American Feudalism - 7

Wee The People

In the fourth post of this series, American Feudalism - 4, we focused on the "slave" class, the lowest class of the feudal construct, and its dynamics.

That class was and is the "Peasant" or "Serf."

In today's post, then, let's discuss the Modern American "Peasant" or "Serf."

Our culture tells us "we are the richest nation" of all of the nations in modern civilization, which, in traditional American conversation has meant "we the people", "Americans", or the general citizenry.

Yes, that "we are the richest nation" has traditionally meant that our system of government, with its economic tides, floated all boats, because it was designed to increasingly sustain the common good over time.

That is no longer working out for us because the worst of history is repeating itself:

... the private and state institutions that serve our corporate masters are unassailable. When these ideas are shattered, the institutions that buttress the ruling class deflate and collapse. The battle of ideas is percolating below the surface. It is a battle the corporate state is steadily losing. An increasing number of Americans are getting it. They know that we have been stripped of political power. They recognize that we have been shorn of our most basic and cherished civil liberties, and live under the gaze of the most intrusive security and surveillance apparatus in human history. Half the country lives in poverty. Many of the rest of us, if the corporate state is not overthrown, will join them. These truths are no longer hidden.

It appears that political ferment is dormant in the United States. This is incorrect. The ideas that sustain the corporate state are swiftly losing their efficacy across the political spectrum. The ideas that are rising to take their place, however, are inchoate. The right has retreated into Christian fascism and a celebration of the gun culture. The left, knocked off balance by decades of fierce state repression in the name of anti-communism, is struggling to rebuild and define itself. Popular revulsion for the ruling elite, however, is nearly universal.

(Our Invisible Revolution, Truth Out, emphasis added). The popular nomenclature used to describe this revulsion is the "99% vs the 1%" in recent public conversation (Richest 1% In 2 Families, Everyone In America Is Even More Broke Than You Think).

Several Dredd Blog series, in addition to the post in the current series you are now reading, have focused on the reality (see e.g. The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy, The Graphs of Wrath) with the following general flavor:

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is this: A highly complex and largely discrete set of laws and exemptions from laws has been put in place by those in the uppermost reaches of the U.S. financial system. It allows them to protect and increase their wealth and significantly affect the U.S. political and legislative processes. They have real power and real wealth. Ordinary citizens in the bottom 99.9% are largely not aware of these systems, do not understand how they work, are unlikely to participate in them, and have little likelihood of entering the top 0.5%, much less the top 0.1%. Moreover, those at the very top have no incentive whatsoever for revealing or changing the rules. I am not optimistic.

(The Homeland: Big Brother Plutonomy - 2, quoting Who Rules America). But what can Peasants and Serfs, who are under attack, do about it?

The author of Our Invisible Revolution, quoted above, says this:

This is where we are headed. I do not say this because I am a supporter of revolution. I am not. I prefer the piecemeal and incremental reforms of a functioning democracy. I prefer a system in which our social institutions permit the citizenry to nonviolently dismiss those in authority. I prefer a system in which institutions are independent and not captive to corporate power. But we do not live in such a system. Revolt is the only option left. Ruling elites, once the ideas that justify their existence are dead, resort to force. It is their final clutch at power. If a nonviolent popular movement is able to ideologically disarm the bureaucrats, civil servants and police—to get them, in essence, to defect—nonviolent revolution is possible.

(Our Invisible Revolution, Chris Hedges, emphasis added). Regular readers of Dredd Blog know that we have seen the 1% plan to "resort to force" reaction coming for a long time (see e.g. Will The Military Become The Police - 4 and Why Is The Government Conditioning Us To Austerity? - 2).

Will those "bureaucrats, civil servants and police" who took the oath to protect and defend the Constitution do so by supporting the people, the common good.

Or will they instead support the lord king "who can do no wrong"?

In other words, will they help the people rescue our fading America, that is, will the Americans in our government reject the Epigovernment?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Imagine This and imagine That ...

