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Re: Just when you thought it couldn't get WORSE!
The Supreme Court needs to stop this right away.
This is like what Chavez did in Venezuela. -
Re: Just when you thought it couldn't get WORSE!
Originally posted by Mega View Post
The United States fights for freedom in other countries to undermine the power of their governments. Putin for example is the best protector of American freedoms because he knows very well that our freedom is his gain at the expense of his political enemies. He used this expertly in Syria while protecting Snowden. See if we can't get this over to Putin, our current best lord and protector of American liberty.
The current force behind democracy is nothing but a political weapon.Comment
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Re: Just when you thought it couldn't get WORSE!
From They Thought They Were Free, by Milton Mayer:Originally posted by Mega View Post
- "Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on." "Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
- "To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it - please try to believe me - unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, "regretted," that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these "little measures" that no "patriotic German" could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.
- "How is this to be avoided, among ordinary men, even highly educated ordinary men? Frankly, I do not know. I do not see, even now. Many, many times since it all happened I have pondered that pair of great maxims, Principiis obsta and Finem respice - "Resist the beginnings" and "consider the end." But one must foresee the end in order to resist, or even see, the beginnings. One must foresee the end clearly and certainly and how is this to be done, by ordinary men or even by extraordinary men? Things might have changed here before they went as far as they did; they didn't, but they might have. And everyone counts on that might.
Comment
- "Those," I said, "are the words of my friend the baker. "One had no time to think. There was so much going on." "Your friend the baker was right," said my colleague. "The dictatorship, and the whole process of its coming into being, was above all diverting. It provided an excuse not to think for people who did not want to think anyway. I do not speak of your "little men", your baker and so on; I speak of my colleagues and myself, learned men, mind you. Most of us did not want to think about fundamental things and never had. There was no need to. Nazism gave us some dreadful, fundamental things to think about - we were decent people - and kept us so busy with continuous changes and "crises" and so fascinated, yes, fascinated, by the machinations of the "national enemies", without and within, that we had no time to think about these dreadful things that were growing, little by little, all around us. Unconsciously, I suppose, we were grateful. Who wants to think?
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Re: Just when you thought it couldn't get WORSE!
It's a dumb idea, this embedding, and I expect it will not go very far. Honestly, the lack of political acumen among the Obama staff boggles the mind but that's for another discussion. Still, as stupid as this initiative is, I think it is hardly worth the breathlessness by which it is reported here and elsewhere.Originally posted by gwynedd1 View Post
I ask you, what is the point of getting exercised about this when it is a historical fact that the intelligence agencies have relationships with newspaper publishers, editors and reporters world wide? The agencies provide "suggestions" (and sometime completed copy) for stories, articles and other favors in return for cash payments, access, and other goodies. We've discussed Operation Mockinbird here, we've posted articles by the likes of Carl Bernstein (who broke the story 37 years ago), we linked to various books on the matter too.
I can only wonder why this news would cause such anxiety when it is a demostrated fact that the intelligence agencies monitor and capture every one of our communications and transactions? Surely this has as much of a chilling effect on reporters as anything proposed here.
If we can go "meh" for decades with the knowledge that our newsreporting is effectively operated by the intelligence agencies, what accounts for this now? If we've been operating for 30 years under the suspicion that everything but our thoughts and handwritten notes are being collected and stored by the state and did nothing once the suspicions were confirmed, why get indignant now?
Like I say, it's hardly news:
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July 10, 2013
Austin Goodrich, Spy Who Posed as Journalist, Dies at 87
By BRUCE WEBER
Austin Goodrich, an American spy who used credentials as a journalist, including from CBS News, to establish his cover during cold war postings abroad, died on June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Goodrich was far from the only journalist doubling as a secret agent. Several who did so, along with some top news executives, later said that during the cold war the separation between the news media and the government was considerably more negotiable than it subsequently became.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/us...gewanted=print
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Re: Just when you thought it couldn't get WORSE!
Originally posted by Woodsman View PostIt's a dumb idea, this embedding, and I expect it will not go very far. Honestly, the lack of political acumen among the Obama staff boggles the mind but that's for another discussion. Still, as stupid as this initiative is, I think it is hardly worth the breathlessness by which it is reported here and elsewhere.
I ask you, what is the point of getting exercised about this when it is a historical fact that the intelligence agencies have relationships with newspaper publishers, editors and reporters world wide? The agencies provide "suggestions" (and sometime completed copy) for stories, articles and other favors in return for cash payments, access, and other goodies. We've discussed Operation Mockinbird here, we've posted articles by the likes of Carl Bernstein (who broke the story 37 years ago), we linked to various books on the matter too.
I can only wonder why this news would cause such anxiety when it is a demostrated fact that the intelligence agencies monitor and capture every one of our communications and transactions? Surely this has as much of a chilling effect on reporters as anything proposed here.
If we can go "meh" for decades with the knowledge that our newsreporting is effectively operated by the intelligence agencies, what accounts for this now? If we've been operating for 30 years under the suspicion that everything but our thoughts and handwritten notes are being collected and stored by the state and did nothing once the suspicions were confirmed, why get indignant now?
Like I say, it's hardly news:
-------------------------------------
July 10, 2013
Austin Goodrich, Spy Who Posed as Journalist, Dies at 87
By BRUCE WEBER
Austin Goodrich, an American spy who used credentials as a journalist, including from CBS News, to establish his cover during cold war postings abroad, died on June 9 at his home in Port Washington, Wis. He was 87.
In the 1950s and 1960s, Mr. Goodrich was far from the only journalist doubling as a secret agent. Several who did so, along with some top news executives, later said that during the cold war the separation between the news media and the government was considerably more negotiable than it subsequently became.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/10/us...gewanted=print
Hi Woodsman,
"I ask you, what is the point of getting exercised about this when it is a historical fact"
If you ask I shall answer. What happens when you play with a tiger cub for too long. Now the thing about a toy poodle and the possibility that it can grow up into a vicious animal does not worry me. Its a toy poodle. I believe the problem with a pit bull is not merely one of temperament, but the potency of its temperament. Since I believe all governments are extremely vulnerable to hydrophobia , I see absolutely no change in temperament at all. I never, ever imagined that our liberty spring from our love of goodness. Who would considering that the freedom loving country of the US had slaves? What has changed is the tiger keeps growing as we keep becoming a mono-culture instead of confederates with a few basic elements of common self interest. The source of our liberty does not come from "resisting" our government. It often comes from other people resisting our government just like what ever one state in this union does may face the wrath of the 49. But when DC does it I just hopes its a little scratch, and that it does not disembowel you.Comment
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Re: Just when you thought it couldn't get WORSE!
Okay, Gwyn. I think I understand what ...actually, no. What the heck are you saying here, boss?Originally posted by gwynedd1 View Post
Fundamentally, the horse is out of the barn, the barn has been burned down, and the farm was paved over for a shopping mall. We were ignorant of it for some time and refused to believe it for some time after that. Later we took comfort that it only happened to "them" and now that we know the deal is real, we've seemed to have convinced ourselves that it never really mattered in the first place.
But now and then we get our shorts in a bind, like when we hear that the Barak'em Sock'em Robots are going to ask uncomfortable questions of the media; the media we all agree isn't worth squat. And to my point, the same media the cloak and dagger boys have effectively controlled since the Mockingbird caper was ginned up by Frank "Shotgun" Wisner and the "liberal internationalist" Cord Meyer in 1948.
Day late and a dollar short, if you ask me.Comment
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