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5,000 Years of History Shows that Mass Spying Is Always Aimed at Crushing Dissent
Tyrants Have Always Spied On Their Own People
Spying has been around since the dawn of civilization.
Keith Laidler – a PhD anthropologist, Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society and a past member of the Scientific Exploration Society – explains:
Spying and surveillance are at least as old as civilization itself.
University of Tennessee history professor Vejas Gabriel Liulevicius agrees:
Espionage and intelligence have been around since human beings first began organizing themselves into distinct societies, cities, states, nations, and civilizations.
Unfortunately, spying hasn’t been limited to defense against external enemies. As documented below, tyrants have long spied on their own people in order to maintain power and control … and crush dissent.
Laidler notes:
The rise of city states and empires … meant that each needed to know not only the disposition and morale of their enemy, but also the loyalty and general sentiment of their own population.
Benevolent rulers don’t need to spy on their own people like tyrants do. Even the quintessential defender of the status quo for the powers-that-be – Cass Sunstein – writes:
As a general rule, tyrants, far more than democratic rulers, need guns, ammunition, spies, and police officers. Their decrees will rarely be self-implementing. Terror is required.
From Ancient Egypt to Modern America …
The Encyclopedia of Espionage, Intelligence and Security notes:
Espionage is one of the oldest, and most well documented, political and military arts. The rise of the great ancient civilizations, beginning 6,000 years ago in Mesopotamia, begat institutions and persons devoted to the security and preservation of their ruling regimes.
***
Early Egyptian pharos [some 5,000 years ago] employed agents of espionage to ferret-out disloyal subject and to locate tribes that could be conquered and enslaved.
***
The Roman Empire possessed a fondness for the practice of political espionage. Spies engaged in both foreign and domestic political operations, gauging the political climate of the Empire and surrounding lands by eavesdropping in the Forum or in public market spaces. Several ancient accounts, especially those of the A.D. first century, mention the presence of a secret police force, the frumentarii . By the third century, Roman authors noted the pervasiveness and excessive censorship of the secret police forces, likening them to an authoritative force or an occupational army.
The BBC notes:
In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church was more powerful than most governments – and it had a powerful surveillance network to match.
French Bishop Bernard Gui was a noted author and one of the leading architects of the Inquisition in the late 13th and early 14th Centuries. For 15 years, he served as head inquisitor of Toulouse, where he convicted more than 900 individuals of heresy.
A noted author and historian, Gui was best known for the Conduct of the Inquisition into Heretical Depravity, written in 1323-24, in which he outlined the means for identifying, interrogating and punishing heretics.
The U.S. Supreme Court noted in Stanford v. Texas (1965):
While the Fourth Amendment [of the U.S. Constitution] was most immediately the product of contemporary revulsion against a regime of writs of assistance, its roots go far deeper. Its adoption in the Constitution of this new Nation reflected the culmination in England a few years earlier of a struggle against oppression which had endured for centuries. The story of that struggle has been fully chronicled in the pages of this Court’s reports, and it would be a needless exercise in pedantry to review again the detailed history of the use of general warrants as instruments of oppression from the time of the Tudors, through the Star Chamber, the Long Parliament, the Restoration, and beyond.
What is significant to note is that this history is largely a history of conflict between the Crown and the press. It was in enforcing the laws licensing the publication of literature and, later, in prosecutions for seditious libel, that general warrants were systematically used in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries. In Tudor England, officers of the Crown were given roving commissions to search where they pleased in order to suppress and destroy the literature of dissent, both Catholic and Puritan. In later years, warrants were sometimes more specific in content, but they typically authorized of all persons connected of the premises of all persons connected with the publication of a particular libel, or the arrest and seizure of all the papers of a named person thought to be connected with a libel.
By “libel”, the court is referring to a critique of the British government which the King or his ministers didn’t like … they would label such criticism “libel” and then seize all of the author’s papers.
The Supreme Court provided interesting historical details in the case of Marcus v. Search Warrant (1961):
The use by government of the power of search and seizure as an adjunct to a system for the suppression of objectionable publications … was a principal instrument for the enforcement of the Tudor licensing system. The Stationers’ Company was incorporated in 1557 to help implement that system, and was empowered
“to make search whenever it shall please them in any place, shop, house, chamber, or building or any printer, binder or bookseller whatever within our kingdom of England or the dominions of the same of or for any books or things printed, or to be printed, and to seize, take hold, burn, or turn to the proper use of the aforesaid community, all and several those books and things which are or shall be printed contrary to the form of any statute, act, or proclamation, made or to be made. . . .
An order of counsel confirmed and expanded the Company’s power in 1566, and the Star Chamber reaffirmed it in 1586 by a decree
“That it shall be lawful for the wardens of the said Company for the time being or any two of the said Company thereto deputed by the said wardens, to make search in all workhouses, shops, warehouses of printers, booksellers, bookbinders, or where they shall have reasonable cause of suspicion, and all books [etc.] . . . contrary to . . . these present ordinances to stay and take to her Majesty’s use. . . . ”
Books thus seized were taken to Stationers’ Hall where they were inspected by ecclesiastical officers, who decided whether they should be burnt. These powers were exercised under the Tudor censorship to suppress both Catholic and Puritan dissenting literature.
