle grew in his buckshot eye,
“Lied to you…tricked you?” He said “Not I…
for I answered straight and told you true.
The scaffold was raised for none but you.”
“For who has served more faithfully?
With your coward’s hope.” said He,
“And where are the others that might have stood
side by your side, in the common good?”
“Dead!” I answered, and amiably
“Murdered,” the Hangman corrected me.
“First the alien … then the Jew.
I did no more than you let me do.”
Beneath the beam that blocked the sky
none before stood so alone as I.
The Hangman then strapped me…with no voice there
to cry “Stay!” … for me in the empty square.
THE BOTTOM LINE: “…I did no more than you let me do.”
Mother, do you think they’ll drop the bomb? Mother, do you think they’ll like this song? Mother, do you think they’ll try to break my balls? Ooh ah, Mother, should I build the wall?
Mother, should I run for president? Mother, should I trust the government? Mother, will they put me in the firing line? Ooh ah, Is it just a waste of time?
The lyrics to Mother had both a literal and figurative meaning for Roger Waters. He was literally describing his overprotective single mother (his father was killed in World War II) building walls to protect him from the outside world. The figurative meaning is Big Mother sending its boys off to war and using fear to control and manipulate the masses. At the time he wrote this song in 1979, the Soviet Union was thought to be at its peak of power and the Berlin Wall represented a boundary between good and evil. Nuclear war was still a looming fear. Waters has always had a dim view of totalitarian states and institutions (English schools). Having seen his Wall Tour performance this past summer at Citizens Bank Park with a diverse crowd of 40,000, ranging in age from senior citizens to teenagers, it seems this song has gained new meaning. He sang a duet with himself from 1980 projected on the Wall and when he sang the lyric, “Mother, should I trust the government?” the entire stadium responded in unison – NO!!! This revealed a truth that is not permitted to be discussed by the corporate mainstream media acting as a mouthpiece for the ruling class. A growing legion of citizens in this country does not trust the government. This is very perceptive on their part.
In part one of this two part series – Hey You – I examined how an invisible government of wealthy, power hungry men have utilized the propaganda techniques of Edward Bernays and lured the American people into a narcissistic, techno-gadget, debt based servitude. Over the last one hundred years they have created a totalitarian state built upon egotism, material goods, and fulfilling our desires through Wall Street peddled debt and mass consumerism. It has been an incredibly effective form of control that has convinced the masses to love their servitude. The ruling oligarchs correctly chose the painless, amusement saturated, soft totalitarianism of Huxley’s Brave New World over the fearful, pain inflicting, surveillance state, house of horrors detailed in Orwell’s 1984.
“A really efficient totalitarian state would be one in which the all-powerful executive of political bosses and their army of managers control a population of slaves who do not have to be coerced, because they love their servitude.” – Aldous Huxley – Brave New World
The nefarious establishment of the Federal Reserve in 1913, launch of welfare programs in the 1930s, expansion of the entitlement state in the 1960s, creation of the credit card in 1970, mass media marketing propaganda, and the formation of an empire of debt laid the foundation for a society based on triviality, egotism, irrelevance and mass delusion. The conscious manipulation of the habits and opinions of the masses by an invisible government of powerful men using media propaganda and easy to access consumer credit has reached its mathematical limit. The oligarchs built a society dependent upon exponential growth. This unsustainable prototype began to show signs of strain in the 1990s. The powerful interests have been growing ever more desperate and blatantly obvious in their looting and pillaging of the debt bloated carcass of a country. They used their control of the political system to repeal Glass-Steagall, allowing the Wall Street banking cabal to become Too Big to Control. The oligarch puppets at the Wall Street controlled Federal Reserve did the bidding of their masters by reducing interest rates and expanding the money supply to create two epic bubbles.
The Dot.com bubble was created by Wall Street utilizing hype and misinformation to fleece millions into believing we had entered a new paradigm. The only people who got rich were the Wall Street hucksters, shysters and shills.
When the Dot.com bubble burst, Alan Greenspan came to the rescue, at the urging of Nobel prize winner Paul Krugman, by creating the largest banker made bubble in the history of the world. The combination of excessively low mortgage rates, complete lack of regulatory oversight by the Federal Reserve, control fraud committed by the Wall Street banks, and buying frenzy stirred up by the corporate MSM and NAR, led to the biggest financial collapse since 1929.
