Obama is rapidly turning this country into a totalitarian regime

[Harconen]

                     Obama is rapidly turning this country into a totalitarian regime


http://canadafreepress.com/index.php/article/13120
By Dr. Laurie Roth  Thursday, July 23, 2009


                                                         

Just this week I was talking to a high level contact who had just talked with a member of the Homeland Security Dept.  They revealed to him that Obama is planning to nationalize every security force that currently guards any military structure and all 800,000 Government buildings.  Currently these buildings and facilities have been guarded by private security companies…..not when Obama is through.  This will immediately put thousands of security companies and hundreds of thousands of workers out of business. 

Hundreds of thousands more jobs of private security companies will be gone but even more chilling, Obama will have a national police force, peppered through out the country, in every city where there are any Government buildings or military sites of any kind.  The question every American, liberal, conservative, black or white should be asking is WHY does Obama plan to have a national police and security force?  Why is he continuing to break into the private banking sector, business sector and now security sector? 

Is Dr. Alan Keys right?  He has said on and off my radio show that Obama will declare martial law after a created crises, thus ending the next cycle of elections and staying in control? 

My source also with a top military service background said that Obama is marching forward to create a Totalitarianism regime.  He predicted that first, Obama will establish a national police/security force then he will take our guns.  My comment at this stage is……Obama may TRY TO TAKE OUR GUNS!!!





Lets see……a national security force and now BOOK DELETIONS?

Also my same source shared with me the order that came from an Obama official last week to Amazon to delete 4 books, all on totalitarianism.  You may remember Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm.  They and two other related books were all deleted, so that even if people had already bought them they would have their books disappear.  Isn’t that a form of stealing folks?  It is as if you went out and bought a room full of furniture and a thug broke in and ripped your couch and love seat to shreds.  Why did Obama want books talking about Totalitarianism threats deleted?  Could it be he wants people to know less of what he is up to?  You decide.  Not surprisingly, Amazon said deleting the books was a mistake though shockingly they aren’t about to say who gave the order from Obama’s administration.

He has already started demonizing conservative patriots in the U.S.  Last April we saw Homeland Security release a report that warned of many dangerous and monstrous Americans to watch carefully.  Anyone that is a returning Vet, pro life, pro 2nd amendment, pro sovereignty, fearful of communistic regimes, and pro Government accountability are already in the suspected cross hairs of being a domestic terrorist.  I must be the anti Christ with these new rules!  Remember, when changing a culture into a totalitarian regime you must create enemies of those who would defend and fight for freedom.

Is it clear yet why Obama and his administration came out so quickly behind Manuel Zelaya who was ousted by the Honduran Supreme Court and congress?  Zelaya was tied directly to massive voter fraud, trying to keep in power as Ortega did, trying to violate their very constitution, law and many other suspected violations.  Another one of my regular guests with extensive Honduran roots, property and business there said there is legitimate evidence also linking Zelaya with massive drug traffic coming in through his ranch from Venezuela.  The Hondurans did only what was proper and necessary for their countries laws and freedom.  How is it that Obama so quickly sided with the totalitarian, Chavez clone?  Could it be that Zelaya reflects Obama’s real world view….communist? 

My question to anyone in the military, police or security force that is taken over by Obama, will you turn on the American people?  Will you blindly obey as forces did when Hitler took over?  Will you allow yourselves to be the tools to take our guns?  Or, will you be REAL patriots, defending our constitution, bill of rights, freedoms and what is right?  I will close with my earlier thought…..WHEN OBAMA TRIES TO TAKE OUR GUNS.

                                                    http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-5464625623984168940&ei=m-N-Stb2HYT02gKpl-XzDg&q=1984&hl=en

[Volitzer]

This is all coming to head real soon.

It's ironic how the Chinese say "May you live in interesting times." 

[Harconen]

Yes my friend, interesting times indeed.

We will win.

[Harconen]

If people haven't woken up yet this surely will get a few more people thinking because the Obama administration has asked it's supporters in a blog to report any "fishy" emails concerning their health care bill or seen on the Web to flag@whitehouse.gov.

Critics have rightly called the move an Orwellian tactic designed to control the health care debate and stifle free speech and have complained that this is a clear violation of the Privacy Act of 1974 statute which generally prohibits any federal agency from maintaining records on individuals exercising their right to free speech.

The White House response to these claims is that it simply wants to be made aware of any "fishy" comments about its health care plan so it can set the record straight!? 

If this wasn't so shocking it would be laughable   

More here:- http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/07/white-house-collect-fishy-info-health-reform-illegal-critics-say/

[Harconen]

Critics Accuse White House of Playing 'Big Brother' in Health Care Debate

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/08/06/critics-accuse-white-house-playing-big-brother-health-care-debate/

The White House posted a blog Tuesday that asked supporters to report "fishy" information they come across about the health insurance debate. That plea for tips raised a slew of privacy questions.

A new White House tactic to control the message on health care reform has critics accusing the Obama administration of playing "Big Brother" and threatening the privacy of average Americans.

"No one expects that when they exercise their First Amendment rights to ask questions or complain about a proposed government program that they're going to be listed on a database in the White House," Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, told FOX News Thursday, saying the White House effort raises serious privacy concerns. "You don't have to be a conspiracy theorist to see the potential for serious abuse."

On Tuesday, the White House posted a blog that asked supporters to report "fishy" information they come across about the health insurance debate. The appeal was made at the end of the blog, which showed a video that countered a set of online clips that made it look like Obama wanted to eliminate private coverage.

"There is a lot of disinformation about health insurance reform out there," the blog concludes. "Since we can't keep track of all of them here at the White House, we're asking for your help. If you get an email or see something on the web about health insurance reform that seems fishy, send it to flag@whitehouse.gov."

With the request raising the possibility of a kind of Nixonian "enemies list" that would initiate a whole new brand of surveillance over that undertaken during the Bush administration, critics called the move an Orwellian tactic to control the health care debate.

"If you get an e-mail from your neighbor and it doesn't sound right, send it to the White House?" said Sen. John Barasso, R-Wyo. "People, I think all across America are going to say is this 1984? What is happening here? Is big brother watching?"

