DANGER, DANGER, DANGER WILL ROBINSON!

The biggest threat to America is not al-Qaeda or Moslem fundamentalist or home grown terrorist: The biggest threat to American Freedom is the blatantly partisan United States Supreme Court.   The latest ruling of The Court allows police officers to conduct strip searches at their whim.   Along with all the other totalitarian rulings they have confirmed over the last decade that have eroded personal freedom and privacy, this last one moves our country further toward a police state. 

The Republican Party, with their elite 1% base, their lunatic Tea Party fringe and fundamentalist Christian theocrats, have systematically tried to dismantle social programs and limit individual freedom of choice and privacy – while at the same time proposing religious restrictions that move our government toward a theocracy.   While picking and choosing the tenets of the Constitution they agree with they have blatantly ignored major articles and provisions that do not conform to their world view of big business and God centered governance.   They constantly threaten amendments to the Constitution that would drastically change our Republic for now and the future.   

This is fine; the Republican Congressmen and Senators are duly elected by the people, and like the President have a right to their Political beliefs, and as such have a right to legislate their agenda.

However, here is the rub:  The Judicial branch is designed by the Constitution to be an impartial and non partisan watchdog that can bring extreme legislations from either party back to the central meaning and intent of the Constitution.   The Supreme Court should be the neutral body of government that guards the freedom and basic human rights of the individual.  

Terrorist have the ability to only destroy limited targets within our population; but, the United States Supreme court has the ability to destroy a nation of free men and women and move our country toward a version of George Orwell’s 1884 – and this is the future that I fear. 

And if some government agency is reading this, as according to the Supreme Court they have the authority to do:
I'm watching you
Watching me
Watching you
the Ol'Buzzard

I AM NOT A CONSPIRACY THEORIST

BUT…

I am seventy-plus years old.   I have been around the block numerous times; and though I don’t think that age necessarily equates to intelligence – I can post an impressive resume.  And, the one thing I know for sure is: I don’t blindly trust our government to act in our best interest.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am a loyal American (of American ideals) – and I have the scars to prove it.  But, I don’t trust our government (politicians.)    Our government has never been a government of the people, by the people… etc.   It has always been the government of special interest and “the bigger picture” gamesmanship.

Our government constantly packages swamp land as “Preferred Real Estate Property” and sells it to the citizenry.   They tell us it’s candy but in the bottom of the box there is often a scorpion.

The last thing I blindly bought into was the liberation of the South Vietnamese people in the Vietnam war; only to discover that our real reason for occupying South Vietnam was to tactically establish a permanent nuclear military presence on the southern border of China (sounds familiar in reverse: Cuban missile crisis.)    Then, of course, “Iraqi Freedom” where a White House full of oil men invade a country with the second largest oil reserve on earth. 

We have constantly been sold a bill of goods only to find that some patriotic spin name has been added to cover up the smell:  The Patriot Act – I need say no more.

We have moved from Bush’s “phone tapping of (only) foreign suspected terrorist”, to authorized surveillance of American citizens and to expanded surveillance authority for civilian police.  Now Obama has just signed an appropriations bill that allows the government to arrest and detain, without trial, any American citizen suspected of terrorist connections.   Obama says he will not use this authority, but what about a future fundamentalist, Tea Party, Republican President – what about a President Cheney clone?  

 Think about how this could fit in to George Orwell’s 1984 repackaged as 20XX.  

Now there is a new government threat covertly aimed at taking the first step to control and censor the Internet.

On October 26, 2011 the Bill HR-3261 was introduced by Lamar Smith (R-TX.)   The bill is touted to prevent the piracy of U.S. copyrighted material.  The bill is commonly known as SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act.)  The actual title is “To Promote Prosperity, Creativity, and Innovation by combating the theft of U.S. property, and for other purposes."

It’s the - “and for other purposes,” - that bothers me.  At first glance the bill seems to require Internet providers to monitor customer’s traffic and block web sites suspected of copyright infringement.  

But, the bill also states that it would make unauthorized streaming of copyright material a crime with a maximum imprisonment of 5 years for ten infringements within six months.

That has me nailed; and probably everyone reading this blog who include pictures or YouTube clips on your post.  This is an open invitation to some political regime of the future to use the NSA or FBI to monitor web sites and blogs that they feel are not in the best interest of Big Brother and shut you down; or to threaten or actually imprison people that speak out.    (Does anybody still remember the First Amendment to the Constitution?)

The internet should not be the property of any government and no government should have the right to censor it “for the greater good” of its people.

the Ol’Buzzard.  

THE PERIL OF APATHY

IF YOU ARE NOT WORRIED; YOU ARE NOT PAYING ATTENTION

To be truly free would be: to be free of all government constrains – to live a life of independence and make choices without conformity to other people's ideas and desires.   This sounds wonderful, but would require a regression to a hunting and gathering society. 

A free man - Jim Bridger - mountain man

Interaction with society is a necessary evil, and societies need governments to organize and run infrastructures, protect resources, oversee commerce and establish a judicial system that looks out for the rights of individuals.  

Corporations are not people – they are not individuals:  they are gangs or cults that are in the business of exploiting the needs of people in order to make a profit.  Their natural inclination is to make a profit at any cost.  Like any gang, mob or organized group of people, corporations have a persona and the person characteristics of an individual; and, just like individuals, it survives through the Darwinian principal of adjust to change or die.   No corporation operates for the benefit of man kind unless it is convenient for its business model. 

The ideal purpose of government is to furnish and maintain the things that an individual is not capable of alone: roads, bridges, mass transit, health care, police, fire and rescue services and protection of the environmental; but also for protection of the individual from the exploitation of corporations and other cults and organized groups. 

