The US Police-State Is Now Undeniable: The Assange Case
Eric Zuesse
It’s not just that the United States has a higher percentage of its people in prison than does any other nation on the planet. (El Salvador — the land that was largely made, what it today is, by its U.S. trained-and-equipped death squads — is now number 2 on that measure. In another country the U.S. controls, Honduras, protesters tried to burn down the U.S. Embassy on 31 May 2019.) This police-state operates also in far subtler ways.
Here is one of those subtler ways, which has global importance:
The U.S. Constitution has become thoroughly removed from the functioning U.S. Government — no restraint whatsoever upon governmental powers.
For a prominent example of this: What is left of the First Amendment’s protection of freedom of speech (freedom to communicate to the public) and freedom of the press (freedom to transmit to the public) if even online publication (and increasingly not only printed and broadcast publication) is being censored by the government, and/or by the billionaires (such as the neoconservative Democrat Jack Dorsey, the founder of Twitter), the 607 individuals whose political donations collectively, and very effectively, control the U.S. Government?
If the public does not possess the means to communicate freely with one another, then do they possess any meaningful freedom, at all? Or would such a nation instead be a dictatorship, no democracy, at all (except on paper, such as the now-irrelevant U.S. Constitution)?
The case of Julian Assange is especially instructive here:
On July 12th, Caitlin Johnstone headlined “Top Assange Defense Account Deleted By Twitter”, and she reported that,
One of the biggest Twitter accounts dedicated to circulating information and advocacy for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, @Unity4J, has been completely removed from the site. The operators of the account report that they have been given no reason for its removal by Twitter staff, and have received no response to their appeals.”
HELP!! @Twitter suspended @Unity4J
The global #FreeAssange supporters account!
Its a central point for updates, interviews & actions re my son politically persecuted journalist JULIAN ASSANGE!
Please demand @TwitterSupport & @Jack re-instate it.
Many thanks #Unity4J
— Mrs Christine Assange (@AssangeMrs) July 11, 2019
This is suppression, not only of American speech, but of global speech (Wikileaks is global), and it is perpetrated by one of the corporations of the neoconservative (i.e., imperialistic American) supporters of the liberal American Democratic Party, Jack Dorsey, who thinks that his corporation, Twitter, has the right to do this.
Billionaires’ control over the U.S. Government is so total, that they now are so brazen as to impose their censorship even directly, by the companies and ’nonprofits’ (think tanks etc., such as Dorsey’s friend and fellow-Democrat, the liberal neocon billionaire Nicholas Berggruen‘s Berggruen Institute, which is tied to the liberal Huffington Post, which such wealthy people control even more directly than they control the U.S.Government).
This is how these people pretend to be ‘progressive’, even while they actually are peddling their international corporate empire, by means of hiding the corruption that stands behind and underneath this empire. Even liberal billionaires, such as these, are neoconservatives (U.S. imperialists), because neoconservatism is U.S. imperialism; and, for example, the progressive independent Julian Assange is the world’s leading investigative journalist and publisher against imperialism itself — against any imperialism.
To him, there is no decent imperialism: it’s always international dictatorship, never international democracy; and he (just as any progressive) is committed to democracy, not just nationally, but internationally. Democracy is his ideological commitment. Americans call American imperialism “regime change” operations, but it’s always just raw imperialism — the grabbing of other countries, and WikiLeaks is against that; he’s against international dictatorship. So: how can the public vote in a truthfully-informed way, when the chief corruptors run the entire ’news’ show, and thus can freely censor-out whatever they do not like?
It’s simply not possible.
How can Dempsey do this, while also being a huge supporter of liberal ‘causes’, such as the ACLU?
Here is how: The ACLU and the other ‘causes’ that liberal billionaires contribute to, avoid the issue of imperialism, and avoid any other economic-class-focussed issue, and focus instead on other types of cases (including Black versus White, Jew versus Christian, male versus female, gay versus straight, etc.), which (whatever their own importance) pose no real threat to billionaires’ personal wealth.
The ACLU wouldn’t be able to get the huge amounts of donations that they get from liberal billionaires and their corporations, unless it excluded the basic political issue, of the super-rich versus everyone else, and so it does this: it avoids this issue — which is what makes it be a liberal organization, instead of a progressive organization (which, by its very nature, focuses on precisely issues of economic class, such as imperialism).
Imperialism has always been practiced by the aristocracy, never by the public — never by the people who aren’t agents of the aristocracy. Many billionaires are liberal.
Virtually, if not entirely, none of them are progressive, because progressivism is the opposite of conservatism, whereas liberalism is a mixture of both.
Every billionaire is conservative, though some of them (such as Dorsey) are liberal (mixed) conservatives. Not all of them are pure conservatives, such as the Koch brothers are.
Every billionaire benefits from imperialism, because international corporations (which are the main thing that billionaires control) benefit from imperialism. Imperialism benefits only the super-rich, because the super-rich have become, and remain, super-rich only because of the military might that enforces their will when international diplomacy (the cheaper alternative) has failed.
The entire taxpaying public — 99+% of which are NOT billionaires — pays the tab for this enormously expensive global military (half of which is American). (America has emerged to become today’s Sparta.)
But the beneficiaries from imperialism are exclusively the super-rich — it’s an enormous public subsidy to international corporations, and to their investors. It’s the biggest welfare-program that exists, and it is welfare for only the super-rich, at everybody else’s expense. And especially at the expense of the publics in the lands that American billionaires want to grab — such as Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Iran, Ukraine, Venezuela, China, and Russia. It enormously transfers wealth from the rest of the world, to the world’s billionaires.