The white collared psychopathic criminals on Wall Street reaped billions in profits, paid themselves millions in bonuses, and cost taxpayers trillions when it all blew up in 2008. The ruling elite have added $6 trillion to our national debt and their central banker has added another $2 trillion to our ultimate tab, while providing free money to their Wall Street bank owners. They realize their efforts to restart the exponential growth engine have failed. They gutted our productive manufacturing based economic system by shipping the blue collar jobs overseas to Chinese slave labor facilities, replaced workers with machines, stimulated consumption with unlimited distribution of high interest debt, and allowed conglomerates to drive small business owners out of business with their cheap foreign sourced goods, all in the name of capitalism. The plan worked so well that real wages haven’t risen in 40 years, inflation has destroyed the purchasing power of the middle class, 47.7 million people are dependent on food stamps to survive, and the masses can’t even afford the cheap slave labor produced trinkets anymore. There is too little cash, too few jobs, too much debt, too many takers, too few makers, too many bankers, too much delusion, and too few resources to sustain the unsustainable. We have entered the end stages of a ravenous locust swarm. The fields have been stripped barren.
When the men in smoke filled rooms realized their soft totalitarianism was losing its grip on the oblivious, submissive, egoistical, distracted masses, they began phase two of their effort to retain their wealth, power and control. They began to institute Orwellian measures to strike fear into the populace. Their illusion of control is dissipating and they are resorting to force in order to maintain hegemony. It began with the immediate passage of the Orwellian Patriot Act one month after 9/11. Did the corporate media question how a 363 page all-encompassing expansion of police state power was written in a few weeks after 9/11 and passed by October 26? They did not. The bill was pre-written and ready for instant implementation when the time was right. The Orwellian version of America was launched.
“If the ideology had been a lie, then they are not heroes and gods on earth, but monsters and criminals, and their life has been self-serving and meaningless, without significance and honor. And that is the credibility trap. It is the impulse for the leaders to keep doubling down in the hope of a win, until exhaustion and collapse.” – Jesse
Obedience to Authority
“Ordinary people, simply doing their jobs, and without any particular hostility on their part, can become agents in a terrible destructive process. Moreover, even when the destructive effects of their work become patently clear and they are asked to carry out actions incompatible with fundamental standards of morality, relatively few people have the resources needed to resist authority.” - Stanley Milgram – Obediance to Authority
Just as Edward Bernays knew the unruly masses could be manipulated by propaganda and molded to believe whatever the small group of intellectually superior men wanted them to believe, conditioning using fear and authoritarian methods have also been perfected by the ruling class. Doctor Stanley Milgram unwittingly provided the oligarchs with confirmation the average citizen could be ordered to do anything by invoking expertise and authority over their subjects. Milgram started his experiments in 1961, shortly after the trial of the World War II criminal Adolph Eichmann had begun. Eichmann’s defense that he was simply following orders when he exterminated millions of Jews roused Milgram’s interest. How could millions of Germans participate and condone such genocide? Milgram’s testing suggested that it could have been that the millions of accomplices were merely following orders, despite violating their deepest moral beliefs.
Writer Kendra Cherry describes the experiment:
The participants in the Milgram experiment were 40 men recruited using newspaper ads. Milgram developed an intimidating shock generator, with shock levels starting at 30 volts and increasing in 15-volt increments all the way up to 450 volts. The many switches were labeled with terms including “slight shock,” “moderate shock” and “danger: severe shock.” The final two switches were labeled simply with an ominous “XXX.”
Each participant took the role of a “teacher” who would then deliver a shock to the “student” every time an incorrect answer was produced. While the participant believed that he was delivering real shocks to the student, the student was actually a confederate in the experiment who was simply pretending to be shocked.
As the experiment progressed, the participant would hear the learner plead to be released or even complain about a heart condition. Once the 300-volt level had been reached, the learner banged on the wall and demanded to be released. Beyond this point, the learner became completely silent and refused to answer any more questions. The experimenter then instructed the participant to treat this silence as an incorrect response and deliver a further shock.
Most participants asked the experimenter whether they should continue. The experimenter issued a series of commands to prod the participant along:
“Please continue.”
“The experiment requires that you continue.”
“It is absolutely essential that you continue.”
“You have no other choice, you must go on.”
The level of shock that the participant was willing to deliver was used as the measure of obedience. How far do you think that most participants were willing to go? When Milgram posed this question to a group of Yale University students, it was predicted that no more than 3 out of 100 participants would deliver the maximum shock. In reality, 65% of the participants in Milgram’s study delivered the maximum shocks.
