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6 posts tagged fascism
Gayane Chichakyan of RT interviews Thomas Andrews Drake. Drake was a senior executive of one of America’s biggest intelligence agencies at the beginning of the 2000’s.
He was an expert on electronic eavesdropping and had top secret security clearance. He was also a decorated United States Air Force and United States Navy veteran, computer software expert, linguist, management and leadership specialist. Then Mr Drake essentially sacrificed his career to blow the whistle on his agency’s wrongdoings, as he saw them.
He was then charged under the Espionage Act, and only last year the charges were dropped.
In 2010, the U.S. government alleged that he ‘mishandled’ documents, one of the few such Espionage Act cases in U.S. history. His defenders claim that he was instead being persecuted for challenging the Trailblazer Project. He is the 2011 recipient of the Ridenhour Prize for Truth-Telling and co-recipient of the Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (SAAII) award.
On June 9, 2011, all 10 original charges against him were dropped. He rejected several deals because he refused to “plea bargain with the truth”. He eventually pleaded to one misdemeanor count for exceeding authorized use of a computer; Jesselyn Radack of the Government Accountability Project, who helped represent him, called it an act of “Civil Disobedience.” The interview makes for very interesting listening, as they discuss the fact that the NSA (National Security Agency had a secret deal with the White House after 9/11, that made the NSA responsible for a secret surveillance program. They also discuss the current situation with whistleblowers and also with the Flame and Stuxnet viruses, created by the U.S. government.
“You go after the messenger because the last thing you want to do is deal with the message. You’re talking about all the activities, the secret surveillance, the warrantless wiretapping, torture, rendition, drone strikes, and a whole host of other measures that I would assert are extra-constitutional. Not only do they violate our own law, but they also violate a number of international laws.
Go after the messenger and not the message because to actually discuss or address the message becomes very uncomfortable. Essentially, what’s happened is that law—and we’re a nation of law—if we start to part (which we have in a very significant way), moving away from being a nation of laws and simply leaving it up to policy as a substitute, we’re going down a very slippery slope in the United States of America.”
(Photo) KKK/Neo-Nazis “patrolling” white neighborhoods in Sanford, FL — the city where Trayvon Martin was murdered by a still-at-large racist.
It wouldn’t surprise me if these white supremacist groups in Sanford have active connections with the local police (who have evinced a pattern of crass racism over the years in their own right).
Most of the reports I’ve read which document extremist right-wing hate groups in the South (for instance, see the work of the Southern Poverty Law Center), note that some of the largest appeal for these far-right groups is among cops, prosecution attorneys, prison guards, etc. (besides the obvious “lumpen-proletarian”, poor, “trailer-park” whites).
This is why I say that the Civil War didn’t go far enough, especially given that the post-war ”Radical Reconstruction” period was quickly abandoned as the result of a compromise between wealthy Northern industrial capitalists and the Southern plantation-owning aristocrats.
One can actually trace a more or less straight line between the defeat of Reconstruction, the advent of the Black Codes in the 1880s and 1890s, the rise of Jim Crow segregration, and through to the present (taking a brief — though nonetheless important — detour during the 50s/60s civil rights movement).
(via mamitah)
Fascism…you really think it’ll be this obvious?
(via fyeahderrickjensen)
hey look that quotes mid WWII. in the context of world war two (which was what orwell was writing it in) that statement is correct, otherwise it isn’t.
You know what, those Syrian rebels ought to just lay down their arms now, same with those in Egypt, Bahrain and Yemen as well because you know, pacifism is alright when some dictator is massacring your people. It’s totally fucking okay just to stop fighting and put all your eggs in one basket, hoping that the government that keeps power by having it’s hand on the gun and finger on the button will just lay down its arms due to non-violent resistance.
Don’t fucking kid yourself. Police and soldiers are there for a reason, they are the ones that you have to fight when shit goes down and whether you’re fighting the nazis or the corporate state here at home, non-violence isn’t an option. Non-violence gets you put in a death camp, non violence makes you a victim
Ever heard this quote summing up how fascism rises?
First they came for the communists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a communist.Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a trade unionist.Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn’t speak out because I wasn’t a Jew.Then they came for me
and there was no one left to speak out for me.
(via huberthumphreydeathrally)
(via apofis)
