State of Fear

FOCUS | Michael Moore: "They Hate America"

FOCUS | The IRS, Benghazi, and the Republicans Who Cried Wolf

The IRS Scandal Is a Supreme Court Scandal

FOCUS | Everything Is Rigged, Continued: Oil Companies Raided

FOCUS | Army Sex Abuse Official Accused of Running Prostitution Ring

Hedges writes: "The FBI documents are not only a chilling example of how widespread this surveillance and obstruction has become, they are an explicit warning by the security services to all who consider dissent."

FBI Surveillance. (illustration: unknown)

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+5 # carurosu 2013-01-08 08:10

Have been reading most of your comments on the life you are leading under the Nazi form of citizen control.

Yet you have the press and yourcomments on Augusto Pinochet Ugarte.

He never arose to that height of cowering a whole country who absurdly claims it is "the land of the free and the home of the brave.

+9 # Artemis 2013-01-08 12:07

FBI = Stasi

+2 # RLF 2013-01-09 07:45

If these radical hippies get out of control and threaten Obama's friends, we've always got NDAA (as Chris well knows) and can call out the army to put them in their place...thier minimum wage place.

+23 # tswhiskers 2013-01-08 08:33

I think Occupy opened the eyes of a lot of Americans as it did mine when we saw the huge amount of police brutality and political power used against those protesters. For many years I thought that the 1st Amendment really did protect those who peacefully resisted govt and other actions. It does seem as tho we do live in a "police state" when people are pepper sprayed and hit for protesting the status quo. Fortunately some police were sympathetic to the aims of Occupy. But it feels as if the days of J. Edgar have come back when the FBI feels it necessary to protect the country against those of us who use the 1st Amendment to proclaim the sins of Big Business and demand change. I think Mayor Bloomberg and the mayors in other large cities who were visited by Occupy, need to do a lot of thinking about what constitutes real harm in today's society. Granted that violence of any kind should be avoided by both police and protesters, this country needs to seriously revisit the 1st Amendment and renew its understanding of peaceful protest and the particular social good sought when people do protest. In this case people protested the greed and awful power of Wall St. Are the interests of Wall St. the same as those of the public? Of course not, and in a better world those in charge would have agreed with Occupy.

+25 # reiverpacific 2013-01-08 09:05

Every time I hear the reference to "Democracy" or as here "Democratic form of government" referring to the USA, it makes me want to scream.
This is the biggest myth perpetrated around the world and I wish that most Americans would get it instead of trumpeting it out sheepishly and passively then threateningly when challenged, including many so-called Libertarians. That would be a good starting point for kick-back. And the lie that Obama is a "Socialist" instead of a center-right upholder of the staus quo; I personally quite like the guy and the only alternative was appalling but have no illusions as to where he stands; I mean he just approved another five years of warrantless wire-tapping, didn't he?!
Many other countries are increasing getting it, especially in the South and Central Americas, Australia and the Pacific Islands and parts of Europe, to their unified and individual benefits.
Hedges gets a bit depressing at times but the truth hurts dunnit?

+9 # Majikman 2013-01-08 10:14

Agree totally, reiverpacific.. ..at least you have the option of leaving easily. This article by Chris was blunt and chilling as it mirrored what I've been thinking (hoping I'm wrong). Once it becomes visceral then it's time to either get out if one can or get seriously active. The middle ground is roadkill.

-14 # Jack Gibson 2013-01-08 20:50

I was completely with you, and was going to write and tell you so, as well as thumbs-up your comment, until you said that Obama is supposedly not a socialist. Well, you need have that corrected, because he IS a socialist. All of the globalist neoliberal neocons like him are. And that's what corporate fascism is, a form of socialism. That's why the Nazis called their form of totalitarian government, "national socialism". Perhaps calling it "nationalistic (as in falsely patriotic, the-state-can-s upposedly-do-no -wrong, no matter how evil it gets, and no matter how bad its evils that it commits get to be) socialism" would be more accurate; but it's still a form of socialism nevertheless. And, if we agree that Obama is a corporate fascist, which I think we probably do, then obviously he is also a national(istic) socialist, because they are one and the same thing, and part and parcel of eachother. You cannot have fascism without corporatism, because fascism wouldn't be able to gain absolute totalitarian control of an entire country without the help and empowerment of the corporations, also known as corporatism.