Of the 40 participants in the study, 26 delivered the maximum shocks while 14 stopped before reaching the highest levels. It is important to note that many of the subjects became extremely agitated, distraught and angry at the experimenter. Yet they continued to follow orders all the way to the end. Why did so many of the participants in this experiment perform a seemingly sadistic act on the instruction of an authority figure? According to Milgram, there are a number of situational factors that can explain such high levels of obedience:
The physical presence of an authority figure dramatically increased compliance.
The fact that the study was sponsored by Yale (a trusted and authoritative academic institution) led many participants to believe that the experiment must be safe.
The selection of teacher and learner status seemed random.
Participants assumed that the experimenter was a competent expert.
The shocks were said to be painful, not dangerous.
The American people have been participants in their very own Milgram experiment being conducted by their government since 9/11. Since the passage of the Patriot Act, the government continues to demand that its citizens increase the voltage in the name of security. Since 2001, the Orwellian measures have included:
Warrantless domestic surveillance.
The ability to search telephone calls, emails, financial matters especially involving foreign individuals, and medical records for people who are “suspected” of endangering the country.
Color coded risk levels designed to keep citizens fearful of non-existent terrorists.
Pre-emptive invasion of foreign countries.
Committing U.S. forces to war without a declaration of war by Congress as mandated in the U.S. Constitution.
Assassination of people on presidential kill lists.
Extermination of “suspected” enemies by predator drones.
Camera systems monitoring the movements of Americans in cites and streets across the United States.
Torture of detainees in camps outside of the United States.
The authority to indefinitely detain America citizens without trial.
Executive orders giving the President the ability to unilaterally disregard the U.S. Constitution and take control of private industries.
Use of drones to monitor the activities of American citizens.
Allowing the very bankers that destroyed the worldwide economic system to blackmail the American taxpayers into handing them $700 billion.
Not prosecuting one Wall Street criminal after the largest Ponzi control fraud in the history of the world.
Cameras and listening devices on public transit and other public locations.
Military exercises conducted in U.S. cities in order to condition the masses.
Attempts to control and censor the internet through the introduction of the SOPA bill.
The use of tragic mass murders by mentally defective young men on psychotropic drugs to disregard the 2nd Amendment and disarm American citizens.
TSA thugs molesting little old ladies and young children to desensitize citizens to gestapo like tactics and treat them like criminals.
Government partnering with Facebook, Apple and other corporate entities to monitor, censor, and report the activities of citizens to the authorities.
The use of public schools to teach children what to think rather than how to think. Thought control is vital to an agenda of keeping the masses fearful and pliable.
Government agencies (FBI, ATF) creating terrorist plots, luring young dupes into the plots, providing fake explosives, and then announcing with great fanfare they have foiled a terrorist plot.
“See something, Say something” government media campaign designed to make citizens paranoid and fearful.
Just as Milgram pondered how the German people could follow the orders of those in authority to slaughter millions, one must ponder how the American people have allowed those in power to strip us of our Constitutional freedoms and liberties in the name of safety and security. They have conditioned the masses to passively accept their fate by utilizing fear, authoritarian measures, thought control, and propaganda. Human beings never change. They have been driven by emotions throughout history – fear, greed, love and hate. There will always be psychopathic men who seek wealth, power, glory and control. It happened during the decline of the Roman Empire and it is happening today during the decline of the American Empire.
“A shocking crime was committed on the unscrupulous initiative of few individuals, with the blessing of more, and amid the passive acquiescence of all.” – Tacitus
Big Brother is Watching You
“Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal. We are not like that. We know what no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.” – George Orwell – 1984
What the average person can’t seem to process through their government public school educated non-critical thinking brains is that there are actually a small group of bankers, politicians, corporate executives, media magnets, and shadowy billionaires who call the shots in this country. They constitute Bernays’ invisible government, run the show, mold the minds, form the opinions, suggest the ideas, and create the reality for the masses because they believe they are intellectually superior. The left/right and Democrat/Republican discord is a planned diversion for the masses. The country has devolved into a corporate fascist warfare/welfare state. We are clearly moving in the direction of Orwell’s state in which government monitors and controls every aspect of human life to the extent that even having a disloyal thought will be against the law. The longer this is allowed to progress the more likely any effort to resist like Winston Smith will be met with brutal measures.
