The End of America

[FRED]

Highly provocative presentation. Worth a listen.

The End of America: Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot

[metalman]

Re: The End of America

Highly provocative presentation. Worth a listen.

heard her on the radio. blocked it out.

drones to be used against citizens in the usa

[Spartacus]

Re: The End of America

I would suggest that the beginnings of most of this was the war on drugs - that was the thin edge of the wedge, the agent provocateur that let the authoritarians start their campaign. Or in the vernacular of Mussolini, the government-corporate partnership.

Many of the basic rights were already gone before Bush "turned the heat up on the frog", it's only just now that some of the frogs are noticing.

The lights turned on for me with the now 10 year old 60 Minutes story on Cops seizing the property of citizens for sale (proceeds to go to the cops) on the say so of informants.

Highly provocative presentation. Worth a listen.

[metalman]

Re: The End of America

I would suggest that the beginnings of most of this was the war on drugs - that was the thin edge of the wedge, the agent provocateur that let the authoritarians start their campaign. Or in the vernacular of Mussolini, the government-corporate partnership.

Many of the basic rights were already gone before Bush "turned the heat up on the frog", it's only just now that some of the frogs are noticing.

The lights turned on for me with the now 10 year old 60 Minutes story on Cops seizing the property of citizens for sale (proceeds to go to the cops) on the say so of informants.

as much as i dig wolf's work, she does sound a bit hysterical in the second video. gonzales was in the end kicked out. rumsfeld is gone. yeh, there's a list but the press is still open enough to talk about it...

Unlikely Terrorists On No Fly List

Anyone who has passed through an airport in the last five years and has been pulled aside for extra screening knows that the government and the airlines keep a list of people they consider to be security threats. Every time you check in at the ticket counter your name is run through a computer to make sure you are not on something called the "No Fly List." It's part of a secret government database compiled after 9/11 to prevent suspected terrorists from getting on airplanes. As correspondent Steve Kroft reports, if your name is on the list or even similar to someone on the list, you can be detained for hours.

It began as a project of the highest priority. In 2003, President Bush directed the nation’s intelligence agencies and the FBI to cooperate in creating a single watch list of suspected terrorists. A version of that list is given to the airlines and the Transportation Security Administration to prevent anyone considered a threat to civilian aviation from boarding a plane. The government won’t divulge the criteria it uses in making up the list or even how many names are on it. But in the spring of 2006, working with a government watchdog group called the National Security News Service, 60 Minutes was able to obtain a copy of the No Fly List from someone in aviation security who wanted us to see what the bureaucracy had wrought.

The first surprise was the sheer size of it. In paper form it is more than 540 pages long. Before 9/11, the government’s list of suspected terrorists banned from air travel totaled just 16 names; today there are 44,000. And that doesn’t include people the government thinks should be pulled aside for additional security screening. There are another 75,000 people on that list.

With Joe Trento of the National Security News Service, 60 Minutes spent months going over the names on the No Fly List. While it is classified as sensitive, even members of Congress have been denied access to it. But that may have less to do with national security than avoiding embarrassment.

seems that there are dead people and presidents on the list. keystone autocrats?

[Uncle Jack]

Re: The End of America

One of my extended family members is on the list, sort of. He gets pulled aside every time he flies because of his name - Jim Smith. Shit you not! Retired bank president and currently about mid-70s, grew up and lives in the bread basket of america. Can't fly without a hassle. It's beyond nonsensical. I felt free to disclose his name because if you can pinpoint him with that name, you're a better sleuth than the federal government.

[Verrocchio]

Re: The End of America

Have you heard this one? "You got nuthin' to hide; you got nuthin' to worry about." Stephen Colbert told Naomi this when she appeared on his show to promote her book. It won't matter if you've nothing to hide if the trend to totalitarianism that she projects advances unimpeded. In terms of the mission of this Web site, think currency controls, confiscation of property property, and so on.

[Rajiv]

Re: The End of America

Statement of James E. Smith

[Uncle Jack]

Re: The End of America

no relation.

[GRG55]

Re: The End of America

One of my extended family members is on the list, sort of. He gets pulled aside every time he flies because of his name - Jim Smith. Shit you not! Retired bank president and currently about mid-70s, grew up and lives in the bread basket of america. Can't fly without a hassle. It's beyond nonsensical. I felt free to disclose his name because if you can pinpoint him with that name, you're a better sleuth than the federal government.

