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America don't GESTAPO! (Original Post) Octafish Jun 2013 OP
That is the ultimate irony isn't it? whatchamacallit Jun 2013 #1
Truman wrote CIA morphed on us. Octafish Jun 2013 #9
Yup. Notice the date he said it. roamer65 Jun 2013 #37
If he said it in December 1963 truebluegreen Jun 2013 #43
It was Nixon's code word for the Kennedy assassination. roamer65 Jun 2013 #56
A fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission Octafish Jun 2013 #57
Even Nixon called the Warren Commission... roamer65 Jun 2013 #59
James Jesus Angleton, a foul name from the past. LBJ reportedly said of the Kennedy byeya Jun 2013 #61
I am Jewish and this is offensive. Rand Paul (Jorg Haider) would be the ones your title refers to. graham4anything Jun 2013 #2
Here's what my Jewish friend's best friend wrote on the subject... Octafish Jun 2013 #4
I'm a 10th generation American in favor of free speech and proud of every opinion that you post. AnotherMcIntosh Jun 2013 #11
What's offensive? premium Jun 2013 #5
I am unaware of Rand Paul being in the CIA. I think you are mistaken. GoneFishin Jun 2013 #13
Of course you're offended... Shade7M Jun 2013 #17
+1 L0oniX Jun 2013 #23
You woo me with science Jun 2013 #31
... L0oniX Jun 2013 #24
For you, we can edit the apt Gestapo tag and just go with NKVD. Feel all better now? DisgustipatedinCA Jun 2013 #26
Somehow, I don't believe the poster is familiar with the GULAG Archipelago... Octafish Jun 2013 #29
Is that a TSA employee? AnotherMcIntosh Jun 2013 #32
Well trained apparatchik for a future job specialization. Octafish Jun 2013 #45
Most of my Jewish friends finds our spying offensive, too usGovOwesUs3Trillion Jun 2013 #35
You don't have the right to not be offended. backscatter712 Jun 2013 #40
I don't think it matters very much whether or not you're offended. nt sibelian Jun 2013 #51
Liars become paranoiacs. Paranoiacs become snoopers.... Junkdrawer Jun 2013 #3
like people who are serial alerters here..be very cautious around those folks..they're dangerous..nt xiamiam Jun 2013 #16
Frighteningly correct Puzzledtraveller Jun 2013 #34
‘Secrets’: How America Lost Its Way Octafish Jun 2013 #18
Thanks for posting this. JEB Jun 2013 #19
Mr. Parry has given his permission? AnotherMcIntosh Jun 2013 #33
By the same types who said the BFEE secret government axis of treasonous weasels does not exist? Octafish Jun 2013 #44
The war against "underground newspapers"... CanSocDem Jun 2013 #50
GOP - when a bunch of Hate-filled Goobers got in with both Mafia and NAZI money from Wall Street Octafish Jun 2013 #58
Nixon. roamer65 Jun 2013 #36
Bunker mentality.... Junkdrawer Jun 2013 #38
The government does seem paranoid. limpyhobbler Jun 2013 #41
Except when we do. Fuddnik Jun 2013 #6
BFEE Takes Charge: The Uses of 'Counter-Terrorism' Octafish Jun 2013 #20
It didn't end there. Your're right. Arctic Dave Jun 2013 #7
SECRET Government Is a One-Way Mirror. Octafish Jun 2013 #25
^^^cool website. limpyhobbler Jun 2013 #42
For a country that doesn't do Gestapo - and I agree with you more than disagree - we sure took in a byeya Jun 2013 #8
in all fairness iamthebandfanman Jun 2013 #15
in all fairness, I think you have come up with an excellent analysis. byeya Jun 2013 #21
'Mexicans' aren’t America’s immigration problem. NAZIs are Octafish Jun 2013 #28
+ + + byeya Jun 2013 #48
There's a lot of German ancestry in the U.S. backscatter712 Jun 2013 #46
The SW USA was populated with American Indians and Mexicans in the 1600s. Spanish speakers byeya Jun 2013 #47
Indeed. Many of the "illegal aliens" who are native Spanish-speakers... backscatter712 Jun 2013 #49
There are reasons why the surveillance of all Americans is necessary: AnotherMcIntosh Jun 2013 #10
LOL. GoneFishin Jun 2013 #12
Money to be made with the right scrap of information. Octafish Jun 2013 #30
i agree with the general sentiment.. iamthebandfanman Jun 2013 #14
Agree 99-percent. The brass is the problem. They are corrupt. Octafish Jun 2013 #52
Your papers please. L0oniX Jun 2013 #22
It's like we live in NAZI times. Octafish Jun 2013 #53
K & R !!! WillyT Jun 2013 #27
Pentagon Spending Spree no one seemed to notice in all the blood lust. Octafish Jun 2013 #55
It is more like The Staatsicherheit American-style. tsuki Jun 2013 #39
Absolutely! Power the Semantics of Terrorism Octafish Jun 2013 #54
The USA is never wrong! Don't forget golden rule number one. Rex Jun 2013 #60

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
9. Truman wrote CIA morphed on us.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:53 AM
Jun 2013

"I never would have agreed
to the formulation of the
Central Intelligence Agency
back in forty-seven, if I had
known it would become
the American Gestapo."