Cornyn alleged the request is part of the "demonization" and "name-calling" used by health care reform proponents to battle critics, who have been interrupting lawmakers with their concerns and questions at town halls across the country in recent days.

Rep. Mike Pence, R-Ind., said the White House should "clarify" what it meant by the message.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs on Thursday denied that the IP addresses or names of people would be trapped by the administration.

"We have seen and as I've discussed from this podium a lot of misinformation around health care reform, a lot of it spread, I think, purposefully. We have used on many occasions the Web site to debunk things that are simply not true. We ask people that if they have questions about health care reform and about what they're hearing about its effects on them, to let us know and we provide information to show that isn't true. But nobody is collecting names," Gibbs said.

Democrats have likened the scenes to "mob rule" and accused the protesters and critics of being backed or put up to the behavior by large conservative organizations.

In some cases, the critics at the town hall meetings have shouted at lawmakers, calling them liars and drowning them out. At least a handful of large organizations acknowledge they have encouraged people to express their concerns on health care reform and have challenged the demonization of attempts to organize communities around an issue that affects everyone.

The conservative organizations that have acknowledged encouraging town hall participation say they've only played a limited role. And at a number of town hall meetings, the participants have tried to engage the lawmakers in substantive debate.

Democrats have focused on the more unruly protests in an apparent bid to marginalize the opposition, particularly during the volatile period of summer recess.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi called the protests "astroturf" -- slang for grassroots organizing that is not genuine -- and even said the protesters are carrying swastikas to meetings.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said lawmakers will continue to press for reform "in spite of the loud, shrill voices trying to interrupt town hall meetings."

[Harconen]

Well, we now have president OBAMA... representing the left leg of the tyrannical monster that marched across Europe during the 19th/20th century and is here in America now in full force. Obama will pick up where Bush left off implementing with a fervor the Bush programs under new names, with a fresh face wielding the dictatorial powers that Bush & Co. coerced from Congress in the days after 9/11.

Here is Obama's more public website... for the unwashed...

www.change.org ...

Here is his more insider website... for the highbrow...

www.change.gov ...

Peruse them, and don't forget to read between the lines.

[Krista Davenport]

No, for the umpteenth time, totalitarianism happened under Bush, who signed the Patriot Act, wiretapped everyone, investigated their bank accounts and internet usage, rendered people, illegally detained them and started two illegal wars.

Of course, he was WHITE so most of y'all didn't care when he did it, now did you?

Hypocrites.

[Harconen]

Same agenda going on with Obama.

[Krista Davenport]

No, its not, he is putting an end to all of it.  It may not be as fast as it should be, but torture has been stopped, Guantonomo Bay is closing, along with illegal detention. Once the Iraq War ends, the other stuff will be ending, too.

[Harconen]

Krista, you are smart girl, don't you tell me that you really believe in that?

For your info Gitmo is still working in full scale, torture is still on, and illegal detention is still on as well. See posts in War President topic. And also this.

A further step toward a police state

Obama seeks to institutionalize indefinite detention

5 August 2009

Press reports have revealed that the Obama administration is considering the creation of a prison and court complex on US soil to process and hold current and future terrorist suspects. It would include a facility to indefinitely detain people held without trial or any other constitutionally mandated due process rights.

The reports underscore the profoundly antidemocratic agenda of the Obama administration, which is not only carrying on the Bush administration’s sweeping and quasi-dictatorial assertions of executive authority, but is seeking to institutionalize them.
Administration officials have referred to the proposal as “a courtroom within a detention facility” that would be jointly operated by the departments of

Defense, Homeland Security, and Justice. It would combine civilian courts and military commissions, further eroding the principle of a constitutionally independent civilian judiciary. It would mark a further assault on the bedrock democratic right of habeas corpus, i.e., the right to challenge one’s detention in a court of law.

The plan is being considered by a presidential task force, which is at the same time entertaining other possible measures to deal with the current Guantánamo prison population, numbered at 229, as well as future prisoners seized in the “war on terror.” The task force could make public some of its proposals this month.

In the context of the Obama administration’s insistence that the president, as the commander in chief, has the prerogative to order the arrest and incarceration of “terror suspects”—US citizens included—the proposal for the maximum security prison and court complex is especially ominous.
While Obama has dropped formal use of the term “enemy combatant,” his administration has in all essentials carried on the Bush administration policy, as a federal judge pointed out in a recent ruling in the case of Abdul Rahim al Janko. (See: “A change in name only: Obama administration ends use of ‘enemy combatant’ designation”).

Similarly, the administration defends the practice of rendition, in which alleged terrorists are abducted by US intelligence agents and transported for interrogation—and torture—to other countries. And it opposes any investigation or prosecution of Bush administration officials who approved and oversaw the use of torture at Guantánamo, US military prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan, and secret CIA-run black sites around the world.
Within the proposed prison-court complex, detainees could be subjected to federal criminal trials, military commissions or indefinite detention without trial, administration sources say. This third category would apply to prisoners the administration declares to be dangerous, but for whom incriminating evidence is scant or was gathered through torture.

Additionally, prisoners cleared of all terrorism-related charges, but who find no country willing to accept them, could also be jailed at the new facility.
The indifference of the US political establishment and the media to democratic rights is such that a plan for indefinite detention even of those declared by the government to be innocent raises barely a murmur of criticism, with the Washington Post offhandedly noting that “a new stateside facility could include a lower-security unit...for detainees who have been cleared for release.”

Administration sources indicate that the Obama administration may seek some form of congressional approval should it move the plan forward, the transparent aim being to lend a democratic veneer to profoundly antidemocratic policies that would establish the framework for the suppression of political dissent and repression on a massive scale.