All of the world’s millionaires, put together, are only 0.8% of the world’s total population, but they own 44.8% of all of the world’s privately owned wealth. The world’s poorest 63.9% own just 1.9%.(Those facts are documented on page 20 there.)
Thus, the entire poorest 63.9%, which are 3.211 billion people, own around 4% as much as do the few richest 0.8%, which are 42 million people.
And, of course, according to Forbes, there are only 2,153 billionaires. So, there’s 1 billionaire for every 19,531 millionaires. Billionaires are the rarest of the rare, and they control virtually all international corporations.
Those percentages — the enormous inequality — are about the same within the U.S. as they are globally. How is it possible for democracy to exist in such conditions? It’s not. Money is power. Corruption runs the world. And America’s billionaires are the global masters of it. But all billionaires hate Julian Assange, because they cannot corrupt him. That’s why not a single one of them is even trying to protect him from all of the others of them: they are united in their hatred of him.
No one has done as much to reveal the corruption that stands behind empire as Julian Assange has. Billionaires are disunited on lots of things — for examples: fossil fuels, immigration, feminism — but they are united in favor of imperialism. And, all throughout history, the aristocracy has been that way: imperialistic.
And America’s imprisonment-rate, and the Assange case, are hardly the only indications that the U.S. is no democracy but only a dictatorship. Here are some other such indications.
NOTE: Although in terms of per-capita military expenditure the U.S. is higher than any other country (shown by MSN as being second-highest after Saudi Arabia, but this was only because the U.S. systematically under-reports its actual annual military expenditures), the U.S. is nowhere near the top for the percentage of its population who are employed in the military: it’s #75 out of 170 countries, with North Korea being #1 on that.
What this demonstrates is the extraordinarily high percentage of America’s military expenditures that go to paying not soldiers but the military contractors, such as Lockheed Martin, Boeing, and General Dynamics, the giant weapons-making firms.
Those are the firms whose markets are virtually 100% the U.S. Government and its allied regimes or vassal nations (such as NATO), America’s allies. The controlling investors in those corporations are the chief beneficiaries of America’s police-state.
However, extractive corporations such as ExxonMobil are close behind, because only by means of this enormous military are they enabled to offer foreign regimes “an offer they can’t refuse.” Thus, the arms contractors, and the extractors, control U.S. foreign policies, under both Democratic and Republican administrations. Neoconservatism is America’s bipartisan foreign policy.
Originally posted at strategic-culture.org
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The Fourth Reich won’t be speaking German, it will speak English with an American accent.
Not only has the USA become a Police State, but “Those in Power” have also taken out insurance to cover themselves by constructing a “Department of Homeland Security” a domestic military force, armed to the teeth with ex military grade weapons and literally BILLIONS of BULLETS to protect THEMSELVES from the American people, should they Revolt against their Fascist masters.
The American Empire may be in decline, but the final battle will be truly Ugly…….
My best wishes to the American People…..you’re going to need it.
By the way, see what happened to me after I tried to spread this article to some Facebook Groups: “75 and 80 Years Ago and We´re Sleepwalking Again!”: https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2019/07/21/75-and-80-years-ago-and-were-again-sleepwalking-vor-75-und-vor-80-jahren-und-wir-schlafwandeln-wieder/
This happened: https://wipokuli.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/facebook-going-rampant-facebook-dreht-durch.pdf
Best regards
The US prison gulag incarcerates 2,300,000, mainly young black males for heinous crimes such as jaywalking.
Each is worth about $50,000 a year to the prison industrial complex.
So a young black man’s life has some value as a convict. It has none in the ghetto.
96% never get any form of trial. Plea bargains are extorted under threat of 500 year prison sentences.
The prison has replaced the old plantation.
Of course the US global gulag of concentration camps, torture chambers, and secret prisons in scores of countries is quite separate. There thousands of hapless victims are tortured and murdered on an industrial scale in ways that can only be conceived by very sick and diseased minds from a very sick and diseased society.
In the Land Of The Free itself, all the legislative and physical infrastructure is in place to duplicate the Bagrams, the Abu Ghraibs and the Guantanamos. All it needs is a signature from the White House given a suitable pretext.
America’s ‘longest war’
In the dying US empire its last images will be its lasting images. The wire and watchtowers of Guantamo Bay, piles of naked prisoners in Abu Ghraib, and children purposely separated from their parents sleeping on the concrete floors of detention centres.
How can that not be fascist?
After then Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard dropped Assange right in it in her interview in the radio studio she was dead to me.
People are affected by corruption, colluding, and the neverending costs for wars and veterans. If we do not have the Julian Assanges and Edward Snowdens we will soon live like Estonians under Stalin.
My initial thought when seeing an article at off-g with Julian Assange’s pic splashed across the top was to keep walking. The intense feelings of despair that I get whenever I consider Julian and/or Chelsea Manning are numbing, so overwhelming that thinking rationally about their situations feels impossible.
Two of the great heroes of the early 21st century have been stuffed in the slammer completely unjustly and arbitrarily, we all know what has to be done, but equally we also know that what is needed will probably never happen.
Most of us who feel so strongly about such overt, cynical misuse of multiple nation’s ‘justice’ systems are well past our use by dates, whatever networks we may once have been a part of that could maybe have been capable of springing at least Julian, are long defunct. I have yet to see any appetite among younger humanists for building such networks, which to be effective would need to have been in existence, tested and proven well before 2019.
Zuesse rightly calls out the oxymoronic absurdity of a nation state which not only incarcerates more humans as a percentage of its population than any other nation by holding in its prisons more than a quarter of the world’s total prison population while claiming that it does what it does in the name of freedom.
