https://www.globalresearch.ca/global-state-war-those-speak-truth-power/5694131
A New Kind of Tyranny: The Global State’s War on Those Who Speak Truth to Power
“What happens to Julian Assange and to Chelsea Manning is meant to intimidate us, to frighten us into silence. By defending Julian Assange, we defend our most sacred rights. Speak up now or wake up one morning to the silence of a new kind of tyranny. The choice is ours.”—John Pilger, investigative journalist
All of us are in danger.
In an age of prosecutions for thought crimes, pre-crime deterrence programs, and government agencies that operate like organized crime syndicates, there is a new kind of tyranny being imposed on those who dare to expose the crimes of the Deep State, whose reach has gone global.
The Deep State has embarked on a ruthless, take-no-prisoners, all-out assault on truth-tellers.
Activists, journalists and whistleblowers alike are being terrorized, traumatized, tortured and subjected to the fear-inducing, mind-altering, soul-destroying, smash-your-face-in tactics employed by the superpowers-that-be.
Take Julian Assange, for example.
Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks—a website that published secret information, news leaks, and classified media from anonymous sources—was arrested on April 11, 2019, on charges of helping U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning access and leak more than 700,000 classified military documents that portray the U.S. government and its military as reckless, irresponsible and responsible for thousands of civilian deaths.
Included among the leaked Manning material were the Collateral Murder video (April 2010), the Afghanistan war logs (July 2010), the Iraq war logs (October 2010), a quarter of a million diplomatic cables (November 2010), and the Guantánamo files (April 2011).
The Collateral Murder leak included gunsight video footage from two U.S. AH-64 Apache helicopters engaged in a series of air-to-ground attacks while air crew laughed at some of the casualties. Among the casualties were two Reuters correspondents who were gunned down after their cameras were mistaken for weapons and a driver who stopped to help one of the journalists. The driver’s two children, who happened to be in the van at the time it was fired upon by U.S. forces, suffered serious injuries.
This is morally wrong.
It shouldn’t matter which nation is responsible for these atrocities: there is no defense for such evil perpetrated in the name of profit margins and war profiteering.
In true Orwellian fashion, however, the government would have us believe that it is Assange and Manning who are the real criminals for daring to expose the war machine’s seedy underbelly.
Since his April 2019 arrest, Assange has been locked up in a maximum-security British prison—in solitary confinement for up to 23 hours a day—pending extradition to the U.S., where if convicted, he could be sentenced to 175 years in prison.
Whatever is being done to Assange behind those prison walls—psychological torture, forced drugging, prolonged isolation, intimidation, surveillance—it’s wearing him down.
In court appearances, the 48-year-old Assange appears disoriented, haggard and zombie-like.
“In 20 years of work with victims of war, violence and political persecution I have never seen a group of democratic States ganging up to deliberately isolate, demonise and abuse a single individual for such a long time and with so little regard for human dignity and the rule of law,” declared Nils Melzer, the UN special rapporteur on torture.
It’s not just Assange who is being made to suffer, however.
Manning, who was jailed for seven years from 2010 to 2017 for leaking classified documents to Wikileaks, was arrested in March 2019 for refusing to testify before a grand jury about Assange, placed in solitary confinement for almost a month, and then sentenced to remain in jail either until she agrees to testify or until the grand jury’s 18-month term expires.
Federal judge Anthony J. Trenga of the Eastern District of Virginia also fined Manning $500 for every day she remained in custody after 30 days, and $1,000 for every day she remains in custody after 60 days, a chilling—and financially crippling—example of the government’s heavy-handed efforts to weaponize fines and jail terms as a means of forcing dissidents to fall in line.
This is how the police state deals with those who challenge its chokehold on power.
Make no mistake: the government is waging war on journalists and whistleblowers for disclosing information relating to government misconduct that is within the public’s right to know.
Yet while this targeted campaign—aided, abetted and advanced by the Deep State’s international alliances—is unfolding during President Trump’s watch, it began with the Obama Administration’s decision to revive the antiquated, hundred-year-old Espionage Act, which was intended to punish government spies, and instead use it to prosecute government whistleblowers.
Unfortunately, the Trump Administration has not merely continued the Obama Administration’s attack on whistleblowers. It has injected this war on truth-tellers and truth-seekers with steroids and let it loose on the First Amendment.
In May 2019, Trump’s Justice Department issued a sweeping new “superseding” secret indictment of Assange—hinged on the Espionage Act—that empowers the government to determine what counts as legitimate journalism and criminalize the rest, not to mention giving “the government license to criminally punish journalists it does not like, based on antipathy, vague standards, and subjective judgments.”