Each succeeding regime during turbulent Seventeenth Century England used the search and seizure power to suppress publications. James I commissioned the ecclesiastical judges comprising the Court of High Commission
“to enquire and search for . . . all heretical, schismatical and seditious books, libels, and writings, and all other books, pamphlets and portraitures offensive to the state or set forth without sufficient and lawful authority in that behalf, . . . and the same books [etc.] and their printing presses themselves likewise to seize and so to order and dispose of them . . . as they may not after serve or be employed for any such unlawful use. . . .”
The Star Chamber decree of 1637, reenacting the requirement that all books be licensed, continued the broad powers of the Stationers’ Company to enforce the licensing laws. During the political overturn of the 1640′s, Parliament on several occasions asserted the necessity of a broad search and seizure power to control printing. Thus, an order of 1648 gave power to the searchers
“to search in any house or place where there is just cause of suspicion that Presses are kept and employed in the printing of Scandalous and lying Pamphlets, . . . [and] to seize such scandalous and lying pamphlets as they find upon search. . . .”
The Restoration brought a new licensing act in 1662. Under its authority, “messengers of the press” operated under the secretaries of state, who issued executive warrants for the seizure of persons and papers. These warrants, while sometimes specific in content, often gave the most general discretionary authority. For example, a warrant to Roger L’Estrange, the Surveyor of the Press, empowered him to “seize all seditious books and libels and to apprehend the authors, contrivers, printers, publishers, and dispersers of them,” and to
“search any house, shop, printing room, chamber, warehouse, etc. for seditious, scandalous or unlicensed pictures, books, or papers, to bring away or deface the same, and the letter press, taking away all the copies. . . .]”
***
Although increasingly attacked, the licensing system was continued in effect for a time even after the Revolution of 1688, and executive warrants continued to issue for the search for and seizure of offending books. The Stationers’ Company was also ordered
“to make often and diligent searches in all such places you or any of you shall know or have any probable reason to suspect, and to seize all unlicensed, scandalous books and pamphlets. . . .”
And even when the device of prosecution for seditious libel replaced licensing as the principal governmental control of the press, it too was enforced with the aid of general warrants — authorizing either the arrest of all persons connected with the publication of a particular libel and the search of their premises or the seizure of all the papers of a named person alleged to be connected with the publication of a libel.
And see this.
General warrants were largely declared illegal in Britain in 1765. But the British continued to use general warrants in the American colonies. In fact, the Revolutionary War was largely launched to stop the use of general warrants in the colonies. King George gave various excuses of why general warrants were needed for the public good, of course … but such excuses were all hollow.
The New York Review of Books notes that the American government did not start to conduct mass surveillance against the American people until long after the Revolutionary War ended … but once started, the purpose was to crush dissent:
In the United States, political spying by the federal government began in the early part of the twentieth century, with the creation of the Bureau of Investigation in the Department of Justice on July 1, 1908. In more than one sense, the new agency was a descendant of the surveillance practices developed in France a century earlier, since it was initiated by US Attorney General Charles Joseph Bonaparte, a great nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte, who created it during a Congressional recess. Its establishment was denounced by Congressman Walter Smith of Iowa, who argued that “No general system of spying upon and espionage of the people, such as has prevailed in Russia, in France under the Empire, and at one time in Ireland, should be allowed to grow up.”
Nonetheless, the new Bureau became deeply engaged in political surveillance during World War I when federal authorities sought to gather information on those opposing American entry into the war and those opposing the draft. As a result of this surveillance, many hundreds of people were prosecuted under the 1917 Espionage Act and the 1918 Sedition Act for the peaceful expression of opinion about the war and the draft.
But it was during the Vietnam War that political surveillance in the United States reached its peak. Under Presidents Lyndon Johnson and, to an even greater extent, Richard Nixon, there was a systematic effort by various agencies, including the United States Army, to gather information on those involved in anti-war protests. Millions of Americans took part in such protests and the federal government—as well as many state and local agencies—gathered enormous amounts of information on them. Here are just three of the numerous examples of political surveillance in that era:
- In the 1960s in Rochester, New York, the local police department launched Operation SAFE (Scout Awareness for Emergency). It involved twenty thousand boy scouts living in the vicinity of Rochester. They got identification cards marked with their thumb prints. On the cards were the telephone numbers of the local police and the FBI. The scouts participating in the program were given a list of suspicious activities that they were to report.
- In 1969, the FBI learned that one of the sponsors of an anti-war demonstration in Washington, DC, was a New York City-based organization, the Fifth Avenue Peace Parade Committee, that chartered buses to take protesters to the event. The FBI visited the bank where the organization maintained its account to get photocopies of the checks written to reserve places on the buses and, thereby, to identify participants in the demonstration. One of the other federal agencies given the information by the FBI was the Internal Revenue Service.
***
The National Security Agency was involved in the domestic political surveillance of that era as well. Decades before the Internet, under the direction of President Nixon, the NSA made arrangements with the major communications firms of the time such as RCA Global and Western Union to obtain copies of telegrams. When the matter came before the courts, the Nixon Administration argued that the president had inherent authority to protect the country against subversion. In a unanimous decision in 1972, however, the US Supreme Court rejected the claim that the president had the authority to disregard the requirement of the Fourth Amendment for a judicial warrant.
***
Much of the political surveillance of the 1960s and the 1970s and of the period going back to World War I consisted in efforts to identify organizations that were critical of government policies, or that were proponents of various causes the government didn’t like, and to gather information on their adherents. It was not always clear how this information was used. As best it is possible to establish, the main use was to block some of those who were identified with certain causes from obtaining public employment or some kinds of private employment. Those who were victimized in this way rarely discovered the reason they had been excluded.
