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Tag: dictatorship
Dictatorship in Disguise: Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms
Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
“You see them on the street. You watch them on TV. You might even vote for one this fall. You think they’re people just like you. You’re wrong. Dead wrong.” — They Live
We’re living in two worlds.
There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police and federal agents armed to the teeth.
All is not as it seems.
Monsters with human faces walk among us. Many of them work for the U.S. government.
This is the premise of John Carpenter’s film They Live, which was released in November 1988 and remains unnervingly, chillingly appropriate for our modern age.
Continue reading “Dictatorship in Disguise: Authoritarian Monsters Wreak Havoc on Our Freedoms”
Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship
Guest Post by Margaret Anna Alice
This is Part 2 of Anatomy of a Philanthropath. Read Part 1: A Mostly Peaceful Depopulation for context
“Regulation mania, as manifested in government bureaucracy, attempts to render social interactions rational and logical by squeezing them into performed templates. In this respect, the ideal bureaucrat is identical to a computer. They strictly adhere to the logic of their system without being ‘distracted’ by the individuality of the people they ‘assist.’ For this reason, a bureaucratic system generates exactly the same frustration as a computer. We are confronted with a mechanical Other who is in no way sensitive to our individuality as human beings. A computer is not so much an unfair or unjust Other; it is an Other who imposes a relentless logic.… In this respect, the computer resembles the ideal totalitarian leader: He strictly and ruthlessly imposes his logic on the population.”
—Mattias Desmet, The Psychology of Totalitarianism (Kindle, hardcover, audiobook, audio CD)
Former Club of Rome Director Dennis Lynn Meadows’s fantasies of a smart dictatorship are now being realized thanks to the wonders of biosurveillance technology, and Nazi-adjacent Klaus Schwab advisor/World Economic Forum (WEF) programmer Say-the-Quiet-Part-out-Loud Yuval Noah Harari can’t wait to tell you about it:
“The surveillance technology gave the tools how to control millions of people against their will in a much more effective way. And these tools, again, are now being exported all over the world. So, this is just an example of how the new technology changes the geopolitical balance of power, whether on a regional level or on a global level.
“And again, if you look globally, then we see that now you can really buy a package of how to create a digital dictatorship just off the shelf. There’s many countries around the world that can’t develop or don’t have these technologies locally, but they can just buy all the necessary tools and know-how and even people to operate the system from elsewhere.” (emphases mine here and in subsequent quotes)
Continue reading “Anatomy of a Philanthropath: Dreams of Democide & Dictatorship”
Rule by Fiat: When the Government Does Whatever It Wants
Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
“We are fast approaching the stage of the ultimate inversion: the stage where the government is free to do anything it pleases, while the citizens may act only by permission; which is the stage of the darkest periods of human history, the stage of rule by brute force.” — Ayn Rand
Rule by brute force.
That’s about as good a description as you’ll find for the sorry state of our nation.
SWAT teams crashing through doors. Militarized police shooting unarmed citizens. Traffic cops tasering old men and pregnant women for not complying fast enough with an order. Resource officers shackling children for acting like children. Homeowners finding their homes under siege by police out to confiscate lawfully-owned guns. Drivers having their cash seized under the pretext that they might have done something wrong.
The list of abuses being perpetrated against the American people by their government is growing rapidly.
We are approaching critical mass.
Continue reading “Rule by Fiat: When the Government Does Whatever It Wants”
“The People’s Democratic Dictatorship”
Guest Post by Jeff Thomas via International Man
Mao Zedong was, by all assessments, not the nicest fellow.
In 1964, he published “Quotations from Chairman Mao,” which came to be known to all and sundry as “Mao’s Little Red Book.”
At first, it just went out to the military, but by 1966, it gained far wider distribution. The goal was for “ninety-nine percent (of the population of China) to read Chairman Mao’s book.”
To be objective, it’s not a great read. It’s merely a collection of rhetoric, intended to indoctrinate the people of China as to “what’s expected of you.”
From time to time, someone from the West will quote a particular passage, but one reference that Chairman Mao made that has escaped notice is his reference to “the people’s democratic dictatorship.”
NO ONE GETS OUT OF HERE ALIVE (PART TWO)
In Part One of this article I exposed the numerous false narratives being peddled to the masses, as this Fourth Turning is entering the intense phase headed towards an unknown climax.
I’ve been expecting the next shoe to fall in this Fourth Turning for years, but the financial elite have pulled the debt levers to keep the Ponzi scheme alive far longer than a reasonable person would expect. We are only six weeks into 2020 and it seems like a year’s worth of major events have already occurred. The year started with the assassination of Qasem Soleimani in Iraq.