Noting that the indictment signaled grave dangers for freedom of the press in general, media lawyer Theodore J. Boutrous, Jr., warned,
“The indictment would criminalize the encouragement of leaks of newsworthy classified information, criminalize the acceptance of such information, and criminalize publication of it.”
Boutrous continues:
[I]t doesn’t matter whether you think Assange is a journalist, or whether WikiLeaks is a news organization. The theory that animates the indictment targets the very essence of journalistic activity: the gathering and dissemination of information that the government wants to keep secret. You don’t have to like Assange or endorse what he and WikiLeaks have done over the years to recognize that this indictment sets an ominous precedent and threatens basic First Amendment values…. With only modest tweaking, the very same theory could be invoked to prosecute journalists for the very same crimes being alleged against Assange, simply for doing their jobs of scrutinizing the government and reporting the news to the American people.
We desperately need greater scrutiny and transparency, not less.
Indeed, transparency is one of those things the shadow government fears the most. Why? Because it might arouse the distracted American populace to actually exercise their rights and resist the tyranny that is inexorably asphyxiating their freedoms.
This need to shed light on government actions—to make the obscure, least transparent reaches of government accessible and accountable—was a common theme for Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, who famously coined the phrase, “Sunlight is the best disinfectant.”
Writing in January 1884, Brandeis explained:
Light is the only thing that can sweeten our political atmosphere—light thrown upon every detail of administration in the departments; light diffused through every policy; light blazed full upon every feature of legislation; light that can penetrate every recess or corner in which any intrigue might hide; light that will open up to view the innermost chambers of government, drive away all darkness from the treasury vaults; illuminate foreign correspondence; explore national dockyards; search out the obscurities of Indian affairs; display the workings of justice; exhibit the management of the army; play upon the sails of the navy; and follow the distribution of the mails.
Of course, transparency is futile without a populace that is informed, engaged and prepared to hold the government accountable to abiding by the rule of law.
For this reason, it is vital that citizens have the right to criticize the government without fear.
After all, we’re citizens, not subjects. For those who don’t fully understand the distinction between the two and why transparency is so vital to a healthy constitutional government, Manning explains it well:
When freedom of information and transparency are stifled, then bad decisions are often made and heartbreaking tragedies occur – too often on a breathtaking scale that can leave societies wondering: how did this happen? … I believe that when the public lacks even the most fundamental access to what its governments and militaries are doing in their names, then they cease to be involved in the act of citizenship. There is a bright distinction between citizens, who have rights and privileges protected by the state, and subjects, who are under the complete control and authority of the state.
Manning goes on to suggest that the U.S. “needs legislation to protect the public’s right to free speech and a free press, to protect it from the actions of the executive branch and to promote the integrity and transparency of the US government.”
Technically, we’ve already got such legislation on the books: the First Amendment.
The First Amendment gives the citizenry the right to speak freely, protest peacefully, expose government wrongdoing, and criticize the government without fear of arrest, isolation or any of the other punishments that have been meted out to whistleblowers such as Edwards Snowden, Assange and Manning.
The challenge is holding the government accountable to obeying the law.
Almost 50 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 in United States v. Washington Post Co. to block the Nixon Administration’s attempts to use claims of national security to prevent The Washington Post and The New York Times from publishing secret Pentagon papers on how America went to war in Vietnam.
As Justice William O. Douglas remarked on the ruling, “The press was protected so that it could bare the secrets of government and inform the people. Only a free and unrestrained press can effectively expose deception in government. And paramount among the responsibilities of a free press is the duty to prevent any part of the government from deceiving the people and sending them off to distant lands to die of foreign fevers and foreign shot and shell.”
Almost 50 years later, with Assange being cast as the poster boy for treason, we’re witnessing yet another showdown, which pits the people’s right to know about government misconduct against the might of the military industrial complex.
Yet this isn’t merely about whether whistleblowers and journalists are part of a protected class under the Constitution. It’s a debate over how long “we the people” will remain a protected class under the Constitution.
Following the current downward trajectory, it won’t be long before anyone who believes in holding the government accountable is labeled an “extremist,” is relegated to an underclass that doesn’t fit in, must be watched all the time, and is rounded up when the government deems it necessary.
Eventually, we will all be potential suspects, terrorists and lawbreakers in the eyes of the government
Partisan politics have no place in this debate: Americans of all stripes would do well to remember that those who question the motives of government provide a necessary counterpoint to those who would blindly follow where politicians choose to lead.
We don’t have to agree with every criticism of the government, but we must defend the rights of allindividuals to speak freely without fear of punishment or threat of banishment.
Never forget: what the architects of the police state want are submissive, compliant, cooperative, obedient, meek citizens who don’t talk back, don’t challenge government authority, don’t speak out against government misconduct, and don’t step out of line.