Efforts to protect civil liberties during that era eventually led to the destruction of many of these records, sometimes after those whose activities were monitored were given an opportunity to examine them. In many cases, this prevented surveillance records from being used to harm those who were spied on. Yet great vigilance by organizations such as the ACLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights, which brought a large number of court cases challenging political surveillance, was required to safeguard rights. The collection of data concerning the activities of US citizens did not take place for benign purposes.
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Between 1956 and 1971, the FBI operated a program known as COINTELPRO, for Counter Intelligence Program. Its purpose was to interfere with the activities of the organizations and individuals who were its targets or, in the words of long-time FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit or otherwise neutralize” them. The first target was the Communist Party of the United States, but subsequent targets ranged from the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference to organizations espousing women’s rights to right wing organizations such as the National States Rights Party.
A well-known example of COINTELPRO was the FBI’s planting in 1964 of false documents about William Albertson, a long-time Communist Party official, that persuaded the Communist Party that Albertson was an FBI informant. Amid major publicity, Albertson was expelled from the party, lost all his friends, and was fired from his job. Until his death in an automobile accident in 1972, he tried to prove that he was not a snitch, but the case was not resolved until 1989, when the FBI agreed to pay Albertson’s widow $170,000 to settle her lawsuit against the government.
COINTELPRO was eventually halted by J. Edgar Hoover after activists broke into a small FBI office in Media, Pennsylvania, in 1971, and released stolen documents about the program to the press. The lesson of COINTELPRO is that any government agency that is able to gather information through political surveillance will be tempted to use that information. After a time, the passive accumulation of data may seem insufficient and it may be used aggressively. This may take place long after the information is initially collected and may involve officials who had nothing to do with the original decision to engage in surveillance.
In 1972, the CIA director relabeled “dissidents” as “terrorists” so he could continue spying on them.
During the Vietnam war, the NSA spied on Senator Frank Church because of his criticism of the Vietnam War. The NSA also spied on Senator Howard Baker.
Senator Church – the head of a congressional committee investigating Cointelpro – warned in 1975:
[NSA's] capability at any time could be turned around on the American people, and no American would have any privacy left, such is the capability to monitor everything: telephone conversations, telegrams, it doesn’t matter. There would be no place to hide. [If a dictator ever took over, the N.S.A.] could enable it to impose total tyranny, and there would be no way to fight back.
This is, in fact, what’s happened …
Initially, American constitutional law experts say that the NSA is doing exactly the same thing to the American people today which King George did to the Colonists … using “general warrant” type spying.
And it is clear that the government is using its massive spy programs in order to track those who question government policies. See this, this, this and this.
Todd Gitlin – chair of the PhD program in communications at Columbia University, and a professor of journalism and sociology – notes:
Under the Freedom of Information Act, the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) has unearthed documents showing that, in 2011 and 2012, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and other federal agencies were busy surveilling and worrying about a good number of Occupy groups — during the very time that they were missing actual warnings about actual terrorist actions.
From its beginnings, the Occupy movement was of considerable interest to the DHS, the FBI, and other law enforcement and intelligence agencies, while true terrorists were slipping past the nets they cast in the wrong places. In the fall of 2011, the DHS specifically asked its regional affiliates to report on “Peaceful Activist Demonstrations, in addition to reporting on domestic terrorist acts and ‘significant criminal activity.’”
Aware that Occupy was overwhelmingly peaceful, the federally funded Boston Regional Intelligence Center (BRIC), one of 77 coordination centers known generically as “fusion centers,” was busy monitoring Occupy Boston daily. As the investigative journalist Michael Isikoff recently reported, they were not only tracking Occupy-related Facebook pages and websites but “writing reports on the movement’s potential impact on ‘commercial and financial sector assets.’”
It was in this period that the FBI received the second of two Russian police warnings about the extremist Islamist activities of Tamerlan Tsarnaev, the future Boston Marathon bomber. That city’s police commissioner later testified that the federal authorities did not pass any information at all about the Tsarnaev brothers on to him, though there’s no point in letting the Boston police off the hook either. The ACLU has uncovered documents showing that, during the same period, they were paying close attention to the internal workings of…Code Pink and Veterans for Peace.
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In Alaska, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Tennessee, and Wisconsin, intelligence was not only pooled among public law enforcement agencies, but shared with private corporations — and vice versa.
Nationally, in 2011, the FBI and DHS were, in the words of Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund, “treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity.” Last December using FOIA, PCJF obtained 112 pages of documents (heavily redacted) revealing a good deal of evidence for what might otherwise seem like an outlandish charge: that federal authorities were, in Verheyden-Hilliard’s words, “functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.” Consider these examples from PCJF’s summary of federal agencies working directly not only with local authorities but on behalf of the private sector:
• “As early as August 19, 2011, the FBI in New York was meeting with the New York Stock Exchange to discuss the Occupy Wall Street protests that wouldn’t start for another month. By September, prior to the start of the OWS, the FBI was notifying businesses that they might be the focus of an OWS protest.”
• “The FBI in Albany and the Syracuse Joint Terrorism Task Force disseminated information to… [22] campus police officials… A representative of the State University of New York at Oswego contacted the FBI for information on the OWS protests and reported to the FBI on the SUNY-Oswego Occupy encampment made up of students and professors.”
