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The Powers-That-Be Are Secretly Terrified of the People’s Power … And Only PRETEND They’re Firmly In Control
Our Actions Are More Powerful Than We Realize
David Swanson writes:
Almost every [history of past activism] includes belated discoveries of the extent to which government officials were influenced by activist groups even while pretending to ignore popular pressure.
These revelations can be found in the memoirs of the government officials as well, such as in George W. Bush's recollection of how seriously the Republican Senate Majority Leader was taking public pressure against the war on Iraq in 2006.
Of course, activism that appears ineffectual at the time can succeed in a great many ways, including by influencing others, even young children, who go on to become effective activists -- or by influencing firm opponents who begin to change their minds and eventually switch sides.
The beautiful thing about nonviolent activism is that, while risking no harm, it has the potential to do good in ways small and large that ripple out from it in directions we cannot track or measure.
Wittner participated in his first political demonstration in 1961. The USSR was withdrawing from a moratorium on nuclear testing. A protest at the White House urged President Kennedy not to follow suit:
"Picking up what I considered a very clever sign ('Kennedy, Don't Mimic the Russians!'), I joined the others (supplemented by a second busload of students from a Quaker college in the Midwest) circling around a couple of trees outside the White House. Mike and I -- as new and zealous recruits -- circled all day without taking a lunch or a dinner break.
"For decades I looked back on this venture as a trifle ridiculous. After all, we and other small bands of protesters couldn't have had any impact on U.S. policy, could we? Then in the mid-1990s, while doing research at the Kennedy Library on the history of the world nuclear disarmament movement, I stumbled onto an oral history interview with Adrian Fisher, deputy director of the U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency. He was explaining why Kennedy delayed resuming atmospheric nuclear tests until April 1962. Kennedy personally wanted to resume such tests, Fisher recalled, 'but he also recognized that there were a lot of people that were going to be deeply offended by the United States resuming atmospheric testing. We had people picketing the White House, and there was a lot of excitement about it -- just because the Russians do it, why do we have to do it?'"
Yes, Kennedy delayed a horrible action. He didn't, at that time, block it permanently. But if the picketers in 1961 had had the slightest notion that Kennedy was being influenced by them, their numbers would have multiplied 10-fold, as would the delay have correspondingly lengthened.
Yes, our government was more responsive to public opinion in the 1960s than now, but part of the reason is that more people were active then. And another reason is that government officials are doing a better job now of hiding any responsiveness to public sentiment, which helps convince the public it has no impact, which reduces activism further. We also focus far too much on the most difficult individuals to move, such as presidents.
In 1973-1974, Wittner visited GI coffee houses in Japan including in Yokusaka, where the Midway aircraft carrier was in port. The Japanese were protesting the ship's carrying of nuclear weapons, which was illegal in Japan, and which the U.S. military, of course, lied about. But U.S. soldiers with whom Wittner and other activists had talked, brought them onto the ship and showed them the nukes. The following summer, when Wittner read in a newspaper that,
"a substantial number of American GIs had refused to board the Midway for a mission to South Korea, then swept by popular protest against the U.S.-backed dictatorship, it occurred to me that I might have played some small role in inspiring their mutiny."
Soldiers can still be reached much more easily than presidents, more easily in many cases in fact than the average citizen. War lies are harder to sell to the people who have been fighting the wars.
In the late 1990s, Wittner was researching the anti-nuclear movement of decades past. He interviewed Robert "Bud" McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan's former national security advisor:
"Other administration officials had claimed that they had barely noticed the nuclear freeze movement. But when I asked McFarlane about it, he lit up and began outlining a massive administration campaign to counter and discredit the freeze -- one that he had directed. . . . A month later, I interviewed Edwin Meese, a top White House staffer and U.S. attorney general during the Reagan administration. When I asked him about the administration's response to the freeze campaign, he followed the usual line by saying that there was little official notice taken of it. In response, I recounted what McFarlane had revealed. A sheepish grin now spread across this former government official's face, and I knew that I had caught him. 'If Bud says that,' he remarked tactfully, 'it must be true.'"
