Stormtroopin' USA, Redention, Indefinite Detention, Creeping Facism
Politics / US Politics Mar 30, 2012 - 10:53 AM GMTBy: Richard_Mills
No term generates more confusion or misunderstanding than fascism, too many people believe that fascism exists solely in images on the History Channel - storm troopers pounding thundering jackboots down cobblestone streets of occupied countries while throwing up the Roman salute. But fascism is not defined by clothing, symbolism or salutes.
Fascism is a totalitarian system of government that bases its economy on capitalism, it's a marriage of government authority and military/police power managed by corporate influence.
"The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it comes stronger than their democratic state itself. That, in its essence, is fascism - ownership of government by an individual, by a group." Franklin D. Roosevelt
Consider the following, all are characteristics of fascism:
- A dictatorial ruling cabal runs the country
- The military is increasingly being used to control the civilian population
- The government repeatedly violates the U.S. Constitution
- Government informants are spying on their fellow citizens
- Controlled mass media
- Fraudulent elections
- Powerful and continuing nationalism, calls for national unity
- Militaristic values are spreading in society and the power of the military is increasing, glorification of war
- Obsession with national security
- Disdain for the recognition of human rights, racism
- Radical opposition to Communism/Socialism, Modernism and attacks on Liberals
- Identification of enemies as a unifying cause
- Corporate power is protected while labors power is suppressed - Fascism and capitalism are inseparable because the corporate power structure is authoritarian, and is geared to reward the elite owners, but not the workers. Few would argue against the fact that corporations control our government and have the dominant role in our society
- Obsession with crime and punishment
- Militarization of the police - Since the terrorist attacks in 2011 the US has spent $635 billion to militarize its police forces
- A trend toward corporatism and systematic destruction of the middle class
- Rampant cronyism and corruption
- Intertwining of government and religion
- A cult like leader
Consequences of fascism to the governed are the loss of rights and the enhancement of the elitists.
Creeping Fascism
"It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as WH Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere - while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing: "dogs go on with their doggy life ... How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."
As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war" - a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president - without US citizens realising it yet - the power over US citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone." Naomi Wolf, Fascist America in 10 Easy Steps, guardian.co.uk
Fascism is dangerous because its insidious, it is a natural degenerative process of a capitalistic society caused by the revolving door between government and the most powerful global corporations. Large multi-national corporations, through campaign finance and intense lobbying, come to dominant the legislative and political process.
"Fascism in America won't come with jackboots, book burnings, mass rallies, and fevered harangues, nor will it come with black helicopters or tanks on the street. It won't come like a storm but as a break in the weather, that sudden change of season you might feel when the wind shifts on an October evening: Everything is the same, but everything has changed. Something has gone, departed from the world, and a new reality will have taken its place.
All the old forms will still be there: legislatures, elections, campaigns plenty of bread and circuses. But consent of the governed will no longer apply; actual control of the state will have passed to a small and privileged group who rule for the benefit of their wealthy peers and corporate patrons.
To be sure, there will be factional conflicts among the elite, and a degree of debate will be permitted; but no one outside the privileged circle will be allowed to influence state policy. Dissidents will be marginalized usually by the people themselves. Deprived of historical knowledge by a thoroughly impoverished educational system designed to produce complacent consumers, left ignorant of current events by a corporate media devoted solely to profit, many will internalize the force-fed values of the ruling elite, and act accordingly. There will be little need for overt methods of control.
The rulers will act in secret, for reasons of national security, and the people will not be permitted to know what goes on in their name. Actions once unthinkable will be accepted as routine: government by executive fiat, state murder of enemies selected by the leader, undeclared wars, torture, mass detentions without charge, the looting of the national treasury, the creation of huge new security structures targeted at the populace. In time, this will be seen as normal, as the chill of autumn feels normal when summer is gone. It will all seem normal." Chris Floyd, November 10, 2001 Moscow Times
Assassination
The President of the United States claims he has absolute arbitrary power over the life and liberty of every person on earth - that he can order the execution or kidnapping of any person, in any country.