-- Harry S Truman

That was in Dec. 1963 -- before we knew about the Mafia, NAZIs, MK ULTRA...

roamer65

(36,739 posts)
37. Yup. Notice the date he said it.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 08:03 PM
Jun 2013

December 1963.

He knew more, but I am sure dared not say it.

We don't want to bring up that "Whole Bay of Pigs thing" again, now do we...as Nixon used to say.

 

truebluegreen

(9,033 posts)
43. If he said it in December 1963
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:38 PM
Jun 2013

I doubt he was referring to the Bay of Pigs....

I've thought for a long time that we would be far better off to abolish the CIA...and other black agencies. And change the Dept of Defense back into what they are: the War Department (that was another of Truman's mistakes BTW).

roamer65

(36,739 posts)
56. It was Nixon's code word for the Kennedy assassination.
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 03:06 PM
Jun 2013

Bob Haldeman admitted much later on in life that was Nixon's code word for it.

Suspect you already know that, but just in case u don't...

I think Harry was trying to clue us in on some of the culprits.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
57. A fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 03:10 PM
Jun 2013


Here's a fact curiously missing from American history and any mention of the Warren Commission: Two of its members were directly responsible for the rise of post-war fascism. Allen Dulles, as a top official of the OSS and CIA, incorporated NAZI war criminals into the CIA from its founding. John McCloy, as High Commissioner for Germany, allowed Klaus Barbie and who-knows-who-else to escape justice. Of course, both men were also barons of Wall Street and Beltway Insiders, at the heart of the military industrial complex. We all can see what that means for the United States today.

roamer65

(36,739 posts)
59. Even Nixon called the Warren Commission...
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 04:39 PM
Jun 2013

....bullshit.

Pretty bad even when Tricky Dick calls it out.

Magic bullet my ass.

According to James Angleton, former CIA counter-intelligence chief, any time you were in a room with Allen Dulles and Dick Helms...you were in a room where the people would deservedly end up in hell. He then cracked he would probably see them there soon.

 

byeya

(2,842 posts)
61. James Jesus Angleton, a foul name from the past. LBJ reportedly said of the Kennedy
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 05:36 PM
Jun 2013

report, Warren's in trouble.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
4. Here's what my Jewish friend's best friend wrote on the subject...
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:38 AM
Jun 2013
IBM and the Holocaust

"Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit." -- Edwin Black

http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/

Black's work includes a study of eugenics, making the socio-economic-political connections between the elite and the masses crystal clear:

"It began on Long Island and ended at Auschwitz...and yet never really stopped." -- Edwin Black

http://www.waragainsttheweak.com/

Proud to say I shook hands with a guy who shook hands with Edwin Black.

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

Shade7M

(30 posts)
17. Of course you're offended...
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 12:05 PM
Jun 2013

Any excuse to toss out another red herring post, distract from the point of the discussion, and get another 50 cents or so from your trollmasters.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
29. Somehow, I don't believe the poster is familiar with the GULAG Archipelago...
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 05:58 PM
Jun 2013


...or the man who coined the phrase, which is sad.

"A state of war only serves as an excuse for domestic tyranny." -- Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
45. Well trained apparatchik for a future job specialization.
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 11:04 AM
Jun 2013

Facial expression of those with the necessary backbone to stand up to Them:



Woke up and smelled the sulfur long ago.

Very much appreciate that you did, as well, AnotherMcIntosh.

 

usGovOwesUs3Trillion

(2,022 posts)
35. Most of my Jewish friends finds our spying offensive, too
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 07:49 PM
Jun 2013

I don't think you have to be Jewish though to find all these intrusions into our privacy offensive though.

backscatter712

(26,355 posts)
40. You don't have the right to not be offended.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 08:13 PM
Jun 2013

Last edited Sun Jun 9, 2013, 09:47 AM - Edit history (1)

Would it make you feel better if I compared America's alphabet soup agencies with the KGB?

In Soviet America, your computer surfs you!

xiamiam

(4,906 posts)
16. like people who are serial alerters here..be very cautious around those folks..they're dangerous..nt
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 11:50 AM
Jun 2013

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
18. ‘Secrets’: How America Lost Its Way
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 12:07 PM
Jun 2013

Secrecy means No Accountability.

Mods: Mr. Parry has given DU permission to run his articles in full. Thank-a-you.



‘Secrets’: How America Lost Its Way

by Robert Parry
The Consortium magazine, November / December 1998

Tyranny, like cowardice, often comes in small pieces, compromises that seemed reasonable at the time, the best we could get, but in totality can doom a noble ideal. That is the worthwhile truth that Angus Mackenzie recalls to our attention in his posthumously published book, Secrets: The CIA’s War at Home.

The book is very much Mackenzie’s story as he charts the course of his short life -- from legends that he heard during boyhood days about American Minute Men who stood their ground at Compo Hill in his native Westport, Conn., in 1777, to a different reality two centuries later when the CIA rode roughshod over politicians and supposed protectors of U.S. civil liberties.

Secrets also is the story of a democratic ideal smothered by a government that came to see an informed electorate as an obstacle to the prosecution of a long Cold War. Yet, this was a slow strangulation, a garotte closing around the victim’s neck so no single twist would be recognized as life-threatening.

Mackenzie’s personal conflict with this national security state came from his practice of what he thought were enshrined constitutional rights: freedom of the press and the right to dissent. To his amazement, his Vietnam-era underground newspaper, The People’s Dreadnaught, made him a target of his own government.

“One of the fundamental lessons passed on from generation to generation is that Americans have the greatest of all freedoms, the freedom to express ourselves in open and public debate,” Mackenzie wrote. “Imagine my surprise ... when I found myself in trouble with the law for publishing a newspaper.”

Mackenzie then challenged the secrecy-holders through lawsuits brought under the Freedom of Information Act. Over time, he broke through some -- but not all -- of the stone walls. Mackenzie kept up that struggle until May 13, 1994, when he died of brain cancer at the age of 43.

For the next two-and-a-half years, his family pulled together the final pieces of his manuscript. The resulting work is an important road map for Americans who wonder how their country lost its way, from the era of Thomas Paine and the Minute Men, to an era when the citizens are denied an honest accounting of the last 50 years, even after the end of the Cold War threat that supposedly justified the secrets in the first place.

Anti-War Disillusions

Mackenzie’s People’s Dreadnaught was one of hundreds of independent publications that sprang up in the 1960s and early 1970s as young Americans grew bitterly disillusioned by U.S. policies in Vietnam. Mackenzie’s first encounter with angry law enforcement came with local authorities who arrested him on obscenity charges for selling an issue that contained an account of the My Lai massacre.

But Mackenzie and his friends also found themselves approached by long-haired strangers who encouraged the commission of crimes, from drug sales to vandalism. Only years later, as a result of his lawsuits, did Mackenzie discover that those approaches were entrapments set by undercover police and were part of a nationwide pattern.

“I learned that editors at scores of other underground newspapers had experienced similar treatment at the hands of local and state authorities,” Mackenzie wrote. “I learned that local cops who proved themselves effective tormentors of underground editors were rewarded by federal authorities. ...

“I learned that was specifically assigned to target the dissident anti-war press and furthermore that the IRS was connected to two larger surreptitious operations, one run out of the Central Intelligence Agency (code-named MHCHAOS)and the other out of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (code-named COINTELPRO).”

Mackenzie’s initial suit earned a jury award of only $2,500 but he added: “Our lawsuit was most valuable for what I learned about the cynical contempt in which some agents of the government hold the First Amendment.” His investigation then pressed onward into other areas of secrecy, that of censorship and the punishment of government officials who broke the code of silence.

The book’s narrative starts with the doubts that some members of Congress had about the proposed National Security Act of 1947. Rep. Clare E. Hoffman, a conservative Michigan Republican, had agreed to introduce the bill but later was stunned at the open-ended language. The CIA would get the authority to perform “functions and duties related to intelligence affecting the national security as the National Security Council may from time to time direct.”

Hoffman and others feared that the CIA might evolve into an American Gestapo, which “could secretly manipulate elections or could undermine political opponents,” Mackenzie wrote. “The greatest danger was that, once created, the CIA would be hard to contain.”
The Truman administration agreed to add some language barring the CIA from domestic police and national security functions, but little notice was taken of a simple phrase granting the CIA director powers “for protecting sources and methods from unauthorized disclosure.”

After some modest compromise, nearly all congressional opposition faded away, but Hoffman rued his initial support for the CIA. He concluded that the agency would become a threat to American democracy. Over the next five decades, some of Hoffman’s fears would become reality.

But as the CIA’s powers grew, so too did intermittent challenges by American citizens who experienced the agency’s abuses. One of the most significant abuses began with the CIA’s demand in 1966 for a “run down” on Ramparts magazine which was preparing a story about the CIA’s penetration of U.S. universities and student organizations. The order led to dossiers on 22 of Ramparts writers and editors.

An important line had been crossed. The war against the underground press was underway.

Finding Enemies

The chief of that CIA operation, Richard Ober, soon was collecting IRS records on the magazine and its publisher. The justification for the investigation was the supposed suspicion that foreign communist agents were inspiring the articles. Stories suggesting those ties were planted in U.S. newspapers, although the CIA knew from its investigation that the money was coming from a wealthy American philanthropist.

The Ramparts case also led the CIA to tighten government-wide procedures for preventing future leaks and to undertake a much broader domestic spying operation, known as MHCHAOS. Soon, the CIA was sneaking informants and troublemakers inside underground newspapers and other antiwar activities. One informant, Salvatore John Ferrara, proved doubly effective because his pose as an underground journalist let him glean defense strategies on criminal cases, including the notorious Chicago Seven trial.
Despite the crackdowns, a devastating leak of government secrets still occurred in 1971 with Daniel Ellsberg’s release of the Pentagon Papers. The documents detailed the deceptions that had led the nation into the Vietnam War. Furious at the leak, President Nixon struck back with creation of his illegal Plumbers operation.

But even more significant was the imposition of ever-stricter regulations on government employees who had access to secrets. By 1972, the CIA had gotten into the business of censoring books, including one by former senior CIA officer Victor Marchetti. CIA officials insisted that Marchetti’s account of CIA misconduct would jeopardize national security and violate his secrecy agreements.

Through the courts, the CIA won important new victories, making Marchetti’s book the first ever in America to be published with deletions from government-imposed censorship. The case also convinced the CIA to compel more and more government officials to sign secrecy pledges that would forever prevent them from telling the American people the truth.

The CIA also challenged a book by Alfred W. McCoy, an academic who had studied the CIA’s tolerance of heroin trafficking in Indochina. This time, the CIA exploited personal contacts in McCoy’s publishing house, Harper and Row, to block or water down the book, The Politics of Heroin in Southeast Asia. When the CIA’s ploy was exposed, however, Harper and Row proceeded with the book.

The mid-1970s saw the CIA’s bid for wider secrecy suffer other setbacks. Published disclosures of CIA abuses and congressional investigations into the secret agency pulled back the curtain, again and again. For the first time with hard facts, Americans were alerted to the danger of clandestine CIA missions at home.

Bush to the Rescue

In 1976, however, a new director, George Bush, rode to the CIA’s rescue. With his own impressive array of contacts and his noblesse-oblige style, Bush spearheaded a clever counter-offensive that falsely pinned the murder of the CIA’s Athens station chief, Richard Welch, on anti-CIA disclosures in a magazine called CounterSpy. Internally, the CIA concluded that Welch’s identity already was blown and that the magazine was not at fault. But Bush and other CIA defenders pushed hard for new laws criminalizing national security disclosures.

These initiatives continued to gain ground under President Jimmy Carter and reached a fever pitch during the early years of Ronald Reagan’s presidency. Reagan signed anew presidential order demanding that information be classified if officials believed its release might endanger national security. Before, the government was required to identify an actual threat and even weigh the benefits of secrecy against the public’s right to know.
Though the Soviet Union was in demonstrable decline, the White House ratcheted up the secrecy throughout the 1980s. Mackenzie’s book details how the Reagan administration succeeded in maneuvering secrecy critics into a series of crippling compromises that expanded secrecy laws.

Some of the sacrifices were promoted by “bipartisan” Democrats, such as Rep. Lee Hamilton of Indiana. Others were tolerated by ACLU officials, such as Morton Halperin. The rationale often was that the compromise was better than what the Reagan administration might do otherwise. But the Executive Branch gained crucial ground in its demand to punish officials who divulged secrets.

Ex-CIA officer Ralph McGehee was shocked when he read Reagan’s new secrecy order. “People in government who become disillusioned and quit at an earlier age than me will virtually lose their freedom of expression,” he said. “The people most able to give informed views will be unable to comment.”

With the CIA again on the rise, director William J. Casey began bullying even mainstream news organizations into withholding stories on national security grounds. “Casey’s threats of prosecution against the Post and other major periodicals also demonstrated the increase in the CIA’s power since 1966, when the agency had ‘run down’ the left-wing Ramparts,” Mackenzie observed.

By the mid-1980s, Vice President Bush was promoting terrorism as the new rationale for domestic security. Some of these “terrorists” were Americans critical of U.S. policies in Central America. Bush also sought curtailment of the Freedom of Information Act because “terrorists groups may have used” it to gain information about FBI surveillance.
Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan administration also mounted aggressive “public diplomacy” campaigns against reporters who disclosed government secrets. Then at The Associated Press, I was told that the administration maintained a list of so-called “treasonous reporters” and that I was on it. During the Iran-contra scandal, documents surfaced revealing that this domestic media operation was run by a veteran CIA propagandist named Walter Raymond Jr. who sent detailed reports to CIA director Casey. (For details on this operation, see Robert Parry’s Lost History.)

Post-Cold War

Ironically, the end of the Cold War did not appreciably lessen the government’s hunger for secrecy. After his election in 1992, President Clinton vowed that a new era of candor was at hand. But Clinton failed to follow through.

As Mackenzie observed, “at the beginning of his presidency, Clinton did not boldly challenge the bureaucracy and relied on others -- often the bureaucrats themselves --to carry out reforms. In the case of the CIA, he relied on Woolsey, a Yale lawyer whose background and sensibilities were similar to those of many career officers under him.” Mackenzie concluded his account by remembering those Minute Men from 1777. “The issue,” he wrote “is freedom, as it was for the Minute Men at Compo Hill. ... Until the citizens of this land aggressively defend their First Amendment rights of free speech, there is little hope that the march to censorship will be reversed. The survival of the cornerstone of the Bill of Rights is at stake.”

http://www.consortiumnews.com /

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Democracy/Secret_DomesSurveillanceUS.html



Liars become paranoiacs. Paranoiacs become snoopers. Snoopers become secret officials...

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
44. By the same types who said the BFEE secret government axis of treasonous weasels does not exist?
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 01:07 AM
Jun 2013

Yeah, I know. Recent events show how, uh, wrong they are.

About six or seven years ago, ConsortiumNews was having a fundraiser. We linked to it from DU. The great DUer BLM, a friend of Parry's, made the arrangements. In return for the favor, we get to run entire articles.

 

CanSocDem

(3,286 posts)
50. The war against "underground newspapers"...
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 11:47 AM
Jun 2013


...used here as a metaphor for Honest Journalism, is tempered by the technology that takes all the logistics of publishing a newspaper, from finding the space to hiring a staff and reduces it to what can be spread out on the kitchen table. Not to mention the sudden availability of all those writer/activists who were driven underground by the pressures of the day.

As always, thanks for posting.

.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
58. GOP - when a bunch of Hate-filled Goobers got in with both Mafia and NAZI money from Wall Street
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 04:34 PM
Jun 2013

Nixon’s southern strategy was at the behest of certain, hiya Prescott, quarters.



Know your BFEE: Spawn of Wall Street and the Third Reich

Documents linking Prescott Bush to Nazi-era enterprises

How the Bush family made its fortune from the Nazis

Know your BFEE: Eugenics and the NAZIs - The California Connection

NAZIs and their money have not gone away. And that goes double for their power. Thank you for standing up to the global fascists, CanSocDem!

limpyhobbler

(8,244 posts)
41. The government does seem paranoid.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 08:17 PM
Jun 2013

The hyper-emphasis on secrecy seems consistent with what a bunch of paranoid liars would do.

They should just do more stuff out in the open instead of trying to keep so many secrets. I know there a few things that should be kept secret but it's ways too much right now.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
20. BFEE Takes Charge: The Uses of 'Counter-Terrorism'
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 12:41 PM
Jun 2013


From Christopher Simpson, details on how Poppy Bush started the big ball of surveillance wax after he pried control of the spyworks out of the bed-ridden Pruneface:



George Bush Takes Charge: The Uses of "Counter-Terrorism"

By Christopher Simpson
Covert Action Quarterly 58

A paper trail of declassified documents from the Reagan‑Bush era yields valuable information on how counter‑terrorism provided a powerful mechanism for solidifying Bush's power base and launching a broad range of national security initiatives.

During the Reagan years, George Bush used "crisis management" and "counter‑terrorism" as vehicles for running key parts of the clandestine side of the US government.

Bush proved especially adept at plausible denial. Some measure of his skill in avoiding responsibility can be taken from the fact that even after the Iran‑Contra affair blew the Reagan administration apart, Bush went on to become the "foreign policy president," while CIA Director William Casey, by then conveniently dead, took most of the blame for a number of covert foreign policy debacles that Bush had set in motion.

The trail of National Security Decision Directives (NSDDS) left by the Reagan administration begins to tell the story. True, much remains classified, and still more was never committed to paper in the first place. Even so, the main picture is clear: As vice president, George Bush was at the center of secret wars, political murders, and America's convoluted oil politics in the Middle East.

