Submitted By: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
As I write this I’ve just read a story in the New York Times about the U.S. threatening countries in South America to not grant asylum to Edward Snowden. In typical “Times” fashion these countries are characterized as “leftist” mavericks against the assumed U.S. hegemony in that vast continent. http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/12/world/americas/us-is-pressing-latin-americans-to-reject-snowden.html?pagewanted=2&_r=0&hp . The attitude of the story is that these countries by resisting our government’s pressure are acting in a petulant manner. This is typical of the mindset of many supposed journalists today who are unable to put in context the history behind the actions of certain players on the world stage. What it highlights for me is that there seems to be unprecedented pressure by our government to capture and punish Mr. Snowden for his “crimes”. With my admittedly jaundiced view of much of the history of my country in my lifetime, the attempt to take Snowden down for his “crimes” makes sense if you put into the context of American history with respect to foreign relations and how foreign relations has impacted the growing unconstitutional treatment of United States citizens at home and abroad. Since this is a huge topic deserving of many tomes and therefore doesn’t lend itself to the guest blog format, my piece will present my own impressionistic view of the interaction between foreign policy and the growth of the American Police State since World War II, which can be expanded, abetted or contradicted by you the reader.
For all practical purposes the Second World War began with the almost total loss of the U.S. Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. While it was known that President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had actively been trying to aid Great Britain in its struggle against the Axis Powers in Europe, the American Congress was skeptical of foreign involvement and there was a large “isolationist” strain in the American people. The devastation of Pearl Harbor shocked the nation into realizing that it had to focus upon the rest of the world and awakened within the country a strong thirst for revenge. I say this not disparagingly since were I alive at the time, I would have been one with this national outrage and blood-lust. The problem with arousing such a strong emotional call for action in any society is that in the frenzy to act, societal norms are often breached in the name of expediency. In the case of our country World War II planted the seeds of the Corporate/Military/Intelligence Complex (CMIC) that is reaching full flower today. What follows is my personal overview of this development since that embattled time and why this government has such a great need to crush Edward Snowden for his deeds.The winning of WWII can be equally credited to the rise of the U.S. Intelligence Establishment, as it was to the valiant efforts of our troops. In the years since WWII the veil of secrecy that surrounded these activities has been lifted and much is now known. In July of 1941, FDR established the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) under William (Wild Bill) Donovan and thus began the start of a centralized United States Intelligence operation, 165 years after the beginning of our Revolution. This Wikipedia article is a rather simplistic overview, but provides some familiarity with the OSS and its morphing into the CIA after the end of WWII, the beginning of the “Cold War” with the USSR and the subsequent US Intelligence establishment. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Office_of_Strategic_Services . The long history of nation’s intelligence apparatus has been intertwined with the ability to break the coded messages of other, nations known as Cryptography. The two breakthroughs in cryptography in WWII were breaking The Japanese Naval Codes http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_naval_codes and the capture and deciphering of the German Enigma Code Machine by a joint Allied effort at the British Bletchley Park Facility http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cryptanalysis_of_the_Enigma . The possession of these two codes gave the U.S. and our Allies a significant strategic advantage. By understanding the maneuvering of Japan’s then dominant Pacific fleet, the damaged U.S. naval forces were able to avoid conflict with superior numbers and know where their attacks would be most effective. In the European Theater the Axis troop movements and the deployment of their naval forces were revealed to the highest levels of our military command and our Executive Branch.