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Those of you in government, please Help out.

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Clash of the Titans of Export - 2

"It is our money now"

Over the past decade it has become well known that criminals have infested the U.S. government.

It is well known that the federal government is filled with neoCons, luddites, and know-nothings of the GOP T-Party.

It is well known that those wild-eyed extremist warmongers have seriously infected the other, once-upon-a-time mild mannered, Republicans.

It is also well known that the Democrats are having an identity crisis, constantly struggling for "balance", "compromise" and "civility" in government, which all too often means their capitulation to "only going halfway" with growing neoCon Republican madness.

It seems that they never get the idea that direction is the most important consideration for a ship, especially the ship of state (see e.g. Obama Administration Rides Into The W Sunset - 2, The W Direction = The Perilous Path, and Titanic Mistakes Using The W Compass).

The news is filled with rogue spying misadventures that have angered nations and peoples of the world, soiling the reputation of the U.S. even further (On The Origin of Security - 4, ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller - 6).

A reputation that had been soiled with a decade of warmongering and hedonistic jingoism rarely seen on the world diplomatic stage.

The military, speaking through NSA officials at recent House "Intelligence" Committee hearings, lashed out at the governments of the world, defending themselves by saying "they do it too."

Following in their footsteps, the U.S. Treasury Department, the zookeeper that distributes American Taxpayer monies around the world to puppet regimes and Epigovernment bank accounts, has now also lashed out at the victims of the military NSA peeping toms:

The United States reprimanded Germany on Wednesday, saying its exporting prowess was hampering economic stability in Europe and hurting the global economy.

The Obama administration has long called for countries with trade surpluses, such as Germany and China, to do more to spur domestic demand.

But in a semiannual report to Congress on international economic policies, the criticism of Germany stood out for its stark language and prominent placement.

"Germany's anemic pace of domestic demand growth and dependence on exports have hampered" efforts to make the euro zone economy more stable, the Treasury said in the report.

(U.S. Treasury Lashes Out At Germany). It is incredibly hypocritical for the Treasury Dept. of an economy that has had balance-of-trade deficits for longer than Ted Cruz's nose:

In 1975, U.S. exports had exceeded foreign imports by $12,400 million, but that would be the last trade surplus the United States would see in the 20th century.

(About Com Ecomonics). So, from 1975-1999 (24 yrs.) the U.S. consistently had a trade deficit, meaning we imported more than we exported.

That trend, habit, and/or failure has continued in the 21st Century, now totaling 37 years of negatives:

(PolicyMic, "...Our Negative Balance of Trade..." [they removed the graphic, so the Wayback Machine version they originally displayed is now shown]). The ridiculous pontificating by the U.S. Treasury Department becomes apparent when we consider what this means, as pointed out in the previous post of this series:

I pointed out a while back that just one state of The United States of Europe was a larger exporter than the U.S. or China.

Also I pointed out that the pacific was the place to watch in terms of economic power.

There is a report today which indicates that China overtook Germany as the number one exporter, but, lest the record become too contorted, let us not forget that The United States of Europe is composed of 26 nations; Germany being only one of them.

Nevertheless, this shows that Europe was hurt more by the U.S. financial debacle than China was. Nevertheless, the story here today for us is that the U.S. remains third.

(Clash of the Titans of Export). The U.S. is complaining that Germany's "exporting prowess [is] hampering economic stability in Europe and [is] hurting the global economy", but that our 37 year long inability to work up a trade/export surplus is helping our domestic economy and helping the global economy?

Here are two free clues for the treasury ghouls this Halloween: 1) lose the shackles of the epigovernment which drains the people's treasury  (Epigovernment: The New Model - 5), and 2) lose the feudal philosophies and polices of the dark ages (American Feudalism - 6).

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

Army "Intelligence" Watching The Tubes - 2

"Your God Wears Combat Boots"

Today we look at a post from Dredd Blog which was posted here on this very date in 2009.

