Death by a Thousand Cuts: The Many Ways Our Rights Have Been Usurped Since 9/11
John whitehead
“We the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
Abraham Lincoln
Those who gave us the Constitution and the Bill of Rights believed that the government exists at the behest of its citizens. It is there to protect, defend and even enhance our freedoms, not violate them.
Unfortunately, although the Bill of Rights was adopted as a means of protecting the people against government tyranny, in America today, the government does whatever it wants, freedom be damned.
In the 22 years since the USA Patriot Act—a massive 342-page wish list of expanded powers for the FBI and CIA—was rammed through Congress in the wake of the so-called 9/11 terror attacks, it has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse.
The Patriot Act drove a stake through the heart of the Bill of Rights, violating at least six of the ten original amendments—the First, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Amendments—and possibly the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments, as well.
The Patriot Act also redefined terrorism so broadly that many non-terrorist political activities such as protest marches, demonstrations and civil disobedience are now considered potential terrorist acts, thereby rendering anyone desiring to engage in protected First Amendment expressive activities as suspects of the surveillance state.
The Patriot Act justified broader domestic surveillance, the logic being that if government agents knew more about each American, they could distinguish the terrorists from law-abiding citizens—no doubt a reflexive impulse shared by small-town police and federal agents alike.
This, according to Washington Post reporter Robert O’Harrow, Jr., was a fantasy that “had been brewing in the law enforcement world for a long time.” And 9/11 provided the government with the perfect excuse for conducting far-reaching surveillance and collecting mountains of information on even the most law-abiding citizen.
Federal agents and police officers are now authorized to conduct covert black bag “sneak-and-peak” searches of homes and offices while you are away and confiscate your personal property without first notifying you of their intent or their presence.
The law also granted the FBI the right to come to your place of employment, demand your personal records and question your supervisors and fellow employees, all without notifying you; allowed the government access to your medical records, school records and practically every personal record about you; and allowed the government to secretly demand to see records of books or magazines you’ve checked out in any public library and Internet sites you’ve visited (at least 545 libraries received such demands in the first year following passage of the Patriot Act).
In the name of fighting terrorism, government officials are now permitted to monitor religious and political institutions with no suspicion of criminal wrongdoing; prosecute librarians or keepers of any other records if they tell anyone that the government has subpoenaed information related to a terror investigation; monitor conversations between attorneys and clients; search and seize Americans’ papers and effects without showing probable cause; and jail Americans indefinitely without a trial, among other things.
The federal government also made liberal use of its new powers, especially through the use (and abuse) of the nefarious national security letters, which allow the FBI to demand personal customer records from Internet Service Providers, financial institutions and credit companies at the mere say-so of the government agent in charge of a local FBI office and without prior court approval.
In fact, since 9/11, we’ve been spied on by surveillance cameras, eavesdropped on by government agents, had our belongings searched, our phones tapped, our mail opened, our email monitored, our opinions questioned, our purchases scrutinized (under the USA Patriot Act, banks are required to analyze your transactions for any patterns that raise suspicion and to see if you are connected to any objectionable people), and our activities watched.
We’re also being subjected to invasive patdowns and whole-body scans of our persons and seizures of our electronic devices in the nation’s airports. We can’t even purchase certain cold medicines at the pharmacy anymore without it being reported to the government and our names being placed on a watch list.
In this way, “we the people” continue to be terrorized, traumatized, and tricked into a semi-permanent state of compliance by a government that cares nothing for our lives or our liberties.
The bogeyman’s names and faces have changed over time (terrorism, the war on drugs, illegal immigration, a viral pandemic, and more to come), but the end result remains the same: in the so-called name of national security, the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
A recitation of the Bill of Rights—set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and the like (all sanctioned by Congress, the White House, and the courts)—would understandably sound more like a eulogy to freedoms lost than an affirmation of rights we truly possess.
What we are left with today is but a shadow of the robust document adopted more than two centuries ago. Sadly, most of the damage has been inflicted upon the Bill of Rights.
Here is what it means to live under the Constitution, with the nation still suffering blowback from the permanent state of emergency brought about by 9/11 and COVID-19.
The First Amendment is supposed to protect the freedom to speak your mind, assemble and protest nonviolently without being bridled by the government. It also protects the freedom of the media, as well as the right to worship and pray without interference. In other words, Americans should not be silenced by the government. To the founders, all of America was a free speech zone.
Despite the clear protections found in the First Amendment, the freedoms described therein are under constant assault. Increasingly, Americans are being persecuted for exercising their First Amendment rights and speaking out against government corruption. Activists are being arrested and charged for daring to film police officers engaged in harassment or abusive practices. Journalists are being prosecuted for reporting on whistleblowers. States are passing legislation to muzzle reporting on cruel and abusive corporate practices. Religious ministries are being fined for attempting to feed and house the homeless. Protesters are being tear-gassed, beaten, arrested and forced into “free speech zones.” And under the guise of “government speech,” the courts have reasoned that the government can discriminate freely against any First Amendment activity that takes place within a so-called government forum.
The Second Amendment was intended to guarantee “the right of the people to keep and bear arms.” Essentially, this amendment was intended to give the citizenry the means to resist tyrannical government. Yet while gun ownership has been recognized by the U.S. Supreme Court as an individual citizen right, Americans remain powerless to defend themselves against red flag gun laws, militarized police, SWAT team raids, and government agencies armed to the teeth with military weapons better suited to the battlefield.
