THIS DAY IN HISTORY – Edward Snowden discloses U.S. government operations – 2013

Via History.com

On June 6, 2013, Americans learned that their government was spying broadly on its own people.

That’s when The Guardian and The Washington Post published the first of a series of reports put together from documents leaked by an anonymous source. The material exposed a government-run surveillance program that monitored the communications records of not just criminals or potential terrorists, but law-abiding citizens as well.

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Privacy

Guest Post by John Stossel

Privacy

I love my digital devices, but people keep telling me to worry more about my privacy.

“Encrypt your emails!” “Drop Google and use search engines like DuckDuckGo that don’t track us!”

I probably should. But I don’t. I’m lazy, and I like that web companies know me and show me things I’m interested in. I like that they display “restaurants near me.”

“You do not understand the way that that system is being used against you,” says whistleblower Edward Snowden in my new video. Snowden is in exile in Russia because he revealed how the NSA spied on us and lied about it. He says I should care more about what companies like Google and Facebook know. But why?

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Snowden And Assange: There Is Still Time For Trump To Do The Right Thing

Authored by Jacob G. Hornberger via The Mises Institute,

It is amazing to me that President Trump has pardoned some people who he considered heroic while continuing to leave Julian Assange and Edward Snowden, two genuine heroes, in the lurch.

Assange, of course, is getting the worst of it, given the brutal conditions under which U.S. and British officials have incarcerated him in England.

But it still can’t be a bundle of joy for Snowden to be living in Russia, given the societal jail-like environment that comes with living under the Russian regime.

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ILLUSION OF FREEDOM

“The illusion of freedom will continue as long as it’s profitable to continue the illusion. At the point where the illusion becomes too expensive to maintain, they will just take down the scenery, they will pull back the curtains, they will move the tables and chairs out of the way and you will see the brick wall at the back of the theater.” – Frank Zappa

“The choice for mankind lies between freedom and happiness and for the great bulk of mankind, happiness is better.” ― George Orwell, 1984

The quote from Frank Zappa has truly come to fruition during the first two weeks of 2021. We have been living in a Surveillance State since the introduction of the Patriot Act in 2001 (Biden has boasted that he wrote the bill years before). Until Snowden and Assange revealed the depth and depravity of this un-Constitutional intrusion into our lives only the Deep State cabal knew the truth.

Most Americans ignored these revelations, as they continued to be distracted and entertained by their iGadgets and new social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Youtube and others. These social media companies parlayed people’s narcissist need for affirmation, likes and followers into multi-billion-dollar conglomerates with near monopolistic control over the distribution of news, opinions, and on-line communication of the masses.

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TIME TO HEEL

“Whether in actual fact the policy of the boot-on-the-face can go on indefinitely seems doubtful. My own belief is that the ruling oligarchy will find less arduous and wasteful ways of governing and of satisfying its lust for power, and these ways will resemble those which I described in Brave New World. Within the next generation I believe that the world’s rulers will discover that infant conditioning and narco-hypnosis are more efficient, as instruments of government, than clubs and prisons, and that the lust for power can be just as completely satisfied by suggesting people into loving their servitude as by flogging and kicking them into obedience.” Letter from Aldous Huxley to George Orwell – 1949

Orwell v. Huxley | Apathy and Urgency

The Search for Scientific Optimism in Speculative Fiction: The Dystopic Worlds of H.G. Wells, Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley and George Orwell – Every Word Counts

Huxley’s vision of the future held sway for the next five decades, as generation after generation underwent government social indoctrination in public schools; medicating those who didn’t conform reduced dissent; incessant propaganda from government-controlled media convinced the masses to consume, obey and feel (no thinking allowed); and learned to love their debt servitude.

Orwell’s vision has taken precedence since September 11, 2001, slowly at first, but rapidly in the last year. A population drowning in cultural irrelevancy, ego enhancing distractions, and technological gadgetry making them dumber, are now being corralled using electronic surveillance, totalitarian dictates by government lackeys, the shredding of the Constitution, intense propaganda, Soviet style censorship of speech, and 3rd world style fraudulent elections to install the Deep State chosen puppet leader. The age of Huxley’s Brave New World has degenerated into Orwell’s 1984 and Solzhenitsyn’s Gulag Archipelago.