The parallels to Orwell dystopian nightmare state grow by the day. Those in control use technology to bombard Americans with psychological inducements designed to overwhelm the mind’s capability for autonomous thought. In Orwell’s 1984 the giant telescreen in every citizen’s room blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the failures and shortcomings of the Party appear to be triumphant successes. In Obama’s 2013 the 72 inch Chinese made HDTVs in every McMansion blasts a constant stream of propaganda designed to make the zombie-like occupants buy trinkets and gadgets with a thin piece of plastic and makes the failures in Iraq, Afghanistan, Egypt and Libya appear to be triumphant successes. Our corporate/fascist party uses their control over the media message to indoctrinate and control the public mind through propaganda and repetitive messaging. In Orwell’s world, the Party undermines family structure by inducting children into an organization called the Junior Spies, which brainwashes and encourages them to spy on their parents and report any instance of disloyalty to the Party. In our world children are indoctrinated in government run public schools that fill their brains with government manufactured history, social engineering claptrap and what they should think, rather than how to think. The Orwellian Department of Homeland Security (Thought Police) instructs them to report anyone they think is suspicious with their “See something, Say something” campaign. Children are “encouraged” to re-educate their parents about green energy and global warming. Corporations fund schools to advertise their products within the hallways of learning. The outputs of this corporate/fascist partnership are non-critical thinking, functionally illiterate, willfully ignorant Proles who obey the Party and consume products as instructed.
In Orwell’s 1984 the Party keeps the population in a general state of exhaustion by making them work long grueling hours at government run agencies. This was designed to keep them from thinking or having the energy to resist. About one in six workers work for the government in the United States, with a substantial portion of private jobs dependent upon government largesse. The true distinction in our society can be seen in the income levels over decades of our own Inner Party, Outer Party and Proles.
The government educated masses were purposely not taught about the impact of Federal Reserve created inflation on their lives. Even using the government manipulated CPI, the real household incomes of the masses have barely risen in the last forty five years. Using a true measure of inflation, the real household incomes of the average family have fallen. In addition, prior to the 1980s those household incomes were predominantly provided with one parent working and the other raising the children. Today the vast majority of households require both parents to work in order to just tread water. Child rearing was delegated to the state and parents have been kept in a constant state of exhaustion, like hamsters in a cage on a spinning wheel. Household income was replaced by credit card debt, mortgage debt, auto debt, and student loan debt peddled by our very own Inner Party (Wall Street bankers). The Inner Party members have seen their incomes soar over the last four decades. This was not an accident.
As those at the top accumulate an ever increasing percentage of the national wealth, while consolidating their power through ever more sophisticated use of technology for surveillance, warfare, and financial theft; urban decay and blight spreads across the land. Totalitarian regimes are ferociously effective at augmenting their own power and wretchedly incompetent at providing for their citizens. Just as the London in Orwell’s dystopian world was a decrepit, rundown city in which buildings were crumbling, amenities such as elevators never worked, and basics such as electricity and plumbing were exceedingly undependable, the urban killing fields that are home to tens of millions in the United States are dangerous, disintegrating, hallowed out carcasses of once thriving metropolises. Hunger, poverty, crumbling infrastructure, and violence are the earmarks of society for the Proles. True unemployment exceeds 20%, with youth and minority unemployment exceeding 40%. There are 47.7 million Americans subsisting on food stamps (program administered by JP Morgan), accounting for 20% of all the households in the country.
The incompetency and mismanagement by our totalitarian governing body is evident for all to see, as bridges collapse, water mains burst, gas lines explode, mass transit shuts down and structures deteriorate due to decades of neglect. The priorities of those in power are clearly visible as they spend trillions on weapons used to attack sovereign countries, distribute billions in “aid” to foreign dictators, provide trillions to the criminal banking cabal on Wall Street, and devote billions to technology designed to monitor and control their citizens. Our entire rotting, fetid, bloated, corrupt society has about reached its limits. It is only a matter of time until it implodes like the former Soviet Union.
“Diminishing returns of ever-increasing complexity addressed with ever-more layers of complexity, larded with systematic lying based on mystifying, opaque jargon, sanctioned statistical misreporting, felonious cronyism, and scuttling of the rule of law. In short, the markets have been taken over in effect by a criminal racketeering syndicate. In doing this, so much resilience has been removed from these market structures that they are riddled with rot, like a mansion infested with carpenter ants.” – Jim Kunstler
We Have Always Been at War with Eastasia
Hush now baby, baby, don’t you cry. Mamma’s gonna make all of your nightmares come true, Mamma’s gonna put all of her fears into you, Mamma’s gonna keep you right here, under her wing.
She won’t let you fly, but she might let you sing, Mamma’s gonna keep baby cozy and warm. Oooh babe, Oooh babe, Oooh babe, Of course Mamma’s gonna help build the wall.
