by Richard M. Dolan
The Canadian
2-15-07
Back in 1933, Adolph Hitler came to power in Germany. He never actually received a majority of the German vote, although his party had received the largest plurality in the most recent parliamentary elections. Thus, in January of 1933, the ancient, revered, and decrepit Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany, appointed Hitler as Chancellor. A little more than a month later, the German parliament building, known as the
Reichstag, was in flames. Arson.
Hermann Goering, director of the national police and number two man in the Nazi Party, immediately
proclaimed this to be "the work of the Communists." An easily confused and not-very-intelligent man, a foreigner (Dutch) and Communist, who was at the scene and had been goaded into the deed by the Nazis, confessed to everything and was executed. In fact, the best evidence indicates that
Goering, Joseph
Goebbels, and Reinhard Heydrich
planned the whole thing. The result was the infamous Enabling Act, which gave Hitler dictatorial and extreme powers - supposedly temporary to meet the current crisis. The crisis happened to last for twelve years.
What I am saying is that
9/11 appears to be America’s version of the Reichstag Fire. The Silent Watchdog and Invisible Fascism People who live in their little private Idaho read all this with such incredulity. “Well, why isn’t any of this in the major media?” “Wouldn’t the press just love such a scoop?”
The answer is no. Of course not. That people can still believe this about their media is something that I continue to marvel at, but -- in case, dear reader, you’re still not getting it- it is time to wake up.
The U.S. Patriot Act contextAmericans have lived with the
Patriot Act for more than four years. A few people have voiced their concerns about the loss of their Fourth Amendment right to privacy. For those who want a refresher, this is the complete amendment, which went into effect:
“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
The 400-page Patriot Act (HR 3162) completely overturns this amendment, which has been the cornerstone of the American right to privacy for more than 200 years. The Patriot Act was rushed through Congress within weeks of 9/11. It was certainly written before 9/11, waiting in the wings, so to speak. The members of Congress rivalled the wisdom of Homer Simpson who, when once faced with a waiver to sue for damages from the dreaded Mr. Burns and his team of lawyers, stated courageously, “I’m not signing anything until I read it or somebody gives me the gist of it!”
The Patriot Act is bad, very bad. The carefully worded Section 213, for example, provides for the infamous ability to “sneak and peak.” It establishes the ability to issue
secret warrants for any federal crime-not just terrorism-and indeed to extend the secrecy indefinitely. Police can break in, examine and remove or alter items, and can do this without ever presenting owners with a warrant detailing what they were entitled to do.
The U.S. Patriot Act also allows authorities to examine your medical, financial, educational, and even library records, whether or not they show any evidence of a crime. Credit reporting firms must also disclose to the FBI any information that agents request in connection with a terrorist investigation, without the need for a court order. In the past, this was only permitted in espionage cases. And just what constitutes terrorism, these days? Your guess is as good as mine.
It gets worse. For now we also live with the
Intelligence Reform Act, passed in December 2004, an even more mammoth piece of legislation which
continues the assault on the rights of American citizens.
For instance, it enables the President to select top Intelligence positions without Senate confirmation. As writer Mike Whitney put it, this is “an invitation to create his personal security apparatus without congressional interference.” It also enables the new Intelligence Director to exempt his office from audits and investigations. It eliminates provisions to ensure that Congress receives timely access to intelligence. It allows the White House’s Office of Management and Budget to screen testimony before the Intelligence Director presents it to the Congress. (Thus, a president-including the current one-can stonewall or selectively present information to Congress).
Whistle blower protections were removed from the bill so that federal employees cannot report on their superiors. Amazingly, it also
hides the entire intelligence budget from Congressional scrutiny.
Finally, as Whitney points out, the Intelligence Director “shall have authority to direct or undertake electronic surveillance and physical search operations pursuant to FISA if authorized by statute or executive order.” Yes, that’s executive order.
Mass-media complicity and collusion with elitesThe U.S. major media was silent on these issues. Indeed, our major
media is a crucial part of the problem. It has become the watchdog that doesn’t bark. I’ve written about this a number of times. Talk about this long enough and you begin to feel as though you’re howling into a vacuum. Which is essentially the case. Just remember the words of long-time publisher of the Washington Post, Katherine Graham, in 1988: “there are some things the general public does not need to know and shouldn’t. I believe democracy "flourishes" when the government can take legitimate steps to keep its secrets and when the press can decide whether to print what it knows.” That’s some interesting take on the idea of democratic rule. It is also a statement that our major media have taken to heart.
Fascist aspirations for "Empire" through "Privatization" and "Globalization". is destroying constitutional democratic ideals of America as a "Republic"There is of course the obvious culprit, finally and widely acknowledged these days. This is the Spirit (and reality) of Empire, which has provided a none-too-subtle knife in the back. Since the days of Rome, people have understood the incompatibility of constitutional-oriented 'republican institutions' with the tools of Conquest and Empire. By the time of Caesar, for instance, Roman rule stretched throughout the Mediterranean, dominating peoples as diverse as those under American military hegemony today.
The problem back then was that the old Roman Senate, already with five centuries of history behind it, was designed for ruling Romans-in Rome. The Senate managed well enough during Rome’s conquest of Italy in the third century BC, and even during the pivotal Punic Wars with Carthage. But ruling faraway (and valuable) lands like Gaul and Egypt were not so simple. Caesar knew this as well as anyone. Solution: end of the Republic, and the creation of such offices as Dictator for Life. Then, after his assassination, Emperor. Indeed, we may wish to remember that Caesar’s successor, his nephew, the Emperor Augustus, stated that his own absolute rule was only temporary, and that he eventually intended to restore the republic.
Ultimately, Republics cannot wear the armour of Empire. That is because two central principles of republican philosophy-freedom and self-government-wither under its weight.
Empires (i.e. the "American Empire") mean war. Wars mean the stifling of dissent and constriction of free thought at home. This happens every time. Repeat: every time. It has happened in America today. Freedom of expression is a meaningless concept if everyone thinks the same.
It is how dissenters are treated that enables us to measure how free a society is.Empires also prevent people from governing themselves. That is because wars destroy truth. Without freedom of information from the elected and appointed leaders of our government-that is, without truth-how can ‘the people’ rule? This was a point heavily emphasized by America’s Founding Fathers. “An enlightened citizenry,” wrote Jefferson, “is indispensable for the proper functioning of a republic.” Madison agreed: “The diffusion of knowledge is the only true guardian of liberty.” But as Phillip Knightly observed in his classic study of the subject, the first casualty in war is truth. This fact is once again in evidence regarding America’s current fiascos in Iraq and Afghanistan.
The so-called
"War on Terror" is simply the latest manifestation of the "new order of things", of what we may call the Permanent Warfare State. In such a situation, the old Constitutional-oriented republican virtues of freedom and self-government cannot survive.
One might argue that Empires don’t have to result in reduction of rights at home. Look at Britain, not a republic of course, but at least a “liberal” monarchy. The British Empire spread around the world, and Brits enjoyed a higher degree of freedom than many other peoples, at least during the Empire’s heyday during the 19th century. That’s true, but the other side of it is that we don’t know how free the British people would have been without Empire. And let us not forget that there was also a great deal of “unfreedom” in Britain, even during glory days of Britannia.
The American Empire Lest you doubt that America is indeed a bona fide empire that garrisons the world, consider that according to the Pentagon itself, the U.S. military has 860 bases in 41 foreign countries. That’s twenty percent of all the nations on Earth.
But this figure is certainly too low. It leaves out bases in Afghanistan, Iraq, Israel, Kosovo, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Qatar, and Uzbekistan. Chalmers Johnson, in The Sorrows of Empire, argues that the true number is probably closer to 1,000 bases in perhaps more than 50 nations. Unlike during the cold war, when it was possible to learn the specifics about American bases in foreign lands, today much of the jurisdictional information is classified, and so we sometimes don’t know matters as elementary as which nation ‘owns’ a particular base in a particular country.
Military bases are a big part of it, but not the whole story. American troops, once again according to the Pentagon, are currently being stationed in 135 nations of the world. This is seventy percent of the world’s nations. Not all these places have large numbers of troops, it’s true. But many do, and the point is, they’re there. Today, we are told this is in order to defend and advance the noble cause of globalization. This is only part of the truth. In reality, empires are taken and defended in order to win great prizes for those few who are powerful enough to make money from them. This was true with Rome, it was true with Britain, it is true with America today.
"Globalization" is a game with winners and losers, and you can be sure that America’s policy makers (as distinct from the American people) intend to be the winners. Since World War II, America has pursued a grand imperial strategy to stake out the globe. Today this strategy wears the scantiest of veils, and America’s leaders now talk openly of “full spectrum dominance.” That’s bureaucratese for “we’re taking over the world.”
US Empire Circa 2003Meanwhile, a profound but silent
"national security revolution" has transformed America. It is silent because there is still no formal acknowledgment of any real change. As long as the external appearances are the same (e.g. President, Congress, Supreme Court, etc.) most people continue to live under the delusion that things are the same, when in fact they are entirely different.
More than three decades ago, Gil Scott-Heron sang The Revolution Will Not Be Televised. He was right. It wasn’t. Criminal Globalization But, as I suggested at the beginning of this article, the demands of empire are only part of the problem.
The death of the American Republic is clearly a book-length subject, so I will content myself to mention some of the other culprits more briefly before moving on to my main theme.
There is a creepy interconnection of most of these villains. There is, for instance, the unsettling confluence of the major financial institutions of the world, the major groups of organized crime, and numerous intelligence agencies from around the world, all carving up the globe in the name of privatization. Behind all this is the unsettling evidence that
elite powerful interests and families do indeed exercise dominant power behind the scenes of our public institutions, and that this is being done on an international scale.
Most Americans live in a mindless "autopilot" of self-imposed ignoranceAmericans have lived on a mental autopilot for long enough. Every day, millions of children mindlessly recite a pledge of allegiance to the flag “and to the republic for which it stands.” Do they know what a republic is? Do the adults who teach them know? Do you? The word once had meaning for all Americans, but those days are long gone. Today, we hear nothing about such things as republican institutions, and even less discussion about what structures of real power have actually evolved in the United States, and indeed throughout the world. I am not sure what exactly we should be calling this new government, but it isn’t a republic, nor is it particularly democratic.
Has Fascism taken over the effect governance of the United States?One certainly hears a lot these days about
“American fascism". Certain commentators like to point out that fascism was a distinct historical development that evolved from the European wreckage after World War I. Some maintain that to call what is happening in America “fascism” is a "disservice" to those who lived under Hitler, Mussolini, or other dictators.
It’s true that there are major differences here today with certain features of those regimes. For one, the current regime is not as in-your-face about it as, say, Hitler was. There has been no openly acknowledged coup d’état to which one can refer. But the changes to America have yet been profound. What I believe is that the Jacobin-styled revolutionaries who run America these days have learned an important lesson from the past: that the best revolutions are silent. Manage the media, manage the other major institutions of power, and you can have your way about almost anything. You can change the structure of society at the most profound levels, as long as you keep the old appearances. I call this
"silent fascism".
Americans must "wake up" in a timely manner, if they are to save America, from a destructive fascist greed-driven agenda that had also inspired Adolf Hiltler quest for "Global Empire".
The necessity of systematized UFO and other disclosure toward the renewal of American democracyBut my main quarry herein is not on 'Empire', not the covert influence of big money, not "Globalization", not the co-option of what was once an independent media, nor even fascism per se in America.
There is another disease eating away at America. It is something that receives nearly no attention, even from those people who think and care about such quaint issues as democratic-oriented 'republican' virtue and freedom.
But the UFO topic has important political implications. We cannot afford to ignore them. One of these is the damaging effect UFO secrecy has had on our society. It is an
issue that intimately affects public policy, national security, and our very freedom.
UFOs are not fun and games, they are not delusions. They are real. The phenomenon has involved real technology, doing real things that are not supposed to be possible. We know this because, for a relatively brief period in America’s history (primarily the late 1970's and into some of the 1980s'), the Freedom of Information Act enabled researchers to obtain official documents from government agencies, which clearly demonstrated this.
As far as efforts to currently try to obtain UFO-related information, FOIA’s moment of glory was long ago, in the post-Watergate and post-Vietnam era.
It is furthermore notable that Dr. Edgar Mitchell, of Apollo 14 fame, and the sixth man to walk on the moon, on several occasions, has also spoken in public about his knowledge of UFOs.
Apparent secrecy on UFO's has been an integral part of a silent fascism which is effected seizing away control of America from the American people, as guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution.
Freedom and Self-GovernanceAmericans elect a member of Congress, with the idea that he or she will represent your interests within the nation’s primary instrument of political power: the Congress. Except that
Congress has been made irrelevant by other centers of power, or been taken over by them.
You get your news from television or your newspaper with the idea that the journalist on the other end is a kind of watchdog, looking out for the public interest. Except that the journalist is working for a corporation which is itself antithetical to the public interest.
Unseen structures of power have evolved over the previous generations, advancing sometimes slowly, sometimes with a dramatic suddenness. But most people lack the conceptual means by which to understand what is happening.
As bad as things look today, I retain hope for a post-disclosure world. I retain a faith - yes, I guess it’s faith -- in the value of truth over all things. A statement by my favourite writer, Leo Tolstoy, hangs before me every day: "the one thing necessary, in life as in art, is to tell the truth." I cannot believe that a society based on a foundational lie can be better than one based on a foundational truth.
.jpg "John Podesta (Interview on Inside Secret Government Warehouses)")