The Third Amendment reinforces the principle that civilian-elected officials are superior to the military by prohibiting the military from entering any citizen’s home without “the consent of the owner.” With the police increasingly training like the military, acting like the military, and posing as military forces—complete with heavily armed SWAT teams, military weapons, assault vehicles, etc.—it is clear that we now have what the founders feared most—a standing army on American soil.
The Fourth Amendment prohibits government agents from conducting surveillance on you or touching you or encroaching on your private property unless they have evidence that you’re up to something criminal. In other words, the Fourth Amendment ensures privacy and bodily integrity. Unfortunately, the Fourth Amendment has suffered the greatest damage in recent years and has been all but eviscerated by an unwarranted expansion of governmental police powers that include strip searches and even anal and vaginal searches of citizens, surveillance (corporate and otherwise), and intrusions justified in the name of fighting terrorism, as well as the outsourcing of otherwise illegal activities to private contractors.
The Fifth Amendment and the Sixth Amendment work in tandem. These amendments supposedly ensure that you are innocent until proven guilty, and government authorities cannot deprive you of your life, your liberty or your property without the right to an attorney and a fair trial before a civilian judge. However, in the new suspect society in which we live, where surveillance is the norm, these fundamental principles have been upended. Certainly, if the government can arbitrarily freeze, seize or lay claim to your property (money, land or possessions) under government asset forfeiture schemes, you have no true rights.
The Seventh Amendment guarantees citizens the right to a jury trial. Yet when the populace has no idea of what’s in the Constitution—civic education has virtually disappeared from most school curriculums—that inevitably translates to an ignorant jury incapable of distinguishing justice and the law from their own preconceived notions and fears. However, as a growing number of citizens are coming to realize, the power of the jury to nullify the government’s actions—and thereby help balance the scales of justice—is not to be underestimated. Jury nullification reminds the government that “we the people” retain the power to ultimately determine what laws are just.
The Eighth Amendment is similar to the Sixth in that it is supposed to protect the rights of the accused and forbid the use of cruel and unusual punishment. However, the Supreme Court’s determination that what constitutes “cruel and unusual” should be dependent on the “evolving standards of decency that mark the progress of a maturing society” leaves us with little protection in the face of a society lacking in morals altogether.
The Ninth Amendment provides that other rights not enumerated in the Constitution are nonetheless retained by the people. Popular sovereignty—the belief that the power to govern flows upward from the people rather than downward from the rulers—is clearly evident in this amendment. However, it has since been turned on its head by a centralized federal government that sees itself as supreme and which continues to pass more and more laws that restrict our freedoms under the pretext that it has an “important government interest” in doing so.
As for the Tenth Amendment’s reminder that the people and the states retain every authority that is not otherwise mentioned in the Constitution, that assurance of a system of government in which power is divided among local, state and national entities has long since been rendered moot by the centralized Washington, DC, power elite—the president, Congress and the courts.
Thus, if there is any sense to be made from this recitation of freedoms lost, it is simply this: our individual freedoms have been eviscerated so that the government’s powers could be expanded.
It was no idle happenstance that the Constitution, which was adopted 236 years ago on Sept. 17, 1787, opens with these three powerful words: “We the people.” As the Preamble proclaims:
We, the people of the United States, in order to form a more perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, do ordain and establish this CONSTITUTION for the United States of America.
In other words, it’s our job to make the government play by the rules of the Constitution.
We are supposed to be the masters and they—the government and its agents—are the servants.
We the American people—the citizenry—are supposed to be the arbiters and ultimate guardians of America’s welfare, defense, liberty, laws and prosperity.
Still, it’s hard to be a good citizen if you don’t know anything about your rights or how the government is supposed to operate.
As the National Review rightly asks, “How can Americans possibly make intelligent and informed political choices if they don’t understand the fundamental structure of their government? American citizens have the right to self-government, but it seems that we increasingly lack the capacity for it.”
Americans are constitutionally illiterate.
Most citizens have little, if any, knowledge about their basic rights. And our educational system does a poor job of teaching the basic freedoms guaranteed in the Constitution and the Bill of Rights.
Teachers and school administrators do not fare much better. A study conducted by the Center for Survey Research and Analysis found that one educator in five was unable to name any of the freedoms in the First Amendment.
Government leaders and politicians are also ill-informed. Although they take an oath to uphold, support and defend the Constitution against “enemies foreign and domestic,” their lack of education about our fundamental rights often causes them to be enemies of the Bill of Rights.
So what’s the solution?
Thomas Jefferson recognized that a citizenry educated on “their rights, interests, and duties” is the only real assurance that freedom will survive.
From the President on down, anyone taking public office should have a working knowledge of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights and should be held accountable for upholding their precepts. One way to ensure this would be to require government leaders to take a course on the Constitution and pass a thorough examination thereof before being allowed to take office.
Some critics are advocating that students pass the United States citizenship exam in order to graduate from high school. Others recommend that it must be a prerequisite for attending college. I’d go so far as to argue that students should have to pass the citizenship exam before graduating from grade school.