The proposal exposes the token and cynical nature of Obama’s executive order to close Guantánamo, issued the week he entered office—to great media fanfare. The action was driven by a desire to remove what had become an international symbol of American lawlessness and brutality, with negative consequences for the aims of US imperialism around the world. Behind the effort to improve Washington’s image, the antidemocratic substance remains.
The prison-court complex proposal is in line with a general assertion by the administration of sweeping and virtually unchecked executive powers. Obama’s Justice Department has made clear its determination to broaden the judicial interpretation of the “state secrets” privilege, on the basis of which the government has moved to shut down, in the name of national security, court challenges lodged by victims of the Bush administration’s policies of rendition, torture and domestic spying.

Last month, Justice Department lawyers filed a friend-of-the-court brief in a Supreme Court case dealing with attorney-client privilege. The last five pages of the brief were dedicated to a defense of the state secrets doctrine—even though it was not germane to the case at hand.
The brief aims to elicit a directive from the Supreme Court on state secrets to the effect that the privilege is rooted in the Constitution—the dubious position Obama has carried on from Bush—and that therefore government appeals of lower court rulings rejecting state secrets claims should be allowed to go directly to higher courts, rather than waiting for the case in question to first be resolved.

The Justice Department brief cites a decision by the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit upholding the dismissal of a lawsuit mounted by a German citizen, Khaled el-Masri, who charged that he had been abducted and tortured by the CIA. A report by the Council of Europe confirmed Masri’s claims. But the case was dismissed on the basis of the Bush Justice Department’s assertion of state secrets.

Attorney Jon B. Eisenberg called the Obama administration brief a recapitulation of “the good old Bush-Cheney inherent presidential power theory.” Eisenberg represents a charity, Al-Haramain Islamic Foundation of Oregon, that claims it was the object of warrantless electronic surveillance during the Bush administration. Obama administration lawyers invoked the state secrets privilege in a bid to prevent the charity’s attorneys from viewing government evidence against their clients.

The implications of the state secrets claim are clear enough. “By giving the executive branch close to unilateral power to have lawsuits dismissed on national security grounds, the privilege can become a way to conceal government misconduct,” writes New York Times legal correspondent Adam Liptak.
Here again, Obama’s rhetoric about “change” stands exposed. “On the campaign trail and in more recent statements, President Obama has indicated that he wants to limit the use of the state secrets privilege,” Liptak notes. “In courtrooms, however, there has been little evidence of a new approach.”

If anything, Obama has intensified his predecessor’s attack on democratic rights. This is because, in the most fundamental sense, basic democratic principles are incompatible with the central policies of the American ruling class—the expansion of militarism and war abroad, and a further redistribution of wealth from the working class to the financial elite at home.

Obama’s latest moves once again demonstrate the impossibility of defending basic liberties within the framework of the existing political and economic setup, and the need for an independent political movement of the working class to defend democratic rights.

Tom Eley
 

[Harconen]

Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism?

By Sara Robinson, Campaign for America's Future
Posted on August 7, 2009, Printed on August 10, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/141819/

All through the dark years of the Bush Administration, progressives watched in horror as Constitutional protections vanished, nativist rhetoric ratcheted up, hate speech turned into intimidation and violence, and the president of the United States seized for himself powers only demanded by history's worst dictators. With each new outrage, the small handful of us who'd made ourselves experts on right-wing culture and politics would hear once again from worried readers: Is this it? Have we finally become a fascist state? Are we there yet?

And every time this question got asked, people like Chip Berlet and Dave Neiwert and Fred Clarkson and yours truly would look up from our maps like a parent on a long drive, and smile a wan smile of reassurance. "Wellll...we're on a bad road, and if we don't change course, we could end up there soon enough. But there's also still plenty of time and opportunity to turn back. Watch, but don't worry. As bad as this looks: no -- we are not there yet."

In tracking the mileage on this trip to perdition, many of us relied on the work of historian Robert Paxton, who is probably the world's pre-eminent scholar on the subject of how countries turn fascist. In a 1998 paper published in The Journal of Modern History, Paxton argued that the best way to recognize emerging fascist movements isn't by their rhetoric, their politics, or their aesthetics. Rather, he said, mature democracies turn fascist by a recognizable process, a set of five stages that may be the most important family resemblance that links all the whole motley collection of 20th Century fascisms together. According to our reading of Paxton's stages, we weren't there yet. There were certain signs -- one in particular -- we were keeping an eye out for, and we just weren't seeing it.

And now we are. In fact, if you know what you're looking for, it's suddenly everywhere. It's odd that I haven't been asked for quite a while; but if you asked me today, I'd tell you that if we're not there right now, we've certainly taken that last turn into the parking lot and are now looking for a space. Either way, our fascist American future now looms very large in the front windshield -- and those of us who value American democracy need to understand how we got here, what's changing now, and what's at stake in the very near future if these people are allowed to win -- or even hold their ground.

What is fascism?

The word has been bandied about by so many people so wrongly for so long that, as Paxton points out, "Everybody is somebody else's fascist." Given that, I always like to start these conversations by revisiting Paxton's essential definition of the term:

"Fascism is a system of political authority and social order intended to reinforce the unity, energy, and purity of communities in which liberal democracy stands accused of producing division and decline."

Elsewhere, he refines this further as

"a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."

.
Jonah Goldberg aside, that's a basic definition most legitimate scholars in the field can agree on, and the one I'll be referring to here.

From proto-fascism to the tipping point

According to Paxton, fascism unfolds in five stages. The first two are pretty solidly behind us -- and the third should be of particular interest to progressives right now.

In the first stage, a rural movement emerges to effect some kind of nationalist renewal (what Roger Griffin calls "palingenesis" -- a phoenix-like rebirth from the ashes). They come together to restore a broken social order, always drawing on themes of unity, order, and purity. Reason is rejected in favor of passionate emotion. The way the organizing story is told varies from country to country; but it's always rooted in the promise of restoring lost national pride by resurrecting the culture's traditional myths and values, and purging society of the toxic influence of the outsiders and intellectuals who are blamed for their current misery.

Fascism only grows in the disturbed soil of a mature democracy in crisis. Paxton suggests that the Ku Klux Klan, which formed in reaction to post-Civil War Reconstruction, may in fact be the first authentically fascist movement in modern times. Almost every major country in Europe sprouted a proto-fascist movement in the wretched years following WWI (when the Klan enjoyed a major resurgence here as well) -- but most of them stalled either at this first stage, or the next one.

