Epigovernment: The New Model - 9

In this series we have been pointing out what some would call "the obvious."

They will say that it is obvious to even a casual observer that more and more as time goes on government policy does not serve the common good, rather, it tends to more and more serve the elite few.

Which is what this series has repeatedly pointed out--that what some call the obvious knowledge cannot be hidden anymore in plain sight because it is so obvious that it is generating a public book storm, a noisy storm pointing out what really is happening:

The really scary characters are our soberest politicians, scholars, journalists, professionals, and managers, men and women (though mostly men) who imagine themselves as morally serious, and then enable the wars, devastate the planet, and rationalize the atrocities. 

(Greg Grandin @ Tom Dispatch, emphasis added). This is the same sort of thing that Noam Chomsky said in 1967 as he watched young students being beaten for demonstrating against war:

I speak of Senator Mansfield precisely because he is not a breast-beating superpatriot who wants America to rule the world, but is rather an American intellectual in the best sense, a scholarly and reasonable man -- the kind of man who is the terror of our age. Perhaps this is merely a personal reaction, but when I look at what is happening to our country, what I find most terrifying is not Curtis LeMay, with his cheerful suggestion that we bomb everybody back into the stone age, but rather the calm disquisitions of the political scientists on just how much force will be necessary to achieve our ends, or just what form of government will be acceptable to us in Vietnam. What I find terrifying is the detachment and equanimity with which we view and discuss an unbearable tragedy. We all know that if Russia or China were guilty of what we have done in Vietnam, we would be exploding with moral indignation at these monstrous crimes.

(On Resistance, Noam Chomsky, emphasis added). The folks with the good reputations, who go to church, and who do everything respectable are the ones responsible for orchestrating mass murder and atrocities against other human beings, and against the Earth which we must have in order to live.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog calls those at the elite core of empire policy making The Epigovernment.

Regular readers know that Dredd Blog thinks that the person called "The Father of Spin / Public Relations" summed it up quite spectacularly:

THE conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses [by] an invisible government [which is] the true ruling power of our country [by whom] our minds are molded ... largely by men we have never heard of ... Our invisible governors ... govern us by their qualities of natural leadership, their ability to supply needed ideas and ... 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 ... who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses ... they who pull the wires which control the public mind ... It is the purpose of this book to explain the structure of the mechanism which controls the public mind ...

(Epigovernment: The New Model). The quote just above is from Edward L. Bernays' book Propaganda (emphasis added).

Bernays, our premiere American propagandist, was bragging about how well American Propaganda, Spin, and Public Relations work to herd us along in our very misguided national direction.

There is only one word for a person who would guide people in a direction toward their deaths via war, ecocide, and the demise of civilization.

That word is psychopath.

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

A Great Danger to America From The Islamic World: Coffee Houses

Which way to the Coffee House?

I have been reading the posts concerning a trial of the Occupy / NATO 3 which is being monitored by Kevin Gosztola at the Dissenter (NATO 3).

I had also read a post at 3QuarksDaily entitled How The Islamic World Gave Us Coffee Houses and Democracy.

So, the testimony of one of the Chicago Police Department undercover operatives (a.k.a. "domestic spy") caught my attention specifically because her testimony on the witness stand was about their spy techniques which they employ against citizens, even though they have no evidence or probable cause to spy on those citizens.

Except that those citizens happen to frequent coffee houses, and that particular type of Café.

Those Coffee House Cafés which are known for several hundred years now to harbor certain undesirables (wink, wink).

So, I could not resist making the following comment there:

“She was to go undercover to 'gather intelligence' at coffee shops …” – Kevin Gosztola

This spying on coffee houses is an ancient practice that goes back to the origin of coffee in the Islamic world, long before it made its subversive way to the West:

Douglas defends coffee by comparing its use in Europe to its history in the East. “The first publick Coffee-Houses,” he explains, were “from the beginning very little different from what it is in London and Paris at this day.” Oriental coffeehouses welcomed “persons of all ranks,” from students to “the Officers of the Seraglio … and others of the First Quality.” The coffeehouse gave all men the “opportunity of discoursing on all manner of subjects, without the least ceremony or constraint.” A place for entertainment, conversation, and debate, the coffeehouses fostered a new kind of sociability that threatened religious and political authority. Douglas celebrates their intellectual edge, observing that the coffee-drinking Sufis enjoyed “great Alacrity and Freedom of the Mind.” Coffeehouses were information exchanges where patrons discussed news, carried on business, and learned about the latest developments in art and science. Unsurprisingly, Douglas dismisses complaints about coffeehouses as “a great deal of noise and useless railing.” In a conspicuous swipe at Charles II’s attempt to close down London’s coffeehouses, Douglas recounts how “the Liberty” of the Ottoman coffeehouses led a Grand Vizier to disguise himself and secretly investigate them. He discovered “Men of Gravity and Character discoursing seriously concerning the Affairs of the Empire, blaming the Ministry, and deciding freely concerning things of the greatest importance. He had been likewise to visit the taverns, where he met only with People singing, or talking of their amours and warlike Exploits … and therefore he allow’d the Taverns to continue.” A King of England who tried to shut down coffeehouses, Douglas contends, would be acting like a tyrannical sultan.