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Oliver Stone: Here’s Why Trump Should Pardon Snowden, Assange

What a coincidence. I happened to watch Oliver Stone’s “Snowden” last night. Extremely well done and sobering movie. The fact that it did only $21 million at the box office is a tribute to the Deep State and the MSM propaganda machines which have convinced the majority of ignorant Americans that Snowden is a traitor and endangered the national security of the country.

Nothing but bullshit. He proved that Clapper lied to Congress. Why is that fucker not in prison? He revealed to the whole world that everything they say, type, or record is being monitored by their government and will be used against them whenever the Deep State chooses.

Interestingly, the movie has an actual snippet of Trump saying Snowden should be executed. Assange and Snowden did more for the people of this world than any two men of the 20th & 21st century. The failure of people to support their release is a black mark for humanity. The Deep State has become bolder since Snowden’s revelations, basically saying “what the fuck are you going to do about it?”

Well. What are we going to do about it?

Via ZeroHedge

Filmmaker Oliver Stone has joined the growing chorus of activists calling for President Trump to pardon Julian Assange and Edward Snowden – without whom we wouldn’t know about intrusive government surveillance programs, the United States’ aggressive drone strike program, or that Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign manager and his brother are apparently into ‘spirit cooking‘ with a satanic performance artist.

According to Stone, pardoning the pair of whistleblowers “will take the edge off his pardons for his family & loyalists by being unselfish and not self-serving. And at the least, confound his many critics — as well as future historians.”

Second, “It will drive his enemies in #DeepState and #Media absolutely nuts!

“A pardon of @Snowden and #Assange would be a great shock to this world, and reflect well on @realDonaldTrump,” wrote Stone in a Thursday tweet. “Despite all the negatives he’s created, it will be seen as a purely merciful action. It will not be forgotten.”

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QUOTES OF THE DAY

“European totalitarianism is an upshot of bureaucracy’s preeminence in the field of education. The universities paved the way for the dictators.”

Ludwig von Mises

“If we don’t believe in freedom of expression for people we despise, we don’t believe in it at all.”

Noam Chomsky

“Even if you’re not doing anything wrong, you are being watched and recorded.”

Edward Snowden

“The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter.”

Winston Churchill

QUOTES OF THE DAY

“You will never be completely free from risk if you’re free. The only time you can be free from risk is when you’re in prison.”

Edward Snowden

“Low-income workers as a group are the major victims of minimum wage legislation.”

Keith B. Leffler

“The essential feature of government is the enforcement of its decrees by beating, killing, and imprisoning.”

Ludwig von Mises

“Blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows.”

Chalmers Johnson

THE ONLY THING SYSTEMATIC IS THE DESTRUCTION OF AMERICA

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!” – Upton Sinclair

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Upton Sinclair was describing willful ignorance based upon who butters your bread. The rampant corruption of our society, as power has been consolidated into fewer and fewer hands, has resulted in our political, financial, cultural and economic systems being captured by a billionaire class who use their wealth to dictate the path we are forced to follow – or lose everything.

The sociopath class include the Silicon Valley social media titans, the billionaires running the six mainstream media companies, the rogue billionaires like Soros and Bloomberg who fund chaos and foment insurrection, the Deep State surveillance agency operatives like Clapper, Brennan, Comey and Mueller doing the bidding of the oligarchy, Wall Street criminals like Dimon, Paulson, and Blankfein doing god’s work, and last but certainly not least – Powell, Yellen, Bernanke and slimy Kashkari priming the pump for the never ending systematic pillaging of the nation’s wealth.

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Should Snowden and Assange Pardon the US Government?

Guest Post by Jacob Hornberger

President Trump is saying that he might issue a pardon to Edward Snowden. For some reason, he hasn’t said the same thing about Julian Assange.

But a pardon suggests that the person being pardoned has done something wrong. Neither Snowden and Assange has done anything wrong — at least not in a moral sense. It is the US government — and specifically the national-security state branch of the federal government — that has engaged in terrible wrongdoing — wrongdoing that Snowden and Assange revealed to the American people and the people of the world.