It seems that now incarceration in amerika has become a truly capitalist enterprise rather than a function of the state designed to enable capitalism, it has contracted the full capitalism disease.
Its ‘business’ must expand year on year, so now to that end, amerikan prisons have persuaded US law enforcement to externalise its business by importing alleged miscreants from foreign nations using the corrupt ‘grand jury’ farce where allegations are made in secret, ‘evidence’ is given in secret and that evidence is never tested as it is so frequently claimed by amerika’s spruikers it always should be.
When it comes to ‘grand juries’ in amerika’s expensive justice system, because although the state turns up with as many shinily suited lawyers as the prosecution claims to need, the accused is not permitted even one attorney. Hell in the case of Julian, he isn’t even allowed to know what the charges are, much less contest the evidence.
What little is known appears to be mainly thanks to what Ms Manning’s attorneys have been permitted to indicate since she who has been pardoned of any alleged crime during the time that the collateral murder video was released, is now tossed back in the slammer on a 100% dodgy but as typical with amerikan justice, 100% unappellable fit-up.
Yet the slimy shitbags who retain control of brit government have already approved Julian’s extradition to face these formerly secret charges where aside from Ms Manning’s travails alleged details of charges and evidence is known thanks to amerikan justice department press release rather than the conventional and presumably constitutional method of court transcript.
There has been no effort whatsoever to fashion the charges against Julian Assange in to a form that bush lawyers, fans of TV legal shows or is there is such a thing ’eminent jurists’ would recognise. Why bother since 2001 the blair nulabourites and the Cameron/May torycons have amended UK’s treaties with amerika to the point where such time-wasting expense is now un-neccessary.
Since these two are but a pair of the hundreds of thousands of human beings made criminal in spite of the law rather than because of it, the only way to spring them or anyone else is to do the same. That is to operate outside the worthless US legal construct.
When Julian Assange, Chelsea Manning, and Edward Snowden, are being pursued with the threat of real torture hanging over them, while slime buckets like Tony Blair, Dubya Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, and lots of other infamous “Slime balls” walk freely around, we know the game is up……For Us……….
Interesting. No one apparently has mentioned shaming the drones/minimum wage victims daily responsible for imprisoning & torturing CM and JA.
Publicly shame the brainwashed dregs. e.g. $$UK toxic, status seeking immigration “judges” are shamed at every (albeit rare) opportunity.
More action. Less words. Less virtue-signalling. Please.
From memory. The Fatal Shore; Robert Hughes. The prison camp chaplain was coerced to stand in for the absent hangman. Said chaplain ends up (metaphorically?) killing himself and losing his family.
Ironically. Good luck to all the turnscrews. Good luck to the many corrupt “judges”. Good luck to the $$MSM criminal status-seekers.
The sociopaths are still in charge of the prison camp.
By not being aware, all become facilitators. (Hannah Arendt for that one.)
Present US are getting worse as a police state, but they are still a bit behind Russia and far behind China.
Check in Tibet, Xinjiang or Hong Kong. In Western EU the police is loosing public respect fast due to irrational dhimmy behavior of their political bosses.
As your fellow travelers shout alla the time in the graun, torygraph and mail. . .”alert alert Whataboutery!”
One reason why it makes so much more sense to criticise your own government before others is that, since you actually live here, you have first hand experience of what is going on. Thus you can counterbalance the media bullshit about the UK with what you have seen yourself. China and Russia, on the other hand, are countries that you have to view through the prism of the media bullshit.
This is one of my biggest concerns, the “police state”, i say that having never been in trouble with the police & where i live, never come into contact with them or suffer any crime. But.
What kind of psycho, incarcerates people for long periods of their life, takes away their livelihood, prevents them signing a private rental lease, bans international travel & brands them for life, for such crimes such as watching illicit TV or an unlicensed device or even copying a CD?
I advocate the abolition of the prison system. Only those that are a physical danger to others should be confined in gated communities, if they then continue to kill each other, then bring back hanging, it has to be more compassionate than holding people against their will for much of their life. There has to be another way, better than locking people up, one that’s fairer, costs tax payers less, (could be better spent on housing, welfare & Health services), is productive & actually compensates the victim not recorded as a crime against the state.
Then there are the torture devices, what kind of twisted person invents a device to electrocute another being into submission? Basically so some ego maniac can assert control over a situation to enforce his power. If you don’t have these weapons you are inclined to want to deescalate situations, rather than provoke violence against you, caution is a much better weapon.
I’m all with freedom of speech advocates, i don’t much like Assange as a person but respect what he does professionally, his sexual conduct from what i know was wrong but i don’t think criminal. But why is it the state doesn’t trust anyone of us, but we are supposed to have blind faith in it? Surely if the, if you aren’t hiding anything, you have nothing to fear, works both ways. Governments shouldn’t keep secrets period!
I was forced to sign the official secrets act, wait for it, because I once worked for the forestry commissions, forest research branch (pardon the pun) when i was a student. How is it right this constrains me for the rest of my life?
I’m of the firm belief what consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes is none of the states business regardless of what that may be. I personally don’t smoke, don’t drink, have never taken illicit drugs ( i dislike taking prescription drugs) don’t gamble & have no children. But I see no reason why drugs are illegal if someone wants to harm themselves with chemical substances that’s their choice.