With such vital information, the need for secrecy then became paramount. If either Japan or Germany became aware of the situation they could both change their codes and also mislead actions against their forces. For human beings secrets always have a way of becoming public, it is our nature. To keep these code breakthroughs secret extraordinary measures were understandably necessary. Sometime these measures included sacrificing our own troops and non-combatants to keep from revealing the knowledge of the code breakthrough. There is some evidence, for instance, that the railroads that brought Jews to the NAZI death camps weren’t bombed, because the advice to Roosevelt was that bombing the tracks would make the coding breakthrough apparent. Given the stakes that were involved in World War II, the rise of government secrecy seems understandable and ultimately made perfect sense, except if it was your life or the lives of loved ones being sacrificed. However, in human activity the Law of Unintended Consequences forever plays a role no matter how smart the idea. The secrecy involved in protecting the knowledge of the broken codes and of the development of atomic bombs, established the precedent that expediency in the face of danger gives great license to those charged with protecting us all.
The War represented a watershed for the United States when it came to intelligence operations. Prior to that War, despite the foreign interventions of “Progressives” such as Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson, our country was not a player in what for centuries was known as “The Great Game” in European Imperialist nations. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Great_Game An essential in playing the game was a sophisticated, centralized intelligence operation. In America our intelligence operations until WWII were scattered among the military branches and the FBI, with coordination being the exception, rather than the rule. As victory in WWII became a certainty, the highest levels in the U.S and British governments were already planning their strategy against the USSR in what would soon become the “Cold War”. That Joseph Stalin was a far left version of Adolph Hitler cannot be denied. Certainly Stalin had murdered at least as many, if not more people than did Hitler. The fact is that militarily it was the USSR that had broken the back of NAZI Germany at the great battles of attrition that were Stalingrad and Leningrad. In the pincer movement from the East, the USSR had gained hegemony in Eastern Europe stretching into Germany. With the tutelage of the British Intelligence establishment the OSS morphed into the CIA and the America intelligence effort rapidly expanded into a force unto itself. As the Cold War developed in the late 40’s, there was bi-partisan agreement that expediency must prevail over this “threat” against our country and its people. One of the two prime elements of this expediency was the over classification of what was to be “Top Secret” and thus withheld from most Americans and its politicians. This deprived of the opportunity to examine and possibly protest the actions of our government. The second element was that all manner of laws and constitutional barriers to certain governmental behaviors, were to be broken in the name of this expediency. Let me just illustrate a few:
- Administration of LSD to unknowing American Citizens to test its “Cold War” application.
- De-stabilization of governments around the world perceived as hostile to U.S. interests.
- Assassinations of foreign leaders perceive as being Communist.
- Infiltration of various American political movements and counter-intelligence manipulations.
- Spying by the CIA, NSA, DIA, FBI etcetera on American political leaders.
- Illegal wiretapping expanded into other extensive data collection in the Digital Age.
I’ve chosen six broad illustrations, each of which could be expanded exponentially, to show what has become of the use of “Top Secrecy” in our country and the actions taken against those who dare breach that secrecy. The secrecy is imposed in the name of saving America from the threat of overwhelming outside danger, yet conveniently it also benefits those who are breaching our Constitution in the name of protecting it. As Jack Nicholson famously exclaims in the movie “A Few Good Men”: “You can’t handle the truth!” This sums up the attitude of those who would destroy the life of Edward Snowden. Interestingly, this 1992 movie dealt with the intelligence/military issues we deal with today and is set in Guantanamo Bay. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_few_good_men . Many of our readers here are well aware of all six of the illustrations above, but if needed I could provide evidence for all of these incursions upon our Constitution and go far beyond them, yet they are so obvious I don’t feel the need.
My point is that as the years have passed since WWII, the breeches of our Constitution have grown to unprecedented proportions and have worked to destroy the concept of government put forth by our country’s Founders. Indeed, George Washington cautioned this country to beware of foreign entanglements. http://jonathanturley.org/2013/06/01/the-father-of-our-country/ . Entangled, however, we are and that entanglement is choking the freedom out of our country. Edward Snowden’s revelation of the extensive spying being done on all American citizens was merely releasing a secret long suspected. With the occurrence of 9/11, the unnecessary war on Iraq, the passage of the Patriot Act and finally the spreading of that meaningless meme “The War on Terror” to justify them, our Corporate/Military/Intelligence Complex (CMIC) has run amuck “saving” our Country, while shredding its Constitution.