As Rick Perlstein documented in his two books on Barry Goldwater and Richard Nixon, modern American conservatism was built on these same themes. From "Morning in America" to the Rapture-ready religious right to the white nationalism promoted by the GOP through various gradients of racist groups, it's easy to trace how American proto-fascism offered redemption from the upheavals of the 1960s by promising to restore the innocence of a traditional, white, Christian, male-dominated America. This vision has been so thoroughly embraced that the entire Republican party now openly defines itself along these lines. At this late stage, it's blatantly racist, sexist, repressed, exclusionary, and permanently addicted to the politics of fear and rage. Worse: it doesn't have a moment's shame about any of it. No apologies, to anyone. These same narrative threads have woven their way through every fascist movement in history.

In the second stage, fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power. Interestingly, in every case Paxton cites, the political base came from the rural, less-educated parts of the country; and almost all of them came to power very specifically by offering themselves as informal goon squads organized to intimidate farmworkers on behalf of the large landowners. The KKK disenfranchised black sharecroppers and set itself up as the enforcement wing of Jim Crow. The Italian Squadristi and the German Brownshirts made their bones breaking up farmers' strikes. And these days, GOP-sanctioned anti-immigrant groups make life hell for Hispanic agricultural workers in the US. As violence against random Hispanics (citizens and otherwise) increases, the right-wing goon squads are getting basic training that, if the pattern holds, they may eventually use to intimidate the rest of us.

Paxton wrote that succeeding at the second stage "depends on certain relatively precise conditions: the weakness of a liberal state, whose inadequacies condemn the nation to disorder, decline, or humiliation; and political deadlock because the Right, the heir to power but unable to continue to wield it alone, refuses to accept a growing Left as a legitimate governing partner." He further noted that Hitler and Mussolini both took power under these same circumstances: "deadlock of constitutional government (produced in part by the polarization that the fascists abetted); conservative leaders who felt threatened by the loss of their capacity to keep the population under control at a moment of massive popular mobilization; an advancing Left; and conservative leaders who refused to work with that Left and who felt unable to continue to govern against the Left without further reinforcement."

And more ominously: "The most important variables...are the conservative elites' willingness to work with the fascists (along with a reciprocal flexibility on the part of the fascist leaders) and the depth of the crisis that induces them to cooperate."

That description sounds eerily like the dire straits our Congressional Republicans find themselves in right now. Though the GOP has been humiliated, rejected, and reduced to rump status by a series of epic national catastrophes mostly of its own making, its leadership can't even imagine governing cooperatively with the newly mobilized and ascendant Democrats. Lacking legitimate routes back to power, their last hope is to invest the **** remainder of their base with an undeserved legitimacy, recruit them as shock troops, and overthrow American democracy by force. If they can't win elections or policy fights, they're more than willing to take it to the streets, and seize power by bullying Americans into silence and complicity.

When that unholy alliance is made, the third stage -- the transition to full-fledged government fascism -- begins.

The third stage: being there

All through the Bush years, progressive right-wing watchers refused to call it "fascism" because, though we kept looking, we never saw clear signs of a deliberate, committed institutional partnership forming between America's conservative elites and its emerging homegrown brownshirt horde. We caught tantalizing signs of brief flirtations -- passing political alliances, money passing hands, far-right moonbat talking points flying out of the mouths of "mainstream" conservative leaders. But it was all circumstantial, and fairly transitory. The two sides kept a discreet distance from each other, at least in public. What went on behind closed doors, we could only guess. They certainly didn't act like a married couple.

Now, the guessing game is over. We know beyond doubt that the Teabag movement was created out of whole cloth by astroturf groups like Dick Armey's FreedomWorks and Tim Phillips' Americans for Prosperity, with massive media help from FOX News. We see the Birther fracas -- the kind of urban myth-making that should have never made it out of the pages of the National Enquirer -- being openly ratified by Congressional Republicans. We've seen Armey's own professionally-produced field manual that carefully instructs conservative goon squads in the fine art of disrupting the democratic governing process -- and the film of public officials being terrorized and threatened to the point where some of them required armed escorts to leave the building. We've seen Republican House Minority Leader John Boehner applauding and promoting a video of the disruptions and looking forward to "a long, hot August for Democrats in Congress."

This is the sign we were waiting for -- the one that tells us that yes, kids: we are there now. America's conservative elites have openly thrown in with the country's legions of discontented far right thugs. They have explicitly deputized them and empowered them to act as their enforcement arm on America's streets, sanctioning the physical harassment and intimidation of workers, liberals, and public officials who won't do their political or economic bidding.

This is the catalyzing moment at which honest-to-Hitler fascism begins. It's also our very last chance to stop it.

The fail-safe point

According to Paxton, the forging of this third-stage alliance is the make-or-break moment -- and the worst part of it is that by the time you've arrived at that point, it's probably too late to stop it. From here, it escalates, as minor thuggery turns into beatings, killings, and systematic tagging of certain groups for elimination, all directed by people at the very top of the power structure. After Labor Day, when Democratic senators and representatives go back to Washington, the mobs now being created to harass them will remain to run the same tactics -- escalated and perfected with each new use -- against anyone in town whose color, religion, or politics they don't like. In some places, they're already making notes and taking names.

Where's the danger line? Paxton offers three quick questions that point us straight at it:

1. Are [neo- or protofascisms] becoming rooted as parties that represent major interests and feelings and wield major influence on the political scene?

2. Is the economic or constitutional system in a state of blockage apparently insoluble by existing authorities?

3. Is a rapid political mobilization threatening to escape the control of traditional elites, to the point where they would be tempted to look for tough helpers in order to stay in charge?

By my reckoning, we're three for three. That's too close. Way too close.