We do this in the spirit of remembering "History repeats itself, and that's one of the things that's wrong with history", said Clarence Darrow.

With all of this military NSA "spying on the world" news going around for several months now, I thought it would be interesting for regular readers to reflect on the history of a Dredd Blog post, which noticed that the military was spying on American blogs.

How many read that post about four years ago, then thought: "Dredd you are just being paranoid!"?

Anyway, here is the post from that date:

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The post about the CIA yesterday generated more visits from USAISC [United States Army Information Systems Command], HQ, and other Pentagon subordinates than usual.

Like the photo to the left, all we can see are their boot tracks, we cannot see who they are or why they came; but here are two different times and locations:

16:43:05 (4:43 PM) from Lawton, OK (155.219.241.10) [Newsweek 1]

17:23:25 (5:23 PM) from Lawton, OK (131.92.133.22) [Newsweek 2]

The dot quad IP address is not the same for the two visitors, nor were the Newsweek pages Dredd had made comments on the same Newsweek pages (the location the soldier spies came to Dredd Blog from).

What was the same was the Dredd Blog post here that caught their eye, the post about the CIA linked to above.

Thus, it is possible that different soldiers watch different Newsweek correspondents.

In light of that, it seemed appropriate to inform you of some of the unclassified operations (ops) that they are involved in.

There are indications that the military is again spying on anyone they think advocates peace:

CIFA's similar collection and retention of data on peace groups and other activists has promoted parallels to be drawn between the two programs by civil rights groups like the ACLU, and intelligence officials who find the prospect of the military tracking peace groups again to be worrisome.

After ACLU filed multiple Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests regarding information gathering on peace groups and NBC did a report citing a Quaker group planning an anti-enlistment action that was listed as a "threat", a review of CIFA activities was ordered by then Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone, who stated at the time that it appeared that there had been several violations.

(Wikipedia, emphasis added). Some of the paranoid types in the military who would allow their minds to consider "anti-enlistment action" to be a "threat", would certainly also allow their paranoid minds to consider Dredd Blog posts to be threats too. After all, they have even put U.S. Senators on the terrorist watch list haven't they?

Nevertheless, somebody has to be the free press, and that certainly is not going to be the military's media lackeys who are bought and paid for by the Pentagon.

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UPDATE: The two dot quad addresses referenced in the 2009 Dredd Blog post above, came from the United States Army Information Systems Command (USAISC), at a physical location of Lawton, Oklahoma, as was mentioned in the post above. Fort Sill is located there.

Here is more information about "where they are coming from":

IP Address: 155.219.241.10
Domain: BLUECOAT.sill.army.mil

IP Address: 131.92.133.22
Domain: generichost.fsed.army.mil

"BLUECOAT" may refer to a software company by that name:

On March 12, 2013, Reporters Without Borders named Blue Coat Systems as one of five "Corporate Enemies of the Internet" and “digital era mercenaries” for selling products that have been or are being used by governments to violate human rights and freedom of information.

(Wikipedia). The Army was putting out requests for bids for Blue Coat proxy servers during that time frame (Army RFP).

"generichost.fsed.army.mil" is a generic host terminal at an FSED (Full-Scale Engineering and Development) site. Software development goes on at Fort Sill, Oklahoma (Fort Sill, OK – Fire Support Software Engineering, Battlespace System Support. Local area information) according to the Army SEC website.

On The Origin of Security - 4

The Spy Within

The military NSA is in big trouble according to their own estimation.

They surmise this because the chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Senator Diane Feinstein has gotten the message.

The message which whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange of Wikileaks, and Pvt. Manning of the Army communicated to all of us.

Others, including the President, are finally getting the message that, in this most recent episode, began to be published by Journalists last June.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog has been pointing out this message which has been coming from several whistleblowers, and pointing out that the message has been given to us for a long time (see e.g. (A Tale of Coup Cities - 4, The Queens of Stalingrad, The Queens of Stalingrad - 2, and ACLU vs. Clapper, Alexander, Hagel, Holder, and Mueller).