What the First Amendment protects—and a healthy constitutional republic requires—are citizens who routinely exercise their right to speak truth to power.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, the right to speak out against government wrongdoing is the quintessential freedom.
Be warned: this quintessential freedom won’t be much good to anyone if the government makes good on its promise to make an example of Assange as a warning to other journalists intent on helping whistleblowers disclose government corruption.
Once again, we find ourselves reliving George Orwell’s 1984, which portrayed in chilling detail how totalitarian governments employ the power of language to manipulate the masses.
In Orwell’s dystopian vision of the future, Big Brother does away with all undesirable and unnecessary words and meanings, even going so far as to routinely rewrite history and punish “thoughtcrimes.”
Much like today’s social media censors and pre-crime police departments, Orwell’s Thought Police serve as the eyes and ears of Big Brother, while the other government agencies peddle in economic affairs (rationing and starvation), law and order (torture and brainwashing), and news, entertainment, education and art (propaganda).
Orwell’s Big Brother relies on Newspeak to eliminate undesirable words, strip such words as remained of unorthodox meanings and make independent, non-government-approved thought altogether unnecessary.
Where we stand now is at the juncture of OldSpeak (where words have meanings, and ideas can be dangerous) and Newspeak (where only that which is “safe” and “accepted” by the majority is permitted). The power elite has made their intentions clear: they will pursue and prosecute any and all words, thoughts and expressions that challenge their authority.
This is the final link in the police state chain.
Having been reduced to a cowering citizenry—mute in the face of elected officials who refuse to represent us, helpless in the face of police brutality, powerless in the face of militarized tactics and technology that treat us like enemy combatants on a battlefield, and naked in the face of government surveillance that sees and hears all—our backs are to the walls.
From this point on, we have only two options: go down fighting, or capitulate and betray our loved ones, our friends and ourselves by insisting that, as a brainwashed Winston Smith does at the end of Orwell’s 1984, yes, 2+2 does equal 5.
As George Orwell recognized, “In a time of deceit telling the truth is a revolutionary act.”
....
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogapr22/demographics4-22.html
The Demographics of Financial Doom
The saying "demographics is destiny" encapsulates the reality that demographics--rising or falling trends of births
and deaths--energize or constrain economies and societies regardless of other conditions.
Demographics are long-term trends, but the trends can change relatively rapidly while policies remain fixed in the distant
past. This disconnect between demographic reality and policies has momentous future consequences. An appropriate
analogy is the meteor wiping out the dinosaurs; in the case of demographics, this equates to the complete financial
collapse of the retirement and healthcare systems.
As this article below mentions, extrapolating the high birth rates and falling death rates of the 1960s led to
predictions of global famine.
As death rates declined and women's educational and economics prospects brightened, birth rates fell, a trend that
now encompasses most of the world.
As a result of the Green Revolution (hybrid seeds and hydrocarbon-based fertilizers), the Earth supports more than
twice as many humans as were alive in the 1960s (3.5 billion then, 7.9 billion now).
Now the problem is a shrinking working-age population that will be unable to support the financial and healthcare
promises made to the retired generations.
Birth rates in developed nations have fallen below replacement rates, which means populations are shrinking and
populations are aging rapidly, i.e. the average age of the populace is rising..
One side effect discussed in this article is the decline of the cohort of young males and the rise in the average
age reduces the likelihood of conflict:
Children of Men' is really happening--Why Russia can’t afford to spare its young soldiers anymore.
I remember reading similar research in the mid-1970s that identified a strong correlation between the relative size
of the cohort of young males and the likelihood of war.
If the cohort was above a specific percentage of the total population, war was likely. One example was Germany in the
1930, which had a large cohort of young males under the age of 25.
This may partially explain the increasing reliance on economic war (sanctions) and cyberwarfare--nations no longer
have large enough cohorts of young males to field armies where high casualties are a reality.
What the article mentions in passing--the demographic impact of social values and political power--is worth exploring.
In broad brush, several trends are visible in many nations and cultures.
One is that having children has gone from being an economic necessity or benefit to a tremendous financial liability
in the developed world.
A Danish friend once commented that only wealthy families could afford to have three children now in Northern European
countries. The same can be said of the U.S. and many other countries, once we consider the higher demands now placed
on parents.
Where in the good old days of previous generations, parents were deemed adequate if they provided a roof over the
kids' heads, basic meals and clothing. Education was left up to the public schools, and public college was low-cost,
should the child want to continue their education.
(The University of Hawaii tuition was $89 and student fees were $27, for a grand total of $117 per semester from 1971
to 1975, $780 in today's dollars. I was able to support myself, pay all my university expenses and carry a full
class load on a part-time job--in one of the two most expensive cities in the nation, Honolulu.)