• An entity called the Domestic Security Alliance Council (DSAC), “a strategic partnership between the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and the private sector,” sent around information regarding Occupy protests at West Coast ports [on Nov. 2, 2011] to “raise awareness concerning this type of criminal activity.” The DSAC report contained “a ‘handling notice’ that the information is ‘meant for use primarily within the corporate security community. Such messages shall not be released in either written or oral form to the media, the general public or other personnel…’ Naval Criminal Investigative Services (NCIS) reported to DSAC on the relationship between OWS and organized labor.”
• DSAC gave tips to its corporate clients on “civil unrest,” which it defined as running the gamut from “small, organized rallies to large-scale demonstrations and rioting.” ***
• The FBI in Anchorage, Jacksonville, Tampa, Richmond, Memphis, Milwaukee, and Birmingham also gathered information and briefed local officials on wholly peaceful Occupy activities.
• In Jackson, Mississippi, FBI agents “attended a meeting with the Bank Security Group in Biloxi, MS with multiple private banks and the Biloxi Police Department, in which they discussed an announced protest for ‘National Bad Bank Sit-In-Day’ on December 7, 2011.” Also in Jackson, “the Joint Terrorism Task Force issued a ‘Counterterrorism Preparedness’ alert” that, despite heavy redactions, notes the need to ‘document…the Occupy Wall Street Movement.’”
***
In 2010, the American Civil Liberties Union of Tennessee learned … that the Tennessee Fusion Center was “highlighting on its website map of ‘Terrorism Events and Other Suspicious Activity’ a recent ACLU-TN letter to school superintendents. The letter encourages schools to be supportive of all religious beliefs during the holiday season.”
***
Consider an “intelligence report” from the North Central Texas fusion center, which in a 2009 “Prevention Awareness Bulletin” described, in the ACLU’s words, “a purported conspiracy between Muslim civil rights organizations, lobbying groups, the anti-war movement, a former U.S. Congresswoman, the U.S. Treasury Department, and hip hop bands to spread tolerance in the United States, which would ‘provide an environment for terrorist organizations to flourish.’”
***
And those Virginia and Texas fusion centers were hardly alone in expanding the definition of “terrorist” to fit just about anyone who might oppose government policies. According to a 2010 report in the Los Angeles Times, the Justice Department Inspector General found that “FBI agents improperly opened investigations into Greenpeace and several other domestic advocacy groups after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks in 2001, and put the names of some of their members on terrorist watch lists based on evidence that turned out to be ‘factually weak.’” The Inspector General called “troubling” what the Los Angeles Times described as “singling out some of the domestic groups for investigations that lasted up to five years, and were extended ‘without adequate basis.’
Subsequently, the FBI continued to maintain investigative files on groups like Greenpeace, the Catholic Worker, and the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, cases where (in the politely put words of the Inspector General’s report) “there was little indication of any possible federal crimes… In some cases, the FBI classified some investigations relating to nonviolent civil disobedience under its ‘acts of terrorism’ classification.”
***
In Pittsburgh, on the day after Thanksgiving 2002 (“a slow work day” in the Justice Department Inspector General’s estimation), a rookie FBI agent was outfitted with a camera, sent to an antiwar rally, and told to look for terrorism suspects. The “possibility that any useful information would result from this make-work assignment was remote,” the report added drily.
“The agent was unable to identify any terrorism subjects at the event, but he photographed a woman in order to have something to show his supervisor. He told us he had spoken to a woman leafletter at the rally who appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent, and that she was probably the person he photographed.”
The sequel was not quite so droll. The Inspector General found that FBI officials, including their chief lawyer in Pittsburgh, manufactured postdated “routing slips” and the rest of a phony paper trail to justify this surveillance retroactively.
Moreover, at least one fusion center has involved military intelligence in civilian law enforcement. In 2009, a military operative from Fort Lewis, Washington, worked undercover collecting information on peace groups in the Northwest. In fact, he helped run the Port Militarization Resistance group’s Listserv. Once uncovered, he told activists there were others doing similar work in the Army. How much the military spies on American citizens is unknown and, at the moment at least, unknowable.
Do we hear an echo from the abyss of the counterintelligence programs of the 1960s and 1970s, when FBI memos — I have some in my own heavily redacted files obtained through an FOIA request — were routinely copied to military intelligence units? Then, too, military intelligence operatives spied on activists who violated no laws, were not suspected of violating laws, and had they violated laws, would not have been under military jurisdiction in any case. During those years, more than 1,500 Army intelligence agents in plain clothes were spying, undercover, on domestic political groups (according to Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics, 1967-70, an unpublished dissertation by former Army intelligence captain Christopher H. Pyle). They posed as students, sometimes growing long hair and beards for the purpose, or as reporters and camera crews. They recorded speeches and conversations on concealed tape recorders. The Army lied about their purposes, claiming they were interested solely in “civil disturbance planning.”
(More.)
Yes, we hear echoes to the Cointelpro program of the 60s and 70s … as well as King George’s General Warrants to the Colonies … the Star Chamber of 15th century England … the frumentarii of Ancient Rome … and the spies of the earliest pharaohs some 5,000 years ago.
Because – whatever governments may say – mass surveillance is always used to crush dissent.
Notes:
1. Spying is also aimed at keeping politicians in check.
2. The East German Stasi obviously used mass surveillance to crush dissent and keep it’s officials in check … and falsely claimed that spying was necessary to protect people against vague threats. But poking holes in the excuses of a communist tyranny is too easy. The focus of this essay is to show that governments have used this same cynical ruse for over 5,000 years.