To continue to hold the power to run amok, the CMIC must maintain the faith in their cause with the American people. People like Daniel Ellsberg, Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and now Edward Snowden must be crushed to maintain the illusion that these Constitutional violations are all being done in our best interests. They needed to be punished to serve as a lesson to others who would have the temerity to expose the truth to America and to the World at large. Daniel Ellsberg suffered difficulty after the revelations of the Pentagon Papers, but overcame them because the America of his time was different than America today. Manning is in Jail, Assange is trapped at an Embassy in London and Snowden is trapped in a Moscow airport. To my mind, these men performed heroic services in the spirit of informing us about the truth of our Government’s misdeeds and should not be considered as espionage agents. The eventual outcome of their lives is yet to play out, but the real traitors to America are those that want to crush them via prosecution in the supposed interests of
“national security”. That the prosecutors may honestly believe in the justness of their cause in hiding the truth of their actions from the public, does not make them less culpable or guilty. An oath of loyalty to our Constitution was sworn by all of our “protectors” and they have violated that oath, on a bi-partisan basis, for many years. Coincidentally, their actions have coincided with most of them achieving a good deal of success, but then the ability to self justify is a common trait in all of us humans. So the question does devolve to who do you trust? I personally don’t trust the government, as run by the CMIC, to uphold our Constitution and I don’t believe they are protecting us from anything by destroying our Constitution.
Submitted by: Mike Spindell, Guest Blogger
“…I think that there are some reasonable things that can and should be done and kept secret. They do infringe on some parts of our rights, but one has to live in the real world and balance these things..”
1.
There are no REASONABLE things wh need be done in secret– mutually exclusive terms;
2. There are NO things, reasonable or not, KEPT secret–SOMEbody does them and knows about them.
3. The SOMEbodies are no more qualified to know about such things than the kid next door–the SOMEbodies who do or know about such secretive things has/have ulterior motives and personal agendas in the doing and keeping them secret–the kid next door does not, but is likely the one who will suffer most because of said things done and kept secret.
4. The very doing and keeping secret of such things is an infringement on any and all of our rights and remedies–the very thot of such shenanigans is an infringement of the sacredness of the sanguine community of we the people, and a destructive violation of the faith we place in elected-appointed officials to be honest, truthful, and accountable.
5. Mostly because these things are done in MY NAME, and are a callous, unjust infringement of the rights of other people to be left alone to live their lives AS THEY SEE FIT, not as this mattoidinal u.S. government thinks they should to continue the great american empire.
6. There’s a great and grand difference between “infringe” and “destroy”; my rights are certainly being infringed, but more to the truthful point, my rights are being systematically destroyed and shredded, as are the rights of other nations/peoples on this big ol’ balla dirt we call “Home”.
7. Please run by me again your idea of “…some reasonable things that can and should be done and kept secret…” against other people who are entirely like us Americans, and against us Americans, who have every right to expect to be treated Constitutionally by those we place in public servant roles. thanks for dialoguing! 1015berpATgmailDOTcom
2. Racial Strife.
At this point let me remind you of another one of the important jobs that was assigned to Schiff when he was dispatched to America. I refer to the job of destroying the unity of the American people by creating minority group and racial strife. By the pogrom-driven Jewish refugees into America; Schiff was creating a ready-made minority group for that purpose. But the Jewish people, as a whole, made fearful by the pogroms, could not be depended upon to create the violence necessary to destroy the unity of American people.
But right within America; there was an already made-to-order, although as yet, a sleeping minority group, the Negroes, who could be sparked into so-called demonstrations, rioting, looting, murder, and every other type of lawlessness – all that was necessary, was to incite and arouse them. Together; those two minority groups, properly maneuvered, could be used to create exactly the King of Strife in America the Illuminati would need to accomplish their objective.