Maybe they're just trying to keep Mr. Smith from going to Washington. They probably remember how it turned out last time...

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

This sort of thing is why I can't share this website with anyone I know. It's borderline kooky.

Not a fan of the current administration, they certainly push the limits on freedoms. But I find this speech ultimately anti-American and naieve. When the bombs start popping off randomly these are the same people who when they are in power will call for much harsher means to protect us. We're dealing with an enemy who uses the "rules" against us. Is that so hard to understand? At some point you have to have some trust in the courts and media to protect us from such abuses. Maybe I missed something, has the Bush administration had any political enemies jailed w/o trial yet?

This woman in particular is not someone a wise person would want to hitch their wagon to to make a point. She's a well known fool from way back.

[FRED]

Re: The End of America

This sort of thing is why I can't share this website with anyone I know. It's borderline kooky.

Not a fan of the current administration, they certainly push the limits on freedoms. But I find this speech ultimately anti-American and naieve. When the bombs start popping off randomly these are the same people who when they are in power will call for much harsher means to protect us. We're dealing with an enemy who uses the "rules" against us. Is that so hard to understand? At some point you have to have some trust in the courts and media to protect us from such abuses. Maybe I missed something, has the Bush administration had any political enemies jailed w/o trial yet?

This woman in particular is not someone a wise person would want to hitch their wagon to to make a point. She's a well known fool from way back.

Over the weekends, we try to push the limits of what our community finds comfortable.

Are you afraid to send friends to watch Hardball? Chris Matthews has Wolf on to represent a position in a serious debate about the U.S. Attorney General. We wouldn't do that. We have her video here to provoke thought and discussion.

How about the video of guy on Fox News? Ok, so he's selling a book.

But how is concern for Americans' constitutional freedoms un-American? Wolf represents the outer fringe that pushes the system back toward the center. Ron Paul also fulfills this role. Without them, the process of giving up freedoms to "protect" security goes on unchecked. It is far easier to solve security issues by taking away freedoms than it is to address the root causes.

No, the Bush administration has not had any political enemies jailed without a trial. Yet.

Granted Wolf is extreme. Her point about the gradual process of erosion of freedoms is correct. Everyone has their own threshold. Political enemies jailed without a trial is one that has not happened yet. For others, the threshold is the establishment of prisons outside the U.S. legal system. For others, passage of laws that allow a U.S. law enforcement organization to write its own search warrants and makes it illegal to discuss the warrant with legal counsel is another. An apparently arbitrary list of 44,000 U.S. citizens who cannot fly without being subject to detention is another. These have happened.

The courts and media will not be able to protect us if they are intimidated. Trust and faith in the courts and press will not ensure that the process is checked. Only pressure will.

Thanks for listening.

Ok, now back to our regularly scheduled programming: the crash of the housing bubble that the trusted and faith-inspiring press didn't report until after the fact, and the resulting foreclosures, defaults, and recession that the press can be trusted to cover in gruesome detail.

[Guest]

Re: The End of America

Have to agree (to some extent with Brucec42). She sounds like a bit of a yapper. I patiently watched through the entire first movie clip. I think my teeth started grating when she got to the bit (I'm paraphrasing as I'm recalling it from yesterday evening):

< "like, how many of us took civics in college?" > accompanied by copious trendy pulling up of the already short and bunched up sleeves on her jacket. She also repeatedly compliments the audience on their 'courage' to attend her seminar? Yeesh. Go spend some time being politically outspoken in Russia or Kyrgizstan and then come back and talk to me about raw political risk, and courage.

Despite many thought provoking warnings on infringement of civil liberties, this 'author' is not my cup of tea really. She indulged too many specious references to parallels with Weimar, without keeping her critique anchored to more sober analysis.

The increasing financial parallels I accept, but those equating the encroachment of civil liberties by brown shirts fascist paramilitary in Weimar Germany to "Blackrock Mercenaries" now hired to ride roughshod over the American public, provide only a very superficial resemblance to the issues the West faces today from international groups who have demonstrated extremely patient, highly sophisticated civilian bombing and terror operations capability.