This authoritarian system we’ve been brainwashed into accepting, is fair & reasonable, where did it come from? Why should we live by others rules we have no say in. I hear this nonsense about social contracts , i’ve never even seen one to agree to it. We are told we are policed by consent, yet i’ve never been given a copy of the consent form to sign. & that’s why i don’t like labels or being pigeonholed left or right because i’m not a socialist or conservative where these issues are concerned & why i have such contempt for neo-liberal rules based society & being treated like a infant by the nanny state.
& i see no end to the deluge of private/state regulatory/legislative terrorism that’s forever imposed upon us by centrist political elites, there answer ot everything is make anew law or regulation. HELP how do we change this? Democracy is dead, though just as well because why should everyone else be ruled a slim majorities values?
The basis of all you ponder is Power.
The basis of Power is Money.
Follow the Money for a clear map of the ‘Mordor’ that we live in and a route to safety.
For example – the number of prisoners.
When Prisons are Privatised – they are effectively businesses, like a hotel chain.
Every room isa cost/profit centre.
Maximising the occupancy, minimises the cost per unit and enables maximum marginal profitability.
In plain english that means that the more guaranteed customers you can get for your hotel the better!
So you get a privatised politician to make up crazy laws that can be used to corale a regular number of potential customers and you pay her off to do so (three strikes/ traffic violations). Then you get your private policeman to collect a set number of customers regularly and pay him commision to do so; then you get a privatised judge to send these customers to prison whether it is justified or not and pay her commission; then you supply drugs to your guests so they never want to leave or you get your privatised parole board to not release your customers and a privatised probation service that doesn’t function for the released, who will return back to hotel faster – if you aren’t getting enough new ones – or if you build yet another hotel because you can make more profits…
Get it?
We (all humans) are simple profit centres for all these private suppliers of basics.
Basics being private is free money from the ‘state’ to the bankers (for it is they who end up lending to build the private businesses).
That con trick has been scaled up over the last 40 years – and called neoliberalism. An ‘enclosure’ not just of public common space but the public itself.
Any recognition of these facts is called socialism!
The paid and owned media shoves that down the publics throats daily like a lot of corn forcefed to geese to make their livers fat to make foie grass, to be eaten by the rich folk along with caviar and champagne for breakfast lunch and dinner – yum.
The dumb public lines up to swallow it just as the geese do!
I’ll let everyone figure out the rest for themselves.
Your reply is actually a little patronizing, i’m not 5 years old.
Anyway what you say is only partially true. Society in general has been shaped to see state violence, theft, kidnap, slavery & being held hostage as acceptable behavior yet none of it is actually effective in preventing the artificial construct of crime as our bursting prisons demonstrate. We are constrained by so many laws now its almost impossible not to brake the law.
Violence & theft are wrong in any civilized society no matter who performs the act. It’s just another example of neo-liberal hypocrisy The fact its not about power or money its more basic than that, its the two basic states that define primate societies, greed & ego!
You obviously miss the point of privatisation of public services for profit.
Prisoners are just one example of turning the population into cost/profit centres.
It starts with nurseries, primary schools, ‘academies’, innumerable university and further education colleges… all the way to housing, utilities, hospitals, forensic science upto and including death.
Did i call you a 5 year old in my comment?
No but you have a very distinctive manner of reply that talks down to people.
I didn’t miss the point of privatization at all i just ignored it, because its not the most important narrative. Liberals are control freaks, that’s the issue.
The billionaires that run these international corporations aren’t just about money in fact money isn’t their priority or main motive, they want control of you , me & everything else. “EGO & GREED”.
I don’t care who runs prisons because i want to abolish the concept of taking away peoples freedom for any reason by anyone, its an obsolete cruel concept that should never have existed .
I have evolved on the boards to be as precise as possible, to avoid a conversation being hijacked by trolls, whatabouterists and the like.
You write:
” ..in fact money isn’t their priority or main motive, they want control of you , me & everything else. “EGO & GREED”.”
I started my comment with:
‘The basis of all you ponder is Power.
The basis of Power is Money.’
Now even a 5 year old would recognize what you did there and call it out for what it was ‘But that’s what i said first!’
As i say on the other conversation we are engaged in – i’ll give you the benefit of doubt about your sincerity. I just try to share knowledge and facts and don’t mean to cause innocent offence. I’m fully capable of dialling it up for these that are asking for it.
Yes I can see you’re carrying baggage.
You know what this comments section needs? An ignore button.
bye bye
I don’t understand your ire. Seeing as how we pretty much agree!
No bad feeling on my side, we’re both long enough in the tooth not to get upset by a comment in a forum I hope.
Your original reply rubbed the wrong way,no big deal, no worries, its forgotten.
Like liberals always say diversity gives us strength (just not diversity of opinion it seems (hypocrites)) anyway its healthy to disagree. 😉
The US Oligopoly is frightened out of their minds that the global economy is not going to come back to reignite the engines of growth that propel earnings exponentially. With a busted Philips Curve and Secular Stagnation as far as the eye can see it is highly probable that the so-called billionaires are really getting their knickers in a knot.
The worst trading earnings quarter since 08 is listed now. Wall Street is the barometer for the USA billionaires and Wall Street investment bank holding companies are posting the worst season of earnings that they have posted since 08 as well. So, the billionaires sure can put on a great show of force but a façade is always just still a façade when we can all see the FOR LEASE signs on all main streets of North America. Commercial MBS & Residential MBS is now tapped out for the investment bank holding companies and the riff raff middle class can’t afford to buy anymore new cars & trucks to alleviate the overflow that are stored in excess from the auto manufacturers. Credit card debt is the highest recorded in history and no new loan issuance is really going to be supporting the billionaire expectation that blue sky is a realistic prospect going forward.