In a fully globalized "winner take most" economy, parents with aspirations for a top 20% career and lifestyle for
their children have a much more demanding burden.
Parents seeking to give their children a leg up must provide costly enrichment lessons and juggle complicated
schedules of after-school classes. Prestigious universities now expect more than mere academic excellence;
applicants must show evidence of leadership, civic engagement, etc., and even public universities are outrageously
expensive.
Another trend is the cultural bias of favoring the elderly in terms of government support.
As workers increasingly lived long enough to actually retire, social and political values supported government
funded pensions and healthcare for retirees.
In the high birth rates 1940, 50s and 60s, governments greatly increased benefits for the elderly / retired, as
everyone assumed there would always be 4 or 5 workers for every retiree. Relatively few people lived to age 80 or older.
The steady decline in birth rates and the steady increase in longevity have dropped that ratio to less than 2 workers
for every retiree. In the US, there are 127 million fulltime workers and 69 million Social Security beneficiaries
(including disabled). That is less than 2 fulltime workers for every beneficiary.
In a recession, Boomers will continue retiring en masse while the workforce will shrink. A ratio of 1.5 workers to
every beneficiary isn't that far away.
Is there any doubt this ratio is unsustainable financially? No.
These two trends are a double-whammy on those young adults having children: the costs of raising kids is much higher,
the expectations are much higher while the government support is heavily weighted to the elderly populace, which is
exploding as people now live into their 80s and 90s. (My Mom is 93, my Mom-in-law who we care for here at home is 91,
our neighbor's Mom is 99, and so on.)
We have elderly friends who retired from federal government jobs at age 55 after 30 years of service and have
collected 40 years of retirement. Is this financially sustainable? No.
The actuarial foundations of Social Security and Medicare were based on 4 or 5 workers per beneficiary and average
lifespans around 70. Retirees were expected to collect benefits for 5 to 7 years, not 25 to 30 years.
These systems are fundamentally unsustainable at current retirement ages (55 for many government workers, 62 for
"early retirement" Social Security and 67 for full benefits and Medicare at 65), current longevity trends and less
than 2 workers per retiree.
The only way to reverse these demographic trends would be for government support for retirees taking a back seat to
government support of children and young parents, greatly reducing the financial burden of having children.
The only way an economy can support a massive population of elderly is if there are enough young workers entering
the workforce to keep the society and economy functioning.
Forward-looking populations would realize supporting parents and children is the only way to support future retirees.
But humans aren't very forward-looking; we want all the good stuff now. So the elderly support politicians who
promise their benefits are sacrosanct and untouchable--except to increase them.
Almost all elderly people vote while a much lower percentage of young people vote. So the government continues
supporting the elderly even as the population of elderly explodes and the means to provide this support are in free-fall.
Retirement ages have barely budged, increasing a mere two years in 40 years from 65 to 67, while lifespans have
greatly advanced and the worker-retiree ratio has collapsed.
Open-ended healthcare expenses are an invitation for profiteering, fraud and unnecessary or even harmful medications
and procedures. By some estimates, 40% of the $1.5 trillion dollars spent on Medicare and Medicaid annually is
paper-shuffling, fraud and needless medications and procedures.
A third trend is female workers wanting a fulfilling career and children, too.
With childcare costing $25,000 or more annually, one parent may essentially be working just to pay the childcare
costs for two children.
A fourth trend is relying on high birth rate immigrants to substitute for native-born workers is no longer viable,
as birth rates have plummeted in nations that provide immigrants.
As the saying has it, something's gotta give. Doing nothing will lead to the collapse of the programs benefiting
the elderly while the birth rate continues declining.
All these values and programs assumed high birth rates, high worker-retiree ratios and modest costs for raising
children were forever. They weren't.
Now we need a new set of values that reduce or eliminate the financial burdens on parents raising children. It
would be nice if we could afford to pay for everything we want but printing money to do so just collapses the
entire system.
Personally, I would raise all retirement ages to match the rise in lifespans, limit Social Security benefits to those
with no other pension or retirement income, limit publicly funded extraordinary
healthcare measures for people over the average lifespan, tax revenues rather than labor, and pay all childcare
and after-school programs expenses currently paid by parents, plus a modest sum per child that can only be spent
on after-school enrichment classes and programs.
That seems common-sense to me, but I'm open to other permutations of hard choices.
Hard choices lead to better outcomes than collapse, but few have any stomach for hard choices. Politicians who
make hard choices that require sacrifices of powerful lobbies and voting blocks lose elections.
The fantasy that we can "print our way out of any problem" is strong because it's so convenient and apparently
so successful--at first.
Whether we admit it or not, collapse is the default "solution." That destiny has already been written by demographics.
No comments:
Post a Comment