The Road Ahead

History tells us that once this alliance catalyzes and makes a successful bid for power, there's no way off this ride. As Dave Neiwert wrote in his recent book, The Eliminationists, "if we can only identify fascism in its mature form—the goose-stepping brownshirts, the full-fledged use of violence and intimidation tactics, the mass rallies—then it will be far too late to stop it." Paxton (who presciently warned that "An authentic popular fascism in the United States would be pious and anti-Black") agrees that if a corporate/brownshirt alliance gets a toehold -- as ours is now scrambling to do -- it can very quickly rise to power and destroy the last vestiges of democratic government. Once they start racking up wins, the country will be doomed to take the whole ugly trip through the last two stages, with no turnoffs or pit stops between now and the end.

What awaits us? In stage four, as the duo assumes full control of the country, power struggles emerge between the brownshirt-bred party faithful and the institutions of the conservative elites -- church, military, professions, and business. The character of the regime is determined by who gets the upper hand. If the party members (who gained power through street thuggery) win, an authoritarian police state may well follow. If the conservatives can get them back under control, a more traditional theocracy, corporatocracy, or military regime can re-emerge over time. But in neither case will the results resemble the democracy that this alliance overthrew.

Paxton characterizes stage five as "radicalization or entropy." Radicalization is likely if the new regime scores a big military victory, which consolidates its power and whets its appetite for expansion and large-scale social engineering. (See: Germany) In the absence of a radicalizing event, entropy may set in, as the state gets lost in its own purposes and degenerates into incoherence. (See: Italy)

It's so easy right now to look at the melee on the right and discount it as pure political theater of the most absurdly ridiculous kind. It's a freaking puppet show. These people can't be serious. Sure, they're angry -- but they're also a minority, out of power and reduced to throwing tantrums. Grown-ups need to worry about them about as much as you'd worry about a furious five-year-old threatening to hold her breath until she turned blue.

Unfortunately, all the noise and bluster actually obscures the danger. These people are as serious as a lynch mob, and have already taken the first steps toward becoming one. And they're going to walk taller and louder and prouder now that their bumbling efforts at civil disobedience are being committed with the full sanction and support of the country's most powerful people, who are cynically using them in a last-ditch effort to save their own places of profit and prestige.

We've arrived. We are now parked on the exact spot where our best experts tell us full-blown fascism is born. Every day that the conservatives in Congress, the right-wing talking heads, and their noisy minions are allowed to hold up our ability to govern the country is another day we're slowly creeping across the final line beyond which, history tells us, no country has ever been able to return.

How do we pull back? That's my next post.


Sara Robinson is a Fellow at the Campaign for America's Future, and a consulting partner with the Cognitive Policy Works in Seattle. One of the few trained social futurists in North America, she has blogged on authoritarian and extremist movements at Orcinus since 2006, and is a founding member of Group News Blog.
© 2009 Campaign for America's Future All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/141819/

[Bianca]

Krista Davenport
Superhero Member

Posts: 1291



    Re: Obama is rapidly turning this country into a totalitarian regime
« Reply #6 on: Today at 01:06:08 am » Quote 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
No, for the umpteenth time, totalitarianism happened under Bush, who signed the Patriot Act, wiretapped everyone, investigated their bank accounts and internet usage, rendered people, illegally detained them and started two illegal wars.

Of course, he was WHITE so most of y'all didn't care when he did it, now did you?

Hypocrites


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------



Crying  R A C I S M  again, Krista?


YAWN......


                                                         B O R I N G and D U M B

[Harconen]

She is trying to deflect ANY criticism of nObama by saying it's racist.

Once you're accused of racism, you're supposed to just STFU and curl up into a little ball. I will not do it cuz:

Never mind the fact that the accusation is itself racist, since it blatantly implies that -- even though the policies of all previous presidents could be treated separately from their respective race (since they were white) -- Obama's policies can't be treated separately from his respective race (since he's "black").

Who are the ones who view everything through the prism of race?  The very people who accuse everyone else of being racist.


That's because "left-vs.-right" is not the only false paradigm in which countless millions of people have sheepishly allowed their minds and intellects to be enslaved by elite-funded propaganda campaigns.

Among the many other false paradigms are:

The non-racist Obama supporter-vs.-racist Obama hater paradigm.

The Austrian School "capitalism"-vs.-Marxist "socialism" paradigm.

And in the case of health care: the patient-funded/oligopoly-controlled health care-vs.-taxpayer-funded/government bureaucrat-controlled health care paradigm. The conservatives who've bought into this paradigm blindly assume that, if you support allowing government to finance the cost of health care via universal health insurance, then by definition you support allowing government to run health care itself via top-down, Nazi-style control measures (even though single-payer advocates who support the former oppose the latter).

The liberals who've bought into the same paradigm make two corollary (yet equally false) assumptions: (a) anyone who advocates governmental control of health care itself (such as Obama does) automatically supports universal health insurance (Obama doesn't); and (b) anyone who opposes governmental control of health care itself automatically opposes universal health insurance (even though single-payer advocates who oppose the former support the latter).

Who benefits from this false paradigm? The eugenicists do, because either way they win. Under Obamacare, you have population reduction through such things as tainted vaccines and denial of treatment. Under the phony "free market" alternative that lets overprivileged insurance and pharmaceutical oligopolies price-gouge everyone into bankruptcy, you have a more indirect form of population reduction -- with millions of people dying prematurely due to health care costs having been artificially driven out of their reach.

Good luck explaining all this to either side of the health care shouting match, though.

[Harconen]

Ben Stein fired from New York Times for exposing Obama as a Joker!

Ben Stein Hints: I Was Fired From New York Times For Criticizing Obama

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/blackberry/p.php?id=255897
Huffington Post | August 10, 2009 15:50:38
 

Ben Stein, who was fired last week as a New York Times columnist over the appearance of conflict of interest arising from his role as a spokesperson for credit rating service FreeScore.com, took to the American Spectator Monday to explain why he thinks he was "expelled from the New York Times."

In particular, Stein hinted that it was not his endorsement of FreeScore.com that proved problematic for Times editors, but his recent criticism of President Obama.