America is just a serial liar when it comes to painting a rosy picture for economic outlook & metrics.
Picking on people like Assange is standard fare.
Thomas Hobbes said they are all brutes.
mou
mr Zuesse
Why on earth do people need to communicate through either Facebook or Twitter? Both were convenient until censorship started, now they are pointless. So promote a Twitter/Facebook-free conversation. They are utterly irrelevant, merely a website.
How hard is to use other websites not owned by Wall Street, Silicon Valley and the CIA/NSA? Unbelievably easy.
This is like complaining you cannot have sex because your current partner has Herpes.
You can choose not to, but 2 billion plus other women are probably sexually active….
You need to communicate to the world crucial information like what you had for breakfast, when you are getting your hair done, and the inner turmoil you suffered at Tesco over whether to get a 12 oz or a 16 oz jar of apricot or blackberry jam. The whole world is hanging on the answers to these questions.
It’s been so long since I last got laid I have actually forgotten what sexual intercourse was like, but when you mention Herpes I am reminded of the whole STDs list that we have now and that makes me rather content to not even know what sex is like anymore.
I only signed up to FACEBOOK once so that I could join LeadNow to sign a petition against Steven Harper. Once that was done I changed my FACEBOOK account to one of those strange Chinese dialects that only the Chinese could ever read and then I was unable to ever sign back on ever again because I don’t study Mandarin or strange Chinese dialects.
God I’m smart.
MOU
Smart Cities – via Gore and Gates et al – a New World Prison under the Internment of Things?
Just keep expanding the parameters of sickness, threat or unworthiness to catch in mandatory protection/security schemes.
Questioning authority will be ‘treatable condition’ and standard of care will regulate the legal requirement and penalise failure to ‘care’.
Or maybe not. We may see the trends of our fears and dutifully or grievously succumb, but don’t see any other choices arising from perspectives that fear and reaction block.
Frightened people can be dangerous and attack their own shadows without even seeing who you are.
Sure, and it is just a matter of when, not if..
“Don’t see any other choices”?
You have a passport? Roll the dice.. Good luck..
Well another perspective is that at a level we are not aware of, our expectation effectively creates the outcome.
It may be possible that those who seek to dictate or herd the unfolding of human affairs put it out first as a MEANS to unfold it.
Sure, and at the level that those who attempted to dictate the outcome did indeed trigger my expectation which I was vaguely aware of, but since they put it out first, allowed me to unfold their expectations, and manage my own affairs, ok?
What you write is on track to encourage you to keep it all OPEN – and resolve to be more than vaguely aware of .
The critical issue is – that we don’t see clearly when we project our own unloving, hateful or manipulative and controlling intentions onto ‘shadow proxies’ – and so we react emotionally before we read the energetic nature of what is being suggested or presenting itself. The realm of suggestion and suggestibility is of hypnotic or mesmeric acceptance.
In a simple sense, keeping a presence of heart connection as our source of ‘command’ is the capacity to see mind in its act-reaction. It is also the basis for the release of an error of having already invested in reaction.
How we interpret anything determines how we automatically respond, and this can be from a set of un-revised conditioned survival pattens that were relevant to who we were then but may work against who we recognise, accept and align in being now. This is choice – even if poor choices are bringing current
We are all self-hypnotic under our own thinking. I am asking – but is that who I am or what I want Now? This is re-opening the mind from its strategic defence to a tangible benefit from ‘new intelligence’ albeit through vectors that have been previously discarded or blocked.
Trying to re-adjust a misalignment is predicated on the imbalance – while willingness to align undoes the conditions of support for the action-reaction or perception-response that seems to just ‘happen’ and leave a vulnerable and therefore defended sense of self at the fate of ‘luck’, and then trying to work out strategies of survival.
BTW it may be that before manipulating mind puts out its phishing ruse, we already set the forms or vectors of ‘attack’ by what we WANT to be true or likewise what we fear to be true – because this is where we are most willing to NOT see or to see something that is NOT really there.
It ought to be obvious that is applies to us all – excepting in moments of true alignment – when we are unselfconscious. Self-conscious inhibition and control needs to be reintegrated rather than cast us into polarised fear and control identity. I see this as my willingness to own what is truly mine and release what is not. But where I have invested in wanting my ‘intentions’ to be cast out and attacked or denied in others I have an entanglement with them – and so they will come up in my life and an opportunity for recognition and release.
I don’t know the measure of self-hate – so much as its cost – but given power, it has power to deny and undermine Life and to do so IN YOUR NAME.
This is the same pattern as Orwell’s ‘Freedom is slavery’.
Did Orwell WARN us or did Orwell paint us into a box – a room 101 from which only a fantasy can escape?
Regardless his intent – it is ours that determines what anything means for us.
Illuminating the denial of theHuman Spirit – including its fantasy ‘resistance’ is also a provocation to identify that denial within ourself and choose not to give it allegiance as the source of power and protection. That is stepping out of a siege mentality – but not without guidance and support. There is a lot of room for conflicted vacillation in retuning from a false guide to a true. The mind literally CANNOT TELL THE DIFFERENCE. Every support and reinforcement to its existence is held true, and anything presented as a logical extension of an idea passed off or framed in the forms of truth will read AS true.
Hence to established identity in possession and control, any threat is ‘false’ and must be denied for self-protection, and all extensions of its established model or belief system are true because raising its ‘reality’ to question is ultimate threat. Not to truth – but to investment in partial or limited perspectives held in PLACE of truth and believed ‘too big to fail’.
Well, for those of us who invested heavily in unlimited perspectives, our \souls were laid bare to the COMMAND of exterior criteria, whoever they are. \are they real, or a Spiritual Force from the beginning?