For the next week the world was awash in rhetoric about World War III and possible revolution in Iran. Accusations of Trump using the Wag the Dog method to deflect the negative press from the impeachment hearings were rampant among the half of the country that despises Trump. Soleimani was lauded as a hero by the left and a terrorist by the right. Now, the entire episode seems like ancient history, as more interesting squirrels have arisen for the propaganda media to chase.
The entire month of January was occupied by the ongoing coup/impeachment against Donald Trump. Schiff, Nadler and Pelosi doing their best impression of the three stooges, conducted a laughable prosecution in the House, revealing this was nothing more than a desperate attempt to avoid losing to Trump in a November landslide. The predictable trial in the Senate resulted in an acquittal and Trump’s popularity soaring to all-time highs, as independents realized the Democrats misused the power of impeachment for purely political purposes. Trump’s SOTU address infuriated Pelosi to such an extent it provoked her into acting like a petulant child, tearing up the speech. Future campaign ads wrote themselves.
“Toto, I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore”
Guest Post by Jeff Thomas
Recently, an American colleague commented to me, “We no longer live in a democracy but a dictatorship disguised as a democracy.”
Is he correct? Well, a dictatorship may be defined as “a form of government in which absolute authority is exercised by a dictator.”
The US today is not be ruled by dictatorship (although, to some, it may well feel that way.)
But, if that’s the case, what form of rule does exist in the US?
Continue reading ““Toto, I Don’t Think We’re in Kansas Anymore””
Has America Become a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy?
Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
“The poor and the underclass are growing. Racial justice and human rights are nonexistent. They have created a repressive society and we are their unwitting accomplices. Their intention to rule rests with the annihilation of consciousness. We have been lulled into a trance. They have made us indifferent to ourselves, to others. We are focused only on our own gain.”—They Live, John Carpenter
We’re living in two worlds, you and I.
There’s the world we see (or are made to see) and then there’s the one we sense (and occasionally catch a glimpse of), the latter of which is a far cry from the propaganda-driven reality manufactured by the government and its corporate sponsors, including the media.
Indeed, what most Americans perceive as life in America—privileged, progressive and free—is a far cry from reality, where economic inequality is growing, real agendas and real power are buried beneath layers of Orwellian doublespeak and corporate obfuscation, and “freedom,” such that it is, is meted out in small, legalistic doses by militarized police armed to the teeth.
All is not as it seems.
Continue reading “Has America Become a Dictatorship Disguised as a Democracy?”
I Would Support Trump If He Decided To Become A Benevolent Dictator. So Should You.
It is crystal clear at this point that Trump has many enemies who are hell-bent on thwarting him at every possible turn. A small sampling;
— The entire Democrat party is already gearing up to turn Trump into a Lame Duck starting from Day 1. I have heard various Democrat strategists saying that since Republicans have been “obstructionist” for the past eight years that they will do likewise. There are probably a handful of Democrats willing to give Trump at least his First 100 Days. However, I’m positive they don’t have the testicular fortitude (nads) to stand up to their party’s Hate Machine.
— A huge chunk of the Republican Party. Let’s start with this list HERE of over 450 Backstabbers who left the Republican Party during the 2016 presidential election, or Republicans who endorsed a different candidate. NOTE: It does not include Republicans who opposed Trump during the primaries but have not announced opposition to Trump as the nominee … wolves in sheep clothing such as that despicable opportunist, Paul Ryan and ilk, which are Legion in number. These people never had nads to start with.
This Is Not The America My Parents Immigrated To In 1957
Not that I remember what America was like in 1957, as I was not yet five years old. Years later, when I was old enough to understand, they told me their story. Briefly, it goes like this.
Dad was born in Romania (Czernowitz in Northern Bulovina), but he identified (haha) as German because, well, his dad was German, his mom was German, they spoke German and kept German customs, and lived in a German community so, applying the “quacking duck” theory, that’s what he was. Mom was born in Yugoslavia (now, Slovenia), but she identified as German for the same reasons as dad did. The Nazi regime would refer to folks such as my parents as “Volksdeutsche” —- being German as a people or race, regardless of citizenship. More on that here.
When dad was about seventeen the Deutsche Wehrmacht (army) made a pit stop in his neck of the woods, and forcibly yanked his ass off the farm, and within a few weeks turned him into a bonafide Mortarman (dudes who launch grenades). He might have destroyed or damaged a Russkie tank or two, but was eventually captured by the Russians, and spent the rest of the war, and some time thereafter, in one of their luxurious prison camps. When mom was a pre-teen the Russian army made a pit stop in her neck of the woods, killed most of her family, but spared her life and put her to work as a slave laborer and sex-toy (cuz she was very pretty), in one of their gulags.
