[AgentR11]

Preston, you are describing the complete American body politic. Not just the GOP. I know you can't see it, because you have an affirmative love for the guys on your side of the isle; but we've been on this path for several decades now. Substituting one bad guy for the next, one fear for the next, one crisis for the next. Maybe you just approved of the crises selected by the Democrats, health care, global warming, energy, whatever; but they remain every bit as much crisis politics as the GOP issues.

If the Democrats were in opposition to this, they had more than enough political power a couple years ago to gut a lot of it. But they did not.

9/11 simply pressed the accelerator down on what was already happening, and Democrats and Republicans both piled on like crazed rugby players.

So what has changed since 9/11... ? The atmosphere of fear has become strong enough, that I fear, what fear may cause others to do. Which is why my personal rule for behavior in public is.. "keep your head down and your f***** mouth shut".

[The Practician]

Guys, From the outside looking in, U.S. politics is a complete joke. To think one party poses more of a threat of a fascist system than the other is to miss the point entirely. It should be obvious by now that the U.S can and will function as a fascist state whose interests are served better by holding "elections" every four years than not.

[AgentR11]

Guys, From the outside looking in, U.S. politics is a complete joke. To think one party poses more of a threat of a fascist system than the other is to miss the point entirely. It should be obvious by now that the U.S can and will function as a fascist state whose interests are served better by holding "elections" every four years than not.

The problem I think we have in preventing a fascist state is that we look for the wrong signals to warn us. People reject the notion of approaching fascism because their A/C runs, markets have plenty of food, they can get out of the rain when they want, and go pretty much wherever they want. But these are honestly, the sort of things that a fascist government is very good at providing. We don't look at how the marginalized get peeled off and isolated; nor how market labor is in no way optional for those of us in its system. We don't notice how overwhelmingly powerful and unchecked our police forces are, or how professional our military is, because we see those as signs that we are being protected, not oppressed. Our healthcare industry is completely locked into corporate power, from the hospital to the personal injury lawyer. The biggest sign that might have existed has been rendered moot, protestors would be a threat to a 50's era fascist power, but a 21st century fascist power simply moves the protestors and ignores or mocks them with impunity; from union actions to anti-abortion protests, the playbook is exactly the same. move, mock, ignore.

I honestly see no way it can be stopped.

[The Practician]

[

The problem I think we have in preventing a fascist state is that we look for the wrong signals to warn us.

Exactly. 21st century "fascism" isn't going to look like nazi germany, or 1984, at least not superficially. The thought police are going to be privatized, and they are probably going to be called "facebook": It's the fun and hip way of informing on your friends neighbors! (not to mention yourself)

[Ibon]

How did Osama Bin Laden have us so accurately pegged? Why do we display all the weakness he predicted from his actions. Why have we been puddy in the hands of those who intended us harm to the point where we are afraid of our own shadows.

[The Practician]

http://original.antiwar.com/lobe/2011/0 ... succeeded/

A few choice Osama quotes from the article:

"We, alongside the mujahedeen, bled Russia for 10 years until it went bankrupt and was forced to withdraw in defeat,"

"We are continuing this policy in bleeding America to the point of bankruptcy, "

"All that we have to do is to send two mujahedeen to the furthest point east to raise a piece of cloth on which is written ‘al-Qaeda’, in order to make generals race there and to cause America to suffer human, economic, and political losses without their achieving anything of note other than some benefits for their private corporations"

[AgentR11]

How did Osama Bin Laden have us so accurately pegged?

It was trivial. All he had to do was turn off the sound, and watch what we do, as opposed to what we say. Take away the excuses and colorful adjectives and there remains absolutely no mystery about who and what we are.

[dohboi]

http://cryptome.org/0005/debt-humor.htm

We Meant Well: How I Helped Lose the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of the Iraqi People

Author: Peter Van Buren, a State Department officer in Iraq working with Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs).

Pages 46-49:

Money and Our Meth Habit

We lacked a lot of things in Iraq: flush toilets, fresh vegetables, the comfort of family members nearby, and of course adult supervision, strategic guidance, and common sense. Like Guns N' Roses' budget for meth after a new hit, the one thing we did not lack was money. There was money everywhere. A soldier recalled unloading pallets of new US hundred-dollar bills, millions of dollars flushing out of the belly of a C-130 cargo aircraft to be picked up off the runway by forklifts (operated by soldiers who would make less in their lifetimes than what was on their skids at that moment). You couldn't walk around a corner without stumbling over bales of money; the place was lousy with it. In my twenty-three years working for the State Department, we never had enough money. We were always being told to "do more with less," as if slogans were cash. Now there was literally more money than we could spend. It was weird.