When someone tells you to stop imagining that you're having an impact, ask them to please redirect their energy into getting 10 friends to join you in doing what needs to be done. If it has no impact, you'll have gone down trying. If it has an impact, nobody will tell you for many years.
Mr. Swanson is right. I noted in 2009:
As MSNBC news correspondent Jonathan Capehart tells Dylan Ratigan, the main problem is that people aren’t making enough noise. Capehart says that the people not only have to “burn up the phone lines to Congress”, but also to hit the streets and protest in D.C.
Even though most politicians are totally corrupt, if many millions of Americans poured into the streets of D.C., a critical mass would be reached, and the politicians would start changing things in a hurry.
As [liberal] PhD economist Dean Baker points out:
The elites hate to acknowledge it, but when large numbers of ordinary people are moved to action, it changes the narrow political world where the elites call the shots. Inside accounts reveal the extent to which Johnson and Nixon’s conduct of the Vietnam War was constrained by the huge anti-war movement. It was the civil rights movement, not compelling arguments, that convinced members of Congress to end legal racial discrimination. More recently, the townhall meetings, dominated by people opposed to health care reform, have been a serious roadblock for those pushing reform….
A big turnout … can make a real difference.
Baker is right about Vietnam.
Specifically – according to Daniel Ellsberg and many others – Richard Nixon actually planned on dropping a nuclear bomb on Vietnam. Nixon also said he didn’t care what the American people thought. He said that — no matter what the public did or said — he was going to escalate the war in Vietnam.
However, a well-known biographer says that Nixon backed off when hundreds of thousands of people turned out in Washington, D.C. to protest an escalation of the war.
And Pulitzer prize winning reporter Chris Hedges pointed out recently:
I was in Leipzig on November 9, 1989 with leaders of East German opposition and they told me that - perhaps within a year – there would be free passes back and forth across the Berlin wall.
Within a few hours, the Berlin Wall, at least as far as an impediment to human traffic, did not exist.
Week after week, month after month, these clergy in Leipzig held these candlelit vigils. And it was slow at first … people forget. Just like the Egyptian revolution has been percolating for many many months, and even years.
And suddenly, it began to grow.
And Honecker – who had been in ruling East Germany since the time of the dinosaurs – sent down a paratroop division to Leipzig .. . and they won’t attack the demonstrators.
Part of the reason that our actions are more powerful than we think is that courage is contagious. So is the ability to think.
As we've previously noted:
[Studies show ] that even one dissenting voice can give people permission to think for themselves. Specifically:
Solomon Asch, with experiments originally carried out in the 1950s and well-replicated since, highlighted a phenomenon now known as “conformity”. In the classic experiment, a subject sees a puzzle like the one in the nearby diagram: Which of the lines A, B, and C is the same size as the line X? Take a moment to determine your own answer…The gotcha is that the subject is seated alongside a number of other people looking at the diagram – seemingly other subjects, actually confederates of the experimenter. The other “subjects” in the experiment, one after the other, say that line C seems to be the same size as X. The real subject is seated next-to-last. How many people, placed in this situation, would say “C” – giving an obviously incorrect answer that agrees with the unanimous answer of the other subjects? What do you think the percentage would be?
Three-quarters of the subjects in Asch’s experiment gave a “conforming” answer at least once. A third of the subjects conformed more than half the time.
Get it so far? People tend to defer to what the herd thinks.
But here’s the good news:
Adding a single dissenter – just one other person who gives the correct answer, or even an incorrect answer that’s different from the group’s incorrect answer – reduces conformity very sharply, down to 5-10%.
Why is this important? Well, it means that one person who publicly speaks the truth can sway a group of people away from group-think.
If a group of people is leaning towards believing the government’s version of events, a single person who speaks the truth can help snap the group out of its trance.
There is an important point here regarding the web, as well. The above-cited article states that:
When subjects can respond in a way that will not be seen by the group, conformity also drops.What does that mean? Well, on the web, many people post anonymously. The anonymity gives people permission to “respond in a way that will not be seen by the group”. But most Americans still don’t get their news from the web, or only go to mainstream corporate news sites.