Stein wrote that he was informed that budgetary issues had forced the paper to cut his column to once every four weeks, but that he believes two other issues played prominently in his dismissal:

But the two main things, as I see them, were that I started criticizing Mr. Obama quite sharply over his policies and practices. I had tried to do this before over the firing of Rick Wagoner from the Chairmanship of GM. My column had questioned whether there was a legal basis for the firing by the government, what law allowed or authorized the federal government to fire the head of what was then a private company, and just where the Obama administration thought their limits were, if anywhere. This column was flat out nixed by my editors at the Times because in their opinion Mr. Obama inherently had such powers.


Stein added, "By a total coincidence, I was tossed overboard immediately after my column attacking Obama. (You can attack Obama from the left at the Times but not from the right.)"

Stein also dismissed the notion that his role as a spokesperson for FreeScore.com presented a conflict of interest for his role as a columnist.

"Of course, there was no conflict of interest," he wrote. "I had never written one word in the Times or anywhere else about getting credit scores on line. Not a word."


Special Report
Expelled From the New York Times

http://spectator.org/archives/2009/08/10/expelled-from-the-new-york-tim/print
By Ben Stein on 8.10.09 @ 6:09AM

My sister nailed it many years ago when she said, "Your basic human is not such a hot item."

Keep that filed in your head as I tell my little tale.

About five or six years ago, roughly, I was solicited to write a column every two weeks for the Sunday New York Times Business Section. I was really thrilled. I have written for the Washington Post (when I was a teenager), for the Wall Street Journal edit page under the legendary Bob Bartley, for Barron's, under the really great Alan Abelson and Jim Meagher, for my beloved American Spectator, under the great Bob and Wlady, and now having a regular column at the Times was going to be great stuff.

The column went well. I got lots of excellent fan mail and fine feedback from my editors, who, however, kept changing.

The first real super problem I had was when the movie I narrated and co-wrote, Expelled--No Intelligence Allowed, was in progress. A "science writer" for the Times blasted the movie on the front page and noted that I, whom she repeatedly called "...a freelance writer..." (not a columnist ) for the Times, was somehow involved. That was followed by a really fantastically angry blast against the movie by a reviewer who really hated it a lot. (I note that the Times also disliked Ferris Bueller's Day Off. Hmm.)

Expelled was a plea for open discussion of the possibility that life might have started with an Intelligent Designer. This idea, that freedom of academic discussion on an issue as to which there is avid scientific disagreement has value, seems obvious to me. But it drives the atheists and neo-Darwinists crazy and they responded viciously.

Some of them started a campaign against me in various forums, including letters to the Times.

At roughly the same time, I made a new set of antagonists by repeatedly and in detail criticizing the real power in this country, the "investment bank" Goldman Sachs, for what seemed to me questionable behavior. This elicited a mountain of favorable mail but also some complaints by well-placed persons.

Still, my editor at the Times stood by me loyally and was steadfast, even inspiring.

Now, in the time I had been doing my column, roughly five or six years, I had done many commercials for goods and services. No one at the Times ever said a word negatively about these. In fact, when I did a series of commercials with Shaquille O'Neal, the legendary basketball star, one of my superiors at the Times asked me for souvenirs. No one ever told me in any way, by word, look, or gesture, not to do commercials.

Meanwhile, the haters connected with atheism and neo-Darwinism continued to attack me.

Then, two things happened to change and end my career at the Times. Well, maybe three. The Times told me they were forced by budgetary pressures to only run me every four weeks. This was a blow and I started to think about where else I might write. (I had been solicited by many major publications while at the Times but my editors had asked me not to write for them and I did as asked.)

But the two main things, as I see them, were that I started criticizing Mr. Obama quite sharply over his policies and practices. I had tried to do this before over the firing of Rick Wagoner from the Chairmanship of GM. My column had questioned whether there was a legal basis for the firing by the government, what law allowed or authorized the federal government to fire the head of what was then a private company, and just where the Obama administration thought their limits were, if anywhere. This column was flat out nixed by my editors at the Times because in their opinion Mr. Obama inherently had such powers.

They did let me run a piece querying what I thought was a certain lack of focus in Mr. Obama's world but that was it, and then came another issue.

I had done a commercial for an Internet aggregating company called FreeScore. This commercial offered people a week of free access to their credit scores and then required them to pay for further such access.

This commercial was red meat for the Ben Stein haters left over from the Expelled days. They bombarded the Times with letters. They confused (or some of them seemingly confused ) FreeScore with other companies that did not have FreeScore's unblemished record with consumer protection agencies. (FreeScore has a perfect record.) They demanded of the high pooh-bahs at the Times that they fire me because of what they called a conflict of interest.

Of course, there was no conflict of interest. I had never written one word in the Times or anywhere else about getting credit scores on line. Not a word.

But somehow, these people bamboozled some of the high pooh-bahs at the Times into thinking there was a conflict of interest. In an e-mail sent to me by a person I had never met nor even heard of, I was fired. (I read the e-mail while having pizza at the Seattle airport on my way to Sandpoint.) I called the editor and explained the situation. He said the problem was "the appearance" of conflict of interest. I asked how that could be when I never wrote about the subject at all. He said the real problem was that FreeScore was a major financial company and I wrote about finance. But, as I told him, FreeScore was a small Internet aggregator, not a bank or insurer.

Never mind. I was history. "You should have consulted us," was the basic line.

Of course, there was not one word of complaint when I did commercials for immense public companies. By a total coincidence, I was tossed overboard immediately after my column attacking Obama. (You can attack Obama from the left at the Times but not from the right.)

I still do not see the conflict of interest. Credit reports on the Internet never was in my subject area. However, I don't sue newspapers. And the gig was getting to be so small that it really had a minor effect on my economic life. Still, I shall miss waking up on Sunday to see my column unless a neighbor here in Beverly Hills has stolen my paper. (No place, not one place, in Sandpoint sells the Times.)

The whole subject reminds me of a conversation Bob Dylan had long ago with a reporter who asked him what he thought about how much criticism he was getting for going from acoustic to electric guitar. "There are a lot of people who have knives and forks," he said, "and they have nothing on their plates, so they have to cut something."

