WILL 100,000 Die at the London Olympics 2012 ?

[Steven Gaal]

What kind of sentence ends with a question mark?

ANSWER : Interrogative

20-odd minutes left....still waiting for mushroom cloud cleaning up London's cess-pittery!

+++++++++++++++++++++++++

WILL 100,000 Die at the London Olympics 2012 ?

Mr. Knight the odd thing at the end of the sentence is a question mark. Go to GOOGLE and put in the word question mark.After a little bit of reading Im sure a lightbulb will go on above your head. SG

Edited August 12, 2012 by Steven Gaal

[Steve Knight]

You should watch that video you linked. It states something WILL happen because of some spy drama and a "what if...?" documentary were shown at some point in the last couple of years on the BBC....

SO, the answer to that question is : Nope. But I'll wait, and poke fun at the idiocy while waiting for the Spack Gurls to shut up caterwauling and get off stage....

And the show's over. Clean-up's a-waitin', and nothing has happened. Again. The answer to that question is still "nope". But nevermind, there's always Rio in 4 years. Maybe Brazil's national channel will show some sort of spy drama about a nuke in Rio, too....

[Len Colby]

Steve K,

Gaal was right the video never said an attack would definitely happen it even said distributing the video enough would cause the supposed bombing to be cancelled, the nutcase who made it probably really thinks he saved scores of lives, he'd better watch his back!

[Evan Burton]

Yeah; nothing happens when people make predictions and they look upon that as proof their prediction were right.

Heads I win, tails you lose.

[Steven Gaal]

POLICE STATE UK - Post 2012 London Olympic Games, UK becomes Full Blow Police State

=======

London that is widely known as a perfect example of surveillance society with its watchful CCTVs, is now a perfect example of a police state after the massive Olympics militarization, a fact even organizers implicitly acknowledge.

Organizers decided earlier this year to dress the official mascot for the 2012 Olympics in London, where the security and surveillance cordon are nicknamed the Ring of Steel, in a Metropolitan police outfit.

The mascots, "Wenlock" and "Mandeville", feature a huge single eye that is actually a camera lens that organizers said can "record everything."

The dolls effectively create an explicit symbol of the pervasive surveillance state and suggest an unwelcome addition to British social life that is now subject to an even more intrusive surveillance system thanks to the biggest and most expensive British security operation in decades for the Olympics.

The irony has been taken up by critics of the Games.

"Water cannon and steel cordon sold separately. Baton rounds may be unsuitable for small children. A more perfect visual metaphor for 2012, I cannot imagine," Games Monitor mocked.

One can only appreciate what the Olympic mascots have been ironically symbolizing when a few figures on the military deployment during the Olympics are taken into consideration.

The British government deployed more than three times as many regular troops as former US president George W. Bush administration did in 2002 for the Winter Olympics at Salt Lake City, which began only six months after the 9/11 incidents and four months after the US invaded Afghanistan.

A total 41,000 troops, police officers, private security staff, etc were deployed in London.

There also comes a long list of equipment on the ground and in the air: a Navy aircraft carrier HMS Bulwark and the force's largest warship HMS Ocean will watch the city, Typhoon fighter jets, Apache Helicopters, eagle-eyed surveillance drones and E-3 Sentinel spy planes will swarm the skies, radars and surface-to-air missiles will scan the skies while an 18km, 5,000-volt electrified security barrier partitions off the Olympic zone.

The police state was further intensified by a de facto suspension of civil liberties.

Public protests were banned -- and remain so -- during the Games in "exclusion zones" near key locations and protesters face police with enhanced powers including the right to use force to enter private properties, seize political posters and prevent the display of any material that challenges the image of London as a "clean city", which advertising sponsors including McDonald's and Coca-Cola kept promoting.

Security measures also included new police checkpoints, number-plate and facial recognition CCTV systems, biometric ID cards and disease tracking systems.

And is that all set to be removed now that the Games have ended?

The answer is no as there are speculations that the government is using the opportunity to impose limitations on the British social life that would be otherwise impossible thanks to civil rights campaigners.

The idea for the continuation of the draconian measures would be that Britain faces threats from terrorists lurked inside its own cities and increasingly bigger surveillance would be needed to predict and contain such threats.

Here, victims would be the ethnic minorities and in particular Muslims.

The police did announce in May 2011 that 290 CCTV cameras formerly installed in the Muslim areas of Birmingham will be back online for the Games and there is no end visible to the extra surveillance.

What is more is that Olympic hosts have been unwilling to shelve the security measures taken up for the Games as the example of Greece's high-tech surveillance cameras showed back in 2004.

After all, dissent is not desirable especially in the surveillance society of Britain and police began preparing London for the Games by predicting crimes early before the Games.