It was I.G. Farben, the pharmaceutical conglomerate that morphed into Bayer and Merck, etc., pharmaceutical conglomerates after WW2; and IBM; etc.; which manufactured the gas, and the computing machines to number and keep track of the concentration camp inmates, in order to systematically exterminate at least 10 million innocent people during the Nazi reign of terror.

+9 # fliteshare 2013-01-09 00:13

Boel scheit.
Your assessment of fascism as a form of socialism warrants an emergency visit to the nearest mental healthcare facility.
Take it from a card carrying Socialist, the first to end up in the concentration camps were Communists and Socialists. Strange way of treating your "ideological brethren".
How about calling yourself "National Socialist" to deceive the ignorant (like you) masses into joining your political party. Kinda like calling yourself Republican or Democrat in America nowadays. I call it just another form of identity theft.
Too bad, you, like your ignorant compatriots, still fall for for the nonsense.

+4 # reiverpacific 2013-01-09 16:13

Quoting fliteshare:

Boel scheit.
Your assessment of fascism as a form of socialism warrants an emergency visit to the nearest mental healthcare facility.
Take it from a card carrying Socialist, the first to end up in the concentration camps were Communists and Socialists. Strange way of treating your "ideological brethren".
How about calling yourself "National Socialist" to deceive the ignorant (like you) masses into joining your political party. Kinda like calling yourself Republican or Democrat in America nowadays. I call it just another form of identity theft.
Too bad, you, like your ignorant compatriots, still fall for for the nonsense.

Thanks -you saved me a bunch of words there.

-3 # Jack Gibson 2013-01-10 02:30

The Nazis hated communism and communists; and the communists hated the Nazis; those are facts; but that doesn't mean that one form of socialism can't hate or dislike another form of socialism; because obviously at least one did. And the globalists, the international, multinational banksters, fraudsters, mobsters and mass-murderous monsters, aka the neoliberal neocons, particularly in the U.S., put on a show of hating communism for decades (even though it was they who put both communism, in China at least, and Nazi national socialism into power; even though they work together now; and even though they are the corporate-fasci sts out in the open now). NONE of this is anything but TRUE historical FACT, not "nonsense"; but it figures that you believe the real nonsense that the "non-nonsense" supposedly is "nonsense"; so you're talking about your own beliefs, not mine.

- Continued -

-3 # Jack Gibson 2013-01-10 06:40

The ideologies of communism and fascism are very similar (look at their very similar lists of the steps to totalitarian control of entire countries), though they of course obviously have their (past and/or pretend?) differences, as well as their at least used to supposedly be disgust with eachother. Until globalism, dictators didn't usually like other dictators (aka competitors for power), as well as usually didn't work together unless they felt they absolutely had to in order to win a battle. But today is another story. Today, the globalists are going to bring all of the dictators under one roof, under one-world government; and already have to a great extent. But, idiotically also, you probably think that, or those, fact(s) is and/or are "nonsense", too.

I'm not a right-winger, but you so-called "liberals" and "progressives" hate hearing a lot of truth, especially the truth that the ideologies of communism and fascism are in reality on the same side of the political spectrum, the Left, that you are. So, hate me for that truth, too; I don't care.

+7 # Deboldt 2013-01-08 09:40

They have made peaceful revolution impossible.

+21 # tbcrawford 2013-01-08 10:50

Perhaps a change in vocabulary would help; not "revolution" or "war on..., but "evolution" toward peace-based action. We need words that suggest progress, that replace fear with hope and vision. We do have some fine role models!

+4 # alanvance 2013-01-08 15:40

The genius of Social Security is that benefits are not means-tested, nor should they be. Means testing is the characteristic of the dole, and the dole loses political support quickly. Better to pay benefits to all and let their taxation in a progressive system take care of the inequities.

+4 # Jack Gibson 2013-01-08 21:03

The problem is that, in reality, Social Security really IS a means-based system. How much income one makes, and therefore how much one pays into Social Security via FICA taxes, determines how much benefits one gets upon disability and/or retirement. It shouldn't be that way, but it is; and it causes gross inequity(ies), such as causing millions of disabled people to only receive below-poverty-l ine-level benefits, and live below the poverty line, because they, due to no fault of their own, couldn't pay more into FICA. That's why I argued in a "Social Security thread" here on RSN, that such should be corrected, and that every Social Security recipient receiving benefits below the poverty line should at least be brought up to that line, if not just above it; and that disabled people are not lesser human beings, but are just as deserving as the elderly of receiving benefits that don't put them, and keep them, below the poverty line, and therefore impoverished.