(How the Islamic World Gave Us Coffee and Democracy). “History repeats itself, and that’s one of the things that’s wrong with history”, said Clarence Darrow.

(Dredd Comment @ Dissenter). Little did the neophyte officer or the Chicago Police know that their escapades have been practiced by despots for hundreds of years.

What makes it especially ironic is that the ancestors of the phantom "terrorists of Islam" they were seeking out had created the vestiges of democracy in their coffee houses long, long ago.

The very vestiges of democracy which those ignorant officers purport to protect by their witless operations to destroy it.

The Chicago Police are so wannabe NSA (cf. the Heartland Café which the Chicago PD "saved the world" from).

UPDATE: The jury quickly acquitted the NATO 3 of all terrorism charges (Jury Acquits ‘NATO 3′ of All Terrorism Charges).

A Heart Grown Cold - 2

Silver & Gold Won't Bring Back a Heart Grown Cold

In the first post of this series we included an actual photo, taken in a city in the U.S., showing that some of us no longer have that "old time" empathy, compassion, or care for the welfare of others in our midst (The Common Good).

In this photo (left), an American drowned in his sleep after rolling over into water in an abandoned building, then froze in death as the water he had fallen into became solid ice.

There will be more of that as our nation goes through the throes of freezing to death, while becoming something other than what our nation once was when it was known as a light on a hill.

Those charged with caring for the people like the deceased person in the photo, those in Washington, D.C., have cut off unemployment insurance and food stamps to millions of people like the American in the photo:

This city has not always been a gentle place, but a series of events over the past few, frigid days causes one to wonder how cold the collective heart has grown.

It starts with a phone call made by a man who said his friend found a dead body in the elevator shaft of an abandoned building on the city's west side.

"He's encased in ice, except his legs, which are sticking out like Popsicle sticks," the caller phoned to tell this reporter.
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Before calling the police, this reporter went to check on the tip, skeptical of a hoax. Sure enough, in the well of the cargo elevator, two feet jutted out above the ice. Closer inspection revealed that the rest of the body was encased in 2-3 feet of ice, the body prostrate, suspended into the ice ...
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The building is known as the Roosevelt Warehouse, once belonging to the Detroit Public Schools as a book repository. Located near 14th Street and Michigan Avenue, the warehouse burned in 1987 and caused something of a scandal as thousands of books, scissors, footballs and crayons were left to rot while Detroit schoolchildren -- some of the poorest children in the country -- went without supplies.
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A colony of homeless men live in the warehouse. Wednesday morning a few fires were burning inside oil drums. Scott Ruben, 38, huddled under filthy blankets not 20 paces from the elevator shaft.
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There are at least 19,000 homeless people in Detroit, by some estimates. Put another way, more than 1 in 50 people here are homeless.

The human problem is so bad, and the beds so few, that some shelters in the city provide only a chair. The chair is yours as long as you sit in it. Once you leave, the chair is reassigned.

Thousands of down-on-their-luck adults do nothing more with their day than clutch onto a chair. This passes for normal in some quarters of the city.

(Frozen in Indifference, emphasis added). The corporations down the street which make the vehicles that poison the atmosphere were bailed out when they got themselves into trouble, as were the banks who were and are still plundering us.

The poor and homeless will not be bailed out (Epigovernment: The New Model - 8).

America is an empire that is metaphorically freezing to death (Phases Of An Empire Freezing To Death) as well as being in the process of metaphorically taking off all clothing ("paradoxical undressing").

Just as individuals who freeze to death while awake do (Cold Hard Facts of Freezing to Death) to later appear naked and stone-cold to a perplexed world (Is The Empress Taking Off Her Clothes?).

The frozen state of "the mind" in "the union" (The State of The Onion Script, True State of the Union) will not tell us we are sinking into the mentality and culture of feudalism (American Feudalism - 6).

The previous post in this series is here.

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America, by Simon & Garfunkel

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New Continent Found - Garbage Gyre II - 6

The venerable Pete Seeger

RIP Pete Seeger.

In this series we have been documenting and discussing the destruction of one of the most necessary realms of the Earth, in terms of the survivability of species on the planet.

Which happens to be the beautiful oceans of the world.

Dredd Blog reflected back on a song by Peter "Pete" Seeger (May 3, 1919 – January 27, 2014) in one of the first posts of this series, a song appropriately titled "Garbage" (cf. Garbage, Garbage, Garbage).

One of the lyrical lines in that song is "we're filling up the sea with garbage", which is the operative reason for this ongoing Dredd Blog series (New Continent Found - Garbage Gyre II - 3).