We'd be watching the news from home about foreclosures, and I'd be reading e-mails from my sister about school cutbacks, while signing off on tens of thousands of dollars for stuff in Iraq. At one point we were tasked to give out microgrants, $5,000 in actual cash handed to an Iraqi to "open a business," no strings attached. If he took the money and in front of us spent it on dope and pinball, it was no matter. We wondered among ourselves whether we shouldn't be running a PRT [Provincial Reconstruction Team] in Detroit or New Orleans instead of Baghdad. In addition to the $63 billion Congress had handed us for Iraq's reconstruction, we also had some $91 billion of captured Iraqi funds (that were mostly misplaced by the Coalition Provisional Authority), plus another $18 billion donated by countries such as Japan and South Korea. In 2009, we had another $387 million for aid to internal refugees that paid for many reconstruction-like projects. If that was not enough, over a billion additional US dollars were spent on operating costs for the Provincial Reconstruction Teams. By comparison, the reconstruction of Germany and Japan cost, in 2010 dollars, only $32 billion and $17 billion, respectively.

... In our air-conditioned isolation, it took years to realize we needed to think about things like garbage and potable water. What had happened all around Iraq since the chaos of 2003 was a process of devolution, where populated areas lost their ability to sustain the facilities that had constituted civilization since the Romans -- water, sewage, trash removal -- things that made it possible for large numbers of people to live in close proximity to one another. Shock and awe had disrupted the networked infrastructure that allowed cities to function. What had been slow degradation through neglect under Saddam became irreversible decline by force under the United States.

(By common consent no one was allowed to comment on the paradox of creating a democracy by appointing local leaders. It just wasn't done.)

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2011/09/dangerroom_911toll_0909

(Thanks to Seraph at TOD for the links.)

[PrestonSturges]

.......I forgot the "crisis" of organized labor that requires abolishing unions. That is such a fundamental principle of fascism that I skipped right past it.

[The Practician]

How did Osama Bin Laden have us so accurately pegged?

It was trivial. All he had to do was turn off the sound, and watch what we do, as opposed to what we say. Take away the excuses and colorful adjectives and there remains absolutely no mystery about who and what we are.

according to the BBC documentary series "the century of the self", It all started when one of the fathers of radical islam started reading into the suburban obsession with lawncare, and came to the conclusion that there was just something wrong about a society that cared so much about little useless patches of grass.

[peeker01]

You guys ought to stop with the pro-islam stuff. Google copies your every word to their search
engine about every 12 hours. You might be surprised who's watching.

http://www.google.com/#hl=en&pwst=1&sa= ... 80&bih=715

[dohboi]

Yes, PO1, Obama has been watching everything you have been posting, and his not happy.

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

[AgentR11]

I'm doing a lot of "Bah" recently... but "BAH!"

"They" are perfectly happy to have all the rabble roussers and malcontents spending all their energy, posting on forums and rambling aimlessly about conspiracies and whatnot. And to a certain extent, they are perfectly happy to have them on the street, protesting their hearts out, as long as they do so within their little cordoned off box.

So, I see no reason to give one flip about what the government knows about my political positions, and I doubt anyone else here should either.

OTOH, go outside, and inconvenience a train schedule or something with a protest, and you'll be in a world of too much attention.

[PrestonSturges]

How did Osama Bin Laden have us so accurately pegged?

It was trivial. All he had to do was turn off the sound, and watch what we do, as opposed to what we say. Take away the excuses and colorful adjectives and there remains absolutely no mystery about who and what we are.

Well said!

[Sixstrings]

"They" are perfectly happy to have all the rabble roussers and malcontents spending all their energy, posting on forums and rambling aimlessly about conspiracies and whatnot.

The problem here are the lists -- no-fly, no entry lists, all the lists we don't even know about. Many average folks from Iowa or whatnot get on the list and have no clue why. They're not radical, they're not muslim, they're white.. yet they can't fly and it's a nightmare getting it sorted out.

I read an article once about a documentary filmmaker who did a doc on green energy -- he wound up on a watch list because at some point he was seen filming a power plant.

Earlier in this thread I posted a story out of Canada.. if a Canadian has mental illness of any kind which gets mentioned in a police report then that's it, they can't ever go to the US.

And so, Agent.. we're not too far off from the day when just having an opinion is suspicion enough to be lumped onto a "list." Google could do this at any moment, just hit a button and print a list of every wingnut / peak oiler / ron paul supporter in the country. And a lot of you guys are on Facebook, and have freely given over quite a lot of info about your personal lives -- including all your friends, your family, your relationship status, what you do every day, your thoughts from day to day. All that gets stored and datamined.

[AgentR11]

I always just assume I'm on all the lists, and don't care.
Air travel? Really.

Anyone that would voluntarily submit to that degree of humiliation just to save a couple days travel time... no sympathy.

[peeker01]

Keep it up agent and you will be pulling a train down in Huntsville. WOO WOO!

[AgentR11]

You have such a vivid imagination to think they give a rats rear end about what we post here.

[peeker01]

Woooo Wooooooooo!

[AgentR11]

Gurgle nurk.
Are you spamming, or am I spamming, or has America gotten tired of Spam(tm), other than Hawaiians that is...
Can Hawaiians become tired of Spam(tm)?
Maybe Spam(tm) is the hidden key to a new era of Truth, Justice, and the American Way. Given that superman no longer cares about the American Way.