The concepts of Doublethink and Newspeak are alive and well in our increasingly Orwellian society. The massive long-term campaign of large-scale psychological manipulation, described in detail by Edward Bernays in 1928, has succeeded in breaking down the capacity for independent thought by the masses. Those in control of the media have molded the minds of millions to believe anything the government tells them, even while possessing information that runs counter to what they are being told. On the eve of the invasion of Iraq, the government and their media propaganda mouthpieces had convinced 69% of the American public that Saddam Hussein was involved in the 9/11 attacks, even though there wasn’t a shred of evidence to support that claim. The storyline of Iraqi soldiers murdering Kuwaiti babies in their incubators during the first Gulf War was another example of propaganda designed to manipulate public opinion. By controlling the media message, those in power control the present and can manipulate the past. The government controls the curriculum in public schools and writes our history to conform to whatever storyline that supports their agenda. With 20% of the adult population in this country functionally illiterate, the formulation of ideas or critical thought is virtually impossible for these people. This is exactly what is desired by the ruling class.
The outrageous example of Doublethink in Orwell’s 1984 occurs during the Hate Week rally. The Party shifts its diplomatic allegiance, so the nation it has been at war with suddenly becomes its ally (Eurasia), and its former ally becomes its new enemy (Eastasia). When the Party speaker suddenly changes the nation he refers to as an enemy in the middle of his speech, the crowd accepts his words immediately, and is ashamed to find that it has made the wrong signs for the event. The American people have been programmed to accept the same logic from our leaders. Saddam Hussein was our ally when he was fighting our enemy Iran, who had been our ally ever since we had overthrown their democratically elected leader in the 1950s. Then he became our enemy for using weapons of mass destruction, provided to him by the U.S., on his own people and threatening our control over Middle Eastern oil. Osama bin Laden was our ally when he was fighting our mortal enemy, the Soviet Union. Then he became our mortal enemy because we refused to leave Saudi Arabia after the first Gulf War. Ghadafi was our sworn enemy after blowing up an airliner filled with Americans, until he helped us after 9/11 and became an ally. Then he became an enemy again for fighting to maintain his dictatorship. Mubarak was an ally for decades as we provided him billions in military hardware so he could brutally maintain control. Then he became an enemy when we decided he was no longer of use. Do you get the picture?
Do you see any parallels between Orwell’s Ministry of Plenty (oversees economic shortages); the Ministry of Peace (wages war); the Ministry of Truth (conducts propaganda and historical revisionism); and the Ministry of Love (the center of the Party’s operations of torture and punishment) and our Department of Agriculture, Department of Defense, Department of Education, and Department of Homeland Security?
“In our age there is no such thing as ‘keeping out of politics.’ All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history.” – George Orwell
Should I Trust the Government?
So the oligarchs have utilized all the plays in Huxley’s playbook and are half way through Orwell’s playbook, but they are rapidly losing their credibility as a small minority of critical thinking people is using the internet to spread the truth and form phyles with like-minded citizens with similar values based on liberty and freedom. The political system is broken beyond repair as $2 billion was spent during this last “election” to maintain the status quo. The looting and pillaging of the middle class continues, while the poor are kept controlled, sedated and enslaved by entitlements, debt, drugs and prisons. The financial system is succumbing to the mountains of debt that have been accumulated trying to keep the game going. In the last ten years worldwide total credit market debt, on balance sheets, sovereign obligations, corporate debt, household debt – has grown from $80 trillion to just over $200 trillion. U.S. unfunded liabilities committed to by the politician parasites that pass for our representatives surpass $200 trillion. There are $1.2 quadrillion of interconnected derivatives outstanding in the world today, 20 times the size of the worldwide economy. The accumulation of worldwide debt, aging developed country populations, depletion of resources, perpetual war, financial fraud and rampant corruption are going to lead to a collapse of epic proportions. It may not happen in 2013, but it will happen within the next five years. Jesse explains why the status quo will never relinquish their power, illegally acquired wealth and control without a fight:
“A credibility trap is a condition wherein the financial, political and informational functions of a society have been compromised by corruption and fraud, so that the leadership cannot effectively reform, or even honestly address, the problems of that system without impairing and implicating, at least incidentally, a broad swath of the power structure, including them. The status quo tolerates the corruption and the fraud because they have profited at least indirectly from it, and would like to continue to do so. Even the impulse to reform within the power structure is susceptible to various forms of soft blackmail and coercion by the system that maintains and rewards.
And so a failed policy and its support system become self-sustaining, long after it is seen by objective observers to have failed. In its failure it is counterproductive, and an impediment to recovery in the real economy. Admitting failure is not an option for the thought leaders who receive their power from that system. The continuity of the structural hierarchy must therefore be maintained at all costs, even to the point of becoming a painfully obvious hypocrisy.”