Not just now, but always, our Souls float free.. HOWL.. WOOF..
I think you mean the belief in unlimited growth? Correct me if I misinterpret. But I can read you to mean investing in a deceit so as to ‘sell our Soul-awareness ‘ for an externalised experience of personal growth or becoming ‘more’ or different than we are. Which is the basis of the experience of self-limitation – pursued as ‘growth’ or possession and control as a personal vindication.
The idea here is what exactly is meant by growth?
Perspectives arise from accepted ideas that may occur by reaction of misinterpretation. In other words we can be deceived into giving power to meanings we have unwittingly set up to then suffer.
A sense of Infinite perspective is of interpenetrating perspectives as One in the Many and the Many in the One.
A limiting perspective may in a sense be an unshared private agenda – of fascination in ‘our own thinking’ to the temporary exclusion of sharing in the nature of Thought. If the temporary is re-enacted as every moment, then time will seem to replace the Timeless.
And so human thinking is fitted to follow linear progression of an object continuity – which is indeed ‘externalised meanings of an internalised self-definition. A consciousness that grows and changes by living its own acceptance of idea according to its own unfolding of meaning.
The idea of thought and action without consequence is fantasy substitution for reality – that can seem for a while until ‘reality’ breaks in – though the break is really the shift into fantasy and not the restoring of relational wholeness. But in the ‘meanwhile’ an overlay or interjection of fantasy is given a face value or surface reality at expense of intimate relation/communication. Narrative identity, continuity or control invested as survival set against externalised versions of inner conflicts and fears.
The freedom to accept and extend love is the difference between a Creation of God and a Child of God – because it is the capacity to release any OTHER choice to the wholeness or unconflictedness of being.
Part of that freedom is the condition of a choice not to love – perhaps a hesitancy or split decision (split mind) into which a sense of lack and fear enters. This alloy of love and fear is our human ‘conditioning’ in which we may respond to either as if it is the other and confuse both love and fear as equally THREAT to a sense of ‘protection’ against change that effectively hollows the life out of us to infill with a negatively polarised imagination/expectation. Wholeness has to be decision – regardless of conditions – and so a transcendence of accepting such definition as final or fixed subjection.
The idea of Souls once meant our individuality – to be replaced by Psyche and then mind – and now perhaps ‘brain’. the term ‘I’ can mean innate awareness of Existence and can also be assigned to an imaged social persona. Where do we look for That which identifies us truly?
I prefer to say that you don’t ‘have’ a Soul; you ARE Soul – or rather your whole life and everything/everyone in it is OF Soul – and hasn’t left it – any more than Thought leaves the Mind of God – or indeed any more than our thought leaves the mind that accepts and extends it.
The projection of thoughts our own thought OUT onto OTHER and World is an internalised capacity to see them there so as to seem to separate from, escape or disown them.
The phrase ‘cast out of Heaven’ can also be read in terms of a script. The association of the Heavens with the Creative (feared as Destructive) is part of our own lost history, but the Idea AS Creative matrix is a Living or Universal Idea – whereas the doublethink of a split mind under narrative identity substitutes conceptual frameworks of rules or conditionalities in place of a truly synchronous or unselfconscious appreciation.
In a sense we ‘create’ or invest in ‘externality’ by withdrawing and withholding relational communication to then contract or hide inside and behind a persona or personality strategy. I would not underestimate the intensity of the fear involved in this and thus the power given its containment or suppression.
From a ‘splitting’ of mind is the projecting of guilt and fear – and penalty – away from what seems then to be all that survives of a fragmented and limited sense of self in world.
I write this as a sketch of willingness to consider and explore the ideas that arise to a false investment that develops abilities that are then purposed in service to the re-cognition of true desire or fulfilment of being instead of growing a sense of lack by attempting to possess and control life.
Only love is unlimiting and unlimited – and so it must have been something ELSE that was taken as vestements of subjection. perhaps a set of ‘Emperor’s New Fig-leaves’?
Revising our investments is an honest accounting.
Oh dear Eric. I agree in general with your sentiments, but this is a crap hotch-potch assembled into an incomprehesible, directionless article. Stick to writing to books, not quick opinion pieces, they do you zero credit.
I am aware that the Off-Guardian admin wants to avoid ad-hominums but I can’t help seeing a pattern with your posts FS – you make a vague murmur of approval (“I agree in general with your sentiments”) but then launch a very precise attack (“crap hotch-potch… incomprehesible, directionless article… quick opinion pieces… zero credit.”) It’s not too difficult to see where your true feelings lie.
Not sure what you mean. I seem to have come across a similar post about Eric being a better book writer. I think most of the regular writers here are good. If not perhaps you could submit an article? Besides was this article not published elsewhere first. BTW if Eric is such a great book writer, i am thinking of writing a book and any tips appreciated.
“What this demonstrates is the extraordinarily high percentage of America’s military expenditures that go to paying not soldiers but the military contractors, ”
I’ll add that quite large numbers of ‘consultants’ are employed in Private Military Companies. I understand that the UK has the largest such registered PMC’s in the world.
We train our soldiery using public funds and then they take early retirement and go work with their ex-colleagues and officers, having tax free status professionally arranged for their wages and deployed at the behest of the Imperialist corporations in every part of the world. No need to worry about the media and the public when they end up dead.
It’s come a long way from that initial recruitment film – The Wild Geese.
A healthy democracy always has strong countervailling forces like a critical media, or pluralism across the political spectrum – but what do we have, we have Jeremy Cunt and his press junket that bans anyone who fails to subscribe neoliberal orthodoxy (Russia, you can’t come – Sadi Arabia, no problem).