3. This essay focuses solely on domestic surveillance. Spying outside of one’s country is a different matter altogether.
4. For ease of reading, we deleted the footnotes from the two Supreme Court opinions.
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Too bad it only creates a feedback loop. The more they crush dessent the more they will actually create. Our millitary is a good example. Recent purges change nothing because A paranoia sets in. And B you are removing honest folks and replacing them with people of no integrity. That causes more decent. The snake cant stop eating its own tail.
One more thing. By crushing dessenters the dessenters are proved to be correct. All the crushing of dessent proves is that tptb are paranoid, cheating, rats.
You can still go house to house in New Hampshire and actually ask voters how they feel.
Once people stop voting in New Hampshire it's game over folks.
For centuries and still in operation today, the catholic church was an integral part of the network. The sheeple would tell the priest everything about themselves and their little towns and the information was passed up the chain when found useful.
When I worked for the NSA in the nineties I ran across alot of...click..shhhhhh.click
This comment has been disabled, go about your business
Try MSN or some other legitimate blog
It is important to note that the "dissent crushing" aspect of surveillance is best served when everyone knows they are being spied on. In this sense Edward Snowden has done what the NSA could not. Expose the vast scope of "The Program". Frontline's recent documentary examines how controversial this program was in our own government (The top Bush Justice Dept. officials nearly all resigned) and how quickly Barack Obama embraced it. Michael Hayden smirks through the entire film.
GREAT post, GW. I very much appreciate your work.
Thank you.
GW: the oldrepublic salutes you sir
History doesn't repeat, the evil of government does.
Same as it ever was....
This time it's different???
Only difference I can see is the advancement in technology to make the job more expansive in scope. However, with this is a concurrent hubris and overconfidence in this marvel they have created. No algorithm can be developed to achieve what they really desire. Only trends and postulations that will,hopefully in their eyes bag, their prize. This will, in reality, snare many innocents caught in their web like dolphins in a tuna net.
A moral human would see the unfair sufferings of these innocents and end any program or never begin to develope one. Psychopaths cannot empathize and would consider them just casualties of war. The possibility of nabbing one " terrorist" or "potential terrorist" for "security" is just a smoke screen to what they really desire.
Miffed;-)
Its true isn't it?
We've come a long way, in a very short period of time, from "We would rather let a hundred possibly guilty go free than to jail one innocent."...or worse.
Now everyone is guilty until proven innocent by virtue of fact of their spying on everyone. We're dealing with some seriously impaired paranoid schizophrenics here, under state capture, as their very livelihood depends on feeding that paranoia.
Psychopath's cannot empathize and the ones who aren't psycho's rationalize away their participation in it...the old..."If I didn't do it, someone else would be paid to do it" defense.
Well, that member of the 100 will have the same amount of time to ponder their possible guilt or innocence along with the one who is at this point.
Now that we know the "new rules" ;-)
nmewn, the USAF for decades deliberately recruited Christian fundamentalists, exclusively, into their nuclear weapons delivery command and firing roles, and also into fighter-attack cockpits (many of which were also tasked with gravity-bomb nuke delivery roles). They picked that subcultural cohort because they deemed that group to be the most 'reliable' for mass-murdering an entire 'enemy' population, on demand, and the most likely to support the state top-down command to kill. And very little has changed today, even today. As recently as 2006 it was still normal practice for all USAF fighter pilots to be expected to exhibit Christian fundamentalist beliefs, and they were systematically washed-out if they didn't.
All that's happened now is this sort of insanity has become more widespread, entrenched and prevalent within military intelligence and MIC-State apparatus. Thus "extreme prejudice" is not just some term applied to murdering people without remorse or constraint. It's the state of mind the system wants to foster. Fundamentalist zealots are much better at remorseless acts of anything, and everything, on command. Mass-suspicion, prejudgements and mass-spying are what such 'moral' people readily do.
That's interesting. The conclusion being that a state cannot win a total war without mass abrogation of the individual. Since there will always be a foe this continues in perpetuity.
Your poke at religion doesn't get to the root. The most effective zealots have been atheist statists. It doesn't matter how you get people to die /mass murder for the cause just as long as you do.
It is all about worship of idoltry in some form or another. Nothing more, nothing less that is the control mechanism used to keep people in line by controlling the idoltry and convincing people they can't function without it. Atheists just worship the state while anarachists worship themselves. True Christians don't worship idoltry in any form and believe in the idea of feeding oneself which requires no idoltry to do so just hard work or use of tools to achieve that simple goal. Feeding body (calories) and mind (learning through critical thinking and questioning things) which includes knowledge and wisdom, education is just a vehicle to get there while statists worship the idoltry of education aka paper degrees, etc.
Fundamentalists are well mental in the head regardless of religion or ideology. You can't rationalize with irrational people who know they are right. You are pissing against the wind taking that approach.
The idolatry may extend to levels far more fundamental than the political/ecclesial compliance levels discussed thus far. I commend to all the valuable study in Idolatry written by Owen Barfield many decades ago--Saving the Appearances: A Study in Idolatry.
"Atheists just worship the state while anarachists worship themselves."
You're saying that someone who doesn't believe in fairytales can't also follow the ideals of anarchists, libertarians or any other set that believes in the removal of gov control? That they have to worship the state?
Erm. No!
The environment determines the degree which the pendulum swings. Idol worshippers will hold onto an extreme form of an ideal they worship no matter what. Feeding yourself without idoltry is a simple idea that can be applied in all situations as long as the resources are there to support the people in the first place. Unless you plan to live alone as a hermit with no human contact there will be some form of rules and structure in any societal construct. A family is a form of government.....
As long as recorded history all governments have been slave based using idoltry in some form or another to hold it all together under a single bond. Until adults figure out how to be around each other without using idoltry to hold society together without killing each other nothing changes. It is just the same story over and over and over and over and over and over and over.
The only way that changes is when the most basic need can be satisfied by each individual for each individual then everything else is voluntary if they want more. If can eat you can live, everything else is want not a need.
"You're saying that someone who doesn't believe in fairytales..."
You made up your own fairytale, because you fear the alternative.
Give up the fear, and embrace the Love.
Funny, as it wasn't a 'poke' at religion, just a statement of what they did, and why they did it. It was all about the reliability of people in such roles to take and execute the state command to let the nukes fly that athoritah was most concerned with, so wanted a nuclear triad culture that was going to enable and maintain this mentality of complete obedience to the doomsday order. Fundamentalists by definition are disposed to strict guidelines, and reject lukewarmness to harsh requirements. The US military wanted a preemptive decapitation and counter-force first-strike capability (even though they flatout denied it for decades - they of course lied profusely) so reliability of the launch crews was everything if they were to catch the Russians with their pants down, unable to respond effectively in time. Christian fundamentalism was just the most reliable best motivated tool they could find in the US culture, a cohesive group who would do the job if you ordered them to do it. It just helped that they were also avidly expecting an Apocalypse soon (sincerely, this was not taking a 'poke' - you would know it if it was).
Well, I would say the reverse is true too.
If the state is seen as becoming evil & immoral and makes an enemy of the Christian (after all that training)...they've really screwed up and not nearly the smartass technocrats they present themselves to be...lol.
However, in my experience with "most" devout Christians, they are capable of extreme levels of forgiveness, of things and people you and I never could. But they need to see contrition first, an acknowledgement and an honest attempt at reform.
Speaking for myself, I may be a Christian (certainly no role model for anyone as one, but I define myself as Christian) I'm more of an eye for an eye kinda guy...I don't have any forgiveness for evil or betrayal, its just not in me, never has been. In that regard, I was brought up that death is just a passage to another place, they can be judged here (on Earth) by you & I (mans law) and still the real sentence appealed to a higher authority.
But they have to get there first ;-)
Ha, ok, sounds good to me.
The Fed.gov loves the Mormons for that reason as they have this thing going about the restoration of the US constitution as the perfect form of god-inspired govt (no, seriously!). So all the US military and intel services have to do is pay lip-service and concerted sincere looks and words to that affect and the sappy Mormons fall for it every time, thus you have gullible hardline fundies (who clearly will believe almost anything you tell them lol) that fed.gov can actually trust to follow the codified laws and properly constituted .gov orders to the letter. So the agencies just love to use LDS wackos, for their reliability in both admin, official spying and targeting roles.
lol...well Joseph Smith is an interesting fella, I rate him right up there with praying through idols (a definite no-no) but to each his own.
No one "loses their head over it" around here like elsehere, at least not yet ;-)
When asked or subtly propted to self-identify it's like the question of are you a glass-half-full, or glass-half-empty? The question is a false-dichotomy that was designed to elicit a polarized self-categorization, in order to generate an ad-hoc psychological control-device, to engender compliance to suggestion and the requests of the questioner of that false-dichotomy. So they either submit or resist the questioner based on the category, and to resist they have to defend their negativity, etc., which is another manipulative guilt-trip, and opens up yet another psychological device for to exploit, etc. lol
I just say it appears to be a glassy container with some fluid in it.
No self-categorization results from that and no psychological devices so no capacity to manipulate emerges from it. So I don't identify with any categories and I don't allow any person prompt me to self-categorize, so they can manipulate me, because such things are always designed to gain submissive control of the mind to manipulate it at will.
I suspect you're more like a glassy container with some fluid in it, than a mere Christian mate. ;-)
edit: lols, I notice you picked up the phantom red-flagger today. :D
I agree with you Element. When faced with a Lady or a Tiger behind a door the best decision is simply not opening it and walking away. This seems to be the choice most often ignored. Compulsion drives all to destruction because few are comfortable with allowing the unknowable.
Categorization is always outside of Self. It is an acknowledgment of Judgement. Once accepted, pliancy results. Once pliancy is achieved, manipulation is possible. So it is the individual who is ultimately responsible and the State is just an opportunist.
I, as nmewn, do identify myself as a Christian as a follower of Christ's teachings, but I do not identify with any denomination. This is very difficult for many who want to pigeon hole me into a category. I must wear a brand in their eyes and they are discomforted if I provide none. I tell them I was raised Anglican but am unchurched. This then causes them to prompt me into going to their church which I decline to their amazement. I had one person tell me that to be a Christian, one had to participate in a church with other Christians to fully commune with Christ. Well, I asked what was the difference participating in the Nuremberg Rallies vs going to church? Both seem to have the same goal. Well, I got a very nasty response which was quite deserved because I was being a provocative asshole. I have a great problem with us vs them scenarios in any form. I am continually amazed others find such comfort there.
I am happy to see you posting again after a hiatus. I was very saddened you appeared to have left. You are one of my favored posters and have always gleaned so much from your insight, knowledge and prospective.