SNIP...

Reagan and the NSC also used NSDDs to settle conflicts among security agencies over bureaucratic turf and lines of command. It is through that prism that we see the first glimmers of Vice President Bush's role in clandestine operations during the 1980s.

CONTINUED...

http://books.google.com/books?id=YZqRyj_QXf8C&pg=PA75&lpg=PA75&dq=christopher+simpson+The+Uses+of+%E2%80%98Counter-Terrorism%E2%80%99&source=bl&ots=8klB0PzATX&sig=hi9DpE3qF43Oefh7iGn79W4jXQs&hl=en&ei=zAFQTeriBsr2gAfu1Mgc&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1&ved=0CBYQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=christopher%20simpson%20The%20Uses%20of%20%E2%80%98Counter-Terrorism%E2%80%99&f=false



Gangster times would be a picnic compared to what these are become.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
25. SECRET Government Is a One-Way Mirror.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 05:37 PM
Jun 2013

"We the People" get watched and in return we get:

No Scrutability.
No Accountability.
No Telling Who Benefits.

For STASI-like example: How many citizens have heard of a "Fusion Center"?



An antidote to Big Brother from Lil Sister: Profiling the Powers-That-Be

 

byeya

(2,842 posts)
8. For a country that doesn't do Gestapo - and I agree with you more than disagree - we sure took in a
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 10:46 AM
Jun 2013

lot of Nazis after WW2.

Don't forget that one of the largest Times Square rallies were Americans celebrating the Germans' capture of Paris.

There was a lot of pro-German sentiment before and during the war, just as there was anti-Soviet sentiment before, during, and after the war.

iamthebandfanman

(8,127 posts)
15. in all fairness
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 11:10 AM
Jun 2013

a lot of countries took in a lot of fascists after ww2...

not sure why we decided as a nation that fascism was dead just because the war was over and quickly shifted the blame and hatred towards the other extreme of communism..

also, most pro nazi sentiment came from ex-Germans (as well as a lot of the anti Nazi sentiment actually lol) :p
while the rally held at time square was pretty large, it was really small in comparison to the population of the united states.. even the population of New York..
id imagine most southerners who might be inclined to agree with the anti jewish sentiment didn't even know there was a rally let alone a Nazi party inside the united states... being a racist fascist doesn't make you a Nazi after all (tho all Nazis were racist fascists lol)..
tho id hate to imagine how much the movement would have grown if we hadn't entered the war ...
honestly tho, from my understanding, hitler wasn't to keen on the leader of the Nazi party over here...
thought he was trying to take America out from under him after all

 

byeya

(2,842 posts)
21. in all fairness, I think you have come up with an excellent analysis.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 12:50 PM
Jun 2013

I think many German-Americans remembered the hell they were put through by the Wilson administration in WW1 and didn't want their German ancestry to become potentially lethal again as it was a generation before. I believe their anti-nazism was entirely sincere; I just want it remembered that German-Americans were scapegoated in parts of the USA during WW1 - even Cincinnati! a largely German-American city.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
28. 'Mexicans' aren’t America’s immigration problem. NAZIs are
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 05:47 PM
Jun 2013

And that taboo forms the evil heart of our nation’s secret government—the fact Nazis helped form the modern national security state. This fundamental secret has been kept from America’s people for nearly 60 years: America has been influenced by Nazis, Nazi sympathizers and worse since the CIA allowed enabled them to escape justice after World War II.

Know your BFEE: Nazis couldn’t win WWII, so they backed Bushes.

backscatter712

(26,355 posts)
46. There's a lot of German ancestry in the U.S.
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 11:10 AM
Jun 2013

Up until WWI, German was almost as widely spoken as English.

Up to the 1970's, there were parts of the U.S. with German newspapers, police cars that said "Polizei" on them, and so on.

 

byeya

(2,842 posts)
47. The SW USA was populated with American Indians and Mexicans in the 1600s. Spanish speakers
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 11:15 AM
Jun 2013

have a long history in what later became the USA.

backscatter712

(26,355 posts)
49. Indeed. Many of the "illegal aliens" who are native Spanish-speakers...
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 11:17 AM
Jun 2013

...have had ancestors living in the territory of the present-day U.S. since the 1600s.

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
30. Money to be made with the right scrap of information.
Sat Jun 8, 2013, 06:22 PM
Jun 2013


CIA moonlights in corporate world

By EAMON JAVERS
Politico 2/1/10

In the midst of two wars and the fight against Al Qaeda, the CIA is offering operatives a chance to peddle their expertise to private companies on the side — a policy that gives financial firms and hedge funds access to the nation’s top-level intelligence talent, POLITICO has learned.