Here’s an idea to get educated and take a stand for freedom: anyone who signs up to become a member of The Rutherford Institute gets a wallet-sized Bill of Rights card and a Know Your Rights card. Use this card to teach your children the freedoms found in the Bill of Rights.
A healthy, representative government is hard work. It takes a citizenry that is informed about the issues, educated about how the government operates, and willing to do more than grouse and complain.
As I point out in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People and in its fictional counterpart The Erik Blair Diaries, “we the people” have the power to make and break the government.
The powers-that-be want us to remain divided over politics, hostile to those with whom we disagree politically, and intolerant of anyone or anything whose solutions to what ails this country differ from our own. They also want us to believe that our job as citizens begins and ends on Election Day.
Yet there are 330 million of us in this country. Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.
Tyranny wouldn’t stand a chance.
Constitutional attorney and author John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His book Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks, 2015) is available online at www.amazon.com. Whitehead can be contacted at [email protected]
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It would be nice to know the full history of the patriot act from the date of its inception to the day it was signed into law.
I suspect, it was just waiting for a ‘Pearl Harbor moment’ to turn up.
And whilst we’re at it, I’d love to see a copy of the contracts signed by the relatives of those killed on that day (Victim Compensation Fund).
We know that all “omnibus” mega-legislation– or to coin a term, “crypto-legislation”– is created by committees of lobbyists and lawyers, with some consultation with key Elected Misrepresentatives to ensure that the result is palatable. To again coin a term, even dense, virtually impenetrable statutory laws need to be “votable” just as candidates must be deemed “electable”.
So, paradoxically, atrocities like the Patriot Act have a thousand
fathersparents– and yet are ultimately written by Noman.But Elected Misrepresentatives will claim credit for authorship, if they believe that “owning” a given law will boost their popularity. Thus, it is no surprise that The Ghost of Joe Biden (Barely) Present has boasted over the years that he himself “wrote” the Patriot Act– presumably burning the midnight oil with quill pen in hand. 🤔
Pelosi became notorious for utter the phrase “We had to pass it to find out what’s in it” when referring to Obama care.
Just as Obama said if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor, when the opposite was the truth.
The truth was if your doctor is not in our network, you can keep them, but your insurance wont pay them.
Thank you for enumerating the various ways our rather inconvenient Bill of Rights interferes with the smooth running of government. You should have also mentioned how the privatization of government functions allows the government to do things which they’d be prohibited from doing — they can’t go around surveilling the people without good reason, Patriot Act or no Patriot Act — but there’s absolutely nothing stopping private corporations from (profitably) doing what they choose and selling the results to the government. A Win/Win for all.
The only bone of contention I’d have is with the comments on the Second Amendment. We’re big on Gun Rights in the US but actually the weapons that “We, The People”, are allowed aren’t sufficient to challenge the government in any way, shape or form. They’re powerful enough for them to be a danger to ourselves and our neighbors but they’re mere toys compared to what the government can deploy, in fact they provide a handy excuse for the escalation of weaponry and militarization of law enforcement. If you look at old police training films from a mere 50 years ago the idea of shooting to kill — emptying a rapid firing pistol based on the mere suspicion of a threat — would be anathema, totally incorrect police behavior and symptomatic of poor training and conduct. Today its routine (as is tasing a high school band leader on the field for not following orders and stopping the band when ordered by the police…..see today’s news)(Sieg Heil!). Second Amendment enthusiasts don’t seem to notice the large array they’re not allowed or allowed only under special conditions (antiques) — no full automatic, no armor piercing, no suppressors (silencers), nothing really useful, just enough to get you creamed when law enforcement turns up. Unintended consequences, again.
As a footnote to your excellent comment, I’ll say one word: Waco.
Strange but true.
The Pentagon was created for the sole reason to use people to send back the information on foreign news reports about America, and if they found negative reports they would then either try to discredit this information or create any type of positive stories to counter the bad news stories. This was all begun just before the Pearl Harbor incident.
Which begs the questions of could the Pearl Harbor incident be partly based on this new ideology that gvt had adopted, and just why was this needed in the first place, trust thy friend to stay one step ahead of them in order to control them and their resources?
Obviously the organization today has either continued this process or even added to its obligations.
Rights
Rights, like democracy and freedom and so on are myths. Humans don’t have rights except those at the top. Humans are a strange species. We are the only herdable primate. We are the only species that preys on itself. The banksters three thousand years ago realized that they could create a strategy that would give them control over everyone on the planet. That strategy included control of finances, the creation of materialistic monotheistic religions that could be transported anywhere and which could be used to divide and control or conquer as required. The strategy included exploration, genocide, colonialism, slavery and so on. That strategy worked. However the apparent beneficiaries , the layer under the banksters, such as the Americans of European stock, themselves became completely controlled by their masters.
SEIZE PRIVATE PROPERTY UNDER EMINENT DOMAIN
In a letter to shareholders in April 2023, the CEO of JP Morgan, Jamie Dimon, said that seizing private citizens’ property under eminent domain — where government takes over private property for public use — may be the way to go to control climate change.
Climate change initiatives just aren’t happening quickly enough for the general public to maintain property ownership rights.