If you spend even a liesurely Saturday afternoon compiling a list of international terror events, spanning back 25 years, you begin to see the increasing scale and severity that's accumulating - 09/11 was just one of a long series - and what is very 'untrendy' to observe today is that far away from factional petty American left vs. right squabbling about the significance of terrorism, in the middle east, there is a good deal of continuing vitality and ferment in the 'terrorism industry' - which evidences every interest in prosecuting further such 'unconventional warfare' worldwide in the future.

To leaven this steady diet of dire warnings about America's slide into Fascism, people need to do some serious digging and compilation of the frequency of terror attacks worldwide, mapping frequency and patterns stretching all the way back to 30 years ago. Put it all together on a chronological map and you've got a really nasty issue, which crossed the line into a major issue after 9/11. Screw all the hackneyed left / right political stereotypes that have made this issue so politically tired it's suffering from metal-fatigue.

The fact if you mention 9/11 today you're tagged as a lame-brain leaning on hollow slogans is only public apathy, now masking an issue that's going to grab the world by the throat in the next decade.

The fact is, the 30 year progression that led inexorably to 9/11 is a warm up act, and the split with fundamentalism will grow into a lethal issue for the world in the next 20 years. There will be NO BYSTANDERS in this issue.

This is where I foresake the liberal left in America, although I spring from three generations of their ranks. In their ardor to identify America's slide into fascism, they reduce what is happening in Fundamentalist Islam to a footnote. "If we would just have enough brains to leave them alone, they'd leave us alone - It's just an 'excuse' for the elite in America to stage a silent coup! Duh!" - all of which is delivered to a supposedly eternally stupid American populace with all the conceited proselytizing tones of a seer. Unfortunately these seers happen to also be wrong.

This is the specious liberal indictment of the admittedly nerve rattling slide in America to authoritarianism. Yes indeed! That authoritariansim is a real risk, but I won't sit with people who decry it while misrepresenting it's roots in very real history (and it's a good deal more history than just 9/11!) and then fall coyly mute as to the real causes. I consider their conceits to be highly dangerous. And I really, really don't like an 'author' who continually compliments herself and her audience as to how educated they are while sprinkling her entire conversation with "like, this" and "like, that".

Dear Ms. Wolf, did you really "went to college"?

[metalman]

Re: The End of America

Have to agree (to some extent with Brucec42). She sounds like a bit of a yapper. I patiently watched through the entire first movie clip. I think my teeth started grating when she got to the bit (I'm paraphrasing as I'm recalling it from yesterday evening):

< "like, how many of us took civics in college?" > accompanied by copious trendy pulling up of the already short and bunched up sleeves on her jacket. She also repeatedly compliments the audience on their 'courage' to attend her seminar? Yeesh. Go spend some time being politically outspoken in Russia or Kyrgizstan and then come back and talk to me about raw political risk, and courage.

Despite many thought provoking warnings on infringement of civil liberties, this 'author' is not my cup of tea really. She indulged too many specious references to parallels with Weimar, without keeping her critique anchored to more sober analysis.

The increasing financial parallels I accept, but those equating the encroachment of civil liberties by brown shirts fascist paramilitary in Weimar Germany to "Blackrock Mercenaries" now hired to ride roughshod over the American public, provide only a very superficial resemblance to the issues the West faces today from international groups who have demonstrated extremely patient, highly sophisticated civilian bombing and terror operations capability.

If you spend even a liesurely Saturday afternoon compiling a list of international terror events, spanning back 25 years, you begin to see the increasing scale and severity that's accumulating - 09/11 was just one of a long series - and what is very 'untrendy' to observe today is that far away from factional petty American left vs. right squabbling about the significance of terrorism, in the middle east, there is a good deal of continuing vitality and ferment in the 'terrorism industry' - which evidences every interest in prosecuting further such 'unconventional warfare' worldwide in the future.

To leaven this steady diet of dire warnings about America's slide into Fascism, people need to do some serious digging and compilation of the frequency of terror attacks worldwide, mapping frequency and patterns stretching all the way back to 30 years ago. Put it all together on a chronological map and you've got a really nasty issue, which crossed the line into a major issue after 9/11. Screw all the hackneyed left / right political stereotypes that have made this issue so politically tired it's suffering from metal-fatigue.