The lesson that was not learned was given by General / President Eisenhower, a warning to beware of what was then the Military Industrial Complex.

But before we get into that, since this series is about the origin of the problem, let's get to the origin of the military NSA:

… the Joint Chiefs created the Armed Forces Security Agency [AFSA in 1949 (Wikipedia)] … AFSA was redesignated the National Security Agency, without change in personnel, funds, or facilities.

(Creation of the NSA, PDF). That PDF link is to an NSA document on their website, which may go away, so use George Washington University as an additional source if need be.

The military took it upon themselves to create a spy agency which spies on the entire world, making their own rules about how it was to run (On The Origin of Security - 2), which makes one wonder why the name Chuck Hagel has not come up.

No President signed a law passed by Congress, no President issued any Executive Order to create the behemoth, rather the military just up and created it themselves.

When there was dissatisfaction with the military AFSA the military simply renamed it the National Security Agency (NSA), but kept the same personnel, funds, and facilities.

We now know that it has been spying on the world, and the Senate is going to take a look at the rogue military agency that has been doing damage to the reputation of the nation:

One of the National Security Agency's biggest defenders in Congress is suddenly at odds with the agency and calling for a top-to-bottom review of U.S. spy programs. And her long-time friends and allies are completely mystified by the switch.

"We're really screwed now," one NSA official told The Cable. "You know things are bad when the few friends you've got disappear without a trace in the dead of night and leave no forwarding address."

In a pointed statement issued today, Senate Intelligence Committee chairman Dianne Feinstein said she was "totally opposed" to gathering intelligence on foreign leaders and said it was "a big problem" if President Obama didn't know the NSA was monitoring the phone calls of German Chancellor Angela Merkel. She said the United States should only be spying on foreign leaders with hostile countries, or in an emergency, and even then the president should personally approve the surveillance.

(Foreign Policy). Will the military repeat its past practices and just rename the NSA then hide it somewhere else, or just repaint all the buildings, or will this be a for real correction?

The next post in this series is here, the previous post in this series is here.

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Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

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CIA Stars In A New "Karzai" Movie - 3

On this date in 2009 we talked about CIA operatives.

Sometimes those operatives are fake news media "journalists" (Mocking America) and sometimes they are leaders of nations (Epigovernment: The New Model - 5).

Like Karzai in Afghanistan who seems to have gone rogue (Karzai Lashes Out at NATO Over Deaths) and is dissing those who give him suitcases full of cash periodically.

Anyway, sometimes the past is still with us:

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That the CIA has been paying one of the Karzai clan, who is the brother to another Karzai clan member, President Karzai is well known.

The fact that someone is being paid to do the CIA's bidding is portrayed by the neoCon controlled press as some new shocking incident.

Ok, so it is probably shocking, but it is not "news", it is "olds" to those who follow the poppy truth.

There is some news about a guy I met at U.C.L.A. where he talked about his life as a drug enforcement officer in the Los Angeles Police Department.

The CIA became a part of his life, since his mother, father, and fiancé were all CIA agents.

Mike Ruppert got his Burn Notice when he discovered that his fiancé was the CIA operative who was in charge of the CIA's smuggling of drugs into the U.S. under cover of various complicit operatives in his own beloved department.

My take on it is that his mother, father, and fiancé pleaded for his life, which was obviously granted. However, the CIA part of the bargain was to destroy his reputation and brand him as a kook (standard CIA burn notice operating procedure you know).

A new movie about what his pet peeve has become since then is being released with the title Collapse. It tells the story, in documentary format, about why he anticipates the collapse of western civilization as we know it.

It will be interesting to those who know of CIA "going rogue" episodes, those who are concerned about global climate change, and those who are interested in the real blueprint used by military industrial complex warmonger intellectuals.

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The previous post in this series is here.