“We need to do more, and we need to do so immediately,” Dimon said. To do this, “governments, businesses and non-governmental organizations” need to consider invoking policies such as eminent domain because “we simply are not getting the adequate investments fast enough for grid, solar, wind and pipeline initiatives.” –Mercola
Prez candidate RFK jr is an AGW advocate; don’t know about DeSantes
AGW – anthropogenic global warming…
P…i had to look it up…
Yeah, les, everyone recognizes “GW” but as soon as you put the A in front of it, it becomes Greek; it’s that word “anthropogenic”– who can remember it?
I guess eminent domain is so much less messy than “wildfire” no?
Any private property seized will be returned…to the highest bidder. I think even the American people would know better than to give any credibility to anything a banker proposes. Though of course “shareholders” will be salivating all the way to the safe deposit box.
Interesting. France is pushing ‘ green’ things a lot-solar panels, heat pumps ( lots of ads on telly – ads from businesses and I think from the govt too) There are no street lights on at night in the city where I live
“the people are the rightful masters of both Congress and the courts, not to overthrow the Constitution but to overthrow the men who pervert the Constitution.”
My nagging question for (many) years has been: was the Constitution designed, expressly, or mostly to admit to its, ah, own ‘subversion’?
After all, almost all of the framers were slave owners, and Gerald Horne in his recent history, “Race to Revolution” follows the timeline from the 1772 Kings Bench ruling by Lord Mansfield, in “Somerset versus Stewart” that the Colonial tax revolt against paying slaves any wages was already being framed here as a War of “Independence”.
For non-slaves anyway.
(You may have read that slavery was almost non-existent in Canada by 1790.)
£4£&$4$~~~
MLK spoke of our “slave economy”.
And Cornel West has put forth the bold opinion in recent times that the N-word now applies to all of us.
… Seems supported by these corporate improvisations on the Constitution, exploitable ‘loopholes’ (aka corrupted rotten orifices?) that resulted in some key rulings on Corporations as persons. All of a piece.
But are such things part of its fabric?
A reversible fabric, like certain raincoats?
An open invitation to “perversions of the Constitution,” with apologies to Honest Abe?
But armed with hindsight as 20/20 , I’m sure that the ‘fabled’ rail-splitter could now make a case!
For us. “Of the People by the People for the People.”
Your first reference is good because it shows who created all the mess.
“We the people” allowed it to happen, we hailed it, we praised it, we wanted it, we voted for it, we exploited it, we benefited from it, we envied those who got away with it, we wanted to be like them, exploiters.
Now stop being crybabies whining for your Nanny’s guilt. You took all you could get, pay the price.
Count me out of your summation: I’ve been sounding off against Nazis and all of that pretty loudly since I was barely 3 years old.
Literally!
Just ask my Italian neighbors, they had come straight from their Wonder Years in Mussolini’s Italy and just a few words out of my mouth to their daughter, my first baby crush when we were a wee three, was enough to get Mama cackling like a hen all over the neighborhood warning the neighbors, and glibly, about my shocking anti-fascist profile.
I’ve written about this before, but it still amazes me 70 years later the ferocity of the clash between a dyed in the wool woman brown shirt who had known nothing but fascism in Italy, and her 3-year-old neighbor, paramour of her daughter Lorna!
Epic confrontation, and pretty hilarious to boot. Mama de Motto even complained to my parents early & often behind my back and had them both looking at me askance for some while, months, and then we moved south down the coast, where the PTA complained about me anew and all the more so in that den of richest Fat Cats, Newport Beach. Ouch. I add that color commentary because those who know Newport Beach (“The OC” tv series is a good refresher course) will recognize those facts of Life here.
Of course I didn’t know in my infancy and childhood that this was out of the norm, but I was living in a Nazi Odessa stronghold.
STILL IS.
Although it is tempting to blame my fellow citizens I never do because I realize how many were unable to spot all the tentacles before they were firmly in those clutches, so young. In my case my hackles were raised quite early as I say and they have never gone down since. It was my defense against such hypnosis.
BELIEVE IT!? [I know in our times many find it not so incredible. Less so with each waning, or waxing, moon.]
Americans are all such test tube babies, the whole country has been incubated into a pseudo~reality, in vitro from day one, if you ask me.
They may well perform above my head on so many issues, but not this one. Not the many varieties and flavors of trauma-based hypnosis, and so carefully coverted too.
£4£&$4$™~~
Polanski has told the tale often that children don’t know that their conditions are unusual they just accept them as life, and in his boyhood we could compare notes, from opposite ends, or as a surreal contrast, when his mother was snatched out of their house when he was six and murdered soon after at Auschwitz. Pregnant too. (She was probably assessed as a liability for hard labor? OR was there more to it, all? All in all?)
Any case, RP was left to fend for himself on the streets, after his father too was trained away in a cattle car and for the next 5 years he had to survive as a starving street urchin. Most of his family, but for his favorite uncle, survived the camps, excepting his mother Bella. (In his autobiography he gives all the intriguing family details and he is usually careful enough in such things as to make sure they match many confirmed accounts of those sad times.)
But I have delved ever deeper into his remarkable life story, since he seems to be forever in the eye of a very very BIG intelligence storm, even unto this day. I viewed a number of interviews given by him over the past 50 years, recently, given rather infrequently, (Dick Cavett, Charlie Rose et al.) and I have just finished his autobiography, very engaging, and superbly well written, even if it had been penned by a Hollywood native, as considering english is his third language, “ROMAN by Polanski” (unavailable in online form or in Kindle, big shock, so I got the hard back and highlighted it to pieces, above all since having lived very nearby him in his some 15 years here, familiar with all his neighborhoods, I trip over all the clues he leaves, while crossing my own paths back then, and names, places, etc, a shocking bonanza of cross-associations, especially since I knew none of this back then: ergo, fascination).
