"Richard Nixon had resigned as President of the United States on August 9th, 1974. His political demise was brought about principally by the 1972 Watergate affair: an illegal caper involving clandestine operatives. The operatives — later linked to the White House and Nixon’s re-election committee — were caught bugging the Democratic Party’s national headquarters at the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. Nixon and his team maneuvered to cover up their connection to this crime in what then became additional illegal activities including obstruction of justice. A protracted legal and political battle ensued over the next two years between Nixon’s White House and those pursuing the case, including: the national media and the press, the U.S. Congress, two Special Prosecutors, and the U.S. Supreme Court. All of this culminated in the July 1974 House Judiciary Committee’s vote approving two articles of impeachment. Headed for a certain trial in the U.S. Senate, Nixon pre-empted that possibility by resigning."
The toxins in power have lately been brought to the surface in the McTell News, what with all the whistleblowing going on.
The propaganda is mixed together with temper tantrums then thrown all over the "air waves."
One is in the form of a criminal prosecution of Bradley Manning, another is the president not going over to play white house with Putin.
Meanwhile, the portraits of the presidents of earlier times hang on the walls of today's movie set we call the White House.
But the words of those august statesmen who became president are out in the White House garbage cans --along with the left-over caviar and other gifts presented by the epigovernment to the Cypher patrol there festering in the Matrix (The Matriarch of the Matrix - 3).
Anyway, concerning the historical issue of the traditional view of whistleblowers by the early Americans:
On July 30, 1778, the Continental Congress created the first whistleblower protection law, stating “that it is the duty of all persons in the service of the United States to give the earliest information to Congress or other proper authority of any misconduct, frauds, or misdemeanors committed
"Sweet Meat beats whistleblowing" - Cypher
by any officers or persons in the service of these states.”
Two hundred thirty-five years later, on July 30, 2013, Bradley Manning was found guilty on 20 of the 22 charges for which he was prosecuted, specifically for “espionage” and for videos of war atrocities he released, but not for “aiding the enemy."
(Manning Trial Began 9/11, emphasis added). Wouldn't you say, then, that our recent outlook is a tad bit short of "learning lessons from history?"
Our unseen epigovernment, the unseen 1%, who think they know better than the rest of us --typically reject the wisdom of the ages:
THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society.
Our invisible governors are, in many cases, unaware of the identity of their fellow members in the inner cabinet.
They govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and by their key position in the social structure.
Whatever attitude one chooses to take toward this condition, it remains a fact
that in almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons — a trifling fraction of our hundred and twenty [now 320] million — who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses. It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind, who harness old social forces and contrive new ways to bind and guide the world.
...
It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind, and to tell how it is manipulated by the special pleader who seeks to create public acceptance for a particular idea or commodity. It will attempt at the same time to find the due place in the modern democratic scheme for this new propaganda and to suggest its gradually evolving code of ethics and practice.
(Epigovernment: The New Model, quoting Bernays). The problem is that they do not realize that they are psychopaths, because psychopaths are incapable of that kind of self-reflection:
One out of every 10 Wall Street employees is a clinical psychopath, the CFA Institute (an investment and financial analysis organization) reports in the latest issue of CFA Magazine. That makes psychopathy 10 times more prevalent among New York’s financial elite than among us plebeians, for which the accepted statistic is a more palatable one in 100.
(When You Are Governed By Psychopaths - 4). And the military, which "makes contact" with the rest of the world in our name, has ruined America's reputation around the world, and is composed of more psychopaths than Wall Street is:
Americans have long been taught that events such as the notorious My Lai massacre were isolated incidents in the Vietnam War, carried out by "a few bad apples." But as award‑winning journalist and historian Nick Turse demonstrates in this groundbreaking investigation, violence against Vietnamese noncombatants was not at all exceptional during the conflict. Rather, it was pervasive and systematic, the predictable consequence of orders to "kill anything that moves."
Drawing on more than a decade of research in secret Pentagon files and extensive interviews with American veterans and Vietnamese survivors, Turse reveals for the first time how official policies resulted in millions of innocent civilians killed and wounded. In shocking detail, he lays out the workings of a military machine that made crimes in almost every major American combat unit all but inevitable.
