"In a time of universal deceit - telling the truth is a revolutionary act." - George Orwell
Once again I feel the need to comment on national/international matters. I promised myself I wouldn't do that here because I want to only write about local politics on AZ but I am too outraged not to write about this.
If you haven't read this article yet, please do....and read it again....
David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face
If you don't think there is an all out assault taking place on the First Amendment in this country and journalists around the globe, you're either not paying attention or you're fooling yourself. It amazes me that Americans would so vehemently defend a perceived attack on the Second Amendment while completely ignoring the very real attack taking place on the First. Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of this democracy and its power manifests in the 4th Estate...journalism. Without it, the other Amendments fall like dominoes. This cornerstone is being chipped away right in front of our faces.
I've posted this before but I think it's pertinent to post once again. It's from a 1967 Playboy interview with New Orleans D.A., Jim Garrison:
What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.
In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.
I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.
Read all this material...please.
Once again I feel the need to comment on national/international matters. I promised myself I wouldn't do that here because I want to only write about local politics on AZ but I am too outraged not to write about this.
If you haven't read this article yet, please do....and read it again....
David Miranda, schedule 7 and the danger that all reporters now face
Miranda was held for nine hours under schedule 7 of the UK's terror laws, which give enormous discretion to stop, search and question people who have no connection with "terror", as ordinarily understood. Suspects have no right to legal representation and may have their property confiscated for up to seven days. Under this measure – uniquely crafted for ports and airport transit areas – there are none of the checks and balances that apply once someone is in Britain proper. There is no need to arrest or charge anyone and there is no protection for journalists or their material. A transit lounge in Heathrow is a dangerous place to be.
Miranda's professional status – much hand-wringing about whether or not he's a proper "journalist – is largely irrelevant in these circumstances. Increasingly, the question about who deserves protection should be less "is this a journalist?" than "is the publication of this material in the public interest?""But that's England...", you may say. Then you need to read the debate that took place in the Senate over the titularly titled "Senate Free Flow of Information Act of 2013".
If you don't think there is an all out assault taking place on the First Amendment in this country and journalists around the globe, you're either not paying attention or you're fooling yourself. It amazes me that Americans would so vehemently defend a perceived attack on the Second Amendment while completely ignoring the very real attack taking place on the First. Freedom of speech is the cornerstone of this democracy and its power manifests in the 4th Estate...journalism. Without it, the other Amendments fall like dominoes. This cornerstone is being chipped away right in front of our faces.
I've posted this before but I think it's pertinent to post once again. It's from a 1967 Playboy interview with New Orleans D.A., Jim Garrison:
What worries me deeply, and I have seen it exemplified in this case, is that we in America are in great danger of slowly evolving into a proto-fascist state. It will be a different kind of fascist state from the one of the Germans evolved; theirs grew out of depression and promised bread and work, while ours, curiously enough, seems to be emerging from prosperity. But in the final analysis, it's based on power and on the inability to put human goals and human conscience above the dictates of the state. Its origins can be traced in the tremendous war machine we've built since 1945, the "military-industrial complex" that Eisenhower vainly warned us about, which now dominates every aspect of our life. The power of the states and Congress has gradually been abandoned to the Executive Department, because of war conditions; and we've seen the creation of an arrogant, swollen bureaucratic complex totally unfettered by the checks and balances of the Constitution.
In a very real and terrifying sense, our Government is the CIA and the Pentagon, with Congress reduced to a debating society. Of course, you can't spot this trend to fascism by casually looking around. You can't look for such familiar signs as the swastika, because they won't be there. We won't build Dachaus and Auschwitzes; the clever manipulation of the mass media is creating a concentration camp of the mind that promises to be far more effective in keeping the populace in line. We're not going to wake up one morning and suddenly find ourselves in gray uniforms goose-stepping off to work. But this isn't the test. The test is: What happens to the individual who dissents? In Nazi Germany, he was physically destroyed; here, the process is more subtle, but the end results can be the same.
I've learned enough about the machinations of the CIA in the past year to know that this is no longer the dreamworld America I once believed in. The imperatives of the population explosion, which almost inevitably will lessen our belief in the sanctity of the individual human life, combined with the awesome power of the CIA and the defense establishment, seem destined to seal the fate of the America I knew as a child and bring us into a new Orwellian world where the citizen exists for the state and where raw power justifies any and every immoral act. I've always had a kind of knee-jerk trust in my Government's basic integrity, whatever political blunders it may make. But I've come to realize that in Washington, deceiving and manipulating the public are viewed by some as the natural prerogatives of office. Huey Long once said, "Fascism will come to America in the name of anti-fascism." I'm afraid, based on my own experience, that fascism will come to America in the name of national security.
Read all this material...please.
5 comments:
Journalists? What about the Restuvus?
I have a friend, who currently, or in the last 6 months:
1. Has a "dial tone" on his cell phone which is almost certainly a carrier signal, which he can't get rid of.
2. Has a cellphone caller ID which shows up on the receiving end as another telephone number owned by the same cellphone carrier without his consent or explanation by said carrier.
3. Has his telephone calls from his land line inexplicably transferred to a distant area code WITH THE EXACT SAME NUMBER AS HIS but with a different area code in another state. The number is a "non-working" number but has an answer machine tone at the end of the "out of service" message.
4. Has outbound telephone call details which are not reported by the land line carrier in violation of FCC rules.
5. Receives email that is posted to his email inbox SIX TO 12 HOURS AHEAD of the actual delivery time, ie: actually received at 7am but shown as "delivered" at 3 4 or 6 PM, the same day.