Away from the keyboard, we are not very anonymous. So that is where the conformity dynamic — and the need for courageous dissent — is vital. It is doubly important that we apply the same hard-hitting truthtelling we do on the Internet in our face-to-face interactions; because it is there that dissent is urgently needed.
Bottom line: Each person‘s voice has the power to snap entire groups out of their coma of irrational group-think. So go forth and be a light of rationality and truth among the sleeping masses.
And a recent study shows that when only 10% of a population have strongly-held beliefs, their belief will often be adopted by the majority of the society.
True, governments worldwide are cracking down on liberty with the iron fist of repression.
But some argue that this is actually a sign that we are winning.
As Truthout’s Matt Renner writes:
Recently I sat down with two of the young adults who organized and led the Egyptian resistance movement that overthrew Hosni Mubarak. The media narrative said it took 18 days, when in fact, they had been organizing for over five years.
According to these young men, the moment they knew they had won was the day Mubarak’s government shut off the Internet and blocked cellphone communications. When people could no longer get updates about what was happening in Tahrir Square, they had to come out of their homes and see for themselves, tripling the size of the protests in one fell swoop.
The global plutocracy is terrified of dissent. In some places, the war on dissent is being fought with bullets. In others, the war on dissent targets social media and mobile communications, while repressing and deceiving communities of struggle. It’s already happening.
Indeed, the use of heavy-handed tactics – taking the velvet glove off of the iron fist – could backfire, as it will show the “emperor’s ruthlessness” for all to see.
The powers-that-be are terrified of political awakening and dissent. For example, Zbigniew Brzezinski – National Security Adviser to President Carter, creator of America’s strategy to lure Russia into Afghanistan, creator of America’s plans for Eurasia in general, and Obama’s former foreign affairs adviser - said:
For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the world that are not politically alert and engaged with the political turmoil and stirrings that are so widespread today around the world.
***
America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that the world’s population is experiencing a political awakening unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power.
***
[T]he central challenge of our time is posed not by global terrorism, but rather by the intensifying turbulence caused by the phenomenon of global political awakening. That awakening is socially massive and politically radicalizing.
It is no overstatement to assert that now in the 21st century the population of much of the developing world is politically stirring and in many places seething with unrest. It is a population acutely conscious of social injustice to an unprecedented degree, and often resentful of its perceived lack of political dignity.
***
These energies transcend sovereign borders and pose a challenge both to existing states as well as to the existing global hierarchy, on top of which America still perches.
***
The misdiagnosis [of foreign policy] pertains to a relatively vague, excessively abstract, highly emotional, semi-theological definition of the chief menace that we face today in the world, and the consequent slighting of what I view as the unprecedented global challenge arising out of the unique phenomenon of a truly massive global political awakening of mankind. We live in an age in which mankind writ large is becoming politically conscious and politically activated to an unprecedented degree, and it is this condition which is producing a great deal of international turmoil.
That turmoil is the product of the political awakening, the fact that today vast masses of the world are not politically neutered, as they have been throughout history. They have political consciousness.
***
The other major change in international affairs is that for the first time, in all of human history, mankind has been politically awakened. That is a total new reality – total new reality. It has not been so for most of human history until the last one hundred years. And in the course of the last one hundred years, the whole world has become politically awakened. And no matter where you go, politics is a matter of social engagement, and most people know what is generally going on –generally going on – in the world, and are consciously aware of global inequities, inequalities, lack of respect, exploitation. Mankind is now politically awakened and stirring.
And a reader notes:
We do not understand our own power. Look around you. Almost everything you see was not only made, but created by people like yourselves. Most of the horrors existing on earth were engendered by the elites, WITH OUR CO-OPERATION. Without our consent, most of the terrifying situations existing in our world will cease to exist. Resist. It certainly may be difficult initially, but it grows easier moment by moment.
Some historical quotes may be helpful in illustrating the importance of struggling to make things better ...
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 walls of oppression and resistance.
- Robert F . Kennedy
We must never despair; our situation has been compromising before; and it changed for the better; so I trust it will again. If difficulties arise; we must put forth new exertion and proportion our efforts to the exigencies of the times.
- George Washington
We must remember that one determined person can make a significant difference, and that a small group of determined people can change the course of history.
-Sonia Johnson
Never doubt that a small, group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.
- Margaret Mead
Hope has never trickled down. It has always sprung up.
- Studs Terkel
At certain points in history, the energy level of people, the indignation level of people rises. And at that point it becomes possible for people to organize and to agitate and to educate one another, and to create an atmosphere in which the government must do something.
- Howard Zinn, historian
There is no act too small, no act too bold. The history of social change is the history of millions of actions, small and large, coming together at points in history and creating a power that governments cannot suppress.
- Howard Zinn
Cynicism Is Not Realistic
Millions of Americans think that hope is for the foolish, and that the smart people are cynics.
But if all of the people who think of themselves as cynics or skeptics made noise, things would instantly change for the better. In other words, the millions of cynics/skeptics/self-described “realists” aren’t raising a ruckus against the fraud being committed by the giant banks, the corruption of our political system, or the lawlessness and imperial arrogance of our intelligence-military-industrial complex because they think things can’t change.
But by staying silent, they are actually creating the conditions in which nothing can change. As Edmund Burke points out:
All tyranny needs to gain a foothold is for people of good conscience to remain silent.
If the millions of cynics woke up to the fact that they are a huge group – especially when combined with the people who are already actively working for the restoration of a liberty, justice and the rule of law – they would suddenly realize that collectively we can change things in a heart beat.
Don't Want to Go First?
Most people don't want to go first ...
Most people want to see others succeeding before they give it a shot.
But the truth - as pointed out by Zbigniew Brzezinski above - is that people are waking up worldwide ... and things are changing quickly.
A few short years ago, Americans wouldn't have believed that the White House would lie us into a major war, that our government would choose Wall Street over the little guy, or that the NSA spied on every American citizen. Now, this is all common knowledge.
A few years ago, most Americans trusted government and corporate leaders. Now, polls show that trust has collapsed, as people realize that our core institutions are rotten with corruption.
You will not be taking the first step. More people than you realize are already working to challenge the corrupt people in positions of power.
When you act to make things better, you're actually joining a large group of people doing the same thing.
And as Hellen Keller pointed out:
Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.
Postscript: In any event, hiding our head in the sand doesn't work.
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Far too high a percentage don't even have the mental capacities (education, intelligence, and the LEARNED skill of critical thinking) to even UNDERSTAND what's wrong and what's at the CORE of what's wrong for anything other than the most simple problems and, even if they did, games and circuses, apathy, and the billions of dollars worth of propaganda spewing from the oligarchy promoting the continuance of their status quo and the diversionary Dem/Rep, left/right paradigm keeps them off the streets. No activism on my part can change that and, believe me, I've tried. Zero visible results seen and the same for my fellow activists who have all since said, effectively, "screw these idiots" and now only do what they can to protect themselves and their own. Any real change will take a huge economic crash. Even 2008 apparently wasn't enough.
I have to agree but I don't know if you can blame it all on the people our educational system was as taken over as our political system and the press. The NYT's just wrote that we should be thanking Bernanke lol. The next crash could allow the next phase. Wait until they institute a cashless society you will really feel the effects of global totalitarianism then.
I went through the same educational system as everyone else and I see through the ripoff that is our monetary system (i.e. the creation of money via DEBT) and the illusion of real choice that is our deep pockets political system very clearly. I learned that through my OWN efforts. If most people want to see the reason for our current situation, all they need to do is look into a mirror.
As long as Obozo keeps sending Welfare cheques to the 40% plus His make believe support for the 10% extreme Left LGBT'ers, the TPTB/Elite will remain in control.
when reading between the lines, observing the system for what it is, i cant help but to get the feeling that bible held many truths. i am not religious. but was jesus the first Ron Paul? The first dissident against the ancient monetary systems of his time? Also, Islam is against usery. Is it coincidence that many religions are against much of the core practices of central banking?
sometimes i wonder if TBTB have diluted the bible and filled it with hard-to-believe hocus pocus to cover up the true teachings of jesus; money changers are evil. is that why there seems to be a persecution against christianity in our modern times? TPTB would like to prevent anyone from seeing through the matrix.