Regards,
Miffed;-)
Well, even I would not have said that. </lolled out loud>
I guess the church is also in part the mechanism of purification and the new testament also speaks of 'oversight', and flocks and shunning the rebellious or heretical.
All psychological device to control the membership for their own good, and mostly it probably was in their material and social interests to be a part of team church.
But when you examine the Spanish Inquisition, non-membership of said unitary church was not a good option and perhaps that would have been a better comparison than the Nuremberg Rallies? And not even being an asshole yet. :D
Maybe zh has become a bit less relevant to me I've been seeing more than the usual insane-type commentary but then again I thought that about zh long before I joined it too. But at least then I knew there were many people present who understood the grim detail, and back then merely knowing the grim truth was more than sufficient doom for one day. Now a more significant fraction of the comments and also contributor mix seems less satisfied with the awful truth and more into extravagant claims (which somehow always amount to nothing and are not retracted) and general weirdness stuff and people talking their book a bit too much. If it were not for Tyler's work plus zh back-grounding some substance on key topics, plus Tyler's own thoughts and basic philosophy with regards to information and discussions, I'd be doing something else.
Well I for one always appreciate your point of view Element (even when we disagree and we have...lol).
As far as I'm concerned, I can have my belief in my religion without the attendant conflict or alliance of church & state, which you rightly point out has been abused for various reasons of power or profit.
The latest example of hypocrisy is the pope himself (which I commented on elsewhere) blathering on about wealth/income inequality, saying governments should "do something". Now, we all know what that means...more central government planning resulting in more economic disruption for the common man.
This, coming from a man at the head of an organization that controls billions in property, paintings, statues & coin.
Its not an indictment of this particular pope per se, it is to show how even a man with the best of intentions (or not) can screw everyone around him and not see that very thing within himself.
This is why the spiritual (surreal, if you like) should never walk hand in hand with the state (the earthly).
I don't like to talk about spirituality because it means dfferent things to different people but I do defend it unabashedly.
I must say nmewn I did not wish my statement not being churched as a judgement against anyone else who is. It is simply a personal decision. I have been a member of several churches in the past and have met several people who were clearly deeply devote and living a life that exemplified this. I met many others that viewed it as a social club. I saw many abuses from power hungry members that were the absolute antithesis of Christianity doctrine. The hypocrisy was glaringly disturbing. Those who should have fought, caved. And this was mild considering the history of Christianity. If a few evil individuals could topple so many I lost respect ( yes, I was one of the few that did fight...what would you have guessed?) I stayed out of loyalty to the two priests. When they made their exits, I left.
After happening in 3 churches, I made the decision I was living life in microcosm. My country was following the same pattern and I could not deal with fighting on so many fronts. I hope this has not resulted in your disappointment.
Miffed;-)
No Miffed, we don't have a problem. Its all voluntary in Christianity.
I had a pretty good dose of it coming up, my mom was a pastor who had a major falling out with the Church of God over the same kind of nonsense.
We're cool ;-)
As per usual you put a smile on my face. A Vulture must feel a twinge of annoyance indeed! Knowing some of your history and having a pastor mother must have made an interesting early life. Fascinating to observe how people end up from such varied backgrounds. It never is fully predictable. Almost as if something else unknowable is involved. ;-)
Church of God. Must be some irony in there. The courses of action are generally very simple but Evil is well versed in obfuscation with the fearful and weak minded. Sadly, this is my experience.
Miffed;-)
"Fascinating to observe how people end up from such varied backgrounds. It never is fully predictable. Almost as if something else unknowable is involved."
Almost, as if ;-)
Believe me, it hasn't escaped my own curiosity (of myself) why I would throw myself into these tussles with atheists & agnostics when I don't participate in (organizationly) anymore, at the expense of going along to get along with the herd, to be "accepted". To be thought of as, learned...lol. What I've seen is real, when I've asked, it was given. Some things are beyond explanation until they happen to you.
"Church of God. Must be some irony in there. The courses of action are generally very simple but Evil is well versed in obfuscation with the fearful and weak minded."
False prophets, we were warned to watch for them, inside and outside the church, in all venues.
Snakes? Speaking in tongues? :)
No snakes ;-)
I went to a few churches as an adult over a period of about 8 years and got disillusioned with pastors, deacons and elders who did not walk the walk. Luckily there were a few good ones in there that facilitated some real good learning.
Social club is a good characterization. Our "praise" bands were more of a production than a celebration.
But like so many others I have gotten off track...
Fred, I'm not so sure. Sometimes "getting off track" can result in a deeper experience and understanding than you ever thought possible. Or it can can result you waking up in an unfamiliar bed strewn with beer bottles and a sheep dressed in dominatrix leather. While I prefer the former to the latter, I believe in either case it will lead to questioning of ones life and a pushing of boundaries necessary to personal growth. Blind adherence to rules and membership in clubs can result in complacency and laziness if one isn't careful. Challenge is necessary as pressure to make diamonds.
You seem quite "on track" to me. Any one here ( besides the trolls) is showing a willingness to explore alternative views vs being plugged into the Dream. That surely can't be bad. ;-)
Miffed;-)
Thanx. A little debauchery, but no sheep. Mostly laziness and a little success. Camel, eye of a needle.
Got to keep a poor Pope in violet satin drapes and cushions and fresh gold-leaf thrones mate. ;-)
Just been having a little discussion with RM about that sort of ethereal/surreal topic, but in a week-old thread:
http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2014-05-28/founding-fathers-guarant...