The people of this country must regain a sense of responsibility for their lives and the lives of future generations. Enough people need to perceive they are being manipulated, controlled and used by the thought leaders and awaken from their narcissistic materialistic debt financed lives. Our culture has failed. The animosity and anger in the country is beginning to bubble over. The masses are beginning to realize they have been screwed. They haven’t figured out who to blame because they are still trapped in the Republican/Democrat false dogma. There is one Party putting on a show, as displayed this week with the fiscal cliff farce, as the government controlled media proclaimed victory because the status quo was maintained, nothing was cut, and $4 trillion was added to the National Debt. More people need to question and challenge the authorities. We must cast aside our willful ignorance of facts and accept the consequences of decades of bad decisions and delusions of grandeur. More government is not the answer. We must break free of the conditioning and mind control used to make us love our servitude and trust those in power.
Kyle Bass recently revealed a fact about our government leaders:
“They’re not going to tell you that a collapse is coming. You’re going to have to see it for yourself. The government’s never going to tell you that it’s going to happen.These guys are never going to tell you the truth, because they can’t tell you the truth. Their job is to promote confidence, not to tell you the truth.”
We need more people to respond to Roger Waters’ question, “Mother, should I trust the government?” with this answer before we can begin to tear down the wall that seemed too high.
“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” – George Orwell
The Obama administration has been caught spying on the Verizon phone calls of tens of millions of Americans.
But the government has sought to “reassure” us that it is only tracking “metadata” such as the time and place of the calls, and not the actual content of the calls.
As the top spy chief at the U.S. National Security Agency – William Binney – explained, the NSA is collecting some 100 billion 1,000-character emails per day, and 20 trillion communications of all types per year.
Binney says that the government has collected all of the communications of congressional leaders, generals and everyone else in the U.S. for the last 10 years.
Binney further explains that he set up the NSA’s system so that all of the information would automatically be encrypted, so that the government had to obtain a search warrant based upon probably cause before a particular suspect’s communications could be decrypted. But the NSA now collects all data in an unencrypted form, so that no probable cause is needed to view any citizen’s information. He says that it is actually cheaper and easier to store the data in an encrypted format: so the government’s current system is being done for political – not practical – purposes.
Binney says that if anyone gets on the government’s “enemies list”, then the stored information will be used to target them. Specifically, he notes that if the government decides it doesn’t like someone, it analyzes all of the data it has collected on that person and his or her associates over the last 10 years to build a case against him. This includes whistleblowers, activists or even government insiders … like the head of the CIA.
The Other Types of Spying the Government Is Doing On Us
In addition, the amount of money and effort the government is putting into spying on Americans using a wide variety of other technologies tends to discredit any notion that the government is exercising restraint in monitoring our phone calls (which are already being tapped) for content.
The domestic use of drones to spy on Americans clearly violates the Fourth Amendment and limits our rights to personal privacy.
Emptywheel notes in a post entitled “The OTHER Assault on the Fourth Amendment in the NDAA? Drones at Your Airport?”:
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As the map above makes clear–taken from this 2010 report–DOD [the Department of Defense] plans to have drones all over the country by 2015.
Many police departments are also using drones to spy on us. As the Hill reported:
At least 13 state and local police agencies around the country have used drones in the field or in training, according to the Association for Unmanned Vehicle Systems International, an industry trade group. The Federal Aviation Administration has predicted that by the end of the decade, 30,000 commercial and government drones could be flying over U.S. skies.
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“Drones should only be used if subject to a powerful framework that regulates their use in order to avoid abuse and invasions of privacy,” Chris Calabrese, a legislative counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union, said during a congressional forum in Texas last month.
He argued police should only fly drones over private property if they have a warrant, information collected with drones should be promptly destroyed when it’s no longer needed and domestic drones should not carry any weapons.
He argued that drones pose a more serious threat to privacy than helicopters because they are cheaper to use and can hover in the sky for longer periods of time.
A congressional report earlier this year predicted that drones could soon be equipped with technologies to identify faces or track people based on their height, age, gender and skin color.
Transit authorities in cities across the country are quietly installing microphone-enabled surveillance systems on public buses that would give them the ability to record and store private conversations….
The systems are being installed in San Francisco, Baltimore, and other cities with funding from the Department of Homeland Security in some cases ….
The IP audio-video systems can be accessed remotely via a built-in web server (.pdf), and can be combined with GPS data to track the movement of buses and passengers throughout the city.