One Word to rule them all, encompassing the entire character of God, LIBERTY!
Gal 5:13 For, brethren, ye have been called unto liberty; only use not liberty for an occasion to the flesh, but by love serve one another.
Gal 5:14 For all the law is fulfilled in one word, even in this; Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
EDIT: One caveat, use it for good, not evil. If teachers of the Word could grasp this most essential element upon which the entire character of God was built, we could get on with life, and justice could prevail!
I wish more people would have gotten behind Ron Paul but wish in one hand crap in the other and we got the crap. As for Usury...
The Trouble With Democrats
snip
American Usury
One of the fundamental issues that party managers wished to avoid was the scandal of American usury. Usury is the ancient sin of charging inflated interest rates sure to ruin the borrowers. It is considered immoral by Judaism, Christianity and Islam because usury involves the powerful using their wealth to ensnare weak and defenseless borrowers. The classic usurer offers an impossible choice that debtors cannot easily refuse. If they reject the terms of the loan, they will not be able to pay the rent or buy necessities. If they accept the usurious interest rates, their debts will accumulate until they are bankrupted (at which point the creditors claim their property). No civilized society can endure in such conditions.
Usury used to be illegal in the United States but it was "decriminalized" in 1980--the dawn of financial deregulation. A Democratic president and Congress repealed all interest-rate controls and the federal law prohibiting usury.
Romney Admits 2012 Nomination Was Stolen (from Ron Paul
Santorum had Romney beaten as well. Ron Paul was my first choice. Romney was backed by Adelson and Gingrich was the Adelson spoiler to insure Romney got it. Romney and the GOP stole the vote from Santorum in the Midwest. The big midwest states, Santorum swept every county execept the few big cities which waited until the end to release their vote counts.
Obama did the same thing to Romney.
George I saw your article about the NSA Police State over on CNS nice -especially the portion about using it for other things like tax avoidance. I've posted it a few places that caught people's attention because suddenly they could relate to it on a personal level.
Been thinking about the list called Main Core... could it be turned to advantage?
It supposedly contains the names of 8 million Americans who are deemed to be "enemies of the State" and who will be arrested/interned/disposed of in the event of Martial Law.
IF that list exists, and IF it were made public, then it would have the power to unify those 8 million Americans.
Consider their options ... either they unify and prepare to fight in support of each other ... or, they live with the knowledge that their lives are over, in the event of a major crisis.
I think that Main Core has the potential to be a potent anti-State weapon ... the very Unifying Factor which has so far proven to be so elusive.
No idea how you'd get hold of a copy, though. Snowden? Anonymous?
Maybe they are reading some of the comments on ZH because it does seem the wealthy are scared RCM ran this yesterday -
Why the Rich Are Freaking the Hell Out - Ben White, Politico
Reply to LMAOLORI Why the Rich Are Freaking the Hell Out
Quote: "I think this is going to be disastrous for the city,” one top executive at a large Wall Street bank said on the eve of de Blasio’s election. “The people who pay taxes could move out, the businesses could leave. What’s keeping us here?”
Why, you moron? Because you're an effing pig feeding at the trough?
+1
And thanks for the link.
Politico: I'd like to see the shoe on the other foot to the same degree for the next 30-40 yrs.
Talk about jumping out of windows.
But can "the people" change the laws of Economics? Can we tell the tide not to come in by holding a few marches and meetings? Why is it that, in retrospect, everything was so predictable?
I think it's risky to equate natural phenomena that respond to scientific principles, like the tides, with human mechanisms like economics. The tides have always ebbed and flowed, on predictable and verifiable patterns and due to quantifiable forces. Economics is a great study of human perception and behavior, but it's far from scientific, and similar causes lead to very different effects based on variability in human attitudes. We haven't always had a finance-based economy with abstract money, for instance, and we may not always into the future. That sort of variability renders most "laws of Economics" temporary at best, or merely platitudes.
Really? The U.S. $17T national debt is not quantifiable? Interest rates and bond prices do not have some "verifiable" relationship? What brand of economics did you study?