But one thing the two of us have quite in common is so much aversion therapy early on against Nazis? And ongoing, more than many. More than most+.
Makes you wonder. If not theorize.
The Beatles and The Rolling Stones were lucky. None of the groupies who allowed them to have their way with them were the ‘kiss and tell’ type…
The gels were ‘groupies’ in those days; Russel’s gels are ‘women from the audience’…
I was at concerts where the young gels threw their panties (aka – knickers) at Mick & The Boys on stage…Russel’s ‘women audience’ are probably those groupies grand daughters…Satyr…(Satyrism: definition = big prick)…
I took my only legal wife to the London Palladium to see Marvin Gaye with 25 LA session men. The knicker throwing was just like it was said to be for Elvis, it just about covered the stage.
A lot of the nurses have a rash and bad breath from wearing masks. Even gold diggers won’t date allopathic doctors anymore. We have the hottest people like have you seen Kate Sugak? She is a true Goddess. Interestingly the last alleged ‘smallpox’ death was on september the 11th.
https://www.instagram.com/kattie.su/
https://odysee.com/@dharmabear:2/The-Truth-About-Smallpox-Kate-Sugak-720-Eng:e
Founding Fathers never promised that the Declaration of Independence, Constitution or Bill of Rights would stop tyranny.
I would argue that they explicitly warned us that it would not stop tyranny, and the very reason that the 2nd Amendment is explicitly stated in the Bill of Rights.
Be ready in a minute or you won’t make it.
Just another invitation, such as c19 Hysteria and toilet paper stampedes, to pandemic panic.
There are a few writers I admire such as Joe Bageant ( can’t think of the others off hand ) who grew up in a gun culture and are pro- 2.
But I find almost all the arguments and motivations suspect, as being really for our defensive purposes if only in the sense that the Weaponry, some of it so very subtle, completely obviates any meaningful use of firearms. I’ve heard a lot of arguments otherwise, some of them rather well considered, but only in the context of maybe almost a half century ago.
I don’t wish to sound like a party pooper when it comes to our defense, but frankly I know enough now of their subtle yet Very potent weaponry to realize that pop guns would probably be more effective against them.
About all the guns are useful for now is to win some kind of popularity contest with the fascists who man the Battle Stations.
As far as useful in any serious resistance, not so much! (Now, on an urban level I have known some very nice old ladies who pack them in their purses on city buses, simply as self-defense against drug addicts on their walks home, and that makes some real sense, but not rallying them as recruits for a militia!)
Seriously, otherwise it’s not much more than an invitation to Defeat.
Those that lacked the intestinal fortitude to stand up the Forces of the English Crown said the same about 240 years ago.
Even Gandhi lamented the Indians giving up arms to the English dogs
Cowardice is a behavior that TPTB rely upon.
Having to face Goliath will never be a reason or excuse for cowardice.
Nonsense. Saddam Hussain handed out machine guns to all his citizens. So did Tito. These countries really fought back. Successfully for the most part.
You got a point. US is a free arms and gun right country, but full of pussies at home, going berserk and perverts abroad.
Apples and oranges, a non-comparison and a non-contrast.
Your examples are, relatively speaking, staged aeons ago.
As one lecturer at West Point recently put it:
“The Battlefield of the 21st Century is the human brain. End of story.”
Then he stepped down and reclaimed his seat. Short, if not sweet.
Weaponizing with hard steel and bullets is just an invitation to martial law, no more no less. Especially in USA. People who preach that policy must really want it.
Ever wonder WHY?
“WAR IS A RACKET.”
Last year I was called to jury duty, and upon jury selection raised my hand when the judge, most high and almighty, asked if any of us might object to following the letter of the law, mentioning what should be obvious injustices of law, like slavery. That, along with additional information upon ‘cross-examination’ as to arrest from acts of civil disobedience, got me swiftly dismissed as an unworthy citizen. I left musing over how unlikely any trial by jury – forget jury rights of nullification – would be fair and impartial.
The U$ is founded upon a coup called its Constitution, usurping the Articles of Confederation to create a more centralized state, and military, to control commerce, currency, and continental expansion and empire, curbed under British colonialism. That’s why the founding fathers, aka ruling class, conspired to craft it behind locked doors in Philadelphia, and why the politically symbolic but economically meaningless* Bill of Rights amounted to an afterthought to negotiate ratification from select propertied interests granted manipulable voting rights.
The rule of law remains the law of rule. Or call it the enduring golden rule: those who have the gold make the rules. Just like soldiers following orders to fight wars declared by those reaping profits from others’ blood, we the people perform our civilian duty by paying for, with our labor and lives, the organized crime rackets run above and behind the law, as the rich get richer and the poor get prison. Double standards of doublethink: “So, if we lie to the government it’s a felony, but if they lie to us it’s politics.” (Bill Murray) See? What they say, goes – until we shut them up.