Yes and the pretending princes in league with their pious popes come in all shapes & sizes. It should never be forgotten who the objects of their idiot designs are, as they plunder...
"If this spirit shall ever be so far debased as to tolerate a law not obligatory on the legislature, as well as on the people, the people will be prepared to tolerate any thing but liberty."- Publius (James Madison-Federalist #57)
...it is us, you and I.
For myself, I will have none of it. Through guilt tripping or law or appeals to "higher authority", they make a mockery of common decency and a plaything of our liberty as they line their own pockets. Deceptive bastards, anyone with eyes can see that, some just choose to look away.
Re your link, you guys are having quite the debate over there...lol.
Yes, been a little bit interesting in there, bit of a wtf thread. :D
Wow, interesting read! I added to it but I'm a bit hung over from a Saturday night of hedonism so place the bar of expectation a few rungs down.
Miffed;-)
A long time ago I was watching an interview with a man whose job was to work in the crematorium at Dachau. The interviewer asked how he felt about putting all those bodies in ovens. The man thought for a moment and said it was very hard work and his arms and shoulders hurt most of the time handling the heavy oven doors.The interviewer thought the man didn't understand what he was really asking so he got a German speaking man to pose the question again. It took a bit of back and forth but finally the meaning was imparted. The man just shrugged his shoulders and said it was just a job and if he didn't do it, someone else would have and he was glad to have gotten the livelihood.
Nmewn, I think in reality the true psychopaths are relatively few in number. However, this man I fear is much more common. The psychopaths need these men ( or women for that matter) to do the day to day drudgery to bring their goals to fruition. They being often unwilling to get their hands dirty. It seems we should beware this man (an opportunist) more than the other.
Miffed;-)
>>>The man just shrugged his shoulders and said it was just a job and if he didn't do it, someone else would....
This guy's name wasn't Soros, was it?
no, if there was no dissent there would be no need for spying.
Even in the 70’s the NSA was biased against libertarians. Memories of the old telephone equipment and tape recorders, uhhh.
Back in the Middle Ages, what do you guys figure was the point of CONFESSION? Hm?
It was the Roman Catholic Church collecting intelligence, and using a guilt trip, and institutionalized religion (show up to Church every Sunday, go to Confession every Sunday) to justify/mask the behavior.
The RCC was more of an imperial power structure than a government.
Confession has always been a false doctrine since true Christians believe in purity and a oneness with truth that you don't use a middleman when you can confess directly to the source and at anytime you want through prayer.
"Innocent was nevertheless convinced that the Cathar heresies indicated a thirst for religious revival which he believed he could satisfy with a tranche of devotional reforms. In 1215 he convoked the Fourth Lateran Council. Among its provisions was the decree that all the faithful must attend confession and receive Holy Communion once a year. First confession should be made `on reaching the age of discernment' by all members of the faithful `of either sex'. Those who failed to do their Easter sacramental duties were to be 'barred from entering the church in their lifetime and to be deprived of Christian burial at death'. A familiar verdict of history is that Innocent was exploiting confession to seek out heretics. Yet he also hoped to encourage spiritual renewal and to establish the role of the priest as spiritual director of individual souls." (Cornwell, The Dark Box: A Secret History of Confession, pp.16-17).
An aside on the Cathars. They were a Christian group in France that was supposed to have had all the original histories of Christ and other scriptures Romans had destroyed before Constantine reinvented Joshua as Jesus and turned him into a form of idoltry to be worshipped after feminizing the image of Zeus and combining the name of Esus a Druid pagan god known for crosses, sacrfices and lambs to unify and consolidate major religions in the empire under a common god everyone would accept and in turn make it easier to control the populace through a unified religion and single church. The Cathars knew the real histories and used it to their advantage. This is the reason for the Spanish Inquistion being formed. To stomp out the Cathars and remove those texts from circulation.
Over time as with abusing little boy's anuses they had a problem with priests raping women that confessional became a 'license to sin' for priests. Martin Luther's response to this was the path of purity and removing confession as a form of sacrament. The Constantinian now the Roman Catholic Church's response was the confessional box so they could keep spying on people through confession while seperating the the confessor from the priest so they could not only keeping spy but could use the box for seduction purposes at the same time. Not only that they made it more efficient by creating 2 boxes! One for priests only to confess, one for everyone else. Guess who made the second box necessary, the Spanish Inquistion who through creating all these new pentinents they needed the 2nd box now to keep up with demand they created in the first place and not only that it was financed by gold and silver from the new world that the control of was conveniently given to Spain by the Vatican after the Muslims (Moors) conveniently surrendered to the Spanish just in time so Columbus could conveniently 'discover' the new world. The reality was the Vatican double crossed the Templars/Scots/Celts because they knew they were exploring the area beforehand and were afraid they would set up a competing religion based upon the real histories of Christ outside of their ability to control it.
Today the confessionals are in your counselors, doctors and therapists offices.
NSA. Got the dirt on everybody. With a few keystrokes they can see how people feel. I don't think they worry too much as long as the collective IQ is below 12....
Sex and money.
Lust and greed. The overwhelming majority of "important" (rich/powerful/influential) figures, just like the rest of us, are victims of this weakness.
Discover their indiscretions, and use it against them.
Information is power.
Senators, Supreme Court jusices, judges, bankers, generals......
Precisely. And if we're all dirty: gridlock. I can't do anything 'cause you'll spill the beans on me; and vice versa. Depends on who's in power.
Who's on first? Ya' playin' ball today, ain'tcha?