The Obama administration has compiled a hit list of American citizens targeted for assassination. Obama's top Terrorism adviser has suggested that the number of U.S. citizens targeted for assassination could be in the dozens.
It's obvious that if the present US administration thinks it can kill its own citizens with impunity the gloves are off for foreign nationals of any country.
Rendition
The Obama administration maintains that rendition is legal under U.S. law - rendition is the practice of snatching terrorism suspects from one country and rendering them into the custody of another.
"U.S. law does not even preclude the United States from rendering an individual to a foreign location where he or she could be abused or tortured." CIA assistant general counsel Daniel Pines
New Yorker journalist Jane Mayer says Egypt is the most common destination for suspects rendered by the United States.
According to aformer CIA agent, "If you want a serious interrogation, you send a prisoner to Jordan. If you want them to be tortured, you send them to Syria. If you want someone to disappear - never to see them again - you send them to Egypt."
Indefinite Detention
The US federal government is looking for contractors to provide staff and supplies for "emergency camps" located around the country.
The recently passed National Authorization Defense Act has a provision which empowers the government to arrest Americans and hold them in these emergency camps - you should read that as detention camps - with no legal recourse.
Also under the new law the US military has the power to carry out domestic anti-terrorism operations on US soil. The NDAA authorizes the military to detain even US citizens without trial and no legal recourse.
NDAA section 102: "which purports to authorize the president of the United States to use the armed forces of the United States to detain American citizens who the president suspects are or have been substantial supports of al-Qaida, the Taliban, or associated forces, and to hold such citizens indefinitely."
"The power of the Executive to cast a man into prison without formulating any charge known to the law, and particularly to deny him the judgment of his peers, is in the highest degree odious and is the foundation of all totalitarian government whether Nazi or Communist." Winston Churchill
Checkpoint USA
TSA motto - "Dominate. Intimidate. Control."
The Transportation Security Administration's (TSA) 25 Visible Intermodal Prevention and Response (VIPR) teams have run more than 9,300 unannounced checkpoints and other search operations in the last year.
Department of Homeland Security officials have asked Congress for funding to add 12 more teams to the federal agency's 25 VIPR units that are already scattered across the country.
"Uncontrolled search and seizure is one of the first and most effective weapons in the arsenal of every arbitrary government...Among deprivations of rights, none is so effective in cowing a population, crushing the spirit of the individual and putting terror in every heart." Justice Robert Jackson, chief U.S. prosecutor at the Nuremberg Trials
The $24 million in funding (in addition to the $110 million spent in fiscal year 2011) is in addition to the TSA's role in airports which costs taxpayers $5 billion a year.
VIPR units, comprised of federal air marshals, surface transportation security inspectors, transportation security officers, behavior detection officers and explosive detection canine teams are responsible for manning terrorism and drug checkpoints on interstates, in bus and train terminals, seaports, at major sporting events and, according to a May 2011 Federal Court ruling, even a Santa Fe high school prom.
"TSA and VIPR searches also indoctrinate children to accept pat-downs, full-body scans, and the like, as a regular component of the relationship between government and its citizens. In this way, police state tactics will gradually grow in acceptance as simply "the way things are." A child who has been molested by government officials since before he could read is unlikely to question such activities as an unjustified exercise of authority when an adult.
Furthermore, the normalization of intrusive searches arguably reworks the content of the protections provided by the Constitution, particularly the Fourth Amendment. Increasing use of pat-downs and other controversial screening procedures changes the definition of what is a "reasonable" search and seizure from a cultural perspective and therefore actually re-engineers the constitutional fabric by altering the definition of what is "reasonable" under the Fourth Amendment.