(The Virgin MOMCOM - 6). What started our "love affair" with older invasions to "get back our oil" (which had somehow flowed under the lands of the Middle Eastern Nations) was a fear-based belief within the heart of one of our wounded warrior western heroes --a belief in the battle of Armageddon:
From the moment he arrived at the Admiralty, a young man of destiny, Churchill started to prepare the fleet for the Battle of Armageddon he believed was inevitable.
...
Then, in 1911, the German Kaiser provoked the Agadir crisis ... Churchill went to the Admiralty and his outlook transformed. He was immediately confronted with the decisive question: to convert the navy from coal to oil ... the "fateful plunge" was made ... in April 1912 ... five oil-burning battleships were approved.
...
It was the Royal Navy which was the impetus for the development of the oil industry in Britain. The problem was supply and the security of that supply. Initially, the British government purchased shares in the Anglo-Persian Oil Company, subsequently, British Petroleum [BP].
...
Then, to prevent further disruptions, Britain enmeshed itself ever more deeply in the Middle East, working to install new shahs in Iran and carve Iraq out of the collapsing Ottoman Empire.
Churchill fired the starting gun, but all of the Western powers joined the race to control Middle Eastern oil.
(The Universal Smedley - 2, quoting several books). These and other secrets are well kept, but when they get let loose without official sanction, then all the whistles go off as the command "get the whistleblowers" is barked around the world.
Quite a change from the founding fathers' work which was quoted at the top of this post.
Founding fathers who also said that endless war would destroy our freedoms and build a toxin-infested executive:
Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few. In war, too, the discretionary power of the Executive is extended; its influence in dealing out offices, honors, and emoluments is multiplied: and all the means of seducing the minds, are added to those of subduing the force, of the people. The same malignant aspect in republicanism may be traced in the inequality of fortunes, and the opportunities of fraud, growing out of a state of war, and in the degeneracy of manners and of morals, engendered by both. No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare. Those truths are well established.
(The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?, emphasis added). Who could have foreseen any of this ... I mean it is like global warming and planes crashing into buildings --right?
No, that is not right, that is wrong --dead wrong.
That series concerned the policy "let's shut down the proactive government response" to the damage being done to the Global Climate System.
That series also points out that as a result of having no active response to stopping the polluting of the Earth or the The Sixth Mass Extinction, the government is left with only a policy of triage.
Triage is the policy of dealing only with the results, while ignoring the cause.
That policy represents a senseless lack of leadership, but more than that, the choosing of the triage easy way out did not work out to shield the denialists in the congress from exposure to ridicule because of their response to Hurricane Superstorm Sandy.
That triage response from a lot of neoCons in congress was "let them eat cake."
In this series we are pointing out loudly that the government now has the latest scientific reports it mandated by law, in 1990.
Official reports that expose lack of action by government, and reveal that there are criminally negligent minds within the government.
In the first post of this series Dredd Blog pointed out, among other things, these statements about the report:
A 60-person Federal Advisory Committee (The "National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee" or NCADAC) has produced a report.
The report concerns civilization's green house gas pollution which causes global warming induced climate change (you can download the large PDF report here).
Thirteen federal agencies took part in producing various aspects of the current report.
Climate change, once considered an issue for a distant future, has moved firmly into the present. This report of the National Climate Assessment and Development Advisory Committee concludes that the evidence for a changing climate has strengthened considerably since the last National Climate Assessment report, written in 2009. Many more impacts of human-caused climate change have now been observed.
(ibid). The members of congress who become ignorance generators because Oil-Qaeda contributes to their election campaigns are criminally negligent or criminally insane (The Criminally Insane Epoch Arises).
Anyway, to top off that report quoted from above, another major scientific report also hit the bricks very recently:
Overall, the 2012 average temperature across global land and ocean surfaces ranked among the 10 warmest years on record.The global land surface temperature alone was also among the 10 warmest on record.
...
Atmospheric CO2 concentrations increased by 2.1 ppm in 2012, to 392.6 ppm. In spring 2012, for the first time, the atmospheric CO2 concentration exceeded 400 ppm at 7 of the 13 Arctic observation sites. Globally, other greenhouse gases including methane and nitrous oxide also continued to rise in concentration and the combined effect now represents a 32% increase in radiative forcing over a 1990 baseline.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
A 1958 video which shows we went into the catastrophe with our "eyes wide open."