Any but the current drivel.
17T debt is an abstract. If the Fed were nationalized, about 40% of that would disappear. If the dollar's devalued, that percentage would disappear. So it's not like it's a real economy number unless we want it to be. And most of us don't.
Debt Terrorism is oppression politics pure and simple. Keep it up, and more and more people are going to shrug it off as a scare story.
It boils down to two schools of thought, Abraham Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs and transparency in social activism.
The less people know the more they emotionally connect to those they believe are privy to this special "knowledge" they fear they lack the ability to comprehend, or so they've been told, like in understanding the motives behind complex economic theory or political and social protocol. What they think offers them the best chance of continuing to survive, and beyond that, being able to thrive in a hostile world is aligning themselves on the right side of the holders of this knowledge - most won't take the time to look past the first level of acceptance to question the leadership of their chosen group.
The courageous ones are those who can set aside their most basic instincts to do what they believe is right for the survival of the community. Others will look at them first to discern what it is they'll personally gain from their actions and weigh it against what they themselves could lose for switching allegiances. If they can become actively involved while remaing anonymous they'll be less inclined to hesitate. Crowds offer them that anonymity. So does the internet.
The NSA and others are working hard on a similar set of goals, to destroy our ability to remain anonymous while at the same time obscuring their motives and protecting their own anonymity.
zbig is freaking out trying to explain to his fellow NWO c3p0 superclass underlings that the slaves are waking up in a historically unprecedented way
"the slaves are waking up in a historically unprecedented way"
Waking up is meaningless if nothing happens beyond it, and nothing will happen beyond it.
Knowing the truth doesn't make you free.
"and nothing will happen beyond it"
Tell that to Hosni Mubarak.
Excellent executive summary ...
Given the number of people absolutely dependent upon Uncle Sugar for sustenance, any resistance will be met with withdrawals of favors, and is thus wholly moot.
For instance, plenty of people are awake concerning the fact that there is NO proper chain of title in existence any more (thank MERS). Yet not a single Attorney General has taken on MERS, but instead, kept their mouth shut for a billion dollar share of the settlement loot.
Because nothing is more important than filling in holes in their state's budget. Better yet, they're also on the hook to Uncle Sugar themselves for unemployment benefit loans. Last I checked, not even interest has been paid, as fedgov uses that as the initial threat to keep uppity states in check.
When I see people demanding LESS government, perhaps then there will be fear. As long as they demand MORE though, the sheeple will be safely kept in a trap so that Zbig and Friends can sleep at night.
Simply put, an "awakening" based upon a century of government schooling/conditioning is really just the next nightmare.
No, no; not Uncle Sugar, it's Uncle Slaver.
slaves don't grok that, don't cha' know.
I think that you've discounted the possibility of a hard sweep to the Right in US politics. When people realize that liberal politics is actually vieled racism, they will be less prone to accepting its views. Uncle Sugar cannot pay the bills forever and I think sooner than later the voters will come to the fore. Or more accurately, those footing the bill will tell Uncle Sam to f off. Its speculation but its worth considering
I think that you've discounted the possibility of a hard sweep to the Right in US politics. When people realize that liberal politics is actually vieled racism, they will be less prone to accepting its views. Uncle Sugar cannot pay the bills forever and I think sooner than later the voters will come to the fore. Or more accurately, those footing the bill will tell Uncle Sam to f off. Its speculation but its worth considering
If the Republicans do anything with Obama's NWO driven amnesty then the Repubs will be toast. Not like the GOP is a right party. They are corporate NWO party like the Dems.
Look how the NWO media demonizes any parties in Greece or southern Europe who want out of the EU. They sent two assasins on a motorcycle and shot them.
With millions of new hollow points, DHS has a plan for this.
Germany had undergone a rapid and sweeping revolution that reached deep into the fabric of daily life. It had occurred quietly and largely out of easy view. At its core was a government campaign called Gleichschaltung— meaning “Coordination”— to bring citizens, government ministries, universities, and cultural and social institutions in line with National Socialist beliefs and attitudes.
FORWARD KONZENTRATIONSLAGER!