The increasing deployment of VIPR teams, obviously, also drastically undermines the right to privacy. There is both an intrinsic and instrumental value to privacy. Intrinsically, privacy is precious to the extent that it is a component of liberty. Part of citizenship in a free society is the expectation that one's personal affairs and physical person are inviolable so long as one remains within the law. A robust conception of freedom includes the freedom from constant and intrusive government surveillance of one's life. From this perspective, Fourth Amendment violations are objectionable for the simple fact that the government is doing something it has no license to do, i.e., invading the privacy of a law-abiding freeman by monitoring his daily activities and laying hands on his person without any evidence of wrongdoing." John W. Whitehead, ohiofreepress.com
"First we are told by the U.S. Supreme Court that American citizens have no 4th Amendment protections at border crossings, even when standing on U.S. soil. Now TSA takes the next logical step and simply detains and searches U.S. citizens at wholly internal checkpoints." Texas Congressman and US presidential candidate Ron Paul
Wiretapping the Internet
Federal law enforcement and national security officials argue that their wiretap abilities are dramatically decreasing as people increasingly communicate over the internet instead of by telephone.
Officials are asking Congress to require all services like BlackBerry with its encrypted e-mail transmitters and Skype because it's software allows direct messaging to be technically capable of complying with a wiretap order.
Data Mining
Why is the US government spending time, money and resources on watching over those that help bring news to the masses?
According to Oxford University Press, A Dictionary of World History "The inhabitants of a police state experience restrictions on their mobility, and on their freedom to express or communicate political or other views, which are subject to police monitoring or enforcement. Political control may be exerted by means of a secret police force which operates outside the boundaries normally imposed by a constitutional state."
The National Operations Center (NOC)'s Media Monitoring Initiative has given the NCO and its Office of Operations Coordination and Planning (OPS) permission to retain data on users of social media, online networking platforms, news anchors, journalists, reporters and anyone else, including government officials and common bloggers, who may use "traditional and/or social media in real time to keep their audience situationally aware and informed."
The Department of Homeland Security's says such data could consist of any intellect "that permits the identity of an individual to be directly or indirectly inferred, including any information which is linked or linkable to that individual."
The Department of Homeland Security, under the NOC Monitoring Initiative has been collecting information since 2010 and the data is shared with private sector businesses and international third parties.
Escaping The Matrix
Over 11,500 terrorist attacks occurred in 72 countries in 2010, resulting in almost 13,200 deaths - the number of attacks rose by almost five percent over the previous year.Of the 13,200 deaths caused by terrorism in 2010 just 15 were American private citizens, 13 died in Afghanistan, one in Iraq and one in Uganda.
The Heritage Foundation has compiled a list of 39 foiled internal terrorist plots against the US since September 2001.
"11,500 terrorist attacks occurred in 72 countries in 2010, resulting in almost 13,200 deaths" is an average of 1.14 deaths per attack; 39 x 1.14 = 44.46 lives saved.
In the ten years directly after 9/11 the increase in US domestic homeland security cost in excess of one trillion dollars - does not include foreign wars.
The risk of dying in the U.S. from terrorism is substantially less than the risk of dying in an accident caused by a deer.
2010 Leading Causes of Death in America
- Heart Disease - 595,444 deaths
- Cancer - 573,855 deaths
- Chronic lung disease - 137,789 deaths
- Strokes - 129,180 deaths
- Accidents - 118,043 deaths
The actual leading causes of death in the US are:
- Tobacco
- Poor diet and physical inactivity
- Alcohol consumption
- Motor vehicle crashes
"The defining dramatic moment in the film occurs just after Morpheus invites Neo to choose between a red pill and a blue pill. The red pill promises 'the truth and nothing more.' Neo takes the red pill and awakes to reality - something utterly different from anything Neo, or the audience, could have expected. What Neo had assumed to be reality turned out to be only a collective illusion, fabricated by the Matrix and fed to a population that is asleep, cocooned in grotesque embryonic pods. In the Matrix world, true reality and perceived reality exist on entirely different planes." Escaping the Matrix by Richard K. Moore.
Is a red pill, and the natural degenerative process of a capitalistic society, on your radar screen?
If not, maybe they should be.
By Richard (Rick) Mills
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