6. Consistently has email that is delivered (timestamped) ten to thirty minutes AHEAD of the time he sends it. This results in "replies" to messages that show up before the original message. This while the computer is ALWAYS set to "internet time".
7. Sends and receives FAXES which are completely altered in their appearance upon receipt.
8. Ditto #7 but with email.
9. Has had telephone calls re-routed to a fictitious answer center that is posing as an actual legitimate business, when trying to call said business.
10. Has sent and /or received emails to addresses that should not exist, but are delivered or not reported as bad addresses; these as CCs from official correspondence that has no explanation for the errors from the sources of those odd address "mistakes" who work for said business.
11. Has computer windows that turn out to be unauthorized, unrecognized "virtual machines" unrelated to anything legitimate that is under his control.
These and other events have been reported to the following with no resolution:
1. Law enforcement.
2. Cell phone providers.
3. Wireline phone providers.
4. Internet / mail services.
5. Technology "experts".
6. Lawyers.
7. District Attorneys.
8. Employers.
9. Other government officials.
AND....the problems have only gotten...
Worse.
And this guy is NOT a JOURNALIST.
He has one very bad habit, however:
Asking Questions.
(OH, and connecting dots.)
Is it against the law to ask questions?
One answer:
There is a difference between: 1. Surveillance and
2. INTERFERENCE, and /or outright Fabrication.
The first is marginally, tragically, legal, in certain circumstances.
The other two are patently violations of federal and state statutes, even today. Am I right?
Some might ask: Why does it matter if you can send mails in the "future" without trying, and without remedy?
Now ask yourself: If you could take ten minutes of a persons life to change his electronic submissions, 24 hours a day, what kind of effects could you have on that person? If you could hijack someone's caller id, who could YOU call, "on his behalf"?
Does it matter? Are you listening?????????
Who ARE YOU, after all? Is your life, your very existence, still YOUR right to define?
Or has even THAT been taken from you?
Would you rather live in a box knowing exactly who you are, and where you must remain.... or "free", in a society where nothing you say or do, read or hear can be relied upon to be bona fide?
I wish I knew.
The "powers that be" can't buy the internet to control the content of the media as they have with newsprint and the "airways", so they must resort to these tactics. It's just the next step...
Jason,
You I feel have a good grasp of our history, but the masses of our country don’t. So if you would allow me to opportunity to enlighten those that don’t know a little bit of history that I was not taught in school.
In 1933, a US Marine, Major General Smedley Butler was approached by several wealthy business types. They had a plan to create a veteran’s organization that Major General Butler would “lead” in an coup de tat to overthrow the FDR administration. This group was not looking to install a new republic or socialism, their goal was a concept Mussolini had used, a fascist government. Now the coup failed because a loyal Marine loved his country and our Constitution. Major General Butler testified to the coup to the Special Committee on Un-American Activities. During this testimony it was revealed that some very familiar names were part of the plot, some of those include; Du Pont, Heinz, Colgate, General Motors, Rockefeller and Bush. That Bush is Prescott Bush by the way, daddy to George Hebert Walker Bush, granddad to George W Bush. The plot was exposed but no one went to jail. This idea of a fascist America was squashed or was it?
Let’s fast forward thirty years, it’s now 1963, November 22nd, gun shots rang out and an American President is dead. JFK had a big target on him by many organizations, the CIA, the Mob, and the Banking industry. Fascism failed in 1933 but was it successful in 1963? I say yes. Now we have banks writing bankruptcy laws and congress votes them into law. We don’t have politicians we have prostit-icians, to steal a word from Gerald Celente, they work for the big businesses not us. They make laws that benefit the large businesses. I am afraid to say it but Jim Garrison’s comments were right on the money. We now live in a fascist country. We have lost many rights through the un-Patriot Act and the NDAA not to mention countless other new laws that get passed in the middle of night on New Year’s Eve. The Constitution is the target, they will attack it with ever chance they can. School shooting let’s get the masses riled up about guns, a blogger reports on the illegal doing of a politician let go after the 1st amendment. I feel it will end all at once, like Garrison said, under the guise of National Security. We will be “attacked” by some new group of terrorist, but this group won’t be Muslim, they won’t be Jewish or Christian. This new terrorist will be you.
Smedley Butler was one of the greatest patriots in American history and you'd be hard-pressed to find an American who knows his name or what he did for this country.
You, sir, nailed it.
In my heart of hearts, I believe the most important aspect of this social experiment we call America...which is only about 250 years old, mind you....is the First Amendment. It's what separates us from every attempt at a democracy before us.
While the majority of middle Americans are crying, "From my cold dead hands!", I'm simply "crying" out loud. Nothing is more important to this democracy than freedom of speech...nothing. And I'm not dissing the Second Amendment, I'm simply stating that without the First everything is redundant.
When that basic American (I would say human) right comes under attack the way it has in the past decade and particularly in the past few months, it should be a clarion call to rise to its defense.
I worry that we truly are a nation of American zombies. I know for 80% of the populous that's most likely true but what of the 20% of us that are thinking souls? What of those rational, educated minds sitting in positions of government and power who know better? Where are they? Where is their voice, now? Where are the Smedley Butlers?
I don't know if we've too far gone to save the ship or not but what I do know is the First Amendment is the anchor. And if the ship is going down I'll at least do my part to throw the chain around the motherfuckers' necks.
...gone too far...sic
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