I will miss writing my column for the Times but I miss many things. There were some great people there, really standup people. I got to love some of them. But as to the haters and the weak willed, I think my sister and Bob Dylan had it right.

You will still see my little thoughts, maybe in some big places. And I can put this Times gig on my résumé when I apply for Social Security. And, I really mean this, I will pray for those who use me despitefully, even if the neo-Darwinists think that's a waste of time. It's not.

One final thought. Well, maybe two final thoughts: first, it's sad that the Internet has become a backyard gossip freeway for the whole world's sick people to pour out their neuroses. I have seen a tiny fraction of all of the hate mail that's come in the wake of the NY Times announcement (which they promised they would not make in any event). Too many sick people out there on the web for comfort.

Second, among those who are not really such hot items, I fully include myself. Without doubt, I have made as many mistakes as a person not in custody can make. I make no claims to anything even remotely like perfection or even desirability as a role model. It is just that in this case, I didn't do anything wrong. In my life, I have done plenty wrong. I am not the master. I am the servant and a poor one at that.

Ben Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Beverly Hills and Malibu. He writes "Ben Stein's Diary" for every issue of The American Spectator.

[Harconen]

Militarizing the Homeland




"My very first recruiting officer was G.I. Joe," says Iraq war veteran Michael Prysner, an Iraq war veteran who was an aerial intelligence specialist in the US Army Reserve.

Award-winning journalist and Associate Editor of the Nation Institute's Tomdispatch.com Nick Turse writes in his book The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives: "As a product of the 1980s G.I. Joe generation, I can attest to the seductive power of those three inch action figures in selling the military to young boys."

In an interview with Truthout, Turse observed, "Only later would I learn just how enmeshed G.I. Joe's manufacturer, Hasbro, was with the military. One instance of this close association came to me in 2003 when the Department of Defense shared the specifications for their Future Force Warrior concept with the toy company, even before awarding the contract to General Dynamics. More important to the military these days are its ties to video game manufacturers. The latter turn tax-payer-funded combat simulators into first-person shooters that, in effect, pre-train youngsters in small-unit military tactics and irregular warfare."

Turse also talks of the Microsoft Xbox game "Close Combat: First to Fight," which was originally a training tool developed for the US Marine Corps by civilian contractor Destineer Studios. His book reveals that the game "was created under the direction of more than 40 active-duty Marines, fresh from the frontlines of combat in the Middle East [who] worked side-by-side with the development team to put the exact tactics they used in combat into "First Fight."

"... The game is typical of a recently emerging trend that has melded the video game industry (and entertainment industries more broadly) with the US military in a set of symbiotic relationships that literally immerse civilian gamers in a virtual world of war while training soldiers using the hottest gaming technology available. It's the creation of a digital cradle-to-grave concept in which games created by or for the military are used as recruiting tools and also, as it were, to pre-train youngsters. Then, when they are old enough to enlist, these kids find themselves using video game-like controllers to pilot real military vehicles and are taught tactics and are trained in strategy using specially designed video games and commercially available, off-the-shelf games that have been drafted into service by the military. That civilian-created, military-aided training tool was then recycled into a civilian first-person shooter, rated 'T' for "teen," with a marine on the game's packaging and a blurb that exclaims, "Based on a training tool developed for the United States Marines."

"First to Fight" is but one of many video games that the US military has availed itself of on an extensive scale to indoctrinate, desensitize, dehumanize and ultimately recruit young people into the vocation of legitimized violence in the name of heroism and patriotism.

When veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan gathered at a Winter Soldier event to share their stories and experiences in the occupations with the media, Kristopher Goldsmith, who has served in Iraq, spoke to Truthout about what influenced him as a youngster to want to join the military in order to kill people.

"It might sound crazy to anyone who is not a veteran, but video games and movies, especially recent ones, make death and dismemberment seem like ordinary things. You are desensitized to them. While growing up I used to think people at the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) were crazy, trying to censor violence and stuff like that... I was like 'Oh, well violence is real life,' but there's a huge difference between witnessing first-hand any sort of violence and sitting in a movie theater watching someone faking a death. Reality and pretending are two way different things. It's disturbing. You can ask any combat veteran, things like video games and cartoons like 'G.I. Joe,' dressing in camouflage and running around in the woods, even being in the Boy Scouts definitely makes children idolize soldiers ... and not idolize them for standing up for their country but just for wearing the uniform and being a tough guy. It's a sign of masculinity that a lot of young boys and young men want to achieve, and they do it through the wrong way."

Goldsmith joined the military at 18, right after high school, wanting to go to the front lines because, "I was still under the influence of the media and its Terrorism paranoia, and seriously believed that somewhere in the deserts of Iraq were thousands of WMD (Weapons of Mass Destruction)."

Goldsmith and Prysner are not alone in having responded favorably to the powerful combined influence of the entertainment industry and corporate media. There are innumerable others who have been lured into joining the military for the promise of violence that it offers.

The process of brainwashing and desensitization by the military begins affecting children in the US from a very early age. It is not insignificant that little boys wear camouflage and run around playing with toy guns whenever they get an opportunity.

Goldsmith also attributes his inclination towards violence to the Boy Scouts. A story in The New York Times describes the new Explorers program, a coeducational affiliate of the Boy Scouts of America as "training thousands of young people in skills used to confront terrorism, illegal immigration and escalating border violence - an intense ratcheting up of one of the group's longtime missions to prepare youths for more traditional jobs as police officers and firefighters."

Cathy Noriega, a 16-year-old girl in the program, was attracted by the compressed-air guns the students use while training. "I like shooting them. I like the sound they make. It gets me excited."

Officials involved in the program publicly claim, "This is about being a true-blooded American guy and girl."