General Smedley Butler’s words, at the tail end of over thirty years managing the blood banks, sum up well the imperial reach of the law of the land beyond its extermination of native inhabitants, a rules-based international order compared to which Al Capone was a piker.** But even little ol’ Al sounded the same spirit if not letter of the law in his words, aptly enough, to Cornelius Vanderbilt, Jr. just before going to jail: “People respect nothing nowadays. Once we put virtue, honor, truth, and the law on a pedestal. …Graft is a byword in American life today. It is law where no other law is obeyed.”
Contrary to Lincoln, those who pervert the Constitution are the same ones who created it, and who continue to oversee all its legal legerdemain since, especially on behalf of corporate state fascism now going full spectrum dominance with final solutions of the latest new world disorder. We the people need a radical reconstitution more of our making.
* “In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread.” (Anatole France)
** “I spent 33 years and four months in active military service and during that period I spent most of my time as a high class muscle man for Big Business, for Wall Street and the bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank boys to collect revenues in. I helped in the raping of half a dozen Central American republics for the benefit of Wall Street. I helped purify Nicaragua for the International Banking House of Brown Brothers in 1902-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for the American sugar interests in 1916. I helped make Honduras right for the American fruit companies in 1903. In China in 1927 I helped see to it that Standard Oil went on its way unmolested. Looking back on it, I might have given Al Capone a few hints. The best he could do was to operate his racket in three districts. I operated on three continents.”
Smedley Butler was the best ; didn’t live very long either. 59?
33 years? So Butler was one those slimy eels you know what I mean. Like Russel’s 6 mio?
Like all those military intelligence men Ritter, Saker, m.m. who after 33 years of Corp service suddenly jumped out of the closet and revealed they always have been among the resistance.
The goodie goodies, who cared for all the victims and all the poor, and made their own little opposition info-warrior business internet site fighting the Big Tech and MI complex guys.
Surprice surprice, what a surprice.
As long as the Americans believe that they can change anything by voting, they’re doomed.
“Don’t vote. It only encourages the bastards.”
— PJ O’Rourke
!
Nowadays, thanks especially to mail-in ballots, we don’t have to vote in order to have our votes counted. If 0% of the people should happen to vote, the Media will report a 90% turnout. And each of us will be discouraged that we alone stood our ground while everyone else caved in and voted.
In upcoming elections, voters need not apply.
I thank the Whiteheads for their analysis and for what they do to try to raise the level of political understanding of Americans. I am an American who has been living overseas for nearly 20 years, and look from afar, despairing at the state of things in the land of my birth. Rights have always been vulnerable to power-hungry forces, but at least in the past most people SAW their rights were under threat — now it seems most do not.
It would be great if people with a similar focus and knowledge as the Whiteheads would write articles like this on other nations where basic freedoms were being destroyed. The problem is by no means confined to the US.
How do we cope with that fact that most people may be stupid?
With a second round of Covid Sundae Whip coming around, and the bountiful evidence that the first serving was terminal, what do we do when at least 1/3 of the crowd surge up to the counter for more?
Do we stay silent. Do we take refuge within a London Mumble that, er, wo’evah. Or do we cry out?
Just want to point out that most people have ALWAYS been “stupid”, or at least not very quick mentally, and many others are simply uneducated (not that education always helps!). Having great intelligence is not necessary to understand the idea of rights available to all. It is not the lack of intelligence that is the problem it is complacency and fear. Complacency comes from the people living with a total focus on themselves and their comforts, sort of like well-fed pigs. I know, not a pretty image for my fellow humans. And fear? This once useful instinct has been enhanced and manipulated by those with power for their own ends. Can these obstacles be overcome? I hope they can, hope that these days seems to fly in the face of negative evidence.
Agents of betterment, somehow, some way. A thorny road but it must be made.
We stay silent as long as it is voluntary. We already did our job. Blowing a trombone from all roofs 5 times a day to no result.
They just need a skirt to hide behind, and this skirt is not going to be mine this second time.
I cant take cowards and snitches crawling around my back.
The tightrope is any story that leaves you balancing above the crowd.
ZeroHedge like 99% of the media has dropped the Maui story like a burning iron – the old kind that were cast from one piece of ore.
Yet the Maui story, covered by a few trenchant journalists like yours truly, tells us much about what’s going on. It is worthy of digging for what it reveals:
Rain-drenched peoples – from Maui to the Emerald Isle – told water no longer free
The ultimate renewable is likely to be rationed as a tool of control
Ageing infrastructure used as an excuse to push people off their land
And beneath this, a multi-generational strategy.
330 million people. “Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.”.
Imagine that? Good grief, I imagine that’s a pipe dream of the highest order. There is a divide in this country now so wide you could drive the Red Sea thru it, parted and all. It appears at this point the only solution is to break the U.S. up. Half the country still wants to kill those of us who don’t take the jabs or wear the masks. Ya, they want us dead. Maybe three ways, let the Trump supporters have a third, the woke globalist dems and liberals a third, and the sane among us the other third (if there are that many sane). I can’t imagine that happening either, and I’m being a bit facetious. Or maybe two says, those that took and take the jabs, i.e., support Big Pharma and the Globalists, and those that don’t. Or maybe state by state, which is sort of happening now (red state/blue state) except all are still ruled by the oligarchy’s two political parties.