The poisoning of the oceans continues unabated (Deep sea study, Supplement, PDF) which some feel is exacerbated by Fukushima.

Whatever, but without doubt we can thank folks like Pete Seeger for increasing our awareness of the murder of planet Earth.

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

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Pete Seeger sings the song "Garbage", written by Bill Steele, ©1969, below. It has, among others, the prescient lyric "we're filling up the sea with garbage".

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Myth Addiction Is Establishment's LSD - 4

Wheels of Phallic Glory R Us

Why does the American Public, when polled on the question, "what is the most competent institution in American Culture?" respond consistently with the worst answer possible?

Why does the American Public respond with the name of the institution that illegally and deceptively spies on every member of the American Public as if they were the enemy?

Why does the American Public respond with the name of the institution that has more rapes of its own women membership than any other American institution?

Why does the American Public respond with the name of the institution whose members commit suicide more often than any other American Institution does?

The obvious answer in street language is that "they be trippin' man" (Stockholm Syndrome on Steroids? - 2).

Yes, belief in myth is like a hallucination without drugs, yet it is more powerful and deceitful than the drugs people are thrown into prison for using.

Much more powerful and much more deceitful.

And a very large legal industry spreads the myth (The Deceive Business).

The "mass hallucination" is bigger than any one individual could ever experience on an LSD trip, because it is the conglomerate myth believed by millions of people.

Another remarkable thing is that you don't "come down from the trip" after several hours with the myth, since it does not naturally wear off like the drug version does (The Greatest Source Of Power Toxins?).

No, the addiction to the myth that "the military is the most competent institution" lasts forever it seems, because the only choices which the Establishment provides to the public are: 1) got security?, and 2) got security?

Fear is pumped from the prayer towers of McTell News incessantly, rather than every few hours, five times a day, like in the Muslim world.

The boats of the faithful are floating on the Sea of Fear, navigating in reliance upon the maps of the Empire to show them the W direction to the exceptional continent.

Which is all myth and illusion.

Anyway, regular readers know that we have pointed out the self-destructive dynamics flowing within the military (see e.g. The Surge Of Snap Sergeants, We Killed More Of US Than They Did - 2).

Rape within the military is another self-destructive dynamic:

Brig. Gen. Bryan T. Roberts publicly warned his troops at Fort Jackson, S.C., last spring that he and the Army had “zero tolerance for sexual harassment and sexual assault.” Here’s what the Army didn’t tell the soldiers: At the time, Roberts himself was under investigation by the military over allegations that he physically assaulted one of his mistresses on multiple occasions.

Martin P. Schweitzer, a commander with the Army’s legendary 82nd Airborne Division, was respectful and polite when he met a female member of Congress to discuss matters at Fort Bragg, N.C. Afterward, however, he couldn’t resist tapping out e-mails to two other generals, describing the lawmaker, Rep. Renee L. Ellmers (R-N.C.), as “smoking hot” and jokingly referring to explicit sexual acts.

David C. Uhrich, a one-star Air Force general, kept a vodka bottle in his desk at Joint Base Langley-Eustis and repeatedly drank on duty, so much so that another officer told investigators that “if he did not have his alcohol, the wheels would come off,” according to the findings of an Air Force probe. The married Uhrich later sought treatment for a drinking problem, but not before he was also investigated for allegedly having an affair, something prohibited under military law.

The embarrassing episodes are described in previously undisclosed files of military investigations into personal misconduct by U.S. generals and admirals.
...
At the very top, the commander in chief has taken notice.

“President Obama expects the nation’s senior military leaders to demonstrate the highest standards of ethical conduct,” Caitlin Hayden, a White House spokeswoman, said in an e-mail. “The President has conveyed to the Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff that instances of senior general and flag officers not living up to these standards must be addressed effectively.”

(Military Brass, Behaving Badly, emphasis added). The establishment expects those who are trained to kill more efficiently than any other killing institution to do so ethically and honorably?

They are expected to kill, maim, destroy, and spy on their own people, but to be very ethical about it:

On Friday, more news broke regarding the child pornography scandal at the Pentagon that surfaced this summer. In July, it was discovered that more than 250 civilian and military employees of the Defense Department -- including some with the highest available security clearance -- used credit cards or PayPal to purchase images of children in sexual situations. This was out of the total 5,000 Americans that were discovered to be purchasing child pornography though the investigation.

(Psychology Today). Little wonder that so many of the true believers are going batshit crazy trying to comply with that establishment myth engendered by the establishment religion (see e.g. On The Origin of The Bully Religion, Bully Worship: The Universal Religion, The Virgin MOMCOM - 6).

Which is, the military establishment religion (Doing The Right Thing - Mithraism - 2) which drives the military establishment plutonomy (American Feudalism - 6).

The previous post in this series is here.

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