Back in July, officers reportedly arrested several graffiti artists in pre-emptive raids, which serves as a good example of the state intrusion into legal private activities of individuals in the police state the Olympics have helped intensify.

After media reports of 30 arrests, police claimed they arrested only four people for illegal wall paintings.

"Olympics shouldn't be an excuse to turn Britain into a police state," it said.

[Len Colby]

LOL the text comes from PRESS TV an official outlet of the Iranian police state! Even IF all the claims in the article are true (it is anonymous and citations are scarce) the UK is not a police state, Iran on the other hand.

My family had to flee Nazi occupied Europe, that was a police state. I visited East Germany before the wall came down, that was a police state. I know people who arrested in Brazil when the military ran things, that was a police state. Claiming that the US or UK are police states in an insult to those who suffered or still suffer under such regimes.

[Steven Gaal]

http://policestatebritain.blogspot.com/

Friday, July 03, 2009

The Electronic Police State Report - UK is joint 4th with Russia

==========================================

A report by internet security consultancy Cryptohippe has ranked the UK as being equally as repressive as Russia, in terms of having become an Electronic Police State.

This result emerges from Cryptohippie’s recently published Electronic Police State 2008 Report.

This is the first in what are intended to be a series of annual reports that will audit the "State use of electronic technologies to record, organize, search and distribute forensic evidence against its citizens".

The audit focusses on 17 factors, ranging from requirement to produce documents on demand, through to the extent to which states force ISP’s and phone companies to retain data, the blurring of boundaries between police and intelligence work and ultimately the breakdown of the principles of habeas corpus.

The UK has been ranked as having a score of 3.18 on the scale used, the same as the score obtained by Russia.

Only China, North Korea, and Belarus obtained higher scores, indicating that the UK is the most repressive electronic police state in Western society.

[Steven Gaal]

After Latest NDAA Challenge Hearing, Thoughts on the Criminalization of Dissent

http://truth-out.org...alizing-dissent

====================

I was on the 15th floor of the Southern U.S. District Court in New York in the courtroom of Judge Katherine Forrest on Tuesday. It was the final hearing in the lawsuit I brought in January against President Barack Obama and Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta. I filed the suit, along with lawyers Carl J. Mayer and Bruce I. Afran, over Section 1021 of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). We were late joined by six co-plaintiffs including Noam Chomsky and Daniel Ellsberg.

This section of the NDAA, signed into law by Obama on Dec. 31, 2011, obliterates some of our most important constitutional protections. It authorizes the executive branch to order the military to seize U.S. citizens deemed to be terrorists or associated with terrorists. Those taken into custody by the military, which becomes under the NDAA a domestic law enforcement agency, can be denied due process and habeas corpus and held indefinitely in military facilities. Any activist or dissident, whose rights were once protected under the First Amendment, can be threatened under this law with indefinite incarceration in military prisons, including our offshore penal colonies. The very name of the law itself—the Homeland Battlefield Bill—suggests the totalitarian credo of endless war waged against enemies within "the homeland" as well as those abroad.

"The essential thrust of the NDAA is to create a system of justice that violates the separation of powers," Mayer told the court. "[The Obama administration has] taken detention out of the judicial branch and put it under the executive branch."

In May, Judge Forrest issued a temporary injunction invalidating Section 1021 as a violation of the First and Fifth amendments. It was a courageous decision. Forrest will decide within a couple of weeks whether she will make the injunction permanent.

In last week's proceeding, the judge, who appeared from her sharp questioning of government attorneys likely to nullify the section, cited the forced internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II as a precedent she did not want to follow. Forrest read to the courtroom a dissenting opinion by U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson in Korematsu v. United States, a ruling that authorized the detention during the war of some 110,00 Japanese-Americans in government "relocation camps."

"[E]ven if they were permissible military procedures, I deny that it follows that they are constitutional," Jackson wrote in his 1944 dissent. "If, as the Court holds, it does follow, then we may as well say that any military order will be constitutional, and have done with it."

Barack Obama's administration has appealed Judge Forrest's temporary injunction and would certainly appeal a permanent injunction. It is a stunning admission by this president that he will do nothing to protect our constitutional rights. The administration's added failure to restore habeas corpus, its use of the Espionage Act six times to silence government whistle-blowers, its support of the FISA Amendment Act—which permits warrantless wiretapping, monitoring and eavesdropping on U.S. citizens—and its ordering of the assassination of U.S. citizens under the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force, or AUMF, is a signal that for all his rhetoric Obama, like his Republican rivals, is determined to remove every impediment to the unchecked power of the security and surveillance state. I and the six other plaintiffs, who include reporters, professors and activists, will most likely have to continue this fight in an appellate court and perhaps the Supreme Court.

The language of the bill is terrifyingly vague. It defines a "covered person"—one subject to detention—as "a person who was a part of or substantially supported al-Qaeda, the Taliban, or associated forces that are engaged in hostilities against the United States or its coalition partners, including any person who has committed a belligerent act or has directly supported such hostilities in aid of such enemy forces." The bill, however, does not define the terms "substantially supported," "directly supported" or "associated forces." In defiance of more than 200 earlier laws of domestic policing, this act holds that any member of a group deemed by the state to be a terrorist organization, whether it is a Palestinian charity or a Black Bloc anarchist unit, can be seized and held by the military. Mayer stressed this point in the court Wednesday when he cited the sedition convictions of peace activists during World War I who distributed leaflets calling to end the war by halting the manufacturing of munitions. Mayer quoted Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissenting 1919 opinion. We need to "be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe," the justice wrote.

The Justice Department's definition of a potential terrorism suspect under the Patriot Act is already extremely broad. It includes anyone with missing fingers, someone who has weatherproof ammunition and guns, and anyone who has hoarded more than seven days of food. This would make a few of my relatives in rural Maine and their friends, if the government so decided, prime terrorism suspects.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Benjamin Torrance argued in court that the government already has the authority to strip citizens of their constitutional rights. He cited the execution of Nazi saboteur Richard Quirin during World War II, saying the case was "completely within the Constitution." He then drew a connection between that case and the AUMF, which the Obama White House argues permits the government to detain and assassinate U.S. citizens they deem to be terrorists. Torrance told the court that judicial interpretation of the AUMF made it identical to the NDAA, which led the judge to ask him why it was necessary for the government to defend the NDAA if that was indeed the case. Torrance, who fumbled for answers before the judge's questioning, added that the United States does not differentiate under which law it holds military detainees. Judge Forrest, looking incredulous, said that if this was actually true the government could be found in contempt of court for violating orders prohibiting any detention under the NDAA.

Forrest quoted to the court Alexander Hamilton, who argued that judges must place "the power of the people" over legislative will.

"Nor does this conclusion by any means suppose a superiority of the judicial to the legislative power," Hamilton, writing under the pseudonym Publius, said in Federalist No. 78. "It only supposes that the power of the people is superior to both; and that where the will of the legislature, declared in its statutes, stands in opposition to that of the people, declared in the Constitution, the judges ought to be governed by the latter rather than the former. They ought to regulate their decisions by the fundamental laws, rather than by those which are not fundamental."

Contrast this crucial debate in a federal court with the empty campaign rhetoric and chatter that saturate the airwaves. The cant of our political theater, the ridiculous obsessions over vice presidential picks or celebrity gossip that dominate the news industry, effectively masks the march toward corporate totalitarianism. The corporate state has convinced the masses, in essence, to clamor for their own enslavement. There is, in reality, no daylight between Mitt Romney and Obama about the inner workings of the corporate state. They each support this section within the NDAA and the widespread extinguishing of civil liberties. They each will continue to funnel hundreds of billions of wasted dollars to defense contractors, intelligence agencies and the military. They each intend to let Wall Street loot the U.S. Treasury with impunity. Neither will lift a finger to help the long-term unemployed and underemployed, those losing their homes to foreclosures or bank repossessions, those filing for bankruptcy because of medical bills or college students burdened by crippling debt. Listen to the anguished cries of partisans on either side of the election divide and you would think this was a battle between the forces of light and the forces of darkness. You would think voting in the rigged political theater of the corporate state actually makes a difference. The charade of junk politics is there not to offer a choice but to divert the crowd while our corporate masters move relentlessly forward, unimpeded by either party, to turn all dissent into a crime.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++ RELATED below

Former Marine Brandon Raub Sentenced To Up To 30 Days In Psych Ward Over Facebook Posts

http://www.businessi...bout-911-2012-8

===

Raub's mother said that an FBI agent told her Raub was "arrested by the Chesterfield police department" because he "assaulted an officer and resisted arrest," then asked her if Raub "was having any issues relating to people" and told her that "the threats he was making were terrorist in nature."

When asked the Chesterfield PD said Raub has not been charged with resisting arrest and assaulting an officer.

The FBI and Secret Service will not be available for comment until Monday morning.

===========

FOX NEWS

============

A Virginia-based civil liberties group, The Rutherford Institute, dispatched one of its attorneys to the hospital to represent Raub at a hearing Monday. A judge ordered Raub detained for another month, Rutherford executive director John Whitehead said.

"For government officials to not only arrest Brandon Raub for doing nothing more than exercising his First Amendment rights but to actually force him to undergo psychological evaluations and detain him against his will goes against every constitutional principle this country was founded upon," Whitehead said.

Raub's mother, Cathleen Thomas, said by telephone that the government had overstepped its bounds.

"The bottom line is his freedom of speech has been violated," she said.

Thomas said her son, who served tours as a combat engineer in Iraq and Afghanistan, is "concerned about all the wars we've experienced" and believes the U.S. government was complicit in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. One of his Facebook posts, she said, pictured the gaping hole in the Pentagon and asked "where's the plane?"

Whitehead said he found nothing alarming in Raub's social media commentaries. "The posts I read that supposedly were of concern were libertarian-type posts I see all the time," he said.

The big concern, Whitehead said, is whether government officials are monitoring citizens' private Facebook pages and detaining people with whom they disagree.

Dee Rybiski, an FBI spokeswoman in Richmond, said there was no Facebook snooping by her agency.

"We received quite a few complaints about what were perceived as threatening posts," she said. "Given the circumstances with the things that have gone on in the country with some of these mass shootings, it would be horrible for law enforcement not to pay attention to complaints."

Whitehead said some of the posts in question were made on a closed Facebook page that Raub had recently created so he questioned whether anyone from the public would have complained about them.

"Support Brandon Raub" Facebook pages have drawn significant interest, and other Internet sites had numerous comments from people outraged by the veteran's detention.

Raub's supporters characterized the detention as an arrest, complaining he was handcuffed and whisked away in a police cruiser without being served a warrant or read his rights. But authorities say it wasn't an arrest because Raub doesn't face criminal charges.

Col. Thierry Dupuis, the county police chief, said Raub was taken into custody upon the recommendation of mental health crisis intervention workers. He said the action was taken under the state's emergency custody statute, which allows a magistrate to order the civil detention and psychiatric evaluation of a person who is considered potentially dangerous.

He said Raub was handcuffed because he resisted officers' attempts to take him into custody.

######################################

What caused all of the hullabaloo? This very patriotic post made on Facebook on Friday, November 11, 2011 at 9:00am:

America has lost itself. We have lost who we truly are. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. This is the land of Thomas Jefferson. This is the land of Benjamin Franklin. This is the land of Fredrick Douglas. This is the land of Smedley Butler. This is the land John F. Kennedy. This is the land of Martin Luther King. This is the land where the cowboy wins. This is the land where you can start from the bottom and get to the top. This is the land where regardless of you race and ethnicity you can succeed and build a better life for you and your family. This is the land where every race coexists peacefully. This is the land where justice wins. This is the land where liberty dwells. This is the land where freedom reigns. This is the land where we help the poor, and people help each other. This is land where people beat racism.

[...]

Edited August 21, 2012 by Steven Gaal

[Steven Gaal]

UPDATE

http://rt.com/usa/news/marine-arrest-facebook-us-204/

[Evan Burton]

Like I said: heads I win, tails you lose.

[Steven Gaal]

Like I said: heads I win, tails you lose.

WE ALL LOSE, I guess this is what you want.

All Australian’s now under surveillance

8/23/12 http://www.hangthebankers.com/all-australians-now-under-surveillance/

A cybercrime bill was passed yesterday that will allow the government to collect and monitor your internet records.

The Government’s internet security plan to store the web history of all Australians for up to two years has been put on the backburner until after next year’s election — but new laws passed this week will allow police to compel telcos and ISPs to retain the records of people suspected of cyber-based crimes.

The Cybercrime Legislation Amendment Bill 2011 was passed by the Senate yesterday. This occurred before the Joint Select Committee on Cyber-Safety got the chance to do its work and before the public was able to give evidence. Submissions for the inquiry into reform of national security legislation have only just closed.

It is likely that the inquiry will agree to the push for expanded powers, and that further legislative reforms will be enacted very early in the term of our next government, whether Labor or Liberal.

The haste to pass legislation before appropriate public and parliamentary debate reflects an international trend towards the enactment of harmonised laws to the detriment of national sovereignty.

Civil liberties groups are right to question whether the proposed changes will be used as a tool for turning open source data into intelligence to block whistleblowers, legitimate political dissent and political movements and to spy on the activities, interests and political views of innocent ordinary citizens.

Where does the impetus for legislative changes like these come from? Seldom do we see empirical data that supports claims for the expansion of such powers. The intended purpose is always publicly stated in the same way: we need to ensure that police and intelligence services keep technological pace with criminals and terrorists.

There are conservative sceptics of this approach: the Strasbourg Court, for example, has cautioned about “the risk that a system of secret surveillance for the protection of national security poses of undermining or even destroying democracy on the ground of defending it.”

Attorney-General Nicola Roxon previously expressed concerns about the costs of the reform proposals. That’s something our friends in the United Kingdom now know only too well, as they push forward with their draft Communications Data Bill (dubbed “the snoopers’ charter”) which is forecast to cost the taxpayer £2.5bn over the next decade. Home Office’s Peter Hill admitted in July, during the first hearing of the Joint Committee on the Draft Communications Data Bill, that the British government routinely sweeps up the identities of thousands of people in a given area — via a single request to a mobile phone network.

Lockheed Martin has made advancements in Web Information Spread Data Operations Module — with the appropriate moniker LM Wisdom — which is marketed to “decision makers” as:

“a predicative analytics and big data technology tool that monitors and analyses rapidly changing open source intelligence data (newspaper feeds and social media content for example). This type of content has the power to incite organised movements, riots and sway political outcomes. LM Wisdom turns this data into actionable intelligence for our customers. Think of Wisdom as your eyes and ears on the web.”

Lockheed Martin’s promotional video displays (albeit briefly) a list of “provocateurs” which includes ABC online, newser, Ray McGovern, Arutz Sheva, Land Destroyer, American Thinker and Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty.

The push towards increased surveillance is already well in motion in the United States as well as the UK and Canada. The surveillance intelligence industry is reportedly worth $5 billion a year and, as we know courtesy of WikiLeaks, provides the tools or location tracking, hacking, massive surveillance and data analysis.

In June this year New Scientist reported that the FBI is talking to software vendors and that the Department of Homeland Security in the United States already has a monitoring system up and running.

After examining the corporate social responsibility policies of companies that sell communications surveillance technology, Privacy International revealed that of the 246 companies in the communications surveillance industry, only 62 had publicly available CSRpolicies. Only four companies — less than 2 per cent — had policies that placed specific constraints on doing business with regimes that might use their technology to commit human rights abuses.

Whistleblower William Binney revealed the National Security Agency’s massive power to spy on Americans with the Utah Spy Centre containing huge databases to store all forms of communication collected by the agency, including private emails, mobile phone calls, Google searches and other personal data. He warned that the NSA’s data-mining program has become so vast that it could “create an Orwellian state.”

This should be particularly disturbing when we now know that Australia’s cyber-spy agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, and the Australian Government Information Management Office have warned agencies that the Patriot Act allows the US government to access data held by American companies “without necessarily advising” the information’s owners.

ASIO will be keen to sign on to join their international partners on the data gathering spree. They’re ramping up the threat at home: on 21 August 2012 David Irvine, ASIO Director General, warned businesses to be more careful when it comes to warding off cyber-attacks.

Some people might be more concerned about “ASIO attacks”. ASIO is not subject to the provisions of the Freedom of Information Act 1982. The Privacy Act 1988 does not apply to the disclosure of personal information to ASIO by other agencies, and while attorneys-general come and go the bureaucracy remains the same with virtually no scope for Australian citizens to hold it to account. This must be rectified.

ASIO has been criticised for making adverse security findings against innocent people. The “surveillance rate” for Australian citizens (per capita) by phone surveillance already is vastly greater than the rate for US citizens. If the current proposal is picked up after the next electionASIO will have the ability to “plant material on people’s computers, and destroy material and go through a third party’s computer to do so; criminalising refusing to cooperate with government decryption attempts and freeing up ASIO agents to break the law if it helps to stay undercover”.

Walter Binney’s concerns apply as much to the data gathering activities of Australian security and intelligence organisations as they do to US organisations. By expanding the powers of organisations, without any properly established justification and without requiring independent monitoring of their exercise or any reasonable level of accountability, Parliament will be abnegating its responsibility to protect the rights and interests of the Australian people. It will be putting the future of the Australian people, and probably its own, in the hands of organisations and corporations.

[Steve Knight]

http://www2.timesdispatch.com/news/2012/aug/23/15/judge-says-he-will-order-release-marine-veteran-he-ar-2151347/?referer=None&shorturl=http%3A%2F%2Fbit.ly%2FQv0Mwv

HOPEWELL, Va. --

A judge today ordered the release of a Marine Corps veteran being detained as a psychiatric patient after concerns over his Facebook postings.

After an hourlong hearing, Circuit Judge W. Allan Sharrett said an involuntary commitment petition issued against Brandon J. Raub was invalid because it contained no allegation or basis to holding him.

"The petition is so devoid of any factual allegations that it could not be reasonably expected to give rise to a case or controversy," said the release order signed by the judge and sought by lawyers Anthony F. Troy and Brian D. Fowler.

[Steven Gaal]

Attorney of Former Marine Detained For Facebook Posts to Beck: Psychiatrist Threatened to ‘Brainwash’ My Client With Meds

http://www.theblaze.com/stories/attorney-of-former-marine-detained-for-facebook-posts-to-beck-psychiatrist-threatened-to-brainwash-my-client-with-meds/

===============================================================

Edited August 23, 2012 by Steven Gaal

[Evan Burton]

Like I said: heads I win, tails you lose.

WE ALL LOSE, I guess this is what you want.

All Australian’s now under surveillance

First off, I don't really have a problem with most forms of surveillance when it comes to security. I know many people disagree with me and that is their right.

Secondly, your above statement is misleading, if not incorrect. I come from a family of five children, and two of them have no internet / e-mail access whatesoever. They pay bills in person and one doesn't even have a credit card! The other two do use the internet, one for songs and the other for Facebook (which I refuse to be a part of).

That is my family. Of my three best friends, two have no internet access whatsoever (which I find almost like being Luddites!).

So if we look at my immediate circle of eight people, four have no internet connection whatsoever. If we expand that throughout Australia, and factor in areas where internet access is just a government promise, I think it would be fair to say that at least 10-15% of Australians would not "fall prey" to the surveillance you claim is so pervasive.

[Steven Gaal]

First off, I don't really have a problem with most forms of surveillance when it comes to security. I know many people disagree with me and that is their right. // end Burton

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

(Yes I think I understand you.,Gaal)

=======================================

THE PSYCHOLOGY BEHIND MASS SUBSERVIENCE TO TYRANNY

And The Consequent Rise of the Fourth Reich

From

Christos Lightweaver

"To sin by silence when they should protest makes cowards of men."

- Abraham Lincoln

Everyone likes to say, "Hitler did this," and "Hitler did that." But the truth is Hitler did very little. He was a world class tyrant, but the evil actually done by the Third Reich, from the death camps to WWII, was all done by German citizens who were afraid to question if what they were told by their government was the truth or not, and who, because they did not want to admit to themselves that they were afraid to question the government, refused to see the truth behind the Reichstag Fire, refused to see the invasion by Poland was a staged fake, and followed Hitler into national disaster.

The German people of the late 1930s imagined themselves to be brave. They saw themselves as the heroic Germans depicted by the Wagnerian Operas, the descendants of the fierce Germanic warriors who had hunted wild boar with nothing but spears and who had defeated three of Rome's mightiest legions in the Tuetenberg Forest.

But in truth, by the 1930s, the German people had become civilized and tamed, culturally obsessed with fine details in both science and society. Their self-image of bravery was both salve and slavery. Germans were required to behave as if they were brave, even when they were not.

It's easy to look back and realize what a jerk Hitler was. But at the time, Hitler looked pretty good to the German people, with the help of the media. He was TIME Magazine's Man of the Year in 1938. The German people assumed they were safe from a tyrant. They lived in a Republic, after all, with strict laws regarding what the government could, and more importantly, could not do.

Their leader was a devoutly religious man, and had even sung with the boy's choir of a monastery in his youth.

The reality was that the German people, as individuals, had lost their courage. The German government preferred it that way as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But the German people didn't wish to lose their self-image of courage.

So, when confronted with a situation demanding individual courage in the form of a government gone wrong, the German people simply pretended that the situation did not exist.

And in that simple self-deception

lay the ruin of an entire nation

and the coming of the Second World War.

When the Reichstag burned down, most Germans simply refused to believe suggestions that the fire had been staged by Hitler himself. They were afraid to. But so trapped were the Germans by their belief in their own bravery that they willed themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes so that they could nod in agreement with Der Fuhrer while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoided the one situation which most required real courage; to stand up to Hitler's lies and deceptions.

When Hitler requested temporary extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned under German law, but powers Hitler claimed he needed to have to deal with the "terrorists", the German people, having already sold their souls to their self-delusions, agreed. The temporary powers were conferred, and once conferred lasted until Germany itself was destroyed.

When Hitler staged a phony invasion from Poland, the vast majority of the German people, their own self-image dependant on continuing blindness to Hitler's deceptions, did not question why Poland would have done something so stupid, and found themselves in a war.

But Hitler knew he ruled a nation of cowards, and knew he had to spend the money to make the new war something cowards could fight and win. He decorated his troops with regalia to make them proud of themselves, further trapping them in their self-image. Hitler copied the parade regalia of ancient Rome to remind the Germans of the defeat of the legions at the Tuetenberg Forest. Talismans were added from orthodox religions and the occult to fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical strengths and an afterlife if they fell in battle. Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the enemy face to face, Hitler spent vast sums of money on his wonder weapons, airplanes, submarines, ultra-long range artillery, the world's first cruise missile and the world's first guided missile, weapons that could be used to kill at a distance so that those doing the killing need not have to face the reality of what they were doing.

The German people were lured into WWII not because they were brave, but because they were cowards who wanted to be seen as brave, and found that shooting long range weapons at people they could not see took less courage than standing up to Hitler.

Sent into battle by that false image of courage, the Germans were dependent on their wonder-weapons. When the wonder-weapons stopped working, the Germans lost the war.

I remember as a child listening to the stories of WWII from my grandfather and my uncles who had served in Europe. I wondered how the German people could have been so stupid as to have ever elected Hitler dog catcher, let alone leader of the nation. Such is the clarity of historical hindsight.

And with that clarity,

I see the exact same mechanism that Hitler used

at work here in this nation.

The American people imagine themselves to be brave. They see themselves as the heroic Americans depicted by Western movies, the descendants of the fierce patriot warriors who had tamed the frontier and defeated the might of the British Empire.

But in truth, by the dawn of the third millennium, the American people have become civilized and tamed, culturally obsessed with fine details in both science and society. Their self-image of bravery is both salve and slavery. Americans are required to behave as if they are brave, even when they are not. The American people assume they are safe. They live in a Republic, after all, with strict laws regarding what the government can, and more importantly, cannot do. Their leader is a devoutly religious man.

The reality is that the American people, as individuals, have lost their courage. The government prefers it that way, as a fearful people are easier to rule than a courageous one. But Americans don't wish to lose their self-image of courage. So, when confronted with a situation demanding courage to challenge a government gone wrong, the American people simply pretend that the situation does not exist. Cherished illusions supercede hard reality.

When the World Trade Towers collapsed, most Americans simply refused to believe suggestions that the attacks had been staged by parties working for the U.S. Government itself. Americans were afraid to, even as news reports surfaced proving that the U.S. Government had announced plans for the invasion of Afghanistan early in the year, plans into which the attacks on the World Trade Towers which angered the American people into support of the already-planned war fit entirely too conveniently. But so trapped are Americans by their belief in their own bravery that they will themselves to be blind to the evidence before their eyes so that they can nod in agreement with the government while still imagining themselves to have courage, even as they avoid the one situation which most requires real courage; to stand up to the government's lies and deceptions.

The vast majority of the American people, their own self-image dependant on continuing blindness to the government's deceptions, never question why Afghanistan would have done something so stupid as to attack the United States, and as a result, Americans find themselves in a war.

Now the U.S. Government has requested temporary extraordinary powers, powers specifically banned under Constitutional law, but powers the government is claiming they need to have to deal with the "terrorists". The American people, having already sold their souls to their self-delusions, are agreeing. The temporary powers recently conferred will be no more temporary in America than they were in Germany.

The U.S. Government knows they rule a nation of cowards. The government has had to spend the money to make the new war something cowards can fight. The government has decorated the troops with regalia to make them proud of themselves, further trapping them in their self-image. Talismans are added from orthodox religions and the occult to fill the soldiers with delusions of mystical strengths and an afterlife if they fall in battle.

Finally, knowing that it takes courage to kill the enemy face to face, the United States government has spent vast sums of money on wonder weapons, airplanes, submarines, ultra-long range artillery, cruise missiles, and guided missiles, weapons that kill at a distance so that those doing the killing need not have to face the reality of what they are doing.

As I mentioned above, Hitler was TIME Magazine's Man of the Year in 1938. Stalin was TIME Magazine's Man of the Year for 1939 and 1942. Both of these men, and many others also celebrated by the media, were unimaginable monsters. The lesson from these facts is that it isn't easy to spot a genocidal tyrant when you live with one, especially one whom the press supports and promotes. Tyrants become obvious only when looking back - after what they have done becomes known.

The German people did not stand up to Hitler because their media betrayed them, just as the American media is betraying the American people by willingly, voluntarily, even proudly, abandoning its traditional role as watchdog against government abuse.

It is the very nature of power that it attracts the sort of people who should not have it. The United States, as the world's last superpower, is a prize that attracts men and women willing to do absolutely anything to win that power, and hence are also willing to do absolutely anything with that power once they have it. If one thinks about it long enough, one will realize that all tyrants, past and most especially present, MUST use deception on their population to initiate a war. No citizen of a modern industrialized nation will send their children off to die in a war to grab another nation's resources and assets, yet resources and assets are what all wars are fought over.

The nation that wishes to initiate a war of conquest must create the illusion of an attack or a threat to start a war, and must always give their population of cowards an excuse never to question that carefully crafted illusion.

It is naive, not to mention racist, to assume that tyrants appear only in other nations and that somehow America is immune simply because we're Americans. America has escaped the clutches of a dictatorship thus far only through the efforts of those citizens who, unlike the Germans of the 1930s, have the moral courage to stand up and point out where the government is lying to the people.

And unless more Americans are willing to have that kind of individual courage, then future generations may well look back on the American people with the same harshness of judgment with which we look back on the 1930s Germans.

###

PS -- With this understanding, consider the 4 generations of the Bush Family and the repeating pattern of behavior that the American people, in their striving to be brave, completely deny, ignore, and by default, embrace.

• George Bush Jr. stands to make billions from the Bush Family oil investments and military-industrial stocks of the Carlisle Group (WWIII as GWOT - Global War On Terror).
  
  • George Bush Sr. (son of Prescott), made billions on kickbacks from Sadaam's sale of oil to U.S.
    
    • Prescott Bush made millions doing the financing and banking for Hitler's military-industrial complex (WWII).
      
      • Prescott's Father made millions selling Remington Arms to both sides during WWI.
        

With all the above in mind, consider the mass psychology in the following statements by Bush Jr. Since 9/11

November 10, 2001 - President "Bushwacker" Bush Speaks THE BIG LIE to United Nations

"We must speak the truth about terror. Let us never tolerate outrageous conspiracy theories concerning the attacks of September the 11th; malicious lies that attempt to shift the blame away from the terrorists, themselves, away from the guilty. To inflame ethnic hatred is to advance the cause of terror."

http//www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2001/11/20011110-3.html

NOTE This is the same Machievellian provocateur who made several 9/11 speeches saying first, "If you're not with us, you're against us"... and later saying, "If you're not with us, you're with the terrorists." And while whipping up patriotic frenzy for total compliance with their war agenda on one hand, the other hand slipped in stealth legislation under guise of the "Patriot Act" and Executive Orders that could arrest any dissidents, suspending their Constitutional rights as "potential terrorists" or "enemy combatants". In short, the fast-tract for tyranny and war has been expedited in the name of peace and security; it's a 4th Reich replay of massive 3rd Reich war collaboration of Grandaddy Prescott Bush and John.D. Rockefeller with the Nazi war machine. -CR

And here's Bush Jr. at a recent Address to the Nation at the World Congress Center, Atlanta, Georgia

"I recently received a letter from a 4th-grade girl that seemed to say it all

"I don't know how to feel,'

she said,

'sad, mad, angry. It has been different lately. I know the people in New York are scared because of the World Trade Center and all, but if we're scared, we are giving the terrorists all the power.'

In the face of this great tragedy, Americans are refusing to give terrorists the power.

(Applause.)

Our people have responded with courage and compassion, calm and reason, resolve and fierce determination. We have refused to live in a state of panic -- or a state of denial. There is a difference between being alert and being intimidated -- and this great nation will never be intimidated."

(Applause.)

Adolph couldn't have "emotionally blackmailed" our subservience better!

Or as the scripture says,

"They believed the lie and their damnation was just."

BOTTOM LINE QUOTABLES

"A theory floating through the media these days has it that Son Bush is making war on Iraq to "finish the job" left undone by Father Bush. This is utterly preposterous. Father Bush left the job "undone" to perpetuate the division the world government totalitarians always want. The men running the show now are motivated by the same thing that motivates Father Bush -- the goal of world government. Turning the country into a police state to "protect" us from terrorism is part of the process, in which criticism can be quelled by calling it disloyalty." --by Alan Stang, stangfeedback@hotmail.com, from an excellent article published originally at www.EtherZone.com

As for the Common Sense that the Big Lie makes uncommon...

"We have a duty to look after each other. If we lose control of our government,

then we lose our ability to dispense justice and human kindness.

Our first priority today, then, is to defeat utterly those forces of greed and corruption

that have come between us and our self-governance."

- Doris Haddock - Taken from her website at www.grannyd.com

"The world is a dangerous place to live; not because of the people who are evil,

but because of the people who don't do anything about it...

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again

but expecting different results."

--Albert Einstein

"Evil will succeed only if enough good people do nothing."

-Edmund Burke

"In Germany they came first for the Communists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.

Then they came for the trade unionists, and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.

Then they came for the Catholics, and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.

Then they came for me, and by that time, no one was left to speak up."

--Pastor Martin Neimoeller

~~~~~~~~~

ARTICLE FOOTNOTES:

"The Necessity for Enlightened Thinking" by Norman D. Livergood

http://www.hermes-press.com/etch1.htm

We've been conditioned to see Germany under Hitler as an unquestionably horrible example of dictatorial tyranny and inhuman barbarity--and to see our present American culture as completely opposite to that of Nazi Germany. And we like to think that if a tyranny such as that in Germany under the Nazi regime were present and growing in America we'd unquestionably be able to see it. So it's a shock when we realize: most people living in Nazi Germany didn't see the tyranny! They thought it was the best time of their lives! Sobering parallels.

"A kinder, gentler fascism"

http://www.theemaila....org/newKGB.htm

Each and every one of us should be aware of what is occurring in the United States, under the name of terrorism and security. (...) "Like the Bush administration, the Nazis were funded and ultimately ushered into power by wealthy industrialists." Another "long, hideous nightmare" may result if enough good people don't do enough.

"Listen Little Man"

http://www.hermes-press.com/reich.htm

This is an excellent book review on the psychology of the "little man" in all of us who readily bonds with benevolent tyrants even as the German people bonded with Hitler. The Saint of Calcutta, Mother Theresa, once said that there was a little Hitler in all of us. Understanding "how so" is critical to preventing fascism in our day.

Edited August 24, 2012 by Steven Gaal