This sounds like the Occupy 99% stuff, but when I think about it, I think about all those that work for and support the 1%. The pigs, the military, the voters who vote for the democratic and republican parties, the Covidmaniacs, the military industrial state workers, the Big Pharma workers, the Big Oil workers, etc., etc., the list is long, man. I don’t see how there could ever be a united front against the so called 1%. I can imagine a significant segment forcing the issue, which is what we should be working toward.
Science is a human attempt to model what we observe around us. It is a working theory, it is not absolute truth. Even the formula H2O is a flawed description of what makes water.
Carbon dioxide is even more egregiously misrepresented. Apple’s advert for its new iPhone 15 has people scratching their heads:
Not only is this pure hypocrisy as Tim Cook’s Apple refuses to participate in France’s “Green rating” for phones and the company pursues planned obsolescence including non user-replaceable batteries.
Carbon is the element of life and without CO2 we can cannot have oxygen.
On the streets, “grassroots” Gretas keep you distracted.
the Constitution has been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded with the support of Congress, the White House, and the courts.
And the sheeple.
The Biosecurity State would not be possible without the prior existence of the Surveillance State. The GOP and Democrats working as a tag team. 9/11 was step 1, Covid, step 2: here is road to 21st Century fascism.
Governments have become corporations that may found on Dun&BradStreet, and the People have been fraudulently converted into legal-fictions that are re-presented by BAR attorneys. The jurisdiction is now Commerce under the Unidroit Uniform Commercial Code.
The difficulty most have with the US’ definition of ‘freedoms’ is that they are never framed formally in concert with the yang to the freedom’s yins, namely the responsibility to exercise such freedoms appropriately.
The right to bear arms carries consequences for soon-to-be-dead human beings if those who bear arms kill indiscriminately.
The right to protest ‘peacefully’ sees those with the thickest skins and the greatest imperviousness to gaslighting destroying the emotional stability of many wishing to protest peacefully without aggressive verbal thuggery, smearing and attacks on those merely expressing their genuinely held views. Alpha baboons after all expect to be obeyed and expect others to submit to their demands. They aren’t refined debaters in the main.
The right to a trial by jury does, in fact, require a significant level of prosperity, since in order to constitute juries, there needs to be sufficient headroom in organisational financial stability to allow employees to take time off work to perform civic duties of sitting on a jury. It also requires sufficient levels of societal responsibility that it is not controversial that trials by jury are something that society is willing to pay for.
Finally, the ability to assert such rights does come with potential risks. Now if you are a multimillionaire, in the worst case, you can simply no longer work and live off the wealth you have already acquired. If, however, you are an honest diligent worker who gets paid enough to get by, but not to build up a significant bank of savings, then the prospect of employment blacklisting is probably sufficient to make exercising such rights a risky undertaking.
Not to put too fine a point on it, the reality about the exercising of such rights in most countries of the world comes down to how rich you already are……
GKC:
“To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it.”
As well as the Amendement and the Constitution, direct centralization of resources is increasingly a tool of control.
Water in particular. We see assertions that we no longer have rights to the rain. At the very moment they people called upon water, the hydrants from Maui to British Columbia ran dry.
Rain-drenched peoples from the Pacific to the Emerald Isle are assured water is no longer abundant, nor free.
It is, like those nibbling at the Constitution, a pretext for a material grab.
https://moneycircus.substack.com/p/crisis-update-mauis-fire-hydrants
Everybody can make reservoirs from rainwater or nearby rivers, lakes.
You conclude you cant count on the public utilities why you make your own emergency reserve.
Its sad and irritating but necessary.
Remember one even more important thing: Not only rights but especially that the foundation for these rights are obligations.
Every citizen has an obligation to acquaint himself with the way our universe and society are build up, and an obligation to know his own role in this.
Only then he can request rights back from the surrounding society and from God.
As my father’s father said to me when I was a little boy in 1960:”Dont ask what America can do for you, but what YOU can do for America”.
A few month later JFK took this sentence and used it for himself, and thus stole my family’s intellectual property without paying a buck. This case is still circulating in US Supreme court.
I know I will get a millions down votes from all over America. No American wants to hear about his obligations. But so be it.
You can fool yourself once but you cant continue to keep the TRUTH under the carpet forever!
There is no copyright on the “Holy Spirit.” Maybe that thought came from God & Co. if a whole lot of people were thinking it at the same time?
I’m not being coy, I have had a few thoughts of my own that I saw replicated
“as is” exactly, days or weeks later in public forums.
…. Just a thought, and no doubt it’s been had elsewhere.
Yeah yeah. It definitely works exactly like that. The ideas occur to separated folks at a similar time.
“Imagine what we could accomplish if we actually worked together, presented a united front, and spoke with one voice.”
I imagine “we” would then sound just like “them,” and just like them become blind to our own tryanny.
Politics blinds.
Politics is betrayal.
So what do you suggest? That we all give up? And what…die? move to the mountains as survivalists?
What I have come to think, as a result of constant reflection over recent, unpleasant, direct experience, is that I can’t speak for anyone but myself, and that I should continue to speak and act on my own behalf with no presumption, of any kind whatsoever, that my actions and behaviour represent the interests of anyone other than myself.
Therefore, I can’t suggest what anyone else should do, other than to do likewise and stand up and speak for themselves, and that, possibly, if everyone did that, it might have a desirable cumulative effect, without the politics.