In one case, these active-duty officers moonlighted at a hedge-fund consulting firm that wanted to tap their expertise in “deception detection,” the highly specialized art of telling when executives may be lying based on clues in a conversation.

The never-before-revealed policy comes to light as the CIA and other intelligence agencies are once again under fire for failing to “connect the dots,” this time in the Christmas Day bombing plot on Northwest Flight 253.

But sources familiar with the CIA’s moonlighting policy defend it as a vital tool to prevent brain-drain at Langley, which has seen an exodus of highly trained, badly needed intelligence officers to the private sector, where they can easily double or even triple their government salaries. The policy gives agents a chance to earn more while still staying on the government payroll.

A government official familiar with the policy insists it doesn’t impede the CIA’s work on critical national security investigations. This official said CIA officers who want to participate in it must first submit a detailed explanation of the type of work involved and get permission from higher-ups within the agency.

CONTINUED...

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
55. Pentagon Spending Spree no one seemed to notice in all the blood lust.
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 02:59 PM
Jun 2013

Money to be made in times like these. So those with power make sure we live in times like these. Unfortunately for democracy, they just happen to be NAZIs.



Pentagon Spending Spree

The Wartime Opportunists on High Alert

by William Hartung
Multinational Monitor magazine, November 2001

Despite repeated assertions by President Bush and his top advisers that their global campaign against terrorism will be a "new kind of war," the biggest recipients of the new weapons spending sparked by the September 11 attacks will be the usual suspects: big defense contractors like Boeing, Raytheon, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman. Once emergency anti-terror funding and supplemental appropriations to finance the war in Afghanistan are taken into account, this year's Pentagon budget could hit $375 billion, a $66 billion increase over last year.

Most of this new funding will be used to bankroll long-standing pet projects of the military-industrial lobby, not to finance equipment or techniques designed for the fight against terrorism. As one Pentagon official told Defense News, much of the initial anti-terror funding "will have nothing to do with retaliation in response to the Sept. 11 attacks. The funding will go to the wish lists for things we'll have several years from now."

THE GREAT LEAP FORWARD

The arms industry's biggest agenda item of recent years - a massive, across-the-board increase in military spending-has taken a giant leap forward in the wake of September 11. In October 2000, in the stretch run of the presidential campaign, the National Defense Industrial Association joined with other arms industry trade groups and the corporate-backed Center for Security Policy to finance a full page ad in USA Today touting a "4 percent solution" to the nation's defense needs. Their "solution" involved jacking up the Pentagon budget from 3 percent of gross domestic product to 4 percent, which would involve an unprecedented peacetime increase of $100 billion. The industry's rallying cry has since been taken up by the Project for a New American Century, a right-wing think tank founded by conservative luminary William Kristol of the Weekly Standard.

Candidate George W. Bush's hard-line rhetoric on defense issues raised high hopes among defense contractors. The industry rallied behind the Republican ticket, giving more than four times as much to the Bush campaign as they donated to Al Gore's presidential bid, and favoring Republican candidates for Congress by almost a two-to-one margin. But Bush dashed the arms makers' hopes for a quick payoff in February 2001 when he announced that he would not seek additional increases in Pentagon spending beyond those already recommended by the outgoing Clinton administration until Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld had completed a comprehensive review of U.S. military strategy.

CONTINUED...

http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Corporate_Welfare/PentagonSpendingSpree.html

Octafish

(55,745 posts)
54. Absolutely! Power the Semantics of Terrorism
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 02:52 PM
Jun 2013

A STASI Fashion Show...



Var big hit:

http://photoblog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2011/08/10/7331544-the-stasi-fashion-show-east-german-spy-archive-showcases-the-art-of-disguise

I believe it was part of a new exhibition on the state security apparatus put together by the good people in Berlin:

Stasi records take center stage in Berlin

EXCERPT...

The date - January 15 - is significant. Exactly 21 years ago, on January 15, 1990, East German activists stormed the redundant Stasi headquarters in East Berlin, and managed to salvage a significant proportion of the vast numbers of files, recordings and photos in the Stasi archive. Former Stasi officers had been in the process of destroying the material after the fall of the Berlin Wall a couple of months earlier.

