Earlier today I was reviewing some stuff I wrote back over half a decade ago, and I was amazed at the accuracy of the predictions I made. Actually, they weren't predictions as in "mysticism," but logical conclusions I came to in the face of developments related to the expansion of the security apparatus in the U.S. after 9/11.
Yahoo, Google, Facebook, Twitter, massive indiscriminate collection of data, analysis of that data using powerful algorithms, extreme secrecy, government and technology companies collusion; it was all there.
But again, I'm not the only one that has been warning about this stuff for years now. Many, many other people have been doing the same, very accurately.
And it is actually pretty easy to do if one follows one rule of thumb: Once citizens acquiesce to government demands to give up constitutional rights in the name of security, tyranny will follow.
That is just such a clear and unequivocal truism, that's actually painful to even have to debate it with people.
Let's get something out of the way: There is no democracy in the U.S., and the rule of law has been subverted. Therefore, what we currently have is a criminal oligarchy in charge of the government.
Wall Street criminal cartels looted (and are still at it) the nation's coffers. Corrupt government officials who are also members of the Wall Street criminal cartel colluded (and are still at it) to obstruct justice by refusing to prosecute crimes committed by their paymasters.
In the oligarchical structure you will find billionaires like Pete Peterson and the Koch brothers.
Speaking of the Koch brothers, and as a side note, take a minute to think about the implications of this report: "Secret court judge attended expenses-paid terrorism seminar"
U.S. District Judge Roger Vinson, who signed an order requiring Verizon to give the National Security Agency telephone records for tens of millions of American customers, attended an expense-paid judicial seminar sponsored by a libertarian think tank that featured lectures from a vocal proponent of executive branch powers.
This "seminar" was put together by the Orwellian-sounding organization named, "FREE," or Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment.
From 2005 to 2009, FREE received a total of $430,000 in general operating support from the Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation, of which billionaire businessman Charles Koch is a director.
So you have rampant criminality at the very top levels of the Oligarchy, with total impunity. Then you have what are clearly proto-fascist characters like Charles Koch with their hands on all kinds of aspects of the power structure, including the judiciary, a vast and elaborate propaganda apparatus, and corporatist cartels like ALEC.
And speaking of ALEC, as many people know by now, they have been able to basically buy off a very large segment of the political class in the United States, both at the federal level, and at the states level.
That's why you see an increasingly-fast pace of draconian and oppressive laws and regulations spreading throughout the country like wild fire.
Folks, here's the deal... I'm not going to try to convince those who are either willfully ignorant and choose to hide their heads in the sand, or those who are blinded by hyper-partisanship or cults of personality, as to the current state of affairs. By now, after being at this for almost 15 years, I know that for some reason or another there are people who no matter what type of evidence you present to them, they will continue to choose denial over reality.
But in my writing (and activism), I do want to reach those who share my concerns; we have work to do, together. More on that later...
Finally, some media organizations are beginning to warn about the dangers of this rapidly-expanding surveillance police state, albeit tepidly.
Tonight The Atlantic ponders: "All the Infrastructure a Tyrant Would Need, Courtesy of Bush and Obama - More and more, we're counting on having angels in office and making ourselves vulnerable to devils."
...But even if all the critics were proved wrong, even if the CIA, NSA, FBI, and every other branch of the federal government had been improbably filled, top to bottom, with incorruptible patriots constitutionally incapable of wrongdoing, this would still be so: The American people have no idea who the president will be in 2017. Nor do we know who'll sit on key Senate oversight committees, who will head the various national-security agencies, or whether the moral character of the people doing so, individually or in aggregate, will more closely resemble George Washington, Woodrow Wilson, FDR, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, John Yoo, or Vladimir Putin.
Obviously, they are being careful. They don't want to "go there" yet. That's understandable, being a major mainstream news organization. I have no such compunctions. Not because I'm careless, but of the obviousness of the situation.