Speculation.
That’s as far as I’ve gotten.
RFK, SR
“It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped each time a man stands up for an ideal or acts to improve the lot of others or strikes out against injustice. He sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest wall of oppression and resistance.”
To give Off Guardian readers an idea of the unconstitutional nature of the post-9/11 U.S. Patriot Act (many believe the Patriot Act was written before 9/11, given the massiveness of the legislation could not become completed in such a short time after September 11, 2001), we share a relevant personal experience.
To make a long story short: Not long after passage of the Patriot Act we saw John Perkins on C-SPAN talking about his book “Confessions of an Economic Hitman”, and then purchased the book. Innocently showing the recently purchased (bombshell) book to a local suburban Chicago County sheriff’s office deputy at my workplace (I worked in a police/fire/postal uniform store) led to an unannounced search of my apartment, confirmed in subsequent days by things said at the store directed at me by other members of this sheriff department (customers), especially one comment “You’ve got a target on your back.”
I share this experience to give people some awareness of how extensive/”1984″/Fascist the provisions are in the Patriot Act, particularly as they embody a clearly unconstitutional aspect, – and suggesting the advisability of repealing/reversing the Patriot Act (or at the very least, amending to remove all unconstitutional provisions) for that precise reason.
Good night and good luck.
The Russell Brand thing turns out to be even more than first appears.
The whole concerted plot was easy to spot a mile off but the repercussions go much deeper.
The government are now asking Youtube (Google) to self censor as they can take RB et al. off MSM but they can’t (Yet) restrict Youtube content.
Mark my words this will give the “online harms bill” a new impetus and the comparison with Jimmy Saville welds the evil transgressor image in people’s minds, much like the sinister “denier” label.
I’ve said it many times: They’re clever bastards.
But they’re still bastards.
And Russell Brand is still a dangerous, predatory pillock.
He’s a patsy.
So… he’s completely innocent?
How should I know?
Did you mean ‘pansy’?😉Seriously, though, I think you’re right although
given he is an illuminati slave, his excoriating Big Pharma and the Deep State could be a pretext for a type of ritual sacrifice.
Proof??????
“Proof ? Proof ! You want Proof ?! Can you handle the Proof ?”
Fact is, you dont need proof if you already think he’s a pillock…
The MSM dont give a damn about proof…He’s “Guilty !” no proof needed…
The MSM likes to create ‘smoke’, knowing many will think “Where there’s smoke, there’s fire !”
“Russell, he’s A Naughty Boy !’
BREAKING: Neil Oliver Becomes First National Broadcaster On Corporate News To Debate Allegations of State Democide Using Midazolam, With Covid As Cover: https://maajidnawaz.substack.com/p/breaking-neil-oliver-becomes-first
Iain Davis:
“The most pressing concern is the welfare of any and all women who may have been sexually assaulted or raped by Russell Brand. It is essential that the evidence is investigated and, if there is evidence of criminal conduct, Brand should be prosecuted.
There is no contradiction to also state that we should also wholeheartedly reject any suggestion that trial by media is even remotely credible. It has already been said, but it is worth reiterating, that Russell Brand is currently innocent and will remain so until proven otherwise in a court of law.
The LM [Legacy Media] should be free to investigate allegations of this nature, but, due to their lack of legal authority, they cannot possibly secure access to all the required evidence. As a body, they are not objective and frequently serve an agenda.
Based upon what has been reported by the LM, there is very little to substantiate the allegations made against Brand. But if they can make the story stick, or if he is subsequently found guilty, it is inevitable that the same LM who built him up, who then seemingly tried to take him down when he became inconvenient, will use Brand as an example to discredit the opinions of the millions who largely agree with his political views. The illogical association will be completely groundless, but that is no impediment to the propagandists that infest the Legacy Media.”
https://iaindavis.substack.com/p/dispatching-russel-brand-hypocrisy?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=bbdrv&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
unfortunately this is how the state operates, passes laws disguised as targeting one section but in reality will be used on whom they like, there is also an argument to say that today’s young person doesn’t know or miss the freedoms of older generations.
The young have been mollycoddled most of their lives, they believe everything they are told by teachers, the MSM, even the BBC.
You can only be free if you take responsibility to challenge authority, educate yourself about what is true and what is propaganda and recognise the difference between ‘our lives are endangered’ and ‘some politicos can make a fortune by claiming XXX is a warmonger set to kill us/our friends’. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine have occurred because the general public and especially the young simply can’t recognise lying psychopaths organising wars to make fortunes.
Genocide & Slavery
One must of course remember with sadness that the American constitution was written by slaveowners and ethnic cleansers. Great sentiments but the crimes of the framers of the document were grave in the extreme.Ironically their conquest and exploitation of the continent made the banking cartel omnipotent and made it possible for them to commit the outrages that have been inflicted upon Americans and others in recent decades.
If you think the US Constitution is bad, then you should see and compare the bureaucratic babble in the EU Foundation Charter.
You find no better than the Constitution in other places. Only the Bible is greater.
Sad state of affairs when the terrorists and criminals are the government and their bosses…
Think you left out a letter in your title Folks.
There’s an n missing from ‘cuts’.
And there’s waaay more than a thousand of them.
More than half a million in fact.
Didn’t know shit could be piled that high.