Therefore, the real question is: Should Snowden and Assange pardon the US for having destroyed a large part of their lives and liberty?

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ARE YOU LOVING YOUR SERVITUDE? (PART TWO)

In Part One of this article I laid out the argument Huxley’s dystopian vision of the future had played out over many decades, but now I observe Orwell’s darker vision in motion since the start of this century.

70 years after 1984: How today compares with Orwell's prophetic ...

All the “solutions” being imposed by those in power don’t solve anything, because they aren’t designed to solve anything. These are nothing but short-term emergency sustaining maneuvers to keep the dying patient alive, while the criminals ransack his house, extracting whatever wealth he has saved. Throwing $1,200 bones and $600 a week bribes to what they consider the Main Street riff raff, while funneling trillions into the pockets of Too Big To Trust Wall Street banks, billionaire oligarchs, connected mega-corporations, and pliable corrupt politicians, is just what the doctor ordered for the ruling class.

Their weak-kneed toadies at the Federal Reserve have dutifully fulfilled their mandate of no banker or hedge fund left behind. While Main Street is beset with potholes, boarded up small business storefronts (if they haven’t been looted and burned), homeless drug addicts, and the unemployed lining up at local food banks, Wall Street is being paved in gold, with its inhabitants eating caviar, drinking champagne, and celebrating their brilliance in owning a central bank, guaranteed to enrich them.

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P FOR PANDEMIC

“People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people.” – Alan Moore – V for Vendetta

Coronavirus is close to becoming a pandemic, WHO warns - The ...

“Authority, when first detecting chaos at its heels, will entertain the vilest schemes to save its orderly facade.” – Alan Moore – V for Vendetta

I wrote an article called V for Vendetta – 2011 just over nine years ago on the day after the Tucson shooting where congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and eighteen others were shot by a psychologically disturbed lunatic, with six dying. At the time, I thought of the scene from the V for Vendetta movie where someone did something stupid and all hell broke loose. I expected a similar result from this act, but those in control of our society were successfully able to put a cork in the bottle, preserving their façade of order.

We learned shortly thereafter, through the patriotic efforts of Edward Snowden and Julian Assange, how the government was using the vilest of schemes to surveil every American through their abuse of the Patriot Act. The government has become an enemy of the people.

The Immelman Turn » Blog Archive » Giffords Assassination Attempt

It is interesting to go back and view my conclusion from nine years ago and assess its accuracy as of today:

“This country has not reached the level of control and fear seen in Orwell’s 1984 and V for Vendetta, yet. We are moving relentlessly in that direction. Surveillance, monitoring, spying, censorship, secret prisons, predator drones, and conforming to state rules and regulations put citizens further under the thumb of an all-powerful state. The freedom to dissent, the freedom to be left alone, the freedom to speak out against injustice, the freedom to disagree with your government, and the freedom to present your ideas without fear of retribution or penalty are essential in a democratic society.

The next phase of this Fourth Turning will surely include another downward spiral in financial markets as un-payable debts accumulate to a tipping point level. When ATM machines stop spitting out twenties, food shelves are bare and gas stations are shuttered, social chaos will ensue. The government will react with further command and control measures. In V For Vendetta, the government creates a terrorist incident in order to gain unquestioned control over the population. Americans will need to be more vigilant than they have been over the last ten years in keeping an eye on their government.”

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STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

“Secrecy begets tyranny.” Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

Image result for secrecy begets tyranny

“Thinking doesn’t pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.”Robert A. Heinlein, Stranger in a Strange Land

When I read quotes by men like H.L. Mencken and Robert Heinlein, I realize I’m not really a stranger in a strange land, even though I feel that way most of the time. These cynical, critical thinking, libertarian minded gentlemen understood government tended towards corruption and tyranny, the populace tended towards ignorance and distraction, and reality eventually teaches a harsh lesson to fools, knaves and dumbasses.

Sometimes we think the current day worldly circumstances are new and original, when human nature, politicians, and governments never really change. When Mencken and Heinlein were writing and providing social commentary during the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s, they observed the same fallacies, foolishness, lack of self-responsibility, government malfeasance, and inability of the majority to think critically, that are rampant in society today.

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