No government has ever operated primarily for the good of the individual.  Our government is no exception.   But now, more than ever, the United States is in real danger of being co-opted and moved in the direction of authoritarian rule. It is not operating for the welfare of the individual, but instead has become the tool of corporate greed and religious cults - whose goal it is to exploit and subjugate the individual.

The trend of the U.S. government at this time, especially as driven by the Republican right, is to go far beyond servicing the individual.   The government is now being manipulated by the class of wealthy people, who profit from the corporations, in order to accumulate more wealth.  

Even more dangerous is the cult of religious extremist who, through the Republican Party, are attempting to co-opt influence in the government, with the aim of creation a Christian theocracy.  Under the banner of ‘less government and family values’ these organized mobs, like a moral Gestapo, would insert themselves into our most private and personal lives; decreeing what we should believe, what we should learn, what we should read, and controlling our sexual and reproductive choices.   They would legislate laws giving preference to ‘White Americans’; they would establish English as the national language and Christianity as the national religion.  These extreme Christian groups are no longer a minority voice, but are represented by the Republican majority.  They would revel in an opportunity to establish Christian Shariah law and bring back the inquisition to persecute those who dare to believe or think differently.  

The parallels to Orwell’s 1984 are startling.   We have lost the guarantee of trial by jury under the hypocritical name of The Freedom Act.   The government now has the authority to access our e-mails and track our internet activity, they can read our letters and even monitor the books we check out at the library without proving just cause and seeking judicial approval.  We can be arrested and held indefinitely without trial and even detained by the military and tried by a military tribunal. 

The loss of these Constitutional rights is trivial when compared to the America proposed by the Tea Party – fundamentalist Christian co-opted Republican Party.   We could find ourselves moved back – not to the 1950’s – but to a new Dark Ages where the Bible would replace our Bill of Rights. 

 

During the Stalin era the Communist Manifesto claimed that war with the America was not necessary because the U.S would fall “like an over ripe plumb” because of the inequality among its people. 

Communist Russia in no longer a threat and the economic inequality has surely increased; but the real threat is ignorance and religious fanaticism.  

the Ol'Buzzard

ORWELLIAN PARALLEL

IS IT ME OR AM I JUST PARANOID

The're coming to get you Barbara!



On the whole, I am not a conspiracy theorist; I don’t look for underlying contrivances beyond the overt insanity of government and the human race in general. However, the Republican house has proposed a bill requiring internet providers to maintain records of all activity by subscribers for one year. This, along with other information we are required to give to participate in on-line activities lays us more vulnerable to a lot of information gathering.


As bloggers, Face Book, twitter etc. users we often voluntarily publish too much of our personal information.

I have had a friend advise me to use an online storage sight for my computer instead of purchasing a separate hard drive to safely back up my computer. Now I am wondering who controls the information I would be downloading.

We know the government has extended their right to wire tap citizens through the Patriot Act; that the NSA regularly collects information and the laws of search and seizure have been relaxed in the name of terrorism prevention. Parents are encouraged to have their children fingerprinted, DNA collection is and has been done without consent and people can be arrested and detained without due process.

There are already so many similarities to George Orwell’s 1984; what if these online sites that store your personal pictures and information were actually fronted to collect information on citizens by Homeland Security?

I’m just asking.
the Ol'Buzzard

GEORGE ORWELL'S 2011

IF YOU HAVEN'T READ GEORGE ORWELL'S 1984 YOU SHOULD READ IT;  IF YOU HAVE READ IT YOU SHOULD READ IT AGAIN

In the world of 1984 George Orwell portrays a chilling parody of today. We are more controlled and manipulated than we even know. Government never has been about the people, and today it has truly morphed into a corporate oligarchy.



WAR IS PEACE


FREEDOM IS SLAVERY


IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH

“If all others accept the lie which the party imposed – if all records told the same tale – then the lie passed into history and became true. Who controls the past, ran the party slogan, controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.”

“Statistics were just as much a fantasy in their original version. A great deal of the time you were suppose to make them up out of your head.”

“The aim of the high is to remain where they are. The aim of the middle is to change places with the high. The aim of the low, when they have an aim – for it is an abiding characteristic of the low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of any thing outside their daily lives – is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal.”

“It was still true that men were not equal in their native talents and that functions had to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others.”

"Imprisonment without trial, the use of war prisoners as slaves, public execution, torture to extract confessions, the use of hostages and the

Headless corpses in the desert...

Build the Damn Fence.

deportation of whole populations not only became common again, but were tolerated and even defended by people who considered themselves enlightened and progressive."

“In the past, no government had the power to keep it’s citizens under constant surveillance.”



  Who is watching you?

“The essential act of the party is to use conscious deception while retaining the firmness of purpose that goes with complete honesty, to tell deliberate lies while genuinely believing in them, to forget any facts that have become inconvenient.”











“The proles (people) are only intermittently conscious of the war. When it is necessary they can be prodded into frenzies of fear and hatred, but when left to themselves they are capable of forgetting for long periods that the war is happening. It is in the ranks of the party, and above all the Inner Party, that the true war enthusiasms is found.”

"We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end."

NEW SPEAK: (a sound bite) is designed to diminish the range of thoughts.



INGSOC (the controlling oligarchy): “(like religion) successfully manipulated the mind to the point that a person thinks the opposite of what is true.”



DOUBLE THINK: reality control – i.e. thou shall not kill, but glorification of war.

We have been told to be afraid so that we might be less protective of the constitution,less mindful of international law, less respectful toward allies, less discerning in our search for facts, less rigorous in questioning what our leaders tell us; all of this to avoid being accused of aiding our enemies.

From Memo to the President Elect

by Madeleine Albright.