Meanwhile the Guardian hi-fives while a journalist is being tortured in the middle of London.
Did the Guardian adjust its position when Nils Melzer explained to them that they were facilitating state-sanctioned violence (drawing particular attention to the sneering of Marina Hyde)
No, they just ignored the UN rapporteur on torture – while anyone who complained about it below the line was immediately memory-holed.
This raises an obvious question – do politicians or the MSM have anything meaningful to offer median income families?
Most of the time the MSM is either trying to scare them or telling lies about political reality, especially when they portray certain groups as the enemy within such as trades unionist, or working class communities.
Isn’t this what fascism feels like?
“healthy democracy”
oh .. memories!
How is democracy a healthy system? Where everyone is ruled by a slim majorities values.
He did say, “A” healthy democracy, as in a hypothetical concept.
Plato thought democracy was a good idea too, but ruefully admitted that it always tended to disintegrate into some form of anarchy.
“Plato…”
Aristotle?
“…thought democracy was a good idea too,…”
Mmmmm. Sort of. Aristotle thought of democracy as rule by the poor, a perverted form of “polity” (a difficult concept that tempers a democratic rule of the many with the wisdom of a selfless elite of specialist leaders). An important plus for democracy in Aristotle’s view is that the (relative) poor were the most populous stratum of society and the instincts of the many are generally more responsive to and more inclusive of the changing needs of an entire demos than any less populous selection of it.
“…but ruefully admitted that it always tended to disintegrate into some form of anarchy.”
Into oligarchy, rule by the rich, a perverted form of aristocracy.
The primary distinction between “true” and “perverted” forms of government for Aristotle lay in their inclusiveness or otherwise of all the interests in the state, not just a particular stratum within it. (His third dichotomy was between monarchy–“true”–and tyranny–“perverted”.)
I was just trying to keep it short, but we probably don’t really disagree on the fundamentals here.
Oligarchy, which you rightly describe as a perverted form of aristocracy (as if aristocracy itself were not perverted enough for modern western man), engenders anarchy when it becomes so corrupt – as it has today – that the mob finally says, “Enough.”
After that, anarchy is just around the corner, and Plato was clearly aware of that from what I have read of his output on the subject.
It also seems to me that his approach to politics was not so much to compare one traditional system with another, but instead to look into the needs of a man’s soul and to build bridges between what is “good” as a concept and what can practically be achieved in a society which wishes to call itself advanced, or civilized.
No easy task, of course.
You are right ‘Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others’ to quote the old addage.
So lets start by agreeing that democracy is far from perfect but there is something attractive about the idea of representatives trying to reflect some degree of concensus about the cultural and economic direction a society wishes takes.
Yet even though we have only ever managed to attain a highly diluted form of democracy even this has been hijacked by the powers that be:
I seem to recall Eric has highlighted this already when he did an Off-G piece drawing attention to the the Princeton study, which asks the question ‘Does the government represent the people’ (short answer ‘no’ of course)
As an aside there is a difference between democracy and majorityism.
The Brexit referendum is an example of majorityism while through a representative system there is still at least the possibility that issues that may have less than 50% of public support (such as the death penalty) can be legislated to reflect the views of the minority.
In fact democracy in the UK isn’t even ruled by a majority, its ruled by the largest minority, political parties rarely generate much more than 35% of the popular vote.
Why?
Why do we need to be ruled at all, why must there be consensus? Why do I need a leader? We only need a few basic laws based on harmful acts & to co-operate for mutual benefit, i don’t need to agree with your opinions on how to conduct your life to trade with you for my survival.
Government should have a few basic functions, ensure everyone has access to food, shelter, health care, protection from violence then just leave people alone to live their lives as they see fit.
‘Government should have a few basic functions, ensure everyone has access to food, shelter, health care, protection from violence then just leave people alone to live their lives as they see fit.’ – in so far as this translates into a political ideology you seem to be advocating libertarianism?
It never works because checks and balances are always required to control, or at least off-set the inevitable excesses and externalities of any complex social system.
My own preference is for pooled risk, communityism and democratic representation alough we are miles away from this in the real world since todays politicians are owned by corporate, or banking entities: in other words we have entered an era of corporate fascism.
Yeap that’s the problem! Even when you think you’re being radical, it always ends with a horrible totalitarian authoritarianism! I.e neo-liberal one world order run by self asserted elite.
Again why make things complex when they don’t need to be? Social Complexity is the problem & our evolutionary downfall. Extinction.
The Guardian went to hell when it went turncoat and embraced the extremely dubious Daniel Domscheidt Berg –
(“Daniel Dumb Shyte Pile” in good-ol’ Anglo-Saxon . . .)
– and collaborated in an equally dubious conspiracy to betray and undermine Assange and WikiLeaks’s journalism.
That was about ten years ago, and the Guardian has never been the same since.
The Grauniad died when Rusbridger left.
It is now only a ghostly propaganda rag for the banksters.
Where do people get their input of what the US is all about?
From 1981, the new Reagan administration immediately revoked the no-knock bill, the Miranda rights, and attacked the Labour Union via the air-traffic controllers, beginning the decline of the middle-class as was represented by the labour unions..
By the mid-80’s, the neo-con propaganda was already in place, to the extent that it was considered cool for the neo-con teenagers to buy stock in their favourite new Krispy-Kreme donut chain.. This never would of been imagined in the fairly laid-back US of the 70’s. A shallow example, but still goes to show how the mentality drastically changed. Corporate neo-con policy was enabled, and entrenched, a turning point in the fabric of the country..