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The systems use cables or WiFi to pair audio conversations with camera images in order to produce synchronous recordings. Audio and video can be monitored in real-time, but are also stored onboard in blackbox-like devices, generally for 30 days, for later retrieval. Four to six cameras with mics are generally installed throughout a bus, including one near the driver and one on the exterior of the bus.
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Privacy and security expert Ashkan Soltani told the Daily that the audio could easily be coupled with facial recognition systems or audio recognition technology to identify passengers caught on the recordings.
Street lights that can spy installed in some American cities
America welcomes a new brand of smart street lightning systems: energy-efficient, long-lasting, complete with LED screens to show ads. They can also spy on citizens in a way George Orwell would not have imagined in his worst nightmare.
With a price tag of $3,000+ apiece, according to an ABC report, the street lights are now being rolled out in Detroit, Chicago and Pittsburgh, and may soon mushroom all across the country.
Part of the Intellistreets systems made by the company Illuminating Concepts, they havea number of “homeland security applications” attached.
Each has a microprocessor “essentially similar to an iPhone,” capable ofwireless communication. Each can capture images and count people for the police through a digital camera, record conversations of passers-by and even give voice commands thanks to a built-in speaker.
Ron Harwood, president and founder of Illuminating Concepts, says he eyed the creation of such a system after the 9/11 terrorist attacks and the Hurricane Katrina disaster. He is“working with Homeland Security” to deliver his dream of making people “more informed and safer.”
The TSA has moved way past airports, trains and sports stadiums, and is deploying mobile scanners to spy on people all over the place. This means that traveling within the United States is no longer a private affair.
The ACLU published a map in 2006 showing that nearly two-thirds of the American public – 197.4 million people – live within a “constitution-free zone” within 100 miles of land and coastal borders:
Normally under the Fourth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the American people are not generally subject to random and arbitrary stops and searches.
The border, however, has always been an exception. There, the longstanding view is that the normal rules do not apply. For example the authorities do not need a warrant or probable cause to conduct a “routine search.”
But what is “the border”? According to the government, it is a 100-mile wide strip that wraps around the “external boundary” of the United States.
As a result of this claimed authority, individuals who are far away from the border, American citizens traveling from one place in America to another, are being stopped and harassed in ways that our Constitution does not permit.
Border Patrol has been setting up checkpoints inland — on highways in states such as California, Texas and Arizona, and at ferry terminals in Washington State. Typically, the agents ask drivers and passengers about their citizenship. Unfortunately, our courts so far have permitted these kinds of checkpoints – legally speaking, they are “administrative” stops that are permitted only for the specific purpose of protecting the nation’s borders. They cannot become general drug-search or other law enforcement efforts.
However, these stops by Border Patrol agents are not remaining confined to that border security purpose. On the roads of California and elsewhere in the nation – places far removed from the actual border – agents are stopping, interrogating, and searching Americans on an everyday basis with absolutely no suspicion of wrongdoing.
The bottom line is that the extraordinary authorities that the government possesses at the border are spilling into regular American streets.
Border agents don’t need probable cause and they don’t need a stinking warrant since they don’t need to prove any reasonable suspicion first. Nor, sadly, do two out of three people have First Amendment protection; it is as if DHS has voided those Constitutional amendments and protections they provide to nearly 200 million Americans.
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Don’t be silly by thinking this means only if you are physically trying to cross the international border. As we saw when discussing the DEA using license plate readers and data-mining to track Americans movements, the U.S. “border” stretches out 100 miles beyond the true border. Godfather Politics added:
But wait, it gets even better! If you live anywhere in Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Hawaii, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New Jersey or Rhode Island, DHS says the search zones encompass the entire state.
Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and Customs and Border Protection (CBP) have a “longstanding constitutional and statutory authority permitting suspicionless and warrantless searches of merchandise at the border and its functional equivalent.” This applies to electronic devices, according to the recent CLCR “Border Searches of Electronic Devices” executive summary [PDF]:
Fourth Amendment
The overall authority to conduct border searches without suspicion or warrant is clear and longstanding, and courts have not treated searches of electronic devices any differently than searches of other objects. We conclude that CBP’s and ICE’s current border search policies comply with the Fourth Amendment. We also conclude that imposing a requirement that officers have reasonable suspicion in order to conduct a border search of an electronic device would be operationally harmful without concomitant civil rights/civil liberties benefits. However, we do think that recording more information about why searches are performed would help managers and leadership supervise the use of border search authority, and this is what we recommended; CBP has agreed and has implemented this change beginning in FY2012.***
The ACLU said, Wait one darn minute! Hello, what happened to the Constitution? Where is the rest of CLCR report on the “policy of combing through and sometimes confiscating travelers’ laptops, cell phones, and other electronic devices—even when there is no suspicion of wrongdoing?” DHS maintains it is not violating our constitutional rights, so the ACLU said:
If it’s true that our rights are safe and that DHS is doing all the things it needs to do to safeguard them, then why won’t it show us the results of its assessment? And why would it be legitimate to keep a report about the impact of a policy on the public’s rights hidden from the very public being affected?