Continue reading “This Is Not The America My Parents Immigrated To In 1957”
The State of the Nation: A Dictatorship Without Tears
Guest Post by John W. Whitehead
“There will be, in the next generation or so, a pharmacological method of making people love their servitude, and producing dictatorship without tears, so to speak, producing a kind of painless concentration camp for entire societies, so that people will in fact have their liberties taken away from them, but will rather enjoy it, because they will be distracted from any desire to rebel by propaganda or brainwashing, or brainwashing enhanced by pharmacological methods. And this seems to be the final revolution.”—Aldous Huxley
There’s a man who contacts me several times a week to disagree with my assessments of the American police state. According to this self-avowed Pollyanna who is tired of hearing “bad news,” the country is doing just fine, the government’s intentions are honorable, anyone in authority should be blindly obeyed, those individuals who are being arrested, shot and imprisoned must have done something to deserve such treatment, and if you have nothing to hide, you shouldn’t care whether the government is spying on you.
In other words, this man trusts the government with his life, his loved ones and his property, and anyone who doesn’t feel the same should move elsewhere.
It’s tempting to write this man off as dangerously deluded, treacherously naïve, and clueless to the point of civic incompetence. However, he is not alone in his goose-stepping, comfort-loving, TV-watching, insulated-from-reality devotion to the alternate universe constructed for us by the Corporate State with its government propaganda, pseudo-patriotism and contrived political divisions.
While only 1 in 5 Americans claim to trust the government to do what is right, the majority of the people are not quite ready to ditch the American experiment in liberty. Or at least they’re not quite ready to ditch the government with which they have been saddled.
As The Washington Post concludes, “Americans hate government, but they like what it does.” Indeed, kvetching aside, Americans want the government to keep providing institutionalized comforts such as Social Security, public schools, and unemployment benefits, fighting alleged terrorists and illegal immigrants, defending the nation from domestic and foreign threats, and maintaining the national infrastructure. And it doesn’t matter that the government has shown itself to be corrupt, abusive, hostile to citizens who disagree, wasteful and unconcerned about the plight of the average American.
Continue reading “The State of the Nation: A Dictatorship Without Tears”
US Approves 11 Billion Dollar Deal to Sell Combat Ships to Brutal Dictatorship
Guest Post by Sarah Lazare
Deal defies global call for arms embargo over mounting evidence of the Saudi dictatorship’s war crimes in Yemen.
(COMMONDREAMS) Defying the international call for an arms embargo over war crimes concerns, the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) announced Tuesday it has approved an $11.25 billion deal to sell combat ships to Saudi Arabia, which has been waging a military assault against Yemen for more than six months.
“The selling of arms in the middle of a war will obviously send the message that the Saudis can do whatever they want and get away with it,” Farea Al-Muslimi, Beirut-based Yemeni writer and visiting scholar with Carnegie Middle East Center, told Common Dreams.
The U.S. Defense Security Cooperation Agency, which is part of the DoD, announced Tuesday that is has rubber-stamped the export of four “Multi-Mission Surface Combatant (MMSC) Ships and associated equipment, parts and logistical support for an estimated cost of $11.25 billion” to Saudi Arabia.
“This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security goals of the United States by helping to improve the security of a strategic regional partner, which has been, and continues to be, an important force for political stability and economic progress in the Middle East,” the U.S. agency stated.
Continue reading “US Approves 11 Billion Dollar Deal to Sell Combat Ships to Brutal Dictatorship”
MEANWHILE….IN GREECE
Greeks Vote Again – Why Bother?
I am here in Athens for the elections this weekend. I must state, at this point in the game it appears to be just Greek theater with the politicians playing merely parts with the strings beging pulled from Brussels. Whoever governs is almost really a moot point, for it seems that the political forces are not interested in any honest democratic process which was invented in Athens. The political forces appear to be simply prepared to fit in with whatever the country’s international creditors demand.
The Greek people seem to be staring into the abyss with no chance of reversing the economic decline. What governments do not comprehend is rather stark. When the people lose the right to vote, then dictatorship emerges. That historically leads to revolution. If the political forces of Europe do not listen to the people, this is what will lead to civil unrest, uprisings, and revolution. Often, government sensing it will face an uprising, then seeks and external enemy to blame. Revolution can then only be avoided by war with another nation. This is the cold blunt truth of history.