Thus at the same time that Schiff and co-conspirators were laying their plans for the entrapment of our money system; they were also perfecting plans to hit the unsuspecting American people with an explosive and terrifying racial upheaval that would tear the people into hate fractions and create chaos throughout the nation; especially on all college and university campuses; all protected by Earl Warren decisions and our so-called leaders in Washington D.C. (Remember the Warren commission on the assassination of President John F. Kennedy). Of course, perfecting those plans require time and infinitely patient organizing.
lol why arent my posts showing up? anyway to read the complete story just click the link above and realize just how long the one world government has been in effect and who was involved and why certain idiots like hitler and others were picked to do the jobs they were tasked with
A FEW PARAGRAPHS FROM THE LINK POSTED ABOVE
In 1826; one Captain William Morgan decided it was his duty to inform all Masons and the general public what the full proof was regarding the Illuminati, their secret plans, intended objectives, and to reveal the identities of the masterminds of the conspiracy. The Illuminati promptly tried Morgan in absentia and convicted him of treason.
In the early 1850’s; the Illuminati held a secret meeting in New York which was addressed by a British Illuminist named Wright. Those in attendance were told that the Illuminati was organizing to unite the Nihilist and Atheist groups with all other subversive groups into an international group to be known as Communists. That was when the word: “communist” first came into being and it was intended to be the supreme weapon and scare word to terrify the whole world and drive the terrorized peoples into the Illuminati one-world scheme.
This scheme: “communism,” was to be used to enable the Illuminati to foment future wars and revolutions. Clinton Roosevelt, a direct ancestor of Franklin Roosevelt; Horace Greeley; and Charles Dana; foremost newspaper publishers of that time were appointed to head a committee to raise funds for the new venture. Of course, most of the funds were provided by the Rothschilds and this fund was used to finance Karl Marx and Engels when they wrote “Das Kaptial” and the “Communist Manifesto” in Soho, England. And this clearly reveals that communism is not a so-called ideology, but a secret weapon; a bogy man word to serve the purpose of the Illuminati.
In addition, while Karl Marx was writing the “Communist Manifesto” under the director of one group of Illuminists, Professor Karl Ritter of Frankfurt University was writing the antithesis under the direction of another group.
The idea was that those who direct the overall conspiracy could use the differences in those two so-called ideologies to enable them to divide larger and larger members of the human race into opposing camps so that they could be armed and then brainwashed into fighting and destroying each other. And particularly, to destroy all political and religious institutions.
http://educate-yourself.org/nwo/illuminatiagendabestoverviewyet8jun02.shtml
let’s go back to the birth of the Illuminati. Adam Weishaupt was a Jesuit-trained professor of canon law, teaching in Engelstock University, when he defected from Christianity to embrace the luciferian conspiracy. It was in 1770 that the professional money lenders, the then recently organized House of Rothschild, retained him to revise and modernize the age-old Protocols of Zionism, which from the outset, was designed to give the Synagogue of Satan, so named by Jesus Christ, ultimate world domination so they could impose the luciferian ideology upon what would remain of the human race after the final social cataclysm by use of satanic despotism.
Weishaupt completed his task May 1, 1776. Now you know why May 1 is the great day with all communist nations to this very day (May 1 is also “Law Day” as declared by the American Bar Association). That was the day, May 1, 1776, that Weishaupt completed his plan and officially organized the Illuminati to put the plan into execution. That plan required the destruction of all existing governments and religions. That objective was to be reached by dividing the masses of people, whom he Weishaupt, termed: “goyism” or human cattle into opposing camps in ever increasing numbers on political, social, economic, and other issues – the very conditions we have in our country today.
The opposing sides were then to be armed and incidents provided which would cause them to fight and weaken themselves and gradually destroy national governments and religious institutions. Again I say, the very conditions in the world today.
And at this point let me stress a prime feature of the Illuminati plans. When and if their blueprint for world control, the Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion, is discovered and exposed, they would wipe all the Jews off the face of the earth in order to divert suspicions from themselves. If you think this is far fetched, bear in mind that they permitted Hitler, a liberal socialist himself, who was financed by corrupt Kennedy, the Warburgs, and the Rothschilds, to incinerate 600,000 Jews.
Perhaps the most vital directive in Weishaupt’s plan was to obtain absolute control of the press, at that time the only mass communications media, to distribute information to the public so that all news and information could be slanted so that the masses could be convinced that a one-world government is the only solution to our many and varied problems.
Do you know who owns and controls our mass communications media? I’ll tell you. Practically all the movie lots in Hollywood is owned by the Lehmans; Kuhn, Loeb, and Company; Goldman-Sachs; and other internationalist bankers. All the national radio and TV channels in the nation are owned and controlled by those same internationalists bankers.
The same is true of every chain of metropolitan newspapers and magazines, also of the press wire services, such as Associated Press, United Press International, etc.. The supposed heads of all those media are merely the fronts for the internationalist bankers, who in turn compose the hierarchy of the CFR, today’s Illuminati in America.
That gave him complete control of the economy of Britain and virtually of all Europe. So immediately after that Congress in Vienna had boomeranged; Rothschild had forced Britain to set up a new “Bank of England” which he had absolute control exactly, as later through Jacob Schiff; he engineered our own “Federal Reserve Act” which gave the House of Rothschild a secret control of the economy in the United States. But now for a moment; let’s dwell on the activities of the Illuminati in the United States.
In 1826; one Captain William Morgan decided it was his duty to inform all Masons and the general public what the full proof was regarding the Illuminati, their secret plans, intended objectives, and to reveal the identities of the masterminds of the conspiracy. The Illuminati promptly tried Morgan in absentia and convicted him of treason.
ARE,
You are wasting time and photons replying to the conspiracy theorist. He hangs around from time to time spouting nonsense slogans dating from 1917 from a failed ideology, and conspiracy stuff he pulls out of his nether regions.
I find conspiracy theorists strangely entertaining, rather like those YouTube videos of popping zits. Grossly unappealing, yet fascinating. But then I used to teach a doctoral level course in abnormal psychology, so I am weird that way.
OS I think you are right in that. Unfortunately, he is of the type that made a Trotskyist party being successful near impossible. I have to admit I am a fomer SWP member of many years, and still a Trot and a dialiectical materialist. I also rather like Lenin and much of what he wrote,but most of which applied mainly to Russia. The best work he wrote was State and Revolution which was just before the Revolution which laid out his vision for a workers state. Unfortunately, civil war, invasion, material destruction, and the failure of the German revolution, made the project impossible to succeed. Thus Stalin came to power and finished off all the real reds.
I do as all Marxists are supposed to do and deal with facts and reality. So I have no truck with lying, falsificatin of history or other conspiracy theories, bad reasoning, or slogans that mask stupidity. I also like to make reasonable judgements by comparing what the situation was at various times. and how others at the time acted. On the left there is too much falsification of ideas, and history which is the result mainly of the Stalinist tradition of the CPUSA among others. Even some of the more rabid Stalinists can do some good historical work as long as it is subject to peer review and make them toe the line of truth. Unfortunately they are too often disposed to use their authority to purvey bogus stuff which they know to be false.
Bron: There you go talkin’ out your bottom again. The rape of Nanking adds nothing to our understanding of the false flag operation at Pearl Harbor?
RandyJet: The US oil embargo was initially withheld from the press, just as Japan’s unconditional surrender was kept secret 2 weeks before Hiroshima & Nagasaki, for if we accepted their unconditional surrender then how could we test out our new weapon on some brown people which we needed to do to scare the Soviets from taking all of Germany.
You guys sure love to avoid the big point, which was FDR’s foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor & the fact the newest ship in the harbor was built in 1918!
First off you simply say things that are NOT true at all. I have read most books on Pearl Harbor, and the ONLY thing that I can find credible is that Gen. Short and Adm. Kimmel to a lesser degree failed to do their duty. You also tell falsehoods about the Japanese willing to surrender unconditionally before the A-bombs and I have read the books on the Privy Seal Diaries that were not too long ago released. You simply make up fairy tales to support your points. There is NO question that FDR and the Pentagon were sure the Japanese were going to attack SOMEWHERE, which is why all the War Alerts, and War Warnings were sent in the days before the attack. Their best guess was that they would attack to the oil fields in Indonesia. THAT would NOT have caused the US to declare war on Japan. In FACT, the US could have and would have declared war even if Pearl Harbor was ready for the attack. So it makes NO sense at all to say FDR knew before of that attack.
By the way, I find it funny that you support the Republicans who throughout the whole war were saying Pearl Harbor was a set up and FDR betrayed them. In FACT, the last GOP majority Congress passed a resolution absolving Kimmel of any responsibility for the results of the attack.
As for stopping or scaring the Red Army is ludicrous since Churchill and Stalin had divided Europe up when Churchill met with Stalin in 1943 and was later ratified at Yalta by the three. In FACT, if you bother reading Churchill, he has nothing but complimentary things to say about Stalin keeping his word on those agreements. So your conjecture is BS. In FACT, theSoviets withdrew from large parts of the territory that they had taken during the war.
You also avoid the main point that unless FDR could read Hitler’s mind, he could NOT possibly KNOW that Germany would declare war on the US. The US DID NOT declare war on Germany on Dec.8th and without Hitler declaring war, the US would never have fought Germany at all, which was NOT what FDR and Churchill wanted. So your contentions all fail.
Thank you, Mike!
BrucesPoint:
TR was a progressive. The Spanish American War, as near as I can tell, was the first Progressive War of expansion. The rise of the progressives began in the mid 19th century and we are still paying the price today.
An interesting book on early empire maneuvering by FDR’s cousin, & the set up for the War in the Pacific:
“The Imperial Cruise is a non-fiction book authored by James Bradley, the son of one of the men who raised the American flag on Iwo Jima. In the book, based on extensive research and newly discovered archival materials and photographs, Bradley sheds new light on the history of American political affairs in the Pacific during the presidency of Theodore Roosevelt, and a surrounding a secret diplomatic/Congressional mission to Asia conceived by Roosevelt which would affect United States involvement in Asia for generations. The material also covers a wide array of other cultural factors that loosely relate to this, the largest diplomatic delegation ever sent to Asia in U.S. history. The book asserts that Roosevelt’s diplomatic mistakes constituted the original encouragement for the Japanese imperialism that ultimately backfired on the United States and led to the war in the Pacific, and acted as a catalyst in the fomentation of many subsequent events in Asia, including the Chinese Communist Revolution, the Korean War, and even the current state of U.S.-Asia affairs today in the 21st Century.”
I have read it and it is tendentious and poorly written, researched and argued. It makes some big stretches that I found illogical.
LOL, being a Time Lord is confusing! Darren, don’t do that to those of us that remember ‘We have to destroy the village to save it’. Our ability to separate broad satire from fact has been irreparably impaired for decades. Though, we are living in the time that will make that statement possible- no, probable.
LOL, good one Darren 🙂
Darren Smith: ” “We have to ignore the constitution to preserve our way of life”
– Whitehouse Spokesman, July, 2014
It is only a matter of time before this happens.”
————————
It’s been my observation that generally, by the time a government acknowledges something like that, that ship has already sailed.
lexmanifesta, Media is silent it is true and it’s not IMO just that media is all but completely entertainment these days even if there is “News” in the name of the program. The government has a huge card in the licensing aspect of controlling the airwaves. That’s one of the reasons that so many ISPs are so compliant with helping the government collect data. That media is so concentrated makes it easy to coerce. Once the owners are told the facts of life they just send out editorial policy change memos and/or talking points. The government can also protect them from foreign competition so it’s not all arm twisting, there are carrots to dangle. Then everybody in the club gets together at the press corp dinner and a good time is had by all.