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As Christian Post wrote, “Your constitutional rights have been repealed in ten states. No, this isn’t a joke. It is not exaggeration or hyperbole. If you are in ten states in the United States, your some of your rights guaranteed by the Bill of Rights have been made null and void.”
The ACLU filed a Freedom of Information Act request for the entire DHS report about suspicionless and warrantless “border” searches of electronic devices. ACLU attorney Catherine Crump said “We hope to establish that the Department of Homeland Security can’t simply assert that its practices are legitimate without showing us the evidence, and to make it clear that the government’s own analyses of how our fundamental rights apply to new technologies should be openly accessible to the public for review and debate.”
Meanwhile, the EFF has tips to protect yourself and your devices against border searches. If you think you know all about it, then you might try testing your knowledge with a defending privacy at the U.S. border quiz.
Wired pointed out in 2008 that the courts have routinely upheld such constitution-free zones:
Federal agents at the border do not need any reason to search through travelers’ laptops, cell phones or digital cameras for evidence of crimes, a federal appeals court ruled Monday, extending the government’s power to look through belongings like suitcases at the border to electronics.
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The 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the government, finding that the so-called border exception to the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable searches applied not just to suitcases and papers, but also to electronics.
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Travelers should be aware that anything on their mobile devices can be searched by government agents, who may also seize the devices and keep them for weeks or months. When in doubt, think about whether online storage or encryption might be tools you should use to prevent the feds from rummaging through your journal, your company’s confidential business plans or naked pictures of you and your-of-age partner in adult fun.
And they’re probably bluffing and exaggerating, but the Department of Homeland Security claims they will soon be able to know your adrenaline level, what you ate for breakfast and what you’re thinking …from 164 feet away.
In a radio interview, Wall Street Journal reporter Julia Angwin (who’s been one of the best at covering the surveillance state in the US) made a simple observation that puts much of this into context: the US surveillance regime has more data on the average American than the Stasi ever did on East Germans.
Postscript: This is not some “post-9/11 reality”. Spying on Americans started before 9/11.
Regular readers know my complete and total disdain for the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). An organization that is quite clearly gearing itself up for confrontation with the American public, rather than offering any meaningful protection from foreign “terrorists.” These folks think that because they have a big budget and a badge they do not have to abide by the Constitution. They have such little respect for the supreme law of the land that they claim they can search through travelers’ electronic items, and even confiscate them, based on a “hunch.” No, really.
Terrorists don’t take away freedoms. Governments take away freedoms…and ours is doing a damn good job of it.
From CBS:
WASHINGTON (CBSDC/AP) — U.S. border agents should continue to be allowed to search a traveler’s laptop, cellphone or other electronic device and keep copies of any data on them based on no more than a hunch, according to an internal Homeland Security Department study. It contends limiting such searches would prevent the U.S. from detecting child pornographers or terrorists and expose the government to lawsuits.
The 23-page report, obtained by The Associated Press and the American Civil Liberties Union under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act, provides a rare glimpse of the Obama administration’s thinking on the long-standing but controversial practice of border agents and immigration officers searching and in some cases holding for weeks or months the digital devices of anyone trying to enter the U.S.
Since his election, President Barack Obama has taken an expansive view of legal authorities in the name of national security, asserting that he can order the deaths of U.S. citizens abroad who are suspected of terrorism without involvement by courts, investigate reporters as criminals and — in this case — read and copy the contents of computers carried by U.S. travelers without a good reason to suspect wrongdoing.
Now here is some text from the DHS study:
“We do not believe that this 1986 approach, or a reasonable suspicion requirement in any other form, would improve current policy,” the report said. “Officers might hesitate to search an individual’s device without the presence of articulable factors capable of being formally defended, despite having an intuition or hunch based on experience that justified a search.” It added: “An on-the-spot perusal of electronic devices following the procedures established in 1986 could well result in a delay of days or weeks.”
Apparently in America, a search warrant has now been replaced by a “hunch.”
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The budget should be balanced, the treasury should be refilled, the public debt should be reduced and the arrogance of public officials should be controlled. — Ross Perot