[font color="blue"]I look forward to the day where the records of our own government's secret domestic spy apparatus are open for review.[/font color]



Power and the Semantics of Terrorism

By Edward S. Herman
Covert Action Quarterly 26, Summer 1986

For the average citizen of the West, the idea of the United States as a sponsor of international terrorism ‑ let alone the dominant sponsor1 ‑ would appear utterly incomprehensible. After all, one reads daily that the United States is leading the charge against something it calls "terrorism," and it regularly assails its allies for dragging their feet in responding to terrorism. On the other hand, the U.S. government has organized a mercenary army to attack Nicaragua, and even provided it with a printed manual of recommended acts of sabotage and murder, which has been implemented by the proxy army, at the cost of well over a thousand Nicaraguan civilian lives. The U.S. government has given unstinting support to the apartheid government of South Africa, which has invaded, and organized its own mercenary armies, to subvert a string of frontline states, again at the cost of many thousands of civilian lives.2 The western media, however, never refer to the United States or South Africa as "terrorist states," even though both of them have killed vastly greater numbers than Qaddafi or the Red Brigades.3

The reason for the western misperception is that the powerful define terrorism, and the western media loyally follow the agenda of their own leaders. The powerful naturally define terrorism to exclude their own acts and those of their friends and clients.

"If I don't like it, call it terrorism."

The current administration in Washington has found it possible arbitrarily to designate any group or country which it opposes as "terrorist," and this will be transmitted to the public by the mass media without serious criticism or laughter. In his speech before the American Bar Association on July 8, 1985, President Reagan named five states as engaging in serious state terrorism‑North Korea, Libya, Iran, Cuba, and Nicaragua. The Soviet Union was presumably omitted because of the upcoming Summit meeting. The media reported that Syria had been spared as "a gesture of gratitude" to President Assad for his role in negotiating the release of 39 U.S. hostages in Lebanon!4 The press failed to discuss the fact that South Africa and Guatemala (among others) were omitted, that Nicaragua does not murder its own citizens as South Africa and Guatemala have done on a large scale, and that Nicaragua has not invaded other countries or organized subversive forces to destabilize other countries, as South Africa has done in many places and as the United States does quite openly to Nicaragua itself. The ludicrousness and hypocrisy of the United States calling Nicaragua a terrorist state was entirely unnoticed and without effect on the objective reporting by the U.S. press. With a compliant mass media, especially in the United States but also among its clients, terror is what the powerful U.S. government declares to be terror. As it is now using the concept with audacious and arbitrary abandon, it is employing the "If I don't like it, call it terrorism" definition of terrorism.

Exclusion of State Terrorism: Retail Versus Wholesale Terror

In its semantic manipulation of terrorism and related words, a number of devices are used by the United States and its intellectual spokespersons to differentiate friends and self from "terrorists." Perhaps the most important is to confine the use of the word to non‑state actors and actions; i.e., to define terrorism as the use of violence to oppose governments.5 This departs from standard and traditional usage, according to which terrorism is a mode of governing as well as of opposing governments by means of intimidation.6

By excluding governments, South Africa, Guatemala, and Israel are removed from the category of terrorist, while the African National Congress (ANC), rebel groups in Guatemala, and the PLO are automatically eligible. This is grotesque in terms of both numbers of victims and forms of violence employed by state and non‑state intimidators,7 but it is extremely convenient in terms of western priorities and interests. The governments protected by this word usage are allies, clients, and self; the groups automatically made "terrorists" oppose these clients and western defense of the status quo.8

To focus more sharply on the absurdity of this definitional system, I use the concepts of "retail" and "wholesale" terror: Dissident individuals and groups kill on a retail basis (that is, on a small scale, with limited technological resources to kill, and with small numbers of victims); states kill wholesale. This fairly obvious but neglected point is displayed dramatically on Table 1, which compares the numbers killed by state and non-state terrorists in recent decades. It can be quickly observed that single incidents of state terrorism frequently involve many more killings than multi‑year totals for non‑state terrorists (not to speak of the vastly greater numbers allocable to state terrorists on a multi‑year basis). In fact, one can see from this table that the multi‑year aggregates for the Baader‑Meinhof gang (a part of row 1), the Red Brigades (only a part of the relatively small Italian total on row 2),9 and the PLO (row 3) ‑ bogeymen of the western media‑even when taken together fall short of the totals for single episodes of violence by South Africa, El Salvador, and Israel. The table suggests that if we were to allow state (wholesale) terror to be included in our definition of terror and give it attention remotely proportional to numbers, El Salvador, Guatemala, Indonesia, Israel and the United States itself would be pushed to center stage,10 the Red Brigades and PLO would recede to the background. But this would not conform to the demands of western power.

CONTINUED...

http://www.worlddialogue.org/content.php?id=108

 

Rex

(65,616 posts)
60. The USA is never wrong! Don't forget golden rule number one.
Sun Jun 9, 2013, 04:41 PM
Jun 2013

America (well the fed govt) NEVER makes mistakes! EVER.

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