Almost Daily Rant

Attention Shoppers

Big Sister is watching you. Here's the deal on the latest move by the surveillance state.

 

TSA Backlash

It's good to see the growing backlash against the TSA, an out-of-control organization of 50,000 whose main purpose is to condition the public that being treated as a prisoner is the new normal. In what bizarre fairytale must one live for it to be acceptable for unelected bureaucrats to radiate us with back scatter X-rays, grope our wives and naked scan our children in violation of child pornography laws without any reasonable cause?

The letter to John Holdren, Obama’s Science Czar, signed by PhD’s from the University of California, San Francisco frames the potential health risks well.

Airports and warzones are the proving grounds for surveillance state technologies deployed on the homeland.  A case in point - the backscatter x-ray vans, once used in Afghanistan and Iraq are coming to a city near you. It isn’t hard to imagine the chorus of voices claiming that this technology will increase the effectiveness of drug checkpoints in the US as they scan each vehicle with ease.

Search points, such as the TSA Visible Inter-mobile Prevention and Response (VIPER) operation at a truckstop on I-20 outside of Atlanta are becoming more common. VIPER has now moved into bus stations.

You know this dance. It’s always the Orwellian mantra of terror, drugs and safety. If travelers go along with the airport “nakedizers” without a fuss, expect to see them appear at the entrance of state buildings, schools and stadiums.

Turning larger economic interests against TSA practices will be more effective than in-line heroics. For now, yes you can opt out for a grope, but what happens when you can’t? The only way the TSA gets checked is if big spender travelers make it clear to the world’s largest airlines, hotel chains and tourist destinations that the TSA is a barrier between them and their money.

“Dear Disney/Hilton/Marriott/Southwest/American/Continental/City Chamber of Commerce etc. I was planning a trip this year, but will not expose my family to the TSA’s potentially hazardous and tyrannical practices and will instead be content to spend my money locally...”

Ministry of (Mis)Information

"First they ignore you, then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win." --  Mahatma Gandhi

As if a 24/7 blitz of corporate news propaganda was not enough for the masses, the State Department has launched a site condemning "conspiracy theories". Perhaps Bagdad Bob has been tasked with running the site?

The US State Department’s America.gov web site, which purports to engage international audiences on issues of foreign policy, society and values, has dedicated a special section to conspiracy theories and misinformation, claiming:

“Conspiracy theories exist in the realm of myth, where imaginations run wild, fears trump facts, and evidence is ignored. As a superpower, the United States is often cast as a villain in these dramas.” (Read full article)

Police State 4 - The Rise of FEMA

The Story of Your Enslavement

Unconstitutional Patriot Act Renewal Hidden in Jobs Bill

Fairly unnoticed, Congress has hidden a provision for renewing the unconstitutional Patriot Act in the recent Jobs Bill. Benjamin Franklin warned us that those who would trade freedom for (the illusion) of security deserve neither.

(a) USA PATRIOT IMPROVEMENT AND REAUTHORIZATIONACTOF2005. Section 102(b)(1) of the USA PATRIOT Improvement and Reauthorization Act of 2005 (Public Law 109–177; 50 U.S.C. 1805 note, 50 U.S.C. 1861 note, and 50 U.S.C. 1862 note) is amended by striking ‘‘February 28, 2010’’ and inserting ‘‘December 31, 2010’’

I've linked a petition to the Senate here.

Whereas: Giving up Liberty for Security is a false choice, and causes us to lose both; and

Whereas: American citizens are entitled to 4th Amendment protections against secret searches, National Security Letters, and warrantless searches and wiretaps; and

Whereas: Law enforcement and national security can adequately do their jobs without accessing the private information of innocent, law-abiding citizens; and

Whereas: The misnamed Patriot Act violates our constitutional rights and takes away the very freedom we are claiming to protect from terrorists; and

Whereas: The Patriot Act gives too much power, shrouded in too much secrecy, to government agencies;

Therefore: I urge you to uphold your oath to the Constitution and your duty to protect the rights of your constituents by voting and working for the defeat of the Patriot Act at every opportunity.

Executive Orders 12425 and 13528

On January 11^th, President Obama signed Executive Order 13528 to “Synchronize and integrate” state and Federal military forces. This executive order builds on the John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, which nullified the Posse Comitatus Act, which formerly prohibited the Federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The 2007 Act gives the President control over each state’s National Guard over the objections of the state governor and its citizens, and Executive Order 13528 provides a blueprint for coordinating forces through a “Council of Governors” chosen by the President.

In the wake of the Flight 253 provocation, over-hyped terrorism panics, and last year's Big Pharma and media-engineered hysteria over the H1N1 flu pandemic, President Barack Obama signed Executive Order 13528 on January 11.

Among other things, the Executive Order (EO) established a Council of Governors, an "advisory panel" chosen by the President that will rubber-stamp long-sought-after Pentagon contingency plans to seize control of state National Guard forces in the event of a "national emergency."

According to the White House press release, the ten member, bipartisan Council was created "to strengthen further the partnership between the Federal Government and State Governments to protect our Nation against all types of hazards." (Read Full Article)

President Obama, also recently transformed Executive Order 12425, as John Whitefield describes, “from a document that from a document that constitutionally limits the International Criminal Police Organization's (Interpol) activities domestically to one that establishes it as an autonomous police agency within the U.S.”

Over the course of his first year in office, Barack Obama has shown himself to be a skillful and savvy politician, saying the things Americans want to hear while stealthily and inexorably moving forward the government's agenda of centralized power. For example, in one breath, Obama pays lip service to the need for greater transparency in government, while in another, he issues an executive order that will result in even more government secrecy.

He is aided in this Machiavellian mindset by a trusting populace inclined to take him at his word and a mainstream media seemingly loath to criticize him or scrutinize his actions too closely. A perfect example of this is the media's relative lack of scrutiny over Obama's recent transformation of Executive Order (EO) 12425 from a document that constitutionally limits the International Criminal Police Organization's (Interpol) activities domestically to one that establishes it as an autonomous police agency within the U.S. (Read Full Article)

 

Another Loss for Due Process of Law

Due process of law was delt a major blow by the courts this week in the War on Liberty. Do you think you're still free like they did?

Reader Walter passed along this distressing sighting from Chris Floyd’s blog. American civil liberties were gutted last week, and the media failed to take note of it.

The development? If the president or one of his subordinates declares someone to be an “enemy combatant” (the 21st century version of “enemy of the state”) he is denied any protection of the law. So any trouble-maker (which means anyone) can be whisked away, incarcerated, tortured, “disappeared,” you name it. Floyd’s commentary:

After hearing passionate arguments from the Obama Administration, the Supreme Court acquiesced to the president’s fervent request and, in a one-line ruling, let stand a lower court decision that declared torture an ordinary, expected consequence of military detention, while introducing a shocking new precedent for all future courts to follow: anyone who is arbitrarily declared a “suspected enemy combatant” by the president or his designated minions is no longer a “person.” They will simply cease to exist as a legal entity. They will have no inherent rights, no human rights, no legal standing whatsoever — save whatever modicum of process the government arbitrarily deigns to grant them from time to time, with its ever-shifting tribunals and show trials (Read Full Article).

Americans Oblivious to How Fascist We've Become

I’ve linked an article below on how Americans are as blind to fascism as the citizens of Nazi- era Germany. Before getting into the cognitive dissonance that contributes to the gradual acceptance of the previously unacceptable, I’ve recapped Naomi Wolf’s 10 steps of how you close an open society with some updated footnote examples of each step as a reminder.

Sadly, people look for concertina wire fences and check points, and miss the obvious signs of the soft fascism that is all around us:

1. Create a terrifying internal and external enemy which makes the population more willing to accept restrictions on freedom.

a.    Hitler’s communist threat and the tenuous link to the Reichstag fire is our 911, the “Pearl Harbor like event” as laid out in the PNAC documents.

b.   Similar to the Patriot Act, Germany passed the Enabling Act which replaced constitutional law with open-ended state of emergency.

2.    Create a gulag – a prison system outside the rule of law.

a.    Surprise, Obama is continuing the Bush legacy of extraordinary rendition. More Change.

b.   At first people support these systems because they fear terrorists, the “scary brown people” you are propagandized to fear. Eventually the net widens as it did in Germany, where the “Communist terrorists” soon became the Jews, the civil society leaders, journalists and opposition leaders with views outside the party line.

c.    Mussolini and Stalin set up military tribunals which bypass the judicial system, similar to the proposed National Security Court.

d.   Eventually the “special courts” put pressure on the regular courts and the standard judicial system.

3.    Develop a thug caste or homeland army.

a. Fascism grows from the gutter up and so we “need a Civilian Defense Force that is just as strong, just as powerful…” 

b.   The Explorers program, an affiliate of the Boy Scouts takes direction from the Department of Homeland Security and considers veterans and gun owners as the biggest threat.

4.    Set up an internal surveillance system.

a.    The state encourages neighbors to spy on neighbors, and children are encouraged to snitch in the TIPS program.

b.   Surveillance is always cast as being for national security but the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

5.    Harass citizen’s groups.

6.    Arbitrarily detain and release people.

a.    The 2006 Military Commissions Act established that the President can declare you an enemy combatant and hold you indefinitely without trial without telling you why you are being detained.

b.   TSA watch list has over 1M people on it.

c.    People become fearful of going to peaceful demonstrations and rallies, which have been reduced to isolated “free speech areas”.

d.   Do you support the Constitution and Bill of Rights and speak out against the wars? You may be on the list.

7.    Target key individuals.

a.    Mussolini and Goebbels purged academics, but in the modern version academic grants and bribes are more effective.

b.   The TSA watch list has over 1M people on it.

8.    Control the press

a.    Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents claiming that terrorists were about to attack the nation. The reason humble, independent sites like this one exists is because the lion's share of media companies are owned by a handful of conglomerates.

9.    Dissent equals treason

a.    In Stalin’s Soviet Union, dissidents were “enemies of the people”. (“You’re either with us or against us.”)

b.   National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy “November Traitors”.

10.   Suspend the rule of law

a.    The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, nullified the Posse Comitatus Act, which formerly prohibited the Federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The 2007 Act gives the President control over each state’s National Guard over the objections of the state governor and citizens.

b.   National Security Directive 51, would effectively make the President a dictator during times of "national emergency" though does not describe what constitutes a national emergency.

Psychological research demonstrates that large-scale dramatic change can escape attention when the change is unsuspected, unannounced, and agents causing the change act as if nothing is different. Two areasof this cognitive study are “change blindness” and “inattentional blindness.”  When we include consideration of “cognitive dissonance,” the rejection of facts when they conflict with important beliefs, we can approach an explanation of how educated citizens could accept fascism when it was unsuspected, unannounced, and the responsible agents fraudulently represented the new government as no different from the old. Cognitive dissonance would deter many people to accept the new reality, even when the facts were clear.

The definition of “fascism” has some academic variance, but is essentially collusion among corporatocracy, authoritarian government, and controlled media and education. This “leadership” is only possible with a nationalistic public accepting policies of war, empire, and limited civil and political rights.

 

Yes, I am making the argument that the US is no longer a constitutinal republic, but a fascist regime that Americans are struggling with cognitive dissonance, change blindness, and inattentional blindness to recognize. Let’s look to history before we consider the US of the present and if we are afflicted with a kind of cognitive blindness to American fascism.

 

Fascism in Germany

Historically in Nazi Germany, Hitler wrote of the power of the “Big Lie”: 

 

"All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so are brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying. These people know only too well how to use falsehood for the basest purposes."

- Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf , vol.1, ch. 10, 1925 

 

This psychological factor, combined with German resentment against blame and payment for WW1, the Nazi partial implementation of monetary reform that created full employment and a successful economy in the middle of the Great Depression, set a frame of relative trust in government. Dissent was “re-educated” or crushed in work camps, propaganda and education lauded genuine economic infrastructure improvement parallel to military build-up. The downfall was the result of a critical mass of the public believing their government’s overall trustworthiness, and subsequently their story that the invasion of Poland was defensiveagainst Germany being attacked. Germany framed their War of Aggression as their “War to save Europe;” a noble national defense against Britain and France's determination to keep Germany weak and non-competitive to their goals for imperialistic global domination, and against the rise of Bolshevism in Russia. (Read Full Article)

Thoughts on Camp FEMA

Unfortunately, any mention of FEMA camps will tend to land you in the Tin Foil isolation ward, especially after mainstream conservative mouthpiece Glenn Beck supposedly debunked the idea of a massive network of internment centers in the US. Nonetheless, actions in the form of history, current legislation and on-going construction, speak louder than any words. The documentary Camp FEMA outlines how the erosion of civil liberties in the wake of the 911 fear society could culminate in massive, preemptive detention as it already has when the US detained Japanese Americans during the WWII scare.

It should be apparent by now to everyone that the massive security and surveillance apparatus is more about monitoring the domestic population, especially in times of "national emergencies" than a supposed external threat. Surveillance is always cast as being for national security but the true function in any closing society is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

The trail of legislation that led us here is well-known in civil Libertarian circles, but worth repeating time and time again. The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007, nullified the Posse Comitatus Act, which formerly prohibited the Federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The 2007 Act gives the President control over each state’s National Guard over the objections of the state governor and citizens. The US Northern Command (NORTHCOM) deployment of the 3rd Infantry Division's 1st Combat Brigade Team (BCT) is currently deployed on U.S. soil for "civil unrest" and "crowd control" duties. Prior to deployment on the homeland, the 1st BCT spent 35 of the last 60 months in Iraq, carrying out house-to-house raids and engaging in close-quarters combat.

The 2006 Military Commissions Act established that the President can declare you an enemy combatant and hold you indefinitely without trial without telling you why you are being detained. The Military Commissions Act eliminates your ability to petition for a writ of habeas corpus in the event that you are declared an enemy combatant, which in the future as in the past, could be anyone who is a political opponent of the established regime.   

Keep in mind the TSA watch list has over 1M people on it – do you really believe even half are real threats? National Security Presidential Directive 51, would effectively make the President a dictator during times of "national emergency" though does not describe what constitutes a national emergency. The HR645 National Emergency Centers Act would direct the Secretary of Homeland Security to establish national emergency centers on military installations.  

You cannot pretend to live in an open society when you are openly policed by the military and the preventive detention is a looming possibility, especially in an era of perpetual crisis.

 

Paul Craig Roberts - US Joins Ranks of Failed States

Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury, pulls no punches.

The US has every characteristic of a failed state.

The US government’s current operating budget is dependent on foreign financing and money creation.

Too politically weak to be able to advance its interests through diplomacy, the US relies on terrorismand military aggression.

Costs are out of control, and priorities are skewed in the interest of rich organized interest groups at the expense of the vast majority of citizens. For example, war at all cost, which enriches the armaments industry, the officer corps and the financial firms that handle the war’s financing, takes precedence over the needs of American citizens. There is no money to provide the uninsured with health care, but Pentagon officials have told the Defense Appropriations Subcommittee in the House that every gallon of gasoline delivered to US troops in Afghanistan costs American taxpayers $400. (Read Full Article) 

The Lives of Others

With the advent of fusion centers, which allow the military to share information with civilian agencies along with private contractors, the US once a model for an open society, is increasingly becoming a surveillance society. Even as economic conditions worsen, there will continue to be plenty of money for tracking and monitoring the activities of the population.  "The Lives of Others", which portrayed the silencing of a population in East Germany under the watchful eye of the Stasi, was a privacy paradise compared to what we're facing with the technology at hand.

 

Speaking at San Francisco's Commonwealth Club September 15, Director of National Intelligence Admiral Dennis C. Blair, disclosedthat the current annual budget for the 16 agency U.S. "Intelligence Community" (IC) clocks-in at $75 billion and employs some 200,000 operatives world-wide, including private contractors.

In unveiling an unclassified version of the National Intelligence Strategy (NIS), Blair asserts he is seeking to break down "this old distinction between military and nonmilitary intelligence," stating that the "traditional fault line" separating secretive military programs from overall intelligence activities "is no longer relevant."

As if to emphasize the sweeping nature of Blair's remarks, Federal Computer Week reportedSeptember 17 that "some non-federal officials with the necessary clearances who work at intelligence fusion centers around the country will soon have limited access to classified terrorism-related information that resides in the Defense Department's classified network." According to the publication:

Under the program, authorized state, local or tribal officials will be able to access pre-approved data on the Secret Internet Protocol Router Network. However, they won't have the ability to upload data or edit existing content, officials said. They also will not have access to all classified information, only the information that federal officials make available to them.

The non-federal officials will get access via the Homeland Security department's secret-level Homeland Security Data Network. That network is currently deployed at 27 of the more than 70 fusion centers located around the country, according to DHS. Officials from different levels of government share homeland security-related information through the fusion centers. (Ben Bain, "DOD opens some classified information to non-federal officials," Federal Computer Week, September 17, 2009) (Continue - Read Full Article)

Crowd Swarming

The arrests of two men accused of using cell phones and Twitter to direct movements of protesters during the G20 Summit in Pittsburgh brings up a number of major 1st Amendment issues, but the killer irony is how the same alternative media techniques were used in US-backed coups the past decade in Serbia, Georgia and Ukraine during the Color Revolutions.

When the shoe is on the other foot, it is perfectly OK to use RAND think tank style information wars where agent provocateurs use Internet chat rooms, blog sites and cell texting for crowd swarming, with movements guided by GPS satellite images and CNN prepositioned to catch the "protesters".

A New York-based anarchist has been arrested by the FBIand charged with hindering prosecution after he allegedly used the social networkingsite Twitter to help protesters at the G20summit in Pittsburgh evade the police.

Elliot Madison, 41, from Queens, had his home raided and was put on $30,000 (£19,000) bail after he and Michael Wallschlaeger, 46, were tracked to the Carefree Inn motel in Pittsburgh during the summit on 24 and 25 September.

The pair were found sitting in front of a bank of laptops and emergency frequency radio scanners. They were wearing headphones and microphones and had many maps and contact numbers in the room.(Full Article)

Free Speech has no Place in Transnationalism

This is what free speech looks like under transnational totalitarianism. Clearly the well-spoken man with the bull horn and peacefully-assembling protesters are threats and must be put down.

What would our founding fathers think of the military policing and ear-piercing crowd dispersion tools such as LRAD? Contrary to what you think you know about your rights, you have the right to assemble in free speech zones if you have a permit, pay taxes, do as the G20 dictates and be quiet.

Stepping back to the Paris Peace Talks in 1919, what sunk Woodrow Wilson's grand designs for the League of Nations, a precursor to the UN with an analogy to the current G20 push, is the pesky Constitution which required 2/3rds Senate approval for any foreign treaty as spelled out in Article II, Section II.

I wonder how effective our Senate will be in checking the "new economic order" where participating nations agreed to support "counter-cyclical stimulus" (Read: continuing to try and sustain what is economically unsustainable at the behest of international oligarchs and financial cartels) and other measures that arise out of G20 meetings?

As we know, it is not the formal treaties that move the earth in these transnational forums, but the informal backroom agreements, born from think tanks and NGOs, that impose agendas of their sponsors without any oversight of the people’s representatives of each sovereign nation. There are no checks and balances between the G20 agreements and the unchecked powers of the major central banks and other transnational institutions that flank Congress, Parliament and other representative bodies alike.

Martial Law in Response to Swine Flu

According to the CDC, Massachusetts, Florida, Iowa, North Carolina and Washington have  have implemented legal actions in response to the H1N1 virus.

A "pandemic response bill" currently making its way through the Massachusetts state legislature would allow authorities to forcefully quarantine citizens in the event of a health emergency, compel health providers to vaccinate citizens, authorize forceful entry into private dwellings and destruction of citizen property and impose fines on citizens for noncompliance.

If citizens refuse to comply with isolation or quarantine orders in the event of a health emergency, they may be imprisoned for up to 30 days and fined $1,000 per day that the violation continues...(Full Article).

CyberTyranny Act Take 2

Shelly Roche dissects the modified Cyber Tyranny Act, another offensive in the War on Internet.

H1N1 Motives

An objective person can only come to a handful of conclusions given the rampant fear mongering over the swine flu ranging from pharmaceutical profiteering to more sinister motives.

Every year, garden variety flu kills between 250,000 to 500,000 people worldwide and 36,000 people in the US so the numbers attributed to H1N1 so do not justify the response.

As it stands, NORTHCOM is preparing for a fully militarized vaccination campaign which is nothing less than a condition of martial law (Full Article Here and collection of related articles here).

According to CNN, the Pentagon is "to establish regional teams of military personnel to assist civilian authorities in the event of a significant outbreak of the H1N1 virus this fall, according to Defense Department officials."

"The proposal is awaiting final approval from Defense Secretary Robert Gates. The officials would not be identified because the proposal from U.S. Northern Command's Gen. Victor Renuart has not been approved by the secretary.

The plan calls for military task forces to work in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency. There is no final decision on how the military effort would be manned, but one source said it would likely include personnel from all branches of the military.

…

The implications are far-reaching. The decision points towards the militarization of civilian institutions, including law enforcement and public health. A nationwide vaccination program is already planned for the Fall. The pharmaceutical industry is slated to deliver 160 million vaccine doses by the Fall, enough doses to vaccinate more than half of America's population. 

The Pentagon is already planning on the number of troops to be deployed,. with a view to supporting a mass vaccinaiton program. It is worth noting that this involvement of the military is not being decided by the President, but by the Secretary of Defense, which suggests that the Pentagon is, in a key issue of of national interest, overriding the President and Commander in Chief. The US Congress has not been consulted on the issue. 

…

Much of the groundwork for the intervention of the military has already been established. There are indications that these "regional teams" have already been established under USNORTHCOM, which has been involved in preparedness training and planning in the case of a flu pandemic.

Within the broader framework of "Disaster Relief", Northern Command has, in the course of the last two years, defined a mandate in the eventuality of a public health emergency or a flu pandemic. The emphasis is on the militarization of public health whereby NORTHCOM would oversee the activities of civilian institutions involved in health related services.

One of the obvious questions is whether or not the vaccines will be mandatory.

With your safety clearly in mind, the US government has given flu vaccine companies legal immunity. Little surprise given that biotech companies are some of the most well-connected politically. The well-known case in point is Donald Rumsfeld, ex-chairman of Gilead Sciences, patent holder for Tamiflu.

  

The US Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has just signed a decree granting vaccine makers total legal immunity from any lawsuits that result from any new “Swine Flu” vaccine. Moreover, the $7 billion US Government fast-track program to rush vaccines onto the market in time for the Autumn flu season is being done without even normal safety testing. Is there another agenda at work in the official WHO hysteria campaign to declare so-called H1N1 a pandemic virus threat?

First and foremost, neither the WHO nor the CDC or any other scientific body has demonstrated required scientific proof for the existence of the alleged H1N1 Influenza A new virus, a proof which requires such a virus to be scientifically isolated, characterized and photographed with an electron microscope—the scientifically accepted standard procedure. Yet it is being used as the basis for declaring a global “pandemic” threat.

The current official panic campaign over alleged Swine Flu danger is rapidly taking on the dimensions of a George Orwell science fiction novel. The document signed by Sebelius grants immunity to those making a swine flu vaccine, under the provisions of a 2006 law for public health emergencies.

Consider the allegations towards Baxter which allegedly crossed bird flu with a shipment of conventional flu vaccine and the steps the US government has taken to justify forced vaccinations.

Mandatory vaccination using untested vaccines violate the principles of the Nuremburg Code and Declaration of Helsinki.

Viennese journalist Jane Burgermeister filed documents with the Vienna prosecutor’s office on April 8th, 2009 accusing vaccine producer Baxter AG, its US parent, Baxter International, and Avir Green Hills Biotechnology of intentionally contaminating a 72-kilogram shipment of conventional flu vaccine with live H5N1 (bird flu) virus.

The shipment was made in February, 2009 from Baxter’s Vienna facility to 16 laboratories in Slovenia, Czech Republic, Germany, and Austria, and the contamination was discovered by Czech sub-contractors when ferrets died under routine testing with the vaccine. Burgermeister argues that Baxter’s high level biosafety protocols makes accidental contamination of the entire shipment impossible, and accuses Baxter of bioterrorism, stating that the company intended to spark a bird flu pandemic for which its bird flu vaccine would be needed. Burgermeister’s blog, which documents her filing is located here, and a radio interview can be found here.

Burgermeister takes her accusations further, however. She accuses the Austrian Government, in particular Health Minister Alois Stoger, of colluding with the WHO and the EU by giving power, under Austria’s Influenza Pandemic Plan of 2005, to force vaccinations on Austrian citizens in the event of a bird flu pandemic. She has produced an English-language version of her documents here , with specific reference to US law. This version of the documents alleges that US state governments, through the Model State Emergency Health Powers Act, (available here), enacted in 38 states, and the US Federal Government, through the National Security Presidential Directive 51and the Homeland Security Presidential Directive 20together ( referenced here)have likewise taken on themselves the power to force vaccinations in the event of a national pandemic, among other powers.

Burgermeister raises an interesting point in her argument against this appropriation of the power to force  vaccinations. She brings up the Nuremberg Trials, and in particular, the “Doctor’s Trials”(US v. Karl Brandt, et al.)(see here ), in which Nazi doctors were convicted of war crimes, including forced administration of experimental vaccines. Burgermeister argues that forced vaccinations using vaccines of unproven safety violate the principles of the Nuremberg Codeand Declaration of Helsinki, which resulted from the Nuremberg Trials. The principles set forward in the Nuremberg Code formed the basis for US Federal regulation (45 CFR §46 )governing government and federally-funded research.

Burgermeister alleges that bird and swine flu vaccines are untested and unproven. If this is the case and these vaccines are therefore experimental, mandatory vaccination would violate the principles of the Nuremberg Code. Given this experimental nature, administration of the vaccines could be characterized as research, and if conducted using Federal employees or funding, would also be subject to informed consent requirements under 45 CFR §46.116.

So what’s in a regular flu shot?

Egg proteins: including avian contaminant viruses

Gelatin: known to cause allergic reactions and anaphylaxis are usually associated with sensitivity to egg or gelatin

Polysorbate 80 (Tween80™): can cause severe allergic reactions, including anaphylaxis

Formaldehyde: known carcinogen

Triton X100: a strong detergent

Sucrose: table sugar

Resin: known to cause allergic reactions

Gentamycin: an antibiotic

Thimerosal: mercury is still in multidose flu shot vials

What’s in the new swine flu shot?

A new report from a WHO advisory group predicts that global production of vaccine for the novel H1N1 influenza virus could be as much as 4.9 billon doses a year, far higher than previous estimates. The report says that vaccine makers are expected to produce about 780 million doses of seasonal flu vaccine for the northern hemisphere's 2008-09 flu season for the

June 12 Announcement: The new H1N1 (swine flu) vaccine is going to be made by Novartis. It will probably be made in PER.C6 cells (human retina cells) and contain MF59, a potentially debilitating adjuvant.  MF-59 is an oil-based adjuvant primarily composed of squalene, Tween 80 and Span85. All oil adjuvants injected into rats were found toxic. All rats developed an MS-like disease that left them crippled, dragging their paralyzed hindquarters across their cages.

Squalene caused severe arthritis (3 on scale of 4). Squalene in humans at 10-20 ppb (parts per billion) lead to severe immune responses, such as autoimmune arthritis and lupus. Reference: Kenney, RT. Edleman, R. "Survey of human-use adjuvants." Expert Review of Vaccines. 2 (2003) p171. Reference: Matsumoto, Gary. Vaccine A: The Covert Government Experiment That’s Killing Our Soldiers and Why GI’s Are Only the First Victims of this Vaccine. New York: Basic Books. p54.

Federal health officials will probably recommend that most Americans get three flu shots this fall: one regular flu shot and two doses of any vaccine made against the new swine flu strain. Reference: Washington Post, Wednesday, May 6, 2009

HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius is talking to school superintendents around the country, urging them to spend the summer planning what to do if the government decides it needs their buildings for mass vaccinations and vaccinating kids first. Reference: CBS News, June 12, 2009.

War on Internet

Freedom of thought and expression through an open medium is the biggest threat to any closed society. And there is no bigger threat to the 24x7 bombardment of infotainment, pundit-speak and propaganda of the corporate media than the Internet.

The proposed Cyber Security Act of 2009, according to Section 18 of S.773 gives the President the right to, “declare a cybersecurity emergency and order the limitation or shutdown of Internet traffic to and from any compromised Federal Government or United States critical infrastructure information system or network.”

 

 

So what is a “critical infrastructure information system or network”?

 

 

The term ‘Federal Government and United States critical infrastructure information systems and networks’ includes State, local, and nongovernmental information systems and networks in the United States designated by the President as critical infrastructure information systems and networks.

 

 

In other words, any network, host, server, mobile device, website, blog, community board or forum that the President wants to unplug. Remember, this isn’t necessarily about the current Administration. Legislation or Executive Orders signed can lay dormant for years for more sinister purposes beyond the already undemocratic effects of suppressed speech.

 

 

As more applications are centralized through cloud computing and more security breaches inevitably occur, no doubt each incident will be conveniently publicized to yet again create a sense of the imminent threat or crisis that requires the government to protect us.

 

 

Making matters worse is the current push to completely neuter or spade the alternative media. Obama’s choice to head the Orwellian-sounding White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs should worry any advocate of free speech.

 

When it comes to the First Amendment, Team Obama believes in Global Chilling.

Cass Sunstein, a Harvard Law professor who has been appointed to a shadowy post that will grant him powers that are merely mind-boggling, explicitly supports using the courts to impose a "chilling effect" on speech that might hurt someone's feelings. He thinks that the bloggers have been rampaging out of control and that new laws need to be written to corral them.

Advance copies of Sunstein's new book, "On Rumors: How Falsehoods Spread, Why We Believe Them, What Can Be Done," have gone out to reviewers ahead of its September publication date, but considering the prominence with which Sunstein is about to be endowed, his worrying views are fair game now. Sunstein is President Obama's choice to head the White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs. It's the bland titles that should scare you the most (cont.).

Agribusiness, Big Pharma and Flu Panics

The swine flu panic shows us that political responses and overreaction to a supposed crisis should be of more concern to the average citizen than the crises itself. Though much has been made over Rahm Emanuel’s statement to, “never let a series crisis go to waste”, one needs only look back as far as the last administration to see that practice carried out with the wholesale destruction of civil liberties in the Patriot Act after 911 created a mass fear society overnight paving the way for a homeland security complex.

 

One foreseeable outcome of the Flu Panic of 2009 is to create scapegoats out of small family farms at the benefit of agribusiness giants by imposing animal ID tagging and other punitive measures. Once again, the truth trail leads us past the left-right puppet paradigm to the corporate money power base.

Flying Pigs, Tamiflu and Factory Farms by F. William Engdahl

If we are to believe what our trusted international media report, the world is on the brink of a global pandemic outbreak of a new deadly strain of flu, H1N1 as it has been labelled, or more popularly, Swine Flu. As the story goes, the outbreak of the deadly flu was first discovered in Mexico. According to press reports, after several days, headlines reported as many as perhaps 150 deaths in Mexico were believed caused by this virulent people-killing pig virus that has spread to humans and now is allegedly being further spread from human to human. Cases were being reported hourly from Canada to Spain and beyond. The only thing wrong with this story is that it is largely based on lies, hype and coverup of possible real causes of Mexican deaths.

One website, revealingly named Swine Flu Vaccine, reports the alarming news, ‘One out of every five residents of Mexico's most populous city wore masks to protect themselves against the virus as Mexico City seems to be the epicenter of the outbreak. As many as 103 deaths have been attributed to the swine flu so far with many more feared to be on the horizon. The health department of Mexico said an additional 1,614 reported cases have been documented.’ We are told that the H1N1 ‘shares genetic material from human, avian and swine influenza viruses.’1

Airports around the world have installed passenger temperature scans to identify anyone with above normal body temperature as possible suspect for swine flu. Travel to Mexico has collapsed. Sales of flu drugs, above all Tamiflu from Roche Inc., have exploded in days. People have stopped buying pork fearing certain death. The World Health Organization has declared ‘a public health emergency of international concern,’ defined by them as ‘an occurrence or imminent threat of illness or health conditions caused by bioterrorism, epidemic or pandemic disease, or highly fatal infectious agents or toxins that pose serious risk to a significant number of people.’2

What are the symptoms of this purported Swine Flu? That’s not at all clear according to virologists and public health experts. They say Swine Flu symptoms are relatively general and nonspecific. ‘So many different things can cause these symptoms. it is a dilemma,’ says one doctor interviewed by CNN. ‘There is not a perfect test right now to let a doctor know that a person has the Swine Flu.’ It has been noted that most individuals with Swine Flu had an early onset of fever. Also it was common to see dizziness, body aches and vomiting in addition to the common sneezing, headache and other cold symptoms. These are symptoms so general as to say nothing.

The US Government’s Center for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta states on its official website, ‘Swine Influenza (swine flu) is a respiratory disease of pigs caused by type A influenza viruses that causes regular outbreaks in pigs. People do not normally get swine flu, but human infections can and do happen. Swine flu viruses have been reported to spread from person-to-person, but in the past, this transmission was limited and not sustained beyond three people.’ Nonetheless they add, ‘CDC has determined that this swine influenza A (H1N1) virus is contagious and is spreading from human to human. However, at this time, it is not known how easily the virus spreads between people.’3

How many media that have grabbed on the headline ‘suspected case of Swine Flu’ in recent days bother to double check with the local health authorities to ask some basic questions? For example, the number of confirmed cases of H1N1 and their location? The number of deaths confirmed to have resulted from H1N1? Dates of both? Number of suspected cases and of suspected deaths related to the Swine Flu disease?

Some known facts

According to Biosurveillance, itself part of Veratect, a US Pentagon and Government-linked epidemic reporting center, on April 6, 2009 local health officials declared a health alert due to a respiratory disease outbreak in La Gloria, Perote Municipality, Veracruz State, Mexico. 

They reported, ‘Sources characterized the event as a ‘strange’ outbreak of acute respiratory infection, which led to bronchial pneumonia in some pediatric cases. According to a local resident, symptoms included fever, severe cough, and large amounts of phlegm. Health officials recorded 400 cases that sought medical treatment in the last week in La Gloria, which has a population of 3,000; officials indicated that 60% of the town’s population (approximately 1,800 cases) has been affected. No precise timeframe was provided, but sources reported that a local official had been seeking health assistance for the town since February.’ What they later say is ‘strange’ is not the form of the illness but the time of year as most  flu cases occur in Mexico in the period October to February.

The report went on to note, ‘Residents claimed that three pediatric cases, all under two years of age, died from the outbreak. However, health officials stated that there was no direct link between the pediatric deaths and the outbreak; they stated the three fatal cases were "isolated" and "not related" to each other.’

Then, most revealingly, the aspect of the story which has been largely ignored by major media, they reported, ‘Residents believed the outbreak had been caused by contamination from pig breeding farms located in the area. They believed that the farms, operated by Granjas Carroll, polluted the atmosphere and local water bodies, which in turn led to the disease outbreak. According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to "flu." However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’4

Since the dawn of American ‘agribusiness,’ a project initiated with funding by the Rockefeller Foundation in the 1950s to turn farming into a pure profit maximization business, US pig or hog production has been transformed into a highly efficient, mass production industrialized enterprise from birth to slaughter. Pigs are caged in what are called Factory Farms, industrial concentrations which are run with the efficiency of a Dachau or Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. They are all conceived by artificial insemination and once born, are regularly injected with antibiotics, not because of illnesses which abound in the hyper-crowded growing pens, but in order to make them grow and add weight faster. Turn around time to slaughter is a profit factor of highest priority. The entire operation is vertically integrated from conception to slaughter to transport distribution to supermarket.

Granjas Carroll de Mexico (GCM) happens to be such a Factory Farm concentration facility for hogs. In 2008 they produced almost one million factory hogs, 950,000 according to their own statistics. GCM is a joint venture operation owned 50% by the world’s largest pig producing industrial company, Smithfield Foods of Virginia.5 The pigs are grown in a tiny rural area of Mexico, a member of the North American Free Trade Agreement, and primarily trucked across the border to supermarkets in the USA, under the Smithfields’ family of labels. Most American consumers have no idea where the meat was raised. 

Now the story becomes interesting.

Manure Lagoons and other playing fields

The Times of London interviewed the mother of 4-year-old Edgar Hernandez of La Gloria in Veracruz, the location of the giant Smithfield Foods hog production facility. Their local reporter notes, ‘Edgar Hernández plays among the dogs and goats that roam through the streets, seemingly unaware that the swine flu he contracted a few weeks ago — the first known case — has almost brought his country to a standstill and put the rest of the world on alert. ‘I feel great,’ the five-year-old boy said. ‘But I had a headache and a sore throat and a fever for a while. I had to lay down in bed.’’

The reporters add, ‘It was confirmed on Monday (April 27 2009-w.e.) that Edgar was the first known sufferer of swine flu, a revelation that has put La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons’ at the centre of a global race to find how this new and deadly strain of swine flu emerged.’ 6

That’s quite interesting. They speak of ‘La Gloria and its surrounding factory pig farms and ‘manure lagoons.’ Presumably the manure lagoons around the LaGloria factory pig farm of Smithfield Foods are the waste dumping place for the feces and urine waste from at least 950,000 pigs a year that pass through the facility. The Smithfield’s Mexico joint venture, Norson, states that alone they slaughter 2,300 pigs daily. That’s a lot. It gives an idea of the volumes of pig waste involved in the concentration facility at La Gloria.

Significantly, according to the Times reporters, ‘residents of La Gloria have been complaining since March that the odour from Granjas Carroll’s pig waste was causing severe respiratory infections. They held a demonstration this month at which they carried signs of pigs crossed with an X and marked with the word peligro (danger).’7 There have been calls to exhume the bodies of the children who died of pneumonia so that they could be tested. The state legislature of Veracruz has demanded that Smithfield’s Granjas Carroll release documents about its waste-handling practices. Smithfield Foods reportedly declined to comment on the request, saying that it would ‘not respond to rumours.’8

A research compilation by Ed Harris reported, ‘According to residents, the company denied responsibility for the outbreak and attributed the cases to ‘flu.’ However, a municipal health official stated that preliminary investigations indicated that the disease vector was a type of fly that reproduces in pig waste and that the outbreak was linked to the pig farms.’9 That would imply that the entire Swine Flu scare might have originated from the PR spin doctors of the world’s largest industrial pig factory farm operation, Smithfield Foods.

The Vera Cruz-based newspaper La Marcha blames Smithfield’s Granjos Carroll for the outbreak, highlighting inadequate treatment of massive quantities of animal waste from hog production.10

Understandably the company is perhaps more than a bit uncomfortable with the sudden attention. The company, which supplies the McDonald’s and Subway fast-food chains, was fined $12.3 million in the United States 1997 for violating the Clean Water Act. Perhaps they are in a remote tiny Mexican rural area enjoying a relatively lax regulatory climate where they need not worry about being cited for violations of any Clean Water Act.

Factory Farms as toxic concentrations

At the very least the driving force for giant industrial agribusiness outsourcing of facilities to third world sites such as Veracruz, Mexico has more to do with further cost reduction and lack of health and safety scrutiny than it does with improving the health and safety quality of the food end product. It has been widely documented and subject of US Congressional reports that large-scale indoor animal production facilities such as that of Granjos Carroll are notorious breeding grounds for toxic pathogens.

A recent report by the US Pew Foundation in cooperation with the Johns Hopkins School of Public Health notes, ‘the method of producing food animals in the United States has changed from the extensive system of small and medium-sized farms owned by a single family to a system of large, intensive operations where the animals are housed in large numbers in enclosed structures that resemble industrial buildings more than they do a traditional barn. That change has happened primarily out of view of consumers but has come at a cost to the environment and a negative impact on public health, rural communities, and the health and well-being of the animals themselves.' 11

The Pew study notes, ‘The diversified, independent, family-owned farms of 40 years ago that produced a variety of crops and a few animals are disappearing as an economic entity, replaced by much larger, and often highly leveraged, farm factories. The animals that many of these farms produce are owned by the meat packing companies from the time they are born

or hatched right through their arrival at the processing plant and from there to market.’ 12 

The study emphasizes that application of ‘untreated animal waste on cropland can contribute to excessive nutrient loading, contaminate surface waters, and stimulate bacteria and algal growth and subsequent reductions in dissolved oxygen concentrations in surface waters.’13

That is where the real investigation ought to begin, with the health and sanitary dangers of the industrial factory pig farms like the one at Perote in Veracruz. The media spread of panic-mongering reports of every person in the world who happens to contract ‘symptoms’ which vaguely resemble flu or even Swine Flu and the statements to date of authorities such as WHO or CDC are far from conducive to a rational scientific investigation..

Tamiflu and Rummy

In October 2005 the Pentagon ordered vaccination of all US military personnel worldwide against what it called Avian Flu, H5N1. Scare stories filled world media. Then, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced he had budgeted more than $1 billion to stockpile the drug Oseltamivir, sold under the name Tamiflu. President Bush called on Congress to appropriate another $2 billion for Tamiflu stocks.

What Rumsfeld neglected to report at the time was a colossal conflict of interest. Prior to coming to Washington in January 2001, Rumsfeld had been chairman of a California pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences. Gilead Sciences held exclusive world patent rights to Tamiflu, a drug it had developed and whose world marketing rights were sold to the Swiss pharma giant, Roche. Rumsfeld was reportedly the largest stock holder in Gilead which got 10% of every Tamiflu dose Roche sold. 14 When it leaked out, the Pentagon issued a curt statement to the effect that Secretary Rumsfeld had decided not to sell but to retain his stock in Gilead, claiming that to sell would have indicated something to hide.’ That agonizing decision won him reported added millions as the Gilead share price soared more than 700% in weeks. 

Tamiflu is no mild candy to be taken lightly. It has heavy side effects. It contains matter that could have potentially deadly consequences for a person’s breathing and often reportedly leads to nausea, dizziness and other flu-like symptoms.

Since the outbreak of Swine Flu Panic (not Swine Flu but Swine Flu Panic) sales of Tamiflu, as well as any and every possible drug marketed as flu-related, have exploded. Wall Street firms have rushed to issue ‘buy’ recommendations for the company. ‘Gimme a shot Doc, I don’t care what it is…I don’t wanna die…’ 

Panic and fear of death was used by the Bush Administration skilfully to promote the Avian Flu fraud. With ominous echoes of the current Swine Flu scare, Avian Flu was traced back to huge chicken factory farms in Thailand and other parts of Asia whose products were shipped across the world. Instead of a serious investigation into the sanitary conditions of those chicken factory farms, the Bush Administration and WHO blamed ‘free-roaming chickens’ on small family farms, a move that had devastating economic consequences to the farmers whose chickens were being raised in the most sanitary natural conditions. Tyson Foods of Arkansas and CG Group of Thailand reportedly smiled all the way to the bank.

Now it remains to be seen if the Obama Administration will use the scare around so-called Swine Flu to repeat the same scenario, this time with ‘flying pigs’ instead of flying birds. Already Mexican authorities have reported that the number of deaths confirmed from so-called Swine Flu is 7, not the 150 or more bandied in the media, and that most other suspected cases were ordinary flu or influenza.

(To be continued) 

F. William Engdahl is author of Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation (Global Rersearch, 2007, see below) and A Century of War: Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (Pluto Press). His new book, Full Spectrum Dominance: Totalitarian Democracy in the New World Order (Third Millennium Press) is due out end of May. He may be contacted through his website: www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net.

Notes

1  Health Advisory, accessed in http://www.swine-flu-vaccine.info/.

2  Ibid.

3Centers for Disease Control, Swine Influenza and You, accessed in
http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/swineflu_you.htm.

4Biosurveillance, Swine Flu in Mexico- Timeline of Events, April 24, 2009, accessed in
http://biosurveillance.typepad.com/biosurveillance/2009/04/swine-flu-in-mexico-timeline-of-events.html.

5Smithfield Foods website, accessed in
http://www.smithfieldfoods.com/our_company/our_family/Norson.aspx.

6[i]] Ruth Maclean in La Gloria and Chris Ayres in Mexico City, I had a headache and fever’ says boy who survived, London Times, April 28, 2009.

7[ii]] Ibid.

8 Ibid.

9Ed Harris, Bloggers Examine Environmental Role in Mexico Swine Flu Outbreak, April 27, 2009, accessed in
 http://www.planetthoughts.org/?pg=pt/Whole&qid=2870.

10 Ibid.

11 The Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production, Putting Meat on the Table: Industrial Farm

Animal Production in America, accessed in http://www.ncifap.org/_images/PCIFAPFin.pdf.

12 Ibid.

13 Ibid.

14 F. William Engdahl, Is Avian Flu another Pentagon Hoax?, GlobalResearch, October 30, 2005.

The 3rd Rail

How we think about reality impacts reality itself.

Its one thing to accept that in the physical realm, there is no true passive observation. Eighty years ago, Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics taught us that there is always some level of inherent uncertainty in physical measurements - specifically position and momentum – and by simply observing, you impact the results of what you are observing.

This idea of uncertainty knocked us off our Enlightenment era laurels, a place where we confidently felt we could measure, understand and control everything where real truth was waiting to be discovered like an acorn under a leaf. It’s debatable as to whether or not hard sciences ever fully recovered from the blow dealt to it by the certainty of uncertainty, but the impact in the soft sciences, where real people are involved has been more profound.

In the post modern era, we’ve swung far to the other side of the spectrum in relativism, where we put our faith in narratives – or filtered, interpreted versions of some reality through perspectives.

But we’ve never really come to grips with how our flawed thinking and imperfect knowledge impacts the world around us.

This subtlety seems to be at the root of the question, “What’s wrong with America”.

Sure the world has changed. Strains and cracks in the American Dream are everywhere. The problems are well-known and at this point, over-documented. A debt-based, over-consuming economy just isn’t sustainable in the world of diminishing fresh water, arable land, minerals and energy resources. Unless you’re a cornucopian, short on facts and long on wishful thinking, you see this. And yes, we spend more than we make and we’ve lost a lot of respect in the world because of our foreign policy. In some respects, we’ve certainly fell into the mistakes of so many empires past with military overstretch, debt and the allure of Mesopotamia.

Some events and cycles are inevitable or at least predictable like water running downhill.

But how we think is up to us, although that presents us with a huge challenge.

And how we think is at the core of George Soros’ book “The Age of Fallibility”, which has some extremely pointed insights into how we think. After fleeing Nazism in Hungary, Soros went on to make a fortune in the financial markets (he’s known as the guy who broke the Bank of England) and then has since used that money to promote open societies.

Soros writes a great deal about the differences between open and closed societies and dogmatic and critical thinking and how these relate to the American worldview. He’s spent much of his life defining open societies and the meaning is less political and more about how we know what we know: An open society is a reasonably stable society that holds itself open to innovation and improvement.

The perspective is worth a read, whether or not you agree with his politics and faith in civil society initiatives. He makes some very poignant points that summarize our predicament.

“If fear, uncertainty, and the deficiency of purpose that characterizes an open society become unbearable burdens, then a charismatic leader offering a dogmatic mode of thinking may appear as the salvation.”

The application of this in the post 9/11 world is very tangible when Bush cut through an infinitely complex world and offered us a simple choice: “You’re either with us or against us.”

There is of course reference to the well-known, and in some circles overdone, comparison to Weimar Germany where the pursuit of self-interest in self-indulgence to the detriment of morality and traditional values caused revulsion in both societies. In Germany, the humiliation of WW1 and hyperinflation were factors that caused National Socialism. In the United States, it formed around religious fundamentalism which consumed the Republican Party which then gained control of Congress and the Presidency. In the US, market fundamentalist and American supremacy or neoconservative schools of thought merged and forged with religious fundamentalism through, if nothing else, desire for political power and influence.

Without dipping into conspiracy theory realm, there are objectively similarities in how both governments came into being, though our current government is a far cry from totalitarian, in how they used the politics of fear (Reichstag Fire versus 9/11) and how Orwellian propaganda played a part.

But the real question is why are Americans clamoring to be deceived? Part of this willful deception is rooted in our value of success over truth. He doesn't mention the influence of pragmatism, but I do think William James, an influencial American philosopher ingrained pragmatism and the idea that truth was what is most useful, which implies knowledge for the sake of knowledge is entertaining but not really at the heart of what matters.

In any event, our understanding of reality is inherently flawed. Open societies understand this fallibility, but closed societies deny it. Soros puts sums it up by saying that America is an open society that does not understand the concept of open society.

"The truth can be manipulated but the extent to which the outcome will approximate our will depends on the extent to which our understanding approximates reality. We have been pursuing success without much concern for the truth. As a result, we have become a feel-good society, unwilling to confront unpleasant realities. We want our elected leaders to make us feel good instead of telling us the truth. The outcome endangers not only our open society but also our dominant position in the world…the extension of executive powers, infringement of civil liberties at home and violation of human rights abroad and the suspension of the critical process…”   

A case in point, is that when politicians discuss Iraq, the conversation is usually centered on how the war is going, not the pretense under which we are there. Few leaders have publically questioned the War on Terror, although a growing number of people understand the relationship between the War on Terror and the overstretch of Executive powers, fearing this would be perceived as unpatriotic, although is it reasonable is it to declare an indefinite war on an abstraction with no timelines, no boundaries and no measurable objectives?

“Yes, the terrorist attack was real and it required a strong (military) response, but the response chosen by the Bush administration carried the nation into a fantasy land created by a misrepresentation of reality…in reality terrorists are best dealt with by methods other than waging war.”

He charts out how we morphed into a feel-good society – a far cry from the Truman years – around the time Reagan was in office, attributing the transformation mainly to the rise of consumerism and the application of consumerism to politics.”

"Since 1980, the unwillingness to face reality has been exacerbated by globalization. A global economy based on the principles of market fundamentalism is full of uncertainties from which many people are eager to escape…Fundamentalist religion seems to avoid the soul-searching that has characterized Christian religions since the time of Jesus and appears to do everything to reward the faithful by making them feel good."

The challenge with critical thinking and open societies is that it puts the burden of deciding what is right or wrong, true or untrue on the individual. Since understanding is always going to be flawed and uncertainty is painful, the mind will go to great lengths to escape it.

Dogmatic thinking, where there is no need to consider alternatives because the interpretation of truth lies in some other source than the individual, is tempting and we’ve certainly taken some refuge there. The critical mode of thinking in a complex, interconnected world on the brink of so many flashpoints is very hard work but a requirement for an open society.