+7 # wrknight 2013-01-08 17:31

Big Brother is watching YOU!

+2 # Jack Gibson 2013-01-08 20:22

Oh, Shannon McLeish, I can understand you feeling that you have nothing to hide, but you should know better than to cooperate with law enforcement. Whether you know it or not, when you cooperate with them you are waiving your rights and they just use everything against you that you voluntarily share with them. They now presume all protesters and dissenters guilty. And why didn't you, once you saw the photographer with the group of police, protest the photographer taking pictures of the attendees, a very clear violation of the First and Fourth Amendments, the latter due to unreasonable seizure of information about innocent citizens? I hope you are finally completely awake to the fact that the U.S. is now a police state, and that everything you say and do will be used against you whether you're being arrested or not, and whether you ever see a "court of law" or not. The truth is, by you being so "nice" to and "cooperative" with the authorities, they consider you to be even more of a "threat" and a "terrorist". I hope you realize that now and don't cooperate with them, or volunteer ANY information to them, ANYMORE AT ALL. When they so blatantly violate our rights under the Supreme Law of the U.S., the Constitution and Bill of Rights, they are CRIMINALS, and the REAL TERRORISTS, and they have abrogated any claim(s) on any cooperation with them whatsoever, and we must not cooperate with them AT ALL. Do you cooperate with criminals?

- Continued -

+2 # Jack Gibson 2013-01-08 22:36

Under the Orwellian double-speak "U.S.A. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act", all exercise of constitutional rights, including the freedoms of speech, dissent and protest, is and/or are now considered "perceived threatening conduct", the consideration of which is in blatant violation, contravention and abrogation of the Bill of Rights, as well as Article 19 of the international law known as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. And you're cooperating, at all, with that, and the likes of people who believe and unconstitutiona lly, illegally and criminally perpetrate that against you? It's our DUTY to COMPLETELY dissent against those violations, NOT to cooperate with them in any way, shape, form or fashion WHATSOEVER! To cooperate AT ALL with that is to not only voluntarily waive our rights and duties under the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights, as well international law(s), it is to also voluntarily surrender to the increasingly totalitarian government's enslavement of us. Because eradicating our human rights and civil liberties, and taking criminal actions against us for doing nothing but non-violently exercising them, IS enslavement. So please, NOBODY cooperate AT ALL with ANY of this madness that is taking over and sweeping across our beloved country! To cooperate AT ALL with these "slave masters", and any of their unconstitutiona l, illegal and criminal actions, is to be complicit in their tyranny and repression, which we must NOT be complicit in IN ANY WAY(S) AT ALL, WHATSOEVER!

+8 # DBW-OG1 2013-01-08 20:57

shocked by the FBI and Homeland Security's behavior - what was the Church Committee, what was COINTELPRO, PRISACT, GEMSTONE? What was the governments murder and imprisonment of Black Panthers in the 60s and 70s? Is it because White Folks are supremely arrogant or simpletons that they fail to realize People of color in the USA have always lived under a racist Police State for decades while they blithely went about feeding their self-delusions of freedom - now that they are the governments targets they are shocked but its too late. A unique system of "democratic fascism" is already in play. This system is a product of Finance Capitalism's evolution and control of what was once an expansionist white supremacist settler state into its current manifestation of a Corporate national-securi ty state. A state in constant war with its own citizens and with the former peoples of European colonialism around the world. The irony of all this lay in the fact its a half-Black President that has nailed shut the coffin of what passed for democracy in America and there's very little anyone can do about it now. The historical moment has passed when the national-securi ty state could be reigned in by the people. Like Baldwin once wrote about the inevitable doom of Racist and reactionary Americanism, "no more flood, the fire next time....

+2 # cordleycoit 2013-01-09 13:36

You cannot defend yourself if you go to the mattresses and knuckle under.The best way is to orginize and keep being active. Share your knowledge with like minded people keep the spot light on them.Keep the children up to date and help them with their issues. Question their storm troopers and identify their infiltrators. Expose the the bosses of the cops the bought and paid for shills in public office.

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