Why The Powers That Be Are Pushing A Cashless Society
Submitted by George Washington on 05/04/2015 00:23 -0400
We Can’t Rein In the Banks If We Can’t Pull Our Money Out of Them
Martin Armstrong summarizes the headway being made to ban cash, and argues that the goal of those pushing a cashless society is to prevent bank runs … and increase their control:
The central banks are … planning drastic restrictions on cash itself. They see moving to electronic money will first eliminate the underground economy, but secondly, they believe it will even prevent a banking crisis.This idea of eliminating cash was first floated as the normal trial balloon to see how the people take it. It was first launched by Kenneth Rogoff of Harvard University and Willem Buiter, the chief economist at Citigroup. Their claims have been widely hailed and their papers are now the foundation for the new age of Economic Totalitarianism that confronts us. Rogoff and Buiter have laid the ground work for the end of much of our freedom and will one day will be considered the new Marx with hindsight. They sit in their lofty offices but do not have real world practical experience beyond theory. Considerations of their arguments have shown how governments can seize all economic power are destroy cash in the process eliminating all rights. Physical paper money provides the check against negative interest rates for if they become too great, people will simply withdraw their funds and hoard cash. Furthermore, paper currency allows for bank runs. Eliminate paper currency and what you end up with is the elimination of the ability to demand to withdraw funds from a bank.
***
In many nations, specific measures have already been taken demonstrating that the Rogoff-Buiter world of Economic Totalitarianism is indeed upon us. This is the death of Capitalism. Of course the socialists hate Capitalism and see other people’s money should be theirs. What they cannot see is that Capitalism is freedom from government totalitarianism. The freedom to pursue the field you desire without filling the state needs that supersede your own.
There have been test runs of this Rogoff-Buiter Economic Totalitarianism to see if the idea works. I reported on June 21, 2014 that Britain was doing a test run. A shopping street in Manchester banned cash as part of an experiment to see if Brits would accept a cashless society. London buses ended accepting cash payments from July 2014. Meanwhile, Currency Exchange dealers began offering debt cards instead of cash that they market as being safer to travel with. The Chorlton, South Manchester experiment was touted to test customers and business reaction to the idea for physical currency will disappear inside 20 years.
Continue reading “Why The Powers That Be Are Pushing A Cashless Society”
THE DICTATOR ISSUES ANOTHER PROCLAMATION
And the sheep sit idly by tapping away on their iGadgets.
Guess who will be declared a cyber threat in the foreseeable future – TBP, ZH, Liberty Blitzkrieg, and any other website that questions authority, tells the truth, or disagrees with those in power.
Hitler used phantom threats as a way to increase his power, until it was too late.
Heil Obama!!!
Obama Dictates National “Cyber Security” Emergency
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 04/01/2015 08:58 -0400
It’s business as usual in Washington. President Obama has just signed another Executive Order declaring a National Emergency to deal with cyber threats:
- *OBAMA ORDER CREATES NEW AUTHORITY TO RESPOND TO CYBER THREATS TO BE USED IN ‘TARGETED MANNER’
- *OBAMA ORDER ALLOWS SANCTIONS FOR CYBER THREATS
This new authority, yet another layer of government oversight, we are sure is for your own protection and in Obama’s words will “augment work to fight cyber threats.” All your internet is belong to us…
The national and economic security of the United States depends on the reliable functioning of the Nation’s critical infrastructure in the face of such threats. It is the policy of the United States to enhance the security and resilience of the Nation’s critical infrastructure and to maintain a cyber environment that encourages efficiency, innovation, and economic prosperity while promoting safety, security, business confidentiality, privacy, and civil liberties.
We can achieve these goals through a partnership with the owners and operators of critical infrastructure to improve cybersecurity information sharing and collaboratively develop and implement risk-based standards.
MEANWHILE IN BAHRAIN – HOME OF US CENTRAL COMMAND
Funny how we don’t condemn Bahrain for torturing their citizens and running a brutal dictatorship. I wonder why.
This is the home of the headquarters for Commander, United States Naval Forces Central Command (COMUSNAVCENT) / United States Fifth Fleet (COMFIFTHFLT), and around 6,000 United States military personnel.
Inspired by the regional Arab Spring, Bahrain’s Shia majority started large protests against its Sunni rulers in early 2011. The government initially allowed protests following a pre-dawn raid on protesters camped in Pearl Roundabout. A month later it requested security assistance from Saudi Arabia and other GCC countries and declared a three-month state of emergency.
Continue reading “MEANWHILE IN BAHRAIN – HOME OF US CENTRAL COMMAND”