Another irresistible agent that the US military has deployed in its recruitment and support drive is films. Turse elaborates the point, "In addition to toys and video games, the military has also strengthened its ties to Hollywood in recent years. Turning back to G.I. Joe, we can see this with the new movie: 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra.' My understanding is that when the war in Iraq was going especially poorly, and to make the movie more palatable for the global marketplace, the fighting force in the movie was supposed to be an international special ops team based in Europe. A negative response from American fans, and undoubtedly the desire to use DoD (Department of Defense) assets - like vehicles and bases - caused the studio to alter the script, apply for support and get a Department of Defense adviser on the film. As result 'G.I. Joe: The Rise of Cobra' joins a host of recent summer blockbusters, like both of the Transformers movies and Iron Man, for example, in selling the US military to America's kids."

The list of Hollywood films that have helped the military garner wide support from the American public for large-scale conflict is long. By glamorizing and sentimentalizing warfare and camouflaging the truth behind unprovoked aggression, these films have served their purpose well. To name a few of these, we have: Pearl Harbor, Behind Enemy Lines, Letters From Iwo Jima, We Were Soldiers, Saving Private Ryan, Black Hawk Down, Clear and Present Danger, and a host of others. If one looks at Hollywood's history of films that glamorize the US military, there are literally hundreds more.

At the time of entering WW I, the US established the Committee of Public Information, to develop guidelines for the media to promote domestic support for the war. In 1941, during WW II, there was a prolific production of war dramas and documentaries to boost the American war effort by Hollywood studios in association with the Pentagon. In 1948, the Pentagon established a special movie liaison office. Producers and directors who are willing to adapt their movies to Pentagon directives are given substantial financial and technical help, besides ready access to important defense locales and resources. Less obliging movie-makers are pointedly denied any assistance by the DoD. The objective is to encourage movies that inspire youth and, therefore, boost recruitment and not let negative portrayals of the army dissuade people from joining.

Turse writes in his book how this is done: "While the US military has long had a relationship with Hollywood, the ad hoc arrangements of old are over. Today, the air force operates airforcehollywood.af.mil, the official Web site of the US Air Force Entertainment Liaison Office. The military has even set up a one-stop shop - on one floor of a Los Angeles office building - where the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines, Coast Guard, and Department of Defense itself have film liaison offices. Additionally, the DoD runs an entire 'entertainment media division' from the Pentagon."

As an example, the first Transformers film released in July 2007 used a variety of Air Force assets, and for the latest iteration of the film, DreamWorks and Paramount studios partnered with all four US military services to highlight America's military members and combat power on the big screen.

Special military "advisers" are appointed to ensure the desirable changes are retained by the film makers. The Air Force was so happy to work with Hollywood on the movie Iron Man, that it had Capt. Chris Hodge as the DoD's project officer for the film. He is said to have gloated about the movie, "The Air Force is going to come off looking like rock stars."

According to Turse, "By co-opting the civilian 'culture of cool' the military corporate complex is able to create positive associations with the armed forces, immerse the young in an alluring, militarized world of fun, and make interaction with the military sound second nature to today's Americans. The military is now in the midst of a full-scale occupation of the entertainment industry, conducted with far more skill (and enthusiasm on the part of the occupied) than America's debacle in Iraq."

Even members of the US Congress have been captivated by the military's melding of fiction and reality. On July 27, 2004, the American Forces Press Service reported, in an article titled "Future Warrior Exhibits Super Powers," "The Army's future soldier will resemble something out of a science fiction movie, members of Congress witnessed at a demonstration on Capitol Hill July 23."

The successful integration of "culture of cool" and the culture of military is evident in the language of the veterans when they return home and speak of their actions against the people of Iraq. Expressions straight out of video game vocabularies like "lit you up," and "smoked 'em" are commonplace in their speech.

In a recent article, that documents Iraq war veterans engaging in violence and crime upon returning home, soldiers have described their experience in Iraq. Veteran Daniel Freeman told a reporter, "Toward the end, we were so mad and tired and frustrated, you came too close, we lit you up. You didn't stop, we ran your car over with the Bradley."

His friend Anthony Marquez, of the 1st Battalion, 9th Infantry Regiment, added, "With each roadside bombing, soldiers would fire in all directions and just light the whole area up. If anyone was around, that was their fault. We smoked 'em."

All available avenues have been explored by the Pentagon in its quest for a wide-based acceptance of its policies. Social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter have also been utilized for the tasks of seeking out young recruits and spreading its message.

That the US military has made blatant use of the Media and the entertainment industry to indoctrinate the young American mind is common knowledge. What has perhaps gone unnoticed is how the military is insidiously infiltrating our social and public lives. Earlier this summer, on Memorial Day weekend in Times Square, New York City, the military showcased weaponry while recruiters posed for pictures and engaged in small talk with women, men, children and families. Women fondled rocket launchers, small children pretended to fire heavy machine guns, young boys posed with assault rifles, and even housewives enjoyed the act of aiming rocket launchers.

The militarization of US culture in the minds of US citizens has grown ubiquitous. Just this month, the sounds of combat choppers, automatic weapons fire, and other battle noises being broadcast nearby a rural neighborhood prompted locals to protest. The sounds were part of a combat training exercises for SWAT team members and Marines. When civilian neighbors complained of the noise, live ammunition being used and smoke machines as being annoying as well as dangerous, the county opted to allow the war games to continue.

Author/journalist Chris Hedges articulated the issue for Truthout, "Well, the myth of war, at its core, is really a very visceral form of self-exaltation. It is about the empowerment of our nation, of our society, and by extension, our own empowerment. In the coverage, for instance, of the invasion of Iraq, this was clearly evident on the cable news channels where the way the war was covered was to bring in retired military to explain the power and precision and might of our own weapons. And I think, very much, one was made to identify with the power of those weapons and the power of the state. So war has a kind of seductive appeal. The entertainment industry makes a lot of money off it. The politicians perpetuate the myth of war, they romanticize war, they use words like glory, honor, courage, manhood, to appeal to desires on the part of large segments of the population who feel relatively powerless and relatively anonymous. And war is a way of elevating them, or at least so they believe, into a kind of nobility that peace time existence doesn't offer them."

If the US is to recover any of its waning international reputation and this civilization is to sustain itself, the nation and its citizens will have to invent safer, more human ways of elevating themselves.


http://www.sott.net/articles/show/190963-Militarizing-the-Homeland