Corporations write our legislation. They control our systems of information. They manage the political theater of electoral politics and impose our educational curriculum. They have turned the judiciary into one of their wholly owned subsidiaries. They have decimated labor unions and other independent mass organizations, as well as having bought off the Democratic Party, which once defended the rights of workers. With the evisceration of piecemeal and incremental reform—the primary role of liberal, democratic institutions—we are left defenseless against corporate power.
- Chris Hedges / "Rise Up or Die"
The emphasis is mine
I'm kind of a techie (system administrator, Unix, Linux, MySQL, databases, programming, telcom security experience, etc.). If I put on both, my techie hat, an my tinfoil hat (which is never too far from my reach), here's a scenario that comes to mind...
You know this script: Tyrannical regimes always go after liberals, progressives, social justice activists, and intellectuals. Why? Because in a sea of lies, manipulation and propaganda, they represent the biggest threat because the expose the bullshit.
Now that we have officially gone down the rabbit hole; now that we have crossed the rubicon into an Orwellian reality that includes a total-information-awareness police state, using technology would be extremely easy to map out those the criminal oligarchy identifies as threats, as they did with the Occupy Wall Street movement.
As the rising proto-fascist state slowly takes off its mask, the typical line of defense against it, in the form of intellectuals, writers, liberals (the reals ones), and social justice activists, could be pre-targeted one member at a time, in multiple ways. And much of it could be done surreptitiously.
Far-fetched? Check out this, as reported on Huffington Post: '4 Intelligence Officials' Allegedly Joke Of 'Disappearing' NSA Leaker, Reporter
Leading foreign policy analyst Steve Clemons said he witnessed a rather disturbing conversation while waiting for a flight at the Dulles airport on Saturday.
According to Clemons, four men sitting near him were discussing an intelligence conference they had just attended, and turned to the topic of the NSA leaks. One said that both the reporter and leaker should be "disappeared," a term used to describe secret murders and abductions carried out by authoritarian governments. Clemons said on Twitter the suggestion seemed to be "bravado" and a "disturbing joke." He said that the officials were talking loudly, "almost bragging."
I know, so far (as I quote that report), it fits the definition of hearsay, but the point is that this is being reported by a respected foreign policy analyst.
But the larger point here is that this notion of "disappearing" people is being discussed and reported in the open.
Either way, and again, I don't have to hear it from no policy expert, or anybody else. To me, it is something obvious.
If you you have a proto-fascist police state in ascendancy, and if that government has at its disposal what is essentially a total-information-awareness surveillance system, then logic will tell you they will eventually use it to target those they identify as a threat to their control (tyranny).
Again, this is common sense. I would ask certain readers that before they call me an "Alex Jones," or a "truther," or a "Glenn Beck" of the left, to answer a couple of simple questions: Do you believe that Wall Street may have committed massive crimes, and that those crimes were not prosecuted because those who would make the decision to prosecute have conflict of interest relationship with the industry?
Do billionaires like Pete Peterson and the Koch brothers fund vast propaganda networks around the country, and organizations like ALEC, who are passing thousands of draconian laws and regulations (that strip citizens of rights and hard-earned benefits)?
Has the government claimed the right to detain both, non-citizens and citizens indefinitely, without due process? Has the government claimed the right to assassinate U.S. citizens extra-judicially?
Does this ruling elite (government officials on the take and their corporatist paymasters) now have at their disposal a highly-sophisticated total-information-awareness surveillance system?
Are police departments (and policing in general) being militarized?
Folks, it is here. It's Orwell's "Nineteen Eighty-Four"
Nineteen Eighty-Four is a dystopian novel by George Orwell published in 1949. The Oceanian province of Airstrip One is a world of perpetual war, omnipresent government surveillance, and public mind control, dictated by a political system euphemistically named English Socialism (Ingsoc) under the control of a privileged Inner Party elite that persecutes all individualism and independent thinking as thoughtcrimes.
The emphasis is mine
If people don't rise up against it now, there may come a time when it may be too late. I still think the "rising up" can be done peacefully, but it needs to be massive, relentless, and much bigger (strategic, and organized) than Occupy Wall Street ever was.
It is up to you.
P.S. I'll save this essay and will read it again in five years, if I can.