On this date in 2009 we began to take a look at "The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power" as expressed in a book that became a best seller.
Since then we have dug into the subject matter in the series about Mithraism (Doing The Right Thing - Mithraism - 2), which Dredd Blog argues is the underlying religion of those at the heart of the secret fundamentalism now at the heart of American Power.
Power corrupts religion too (About Toxins Of Power), so the traditional value of peace, which the people of the U.S.A. in general value highly, has degenerated into a warmongering ideology of Mithraism (The Virgin MOMCOM - 6).
Those are some of the reasons why the fundamentalist Mithraism should be understood so that it can be resisted adequately.
The text of that 2009 Dredd Blog post follows:
The book "The Family", subtitled "The Secret Fundamentalism At The Heart Of American Power", by Jeff Sharlet, offers a look into both the conscious and the subconscious mind of the powers who control the destiny of the United States.
A place where Hitler and every other despot is approved, but where those who care about global climate change and who care for the survival of the ecosystem are derogatorily called "tree huggers" and worse.
United States Senators and House of Representatives members have lived there on Catastrophe Street for years, and they really do believe hatred and utter dominance is the good and godly path for the future.
Of course the answers at this point are several: "yes. it will", "no, it won't", and "that already happened yesterday."
I suppose the bottom line is: "What If Your Country Begins to Change and No One Notices?".
In this series we have been discussing how the original Posse Comitatus Act (18 U.S.C. § 1385, passed at the end of The Civil War) is becoming quaint and faint (Will The Military Become The Police - 3).
Another related series on Dredd Blog discusses why the military must not be allowed to become the police under a propaganda contrived "martial law" declaration.
A quote from a Phoenix business magazine (which points out that the military already has detailed written plans to do so) underscores the clear and present danger to U.S. Liberty:
A new report by the U.S. Army War College talks about the possibility of Pentagon resources and troops being used should the economic crisis lead to civil unrest, such as protests against businesses and government or runs on beleaguered banks.
“Widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security,” said the War College report.
The study says economic collapse, terrorism and loss of legal order are among possible domestic shocks that might require military action within the U.S.
There, we watched military style tactics shut down an entire American city, with military type outfits going house to house military style, to supposedly find an alleged bomber, who was finally found by a single citizen when the storm troopers could not do so (The Boston Massacres).
Similar events are indications that the military is fast evolving into a national police outfit, spying on all Americans, and conducting military training and ops out in plain sight:
The city is providing support for routine military training exercises around the area.
This training happens across the country and is designed to ensure the military's ability to operate in urban environments, as service members meet mandatory training certification requirements ...
(Chicago Fox News). This is evidently taking place in other cities too:
Such operations are unquestionably of central importance to the US military. Over the past decade, its primary mission, as evidenced in Afghanistan and Iraq, has been the invasion and occupation of relatively powerless countries and the subjugation of their resisting populations, often in house-to-house fighting in urban centers.
The Army operates a 1,000 acre Urban Training Center in south-central Indiana that boasts over 1,500 “training structures” designed to simulate houses, schools, hospitals and factories. The center’s web site states that it “can be tailored to replicate both foreign and domestic scenarios.”
What does flying Blackhawks low over Chicago apartment buildings or rolling armored military convoys through the streets of St. Louis accomplish that cannot be achieved through the sprawling training center’s simulations? Last year alone, there were at least seven such exercises, including in Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, Tampa, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Creeds, Virginia.
The most obvious answer is that these exercises accustom troops to operating in US cities, while desensitizing the American people to the domestic deployment of US military might.
Since the 1960s, in response to a range of perceived threats, law-enforcement agencies across the U.S., at every level of government, have been blurring the line between police officer and soldier. Driven by martial rhetoric and the availability of military-style equipment—from bayonets and M-16 rifles to armored personnel carriers—American police forces have often adopted a mind-set previously reserved for the battlefield. The war on drugs and, more recently, post-9/11 antiterrorism efforts have created a new figure on the U.S. scene: the warrior cop—armed to the teeth, ready to deal harshly with targeted wrongdoers, and a growing threat to familiar American liberties.
(WSJ). The author of the book depicted in the graphic at the top of this post gives a thorough presentation of the issue.
The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.