The fact if you mention 9/11 today you're tagged as a lame-brain leaning on hollow slogans is only public apathy, now masking an issue that's going to grab the world by the throat in the next decade.

The fact is, the 30 year progression that led inexorably to 9/11 is a warm up act, and the split with fundamentalism will grow into a lethal issue for the world in the next 20 years. There will be NO BYSTANDERS in this issue.

This is where I foresake the liberal left in America, although I spring from three generations of their ranks. In their ardor to identify America's slide into fascism, they reduce what is happening in Fundamentalist Islam to a footnote. "If we would just have enough brains to leave them alone, they'd leave us alone - It's just an 'excuse' for the elite in America to stage a silent coup! Duh!" - all of which is delivered to a supposedly eternally stupid American populace with all the conceited proselytizing tones of a seer. Unfortunately these seers happen to also be wrong.

This is the specious liberal indictment of the admittedly nerve rattling slide in America to authoritarianism. Yes indeed! That authoritariansim is a real risk, but I won't sit with people who decry it while misrepresenting it's roots in very real history (and it's a good deal more history than just 9/11!) and then fall coyly mute as to the real causes. I consider their conceits to be highly dangerous. And I really, really don't like an 'author' who continually compliments herself and her audience as to how educated they are while sprinkling here entire conversation with "like, this" and "like, that".

Dear Ms. Wolf, did you really "went to college"?

i took this as weekend rant and rave stuff. agree with what you say. couple of points...

This is where I foresake the liberal left in America, although I spring from three generations of their ranks. In their ardor to identify America's slide into fascism, they reduce what is happening in Fundamentalist Islam to a footnote. "If we would just have enough brains to leave them alone, they'd leave us alone - It's just an 'excuse' for the elite in America to stage a silent coup! Duh!" - all of which is delivered to a supposedly eternally stupid American populace with all the conceited proselytizing tones of a seer. Unfortunately these seers happen to also be wrong.

isn't this ron paul's thing? last i checked, he's not exactly a lefty.

look, we've had terrible diplomacy and botched foreign policy for decades. all of the arguments you make about the threats of radical islam are the same that were made about the soviet union that drew us into vietna m. escalating threats and so on. domino theory. they turned out to be paper tigers. so are the radical islamists... unless we give them a nuke and put a strongman in power who takes away his peoples' rights and freedoms who then gets thrown out by the radicals on behalf of the people whose rights and freedoms were lost ala pakistan today and iran 30 years ago.

the wise diplomat knows that backwards is forwards. want to radicalize a political faction in any group? attack them. iranian students were nearly there taking over iran before the u.s. invasion of iraq. want to radicalize the chinese government to re-enforce the hard liners in the ccp? make a public statement about the usa backing taiwan... grandstand with tibeten leaders. stupid, stupid, stupid.

these guys will never learn.

how do i feel about rolling back usa freedoms because 30 or 40 years of botched foreign policy and diplomacy made radical groups more radical and anti-american and dangerous? frankly, pissed off. bush and condi rice? a friggin disaster.

i ain't no lefty but i ain't stupid, either.

[Spartacus]

Re: The End of America

If the people who see trouble brewing on the horizon wait until they get thrown in jail, won't that be just a
__ teensy bit __
too late to issue warnings?

Yeesh. Go spend some time being politically outspoken in Russia or Kyrgizstan and then come back and talk to me about raw political risk, and courage.

[World Traveler]

Fred is Right - It's the TREND needs watching

While I don't agree with everything that Naomi says, most of her points are valid. I heard a famous quote once "Fascism will come to America in the quise of National Security".

There have been other periods in America when rights were taken away and later restored, i.e., Abe Lincoln and Habeas Coprpus during Civil War, Palmer Raids during WW I, McCarthy Witch Hunts, Nixon's Excesses.

But none in my opinion have gone as far as the Bush Administration (except maybe the Palmer Raids).

So there is reason for hope, both in historical context and in the pushback we are seeing from both the Right (Ron Paul, Pat Buchanan, etc.) and Left (ACLU, US attorney scandals, etc.).

But as a very famous patriot said "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance".