This is a clear precursor for the imminent declaration of a state of emergency, a scenario that President Bush codified in his recent Presidential Decision Directive of May 9th, which states in the event of a “catastrophic event” the President can take total control over the government and the country, bypassing all other levels of government at the state, federal, local, territorial and tribal levels, and thus ensuring total unprecedented dictatorial power.

What is this “clear precursor” mentioned above? Just this:

♦ Feds Train Clergy To “Quell Dissent” During Martial Law

What, you say? That just sounds crazy? Too bad it’s been confirmed: Homeland Security Enlists Clergy to Quell Public Unrest if Martial Law Ever Declared. The White House, continuing their tried-and-true and effective tradition of using religion and religious leaders to further their own political interests, is training clergy to pre-pacify the public to accept unreasonable search and seizure under Martial Law.

Oh but, you may say, if there’s such an emergency and martial law must be declared, the people should do what The Authorities tell them to prevent strife and chaos. Well, I guess that all depends on why martial law is declared, for what gain and purpose, by who, and what is happening under such conditions. We’ve already seen how much abuse of power this administration has been guilty of (“torture? Why not. The Geneva Conventions are just so quaint, aren’t they? Habeas corpus? Naw, the right to know what you’re being accused of and the ability to challenge the charge is so overrated. Secret prisons–think of them as vacation lodges.) There’s no guarantee that this (Vice)President wouldn’t gladly use any excuse to enact his May 9th declaration and assume complete control of the government.

But here’s the more important point: regardless of what you think of King George, can you really say it’s a good idea for every later President to have the power to declare him or herself as dictator? Mrs. Clinton? Mr. Guilliani? Someone even worse 5, 10, 20 years from now? Is it a virtue to be passive sheep under martial law if it’s declared for immoral and unjust reasons? If the power is abused and the government contracted militia who already operate above the law, like Blackwater, and the military, start seizing property and harassing complacent citizens, should we just sit passively by and take it like good sheeple?

On the topic of a surveillance state; last post mainly focused on the government–remember, it’s not just them.
(Of course, what happens when the government is basically being run by corporations?)

(Click the image to go to the site with the video: http://www.aclu.org/pizza/)

Government programs such as MATRIX and Carnivore are destroying our privacy. We live in a democratic society and government-controlled data systems are a dangerous step toward establishing a 24-hour surveillance society.
Recently Northwest Airlines provided the names, addresses, travel plans and credit card numbers of its customers to a NSA project in complete violation of its own privacy policy. In another example, JetBlue provided information from over a million of its customers to the Transportation Security Administration, also in violation of its own privacy policy.

The ACLU has set a “Doomsday Clock” for the coming Surveillance State:

♦ Surveillance Society Clock

I would have to think that Britain is closer to Midnight than the U.S., though: UK is a surveillance society. Lest you think the Surveillance Society is going to be completely at the hands of the government, the culture of surveillance is also coming about through the efforts of corporations filling the needs of people and employers and communities and places of employment etc etc, by providing cameras, sound recording, RFID tracking, Internet traffic monitoring equipment to anyone with the bucks and the interest in keeping an eye on someone else.

But of course the biggest villain is the government. The Democratic Congress recently gave King George (and presumably all succeeding Presidents) the official rubber stamp to spy on U.S. citizens without a court order. They’re failing to pursue the charges that telco companies like AT&T turned over private information on all its subscribers to the NSA. And then I just read this bit of fun info from The National Science Foundation:

♦ Scientists Use the “Dark Web” to Snag Extremists and Terrorists Online

One of the tools developed by Dark Web is a technique called Writeprint, which automatically extracts thousands of multilingual, structural, and semantic features to determine who is creating ‘anonymous’ content online. Writeprint can look at a posting on an online bulletin board, for example, and compare it with writings found elsewhere on the Internet. By analyzing these certain features, it can determine with more than 95 percent accuracy if the author has produced other content in the past. The system can then alert analysts when the same author produces new content, as well as where on the Internet the content is being copied, linked to or discussed.

Does anyone for a second think they’re limiting this activity to just “terrorists”? Just like the warrantless wiretaps only affected terrorists (Federal Court Finds NSA Eavesdropping Program Unconstitutional ), and the detainment of civilians in secret prisons have all been terrorists (Erroneous rendition), and all the people on no-fly lists are only terrorists….(Terrorism Watch List Is Faulted For Errors, Professor who criticized Bush told added to terrorist ‘no-fly’ list, Peace groups under watch)

Yep, our government has only our best interests in mind and would never misuse their power.

Progressive feminist writer Naomi Wolf, has a new book out:
♦ The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot

In it she discusses the “checklist” that nearly all fascisms and dictatorships seem to follow when eliminating democracy and instilling state control:
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.
2. Create secret prisons where torture takes place.
3. Develop a thug caste or paramilitary force not answerable to citizens.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system.
5. Harass citizens’ groups.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.
7. Target key individuals.
8. Control the press.
9. Declare all dissent to be treason.
10. Suspend the rule of law.

A list that King George appears to be following over the last 6 years. Naomi discusses the issue in short in a recent article:

♦ Fascist America, in 10 easy steps

She briefly describes the ways previous fascist groups and dictators have use each item to wrest control, and how the present Bush administration is following suit. The scary thing is, this all may not end after Bush’s reign. Once the government has certain power, the office of the President has certain assumed and direct powers, it’s not easy for the next President to just give them up. Fortunately we’ve won some small battles in getting back some liberty and control: a couple of points of the Patriot Act have been declared unconstitutional–but we’ve lost a lot more battles than we’ve won. For example, the recent failure of Congress to return habeas corpus. The fact that even after they’ve been exposed, we still have a secret prison system in other countries where torture is used, outside US legal boundaries. Congress has authorized the use of warrantless wiretapping. Contracted private security firm Blackwater is still in operation under government contract despite their involvement in criminal actions. No one has yet to be prosecuted for the attempted politicization of the legal system. No one has questioned the President’s renewal this month of the federal State of Emergency condition we’ve been in since 2001. A condition which could give the President to right to transfer all political power to the Administrative Branch per an Executive Order he signed earlier this year–also not questioned!

Every so often we’re fed a little morsel of a return of a piece liberty to make us all think, “Oh, OK. See, things are alright. Everything’s going back to normal. We don’t have to get worked up or concerned. Let’s make sure we keep getting news about O.J. Simpson or Britney Spears.” Meanwhile, the net loss of liberty and justice continues to mount. Along with our national debt, the military spending, the uncertainty of the US dollar….

Not long ago I was looking at the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar with the Canadian dollar, since my brother’s birthday is coming up and he lives in Canada. And I recall when he first moved up there a few years ago I could count on the US dollar buying one-and-a-half CAN dollars. Then a couple of years ago it would buy 1.20 CAN dollars. Now, for the 3rd time in history, the US dollar is equal to the Canadian dollar.

So then I saw last week this interesting blog post on Classically Liberal:

♦ US dollar reaches new lows — like this administration.

Considering the amount of debt that Bush is accumulating the American taxpayers will eventually feel the pinch. Taxes will eventually have to be raised to pay for Republican wild spending. If you go on a spending spree the bills eventually come due. But the moron in the White House figures if the bills are paid when he’s sitting on his ranch then things are just fine for him. Bush has sacrificed the nation’s economy to pursue his own agenda.

Looking around I also found this article:

♦ Declining dollar: Who wins, who loses

Hmm, I wonder why there’s a commercial every hour on Air America advising people to buy gold….

♦ First high school devoted to homeland security

First, let’s establish general and unfocused fear so that people are always in a states of stress disorder and unable to question properly, then turn up the fascist surveillance state mechanisms, then start indoctrinating children into the culture of surveillance and then feed them to the capitalist commodification of fear and loathing in a security State.

I know it fulfills Godwin’s Law right off the bat for me to do so, but I can’t help but think of a mix between Hitler’s Youth and vo-tech programs.

Remember habeas corpus? That concept since the Magna Carta (1215 A.D.) where the accused has the right to know what the charges against them are and the state (or king) has to prove they have enough good reason to arrest someone?
That concept that the Bush administration got rid of in order to “fight terrah”?

Well, it came up in the Senate today to be reinstated. Yea! A chance for America to once again be a civilized country where people have rights!
Oh but wait…only 56 out of 100 Senators voted to restore the ability for people to know why they’re being arrested and given assurance it was for a good reason and not just because of King’s fiat. But, it gets worse:

The Republicans threatened to filibuster the bill, and what happened? The Democrats rolled over and said “Oh, OK, guess we’ll forget it then.”

Here’s a fundamental component of not just the American government but of western politics and crime and punishment, a concept which is often used to separate the democracies from the dictatorships, and not only does so few people’s representatives decide it’s necessary but those who want it aren’t even willing to call the Republican bluff! If the Republicans want to filibuster, let em! Force them to tie up Congress and get nothing done instead of cowtowing to their pathetic threats.

Both parties can bite my….

“What happened here was the gradual habituation of the people, little by little, to being governed by surprise; to receiving decisions deliberated in secret; to believing that the situation was so complicated that the government had to act on information which the people could not understand, or so dangerous that, even if he people could understand it, it could not be released because of national security. And their sense of identification with Hitler, their trust in him, made it easier to widen this gap and reassured those who would otherwise have worried about it.”

The words of a German college professor shortly after the end of World War II, as documented in Milton Mayer’s They Thought They Were Free, published in 1966.

All I can say is thank goodness for forced regime change in another year, or history has a good chance of repeating itself.

“In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda.” - George W. Bush: May 24, 2005

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels

It be Talk Like a Pirate Day, today! Arrrgh!

♦ http://www.talklikeapirate.com/piratehome.html

I think you pretty much have to be blind and living in a cave to not see the “style” of leadership from this administration: loyalty above ability. Bush has put oil business friends in his Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, made faithful campaign captains with no experience in charge of FEMA, campaign loyalists with Creationist and climate change denialists in charge of NASA, the family lawyer who got him out of drunk driving charges in the role of the “people’s attorney,” etc ad nauseum.

One can say well, that’s just Bush. All will be better in another year. But will it? Putting aside the Democrats and all their many ills and failings, there has been a huge and dramatic shift in the conservative Republican party and mindset. Before Reagan the Republican party meant small and efficient government–now they want to use government as a means to personal ends regardless of the purpose of government to be the protector of personal liberty and freedom.

Evidence of this? Well, aside from the rampant greed and corruption in the service of personal gain found throughout the Republican party from the top down, from Bush to Tom Delay, here’s the new Republican play-book laid out for us:

♦ Taking Charge of Federal Personnel

The Heritage Foundation is a highly respected (among conservatives) think-tank with the goal of spreading the conservative. In this white paper, along with many others, they lay out very specific courses of action with the intent of converting government from a representative institution by and for the people into a tool for conservative control and propaganda:

For the new President [Bush], succumbing to temptations to rely on the career civil service to begin implementing his political and policy agenda would be a profound mistake. Career civil servants should not be tasked with formulating and executing the details of an agenda for major policy change. Political appointees, personally loyal to the President and fully committed to his policy agenda, are essential to his success, especially in the crucial early months of his Presidency. No President can or will advance his agenda alone or with a small handful of staffers in the White House or the federal departments. The President needs a full cadre of personnel committed to him and his agenda in the federal agencies that execute the details of national policy.

While this theme of replacing civil servants with people loyal to the President runs throughout this treatise, to be fair, it also discusses quite significantly the necessity for accountability at all levels of government–a vital concept Bush has completely ignored. Whether it’s giving CIA Director George Tennent a medal for his role in at worst corrupting evidence for support of the Iraq war or at best gross negligence, or promising the prosecution and then the firing of anyone in the White House involved in the outing of CIA Agent Plame and then doing nothing about Carl Rove and even commuting the sentence of “Scooter” Libby, or telling FEMA director Brown he’s doing “a heck of a job” during the utter failure that was Katrina relief and recovery, we can see Bush has no awareness of this idea of accountability. We can only hope that the next conservative President, and there of course will be one, will pay close attention to the Heritage Foundations advice to enforce accountability and responsibility across the board.

The findings of the Heritage Foundation, and yesterday’s post regarding the major media news outlets and their corporate-controlled lack of investigative or truthful journalism and the willingness of the American public to accept it, was in mind when I came upon an article by philosopher and political activist Noam Chomsky wrote back in the 80′s, before either of the Iraq wars, where he discusses how the American government, being a “democracy,” finds it necessary to control how people think instead of fascist states that are happy with just controlling what people do:

♦ Propaganda, American-style

If the U.S. were a totalitarian state, the Ministry of Truth would simply have said, “It’s right for us to go into Vietnam. Don’t argue with it.” People would have recognized that as the propaganda system, and they would have gone on thinking whatever they wanted. They would have plainly seen that we were attacking Vietnam, just as we can see the Soviets are attacking Afghanistan.
.
People are much freer in the U.S., they are allowed to express themselves. That’s why it’s necessary for those in power to control everyone’s thought, to try and make it appear as if the only issues in matters such as U.S. intervention in Vietnam are tactical: Can we get away with it? There is no discussion of right or wrong.

It’s a slightly rambling article, but it’s well worth the read. Chomsky really hits the nail on the head with his indictment of how the government, in its inherent need to maintain power and control, must find the most subtle and efficient and effective methods of controlling the way the citizens of a “free” democracy think and believe. Of course then you have the Bush administration which revels in using both thought-control as well as the bludgeon.

“In my line of work you gotta keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kinda catapult the propaganda.” - George W. Bush: May 24, 2005

“If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it. The lie can be maintained only for such time as the State can shield the people from the political, economic and/or military consequences of the lie. It thus becomes vitally important for the State to use all of its powers to repress dissent, for the truth is the mortal enemy of the lie, and thus by extension, the truth is the greatest enemy of the State.” - Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels

Going around the (non-major) news outlets yesterday:

♦ Alan Greenspan claims Iraq war was really for oil

Recent polls have shown that more than 40% of registered Republicans still believe Saddam Hussein was directly involved in 9/11, and even nearly 30% of Democrats as well! This is a direct failure of the major news outlets to not care about the truth. When Congressman Mike Pence can claim Iraq had WMD’s when they didn’t and then backtrack and say because Iraq used to have WMD’s then we are justified in invading under the assumption that they will later, and there’s no outcry over this kind mindset–there’s something very wrong. When he and other members of Congress and the Administration claim that one of the reasons for the invasion is the 16 United Nations resolutions Iraq’s violated when Israel has violated over 60… and we haven’t invaded them, and people buy it, there’s something wrong.

And why are people buying it? Because the 4th Estate has completely failed in its responsibility to the the people’s agent in putting the government to task. For demanding the truth and investigating the lies and distortions. The major media outlets are corporate entities with little concern for truth and have more interest in profit shares, stock holder interests, advertising, and entertainment.

And that’s why even though Hussein despised religious fundamentalists like Osama bin Laden, (and bin Laden hated Hussein and his secular dictatorship), and there were no WMD’s, and no plans for a nuclear program, nearly a third of Americans still think Hussein was involved in terrorism or a threat to the U.S. It’s a lie the Administration fed us and we bought and no one really cares to investigate, except the “fringe news” wackos on the edges of the mainstream. The places where you’ll actually get real news and not days and days of coverage of Paris Hilton.

25 millions people lived in Iraq.
According to recent research, 1.2 million Iraqi civilians have been killed since the U.S. occupation.
2 million have been forced out of their homes, and another 2.5 million have become refugees and have left the country altogether.
Yeah, lucky Iraqis have it so much better now that that dictator (which the CIA helped get installed in the first place and subsequently did a lot of business with both Rumsfield and Cheney’s businesses during the 80′s,) is out of power!