Karl Friedrich:
“After all, when you secretly embargo an Island Nation’s oil supply that’s an undeclared act of war so of course he rightly predicted Japan would have to retaliate pretty much the way they did, . . .”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nanking_Massacre
And thats the problem with Marxist Epistemology.
I had to laugh at KFs idea that FDR’s oil embargo was secret! It was a well announced policy that was a long time coming as the Japanese refused to stop their war of aggression against China and the resutling atrocities that FAR surpassed anything that had been done by anybody up to that time. It was quite clear that Japan was between a rock and a hard place. So it was thought the Japanese would have to go south, not to attack the US at Pearl Harbor. That was a brilliant masterstroke by Yamamoto.
Corporate/military/intelligence complex, CMIC. It occurs to me that there is a portion of the corporate component of CMIC that deserves it’s own “M”. Media. The abdication of the fourth estate fulfilling a role of meaningful oversight of governmental actions is a relic of the past. The mainstream press was asleep at the wheel in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. When they so proudly reported about their embedment with the invading troops it became apparent that any accurate reporting was not going to happen. It is often said that the first casualty of war is truth. Americans were denied the truth before the war even started. When contemplating why media is so cravenly serving power is I believe explained simplistically by the recognition that mainstream media has been increasingly consolidated into fewer and fewer hands. Mainstrem media is big business. Big business is inherently conservative and derives economic advantage by preserving the existing power structure.
The consolidated effort of bought politicians, the security state, the military/militarized police forces, media and corporations seeking greater profits have brought us to the point where we need Snowden’s voice more than ever. Anonymous, Wikileaks, EFF, ACLU and others are the only anchor slowing this country’s headlong rush to full bloom Facism.
I believe it was Huey Long that said, “of course we’ll have Fascism in America. We’ll just call it Americanism”. Seems that he was probably right. Until we get a lot more Ron Wyden’s and a lot less Diane Feinstein’s and her ilk in congress, we will continue to evolve away from founding constitutional principals that concerned themselves with limiting the power of government and preservation of privacy and value of the individual.
And to add to this misery…..http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Kiriakou the second to be prosecuted … I think scooter Libby was the first one….
John Kiriakou (born August 9, 1964) is a former CIA analyst and case officer, former senior investigator for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, and former counter-terrorism consultant for ABC News, blogger for Huffington Post,[1] and author.[2][3][4]
He is notable as the first official within the U.S. government to confirm the use of waterboarding of al-Qaeda prisoners as an interrogation technique, which he described as torture.[5][6]
I might add to your list when the US government irradiated many Marines, Sailors, and Soldiers during atom bomb tests, using them as guinea pigs.
“We have to ignore the constitution to preserve our way of life”
— Whitehouse Spokesman, July, 2014
It is only a matter of time before this happens.
Davidbluefish, “Global Wealth Monarchy” is a good and appropriate way to look at it. For the 1%, the individual and corporate 1%, the world is their state. They have no national allegiance and go wherever the tax rates are lowest or a safe harbor for their wealth can be secured. They are their own nation and they are at war with every other nation on earth. They are also winning I think because the governments of nations can and are bought, reduced to vassals.
It is ironic that Snowden can be pursued with the full, naked might of the nation and thwarted from finding a safe haven under international standards of national behaviour (to the point of having the President of a sovereign nation detained and his plane searched) but Blackwater (Xe) can move itself to Dubai to take advantage of its non-extradition policy with not a word from our government. That our chief law enforcers and regulators can publicly state that some business’ are too big to fail and their COO’s are too big to jail when faced with their massive fraud and wrongdoing you don’t need a weatherman….. Two sets of laws, one for the commons and one for the new gentle class.