The line is blurred as to how the corporatocracy became entwined with law enforcement, the Pentagon, and whichever political party happened to be in place, but the corporate police state had its beginning under the reign of a stupid farm boy from a village in Illinois.
These days, I think many people get their input of what the US is all about by going there and seeing for themselves.
I worked there myself for a few years, and I greatly enjoyed it, but I was young, and really had no idea of what went on in Washington at that time.
The tragedy of the current political mess is that American people are every bit as decent – or not decent – as the people of the UK, Denmark, France, Syria, Turkey, or whatever, and they have lost the reins of their rogue “representatives” to exactly the same extent as the rest of us have.
Americans, too, will pay the price of this mess, a price which their stupid leaders would never dream of paying.
Well stated, and understood..
When one of the greatest US political writers, Sy Hersh, is now only accessible through a German paywall site, you know that there is something very wrong..
I see his equivalent in Robert Fisk, the excellent ‘Independent’ journalist, who has yet to be censored and exiled for writing the truth. An extraordinary anomaly, by England’s standards, which venture from elitist right-wing to elitist right-wing.. Or Fascism.. 5-Eyes graspers, don’t you know?
Thank you, Eddie.
Ditto.
I need to read up more on Fisk and Hersh, and I will.
http://johnhelmer.net/mh-17-evidence-tampering-revealed-by-malaysia-fbi-attempt-to-seize-black-boxes-dutch-cover-up-of-forged-telephone-tapes-ukrainian-air-force-hid-radar-records-crash-site-witness-testimon/#more-21194
Wonder whether May and her tapeworm for a husband will end up in jail.?
Distraction is such an excellent and efficient tactic. It induces delusions of control and significance among the 98%. Which is why the 2% are believed when they state, they have our best interests at heart. The new culture of extreme in political and social correctness, which the 98% pay lip service too, is also a magnificent tactic. We support it, while the elites trample on it in the very same breath within which they assure us, they care for everyone. Only intense psychoanalysis will wake us up but then we will be so ashamed of ourselves we might wither. And analysis does cost money and discipline. Better let the other guy fight those elites. Back to sleep. How bad can propaganda be?
Yep, it’s all on page 1 of the hasbara playbook.
As one that has studied Psychoanalytic Theory & historiography extensively I would not recommend it to a world with the attention span of twitter or the consciousness of a twitterverse.
Psychoanalysis is for people that have time to reflect introspectively. Psychoanalysis can be of no benefit at all to people missing an attention span or for those that have no understanding of history. Psychoanalysis is also only for the very wealthy aristocratic elite and it is absolutely not the kind of enrichment that you would offer to the masses as they are hopelessly uneducated when it comes to personality.
MOU
Agree
This is quite interesting ………………..https://youtu.be/sndPG6Hw01U
Hmm not really no, isn’t this the guy that thinks Jill Dando was murdered by a mind controlled agent of the deep state, because she learned of a BBC Pedophilia ring?
Ever heard of plausible credibility? there’s conspiracy theories then there’s conspiracy theory lunatics.
No He actually says the opposite and claims it had nothing to do with Jill Dando it was to do with the Brick Lane incident
— Apologies to Sir Walter Disney
And you’re the kind of guy that thinks Jeffrey Epstein hosts Tupperware parties. Sure – disagree with people and prove them wrong with logical argument, reasoning and debate but playing the conspiracy card and the loony card for added spin makes you into a deep state facilitator. And for the record Mr Hall, as far as I am aware, connected Jill Dando’s murder with the fake war on terror – which has led directly to the Police State this article is about.
First of all you have to make credible assertions backed up by some facts before the debate even starts. Never make assumptions! Start with the evidence then join the dots to form the narrative, not the other way round.
So your ‘credible assertion’ that Richard D Hall is a ‘conspiracy theory’ lunatic is backed up by what exactly? Haven’t you started and finished with your own assumption. Whether I choose to believe in the final narrative I do believe Mr Hall’s research follows the principles you set out in your reply.
It’s funny how most conspiracy theories end up shining a light on actual conspiracies in part or in whole.
I’ve seen some of his numerous theories on you tube, enough said.
To follow one conspiracy is fine, but making a living looking for them is disingenuous to say the least.
Sure groups of people conspire, often for power or profit & usually its people that are already in positions of authority. But like I said I’ve never seen much verifiable evidence provided to back his contrived theories up.
That said i’ve not studied his work in depth, because i can usually smell BS a mile off.
You and me both then……..
The idea he makes a living out of it has left me with a stain on me undies…..
A shitty blue fleece is on it’s way to you in the post. Peace….
“This is quite interesting”
Which bit? The Assange bit in which they use a 10-bladed Mokum’s Razor to prove that Assange has been a CIA asset since the age of one year seven months (“Everyone knows Ecuador has been run by the CIA since 1492 so when I heard he was hiding in the Ecuadorean Embassy, that was it for me”) with not even a mention of Chelsea Manning,*
or the “Protocols of Zion” bit, complete with a piccy of the Talmud (not as interesting as the pickky of the Talmud)
or the introductory haarping on about free energy to keep your Tesla running through the worst of Atlantic hurricanes?
* Did ol’ Mokum Okkum put his socks on in the wrong order that day or is it more sinistet than that, like it was Assange not Manning who was the mole? Wow! What does flaxgirl know about any of this, apart from they’ve got everything arse about face?
Nope.
Sorry.
It isn’t interesting at all.
Just another couple of guys who enjoy talking and publishing “controversial” books.