Liberal democracy has always been threatened by tyranny (especially in the form of fascism) and it was recognized decades ago that the most insidious threat came from within, rather than from some external system of government.
The biggest threat to liberal democracy is ossification by oligarchy, characterized today by neo-mercantile relationships between powerful corporations and states.
Oligarchies are not all the same, with some being more responsive to "the people" than others.
The worst kind of oligarchies are run by tyrants, according to Aristotle.
Tyranny is often delivered by a charismatic sophist in a context of economic, cultural, and political turmoil, especially with respect to declining living standards coupled with rising expectations of consumption experienced by targeted audiences.
For me, the critical symptoms of tyranny are growing military-police power, surveillance and censorship, and disregard for basic rights of the body, coupled with growing brutalization against individuals and populations.
The glee with which the US President announced a policy to deport immigrants in a Tweet with NO CONTEXTUALIZATION OR PARAMETERS made me realize that we have reached the point where some among our leadership take joy in the rounding up of people.
I acknowledge that the ICE policy was actually much more narrowly targeted at individuals who had received final deportation notices.
However, the specifics of the actual policy are less relevant here than the politics of expulsion that drove the tweet and its affirmative response among certain audiences. (see here)
Rounding up and expelling people are symptoms of a society headed for tyranny.
It is a slippery slope down the slope of expulsion that produced the Nazi concentration camps and other expressions of genocide around the world.
RELATED REFERENCES
Secret panel can put Americans on "kill list'
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/10/05/us-cia-killlist-idUSTRE79475C20111005
www.globalresearch.ca/pre-emptive-nuclear-war-role-israel-attack-iran/5677025/amp
ReplyDeleteGlobal Research
Pre-emptive Nuclear War: The Role of Israel in Triggering an Attack on Iran
From Chapter III of Michel Chossudovsky’s book entitled: The Globalization of War. America’s Long War against Humanity, Global Research Publishers, Montreal, 2015
This chapter provides a historical perspective of US war plans directed against Iran, including the use of a preemptive nuclear attack, using low yield, “more usable” tactical nuclear weapons.
While one can conceptualize the loss of life and destruction resulting from present-day wars including Iraq and Afghanistan, it is impossible to fully comprehend the devastation which might result from a Third World War, using “new technologies” and advanced weapons, until it occurs and becomes a reality. The international community has endorsed nuclear war in the name of world peace. “Making the world safer” is the justification for launching a military operation which could potentially result in a nuclear holocaust.”
The stockpiling and deployment of advanced weapons systems directed against Iran started in the immediate wake of the 2003 bombing and invasion of Iraq. From the outset, these war plans were led by the U.S. in liaison with NATO and Israel.
Following the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration identified Iran and Syria as the next stage of “the road map to war”. U.S. military sources intimated at the time that an aerial attack on Iran could involve a large scale deployment comparable to the U.S. “shock and awe” bombing raids on Iraq in March 2003:
American air strikes on Iran would vastly exceed the scope of the 1981 Israeli attack on the Osiraq nuclear center in Iraq, and would more resemble the opening days of the 2003 air campaign against Iraq.1
“Theater Iran Near Term” (TIRANNT)
Code named by U.S. military planners as TIRANNT, “Theater Iran Near Term”, simulations of an attack on Iran were initiated in May 2003 “when modelers and intelligence specialists pulled together the data needed for theater-level (meaning large-scale) scenario analysis for Iran.”2
The scenarios identified several thousand targets inside Iran as part of a “Shock and Awe” Blitzkrieg:
DeleteThe analysis, called TIRANNT, for “Theater Iran Near Term,” was coupled with a mock scenario for a Marine Corps invasion and a simulation of the Iranian missile force. U.S. and British planners conducted a Caspian Sea war game around the same time. And Bush directed the U.S. Strategic Command to draw up a global strike war plan for an attack against Iranian weapons of mass destruction. All of this will ultimately feed into a new war plan for “major combat operations” against Iran that military sources confirm now [April 2006] exists in draft form.
… Under TIRANNT, Army and U.S. Central Command planners have been examining both near-term and out-year scenarios for war with Iran, including all aspects of a major combat operation, from mobilization and deployment of forces through postwar stability operations after regime change.3
Different “theater scenarios” for an all-out attack on Iran had been contemplated:
The U.S. army, navy, air force and marines have all prepared battle plans and spent four years building bases and training for “Operation Iranian Freedom”. Admiral Fallon, the new head of U.S. Central Command, has inherited computerized plans under the name TIRANNT (Theatre Iran Near Term).4
In 2004, drawing upon the initial war scenarios under TIRANNT, Vice President Dick Cheney instructed U.S. Strategic Command (U.S.STRATCOM) to draw up a “contingency plan” of a large scale military operation directed against Iran “to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States” on the presumption that the government in Tehran would be behind the terrorist plot. The plan included the pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons against a non-nuclear state:
The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than four hundred fifty major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing –that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack– but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
I think we are a long way from Nazi social conditions. Are you in favor of open borders? There seems to be far more concern for illegal immigrants than for homeless Americans living in wretched conditions on the streets of LA, SF, Portland and Seattle. Speaking of surveillance too little is being made of the Hammer, a parallel system that allows the CIA and others to eavesdrop on Americans without any record. "Rounding up and expelling people are symptoms of a society headed for tyranny." Well, what do we do with these people then? What is your solution? If Hitler had expelled the Jews and if Stalin had expelled the dissents I am sure both Jews and dissidents would have been far happier than being put in concentration camps and Gulags. And by the way Plato and Socrates considered democracy the worst form of government.
ReplyDeleteHomelessness, is becoming a symptom of people falling chronically ill and acutely ill . The illness is from the poisoning of this country with radionucllide hellfire and chemical death. The enormous amounts of plastics.
DeleteI know a primary care physician . His immediate family is gone from , illness and cancer. He is homeless. Same thing for a psychiatrist and engineer. About half or more homeless now are there, from medical bankrupsy. There are many that are victims of environmental induced illness and things like diabetes, cancer heart disease, heritable schizophrenia and autism in people who can barely take care of themselves. There numbers are doubling and qudrupeling in the megacities and countryside.
Do not listen to the bullshit propaganda, and "Blame the victims of environmental induced illness dogmas and religions," that prevail in this decaying wobbley, society. They puport that mureca is a country of unbridled properity and abundance . America is a country of ubridled production of the chronic poisons and the worst poisons possible and they are abundant everwhere . The poisons are
effecting men, woman and children throughout the society . Heritable illnesses that are disabling are growing geometrically in all stratum of aociety with incidences of cancer and syatemically debilitating conditions like heart disease, early dementias, diabetes , thyroid diesease and many other conditions. Many are falling through the cracks because they cannot take care of themselves.
The west coast is not the only place with homelessness problems. That is fox news propaganda. There are as many squatters in delapidated parts of New York City as there are paying tenants in other parts. Affordable housing for the middle class, working class, and poor is all but gone. Gone 11 years after the banksters destroyed housing markets and wall street monopolists and foreigeners have taken advantage of it. There are millions of climate change refugees from wildfires, floods and hurricanes.
This time is not like the like nazi germany or fascist stalinist russia. There is plenty of radioactive and chemically poisoned, food and water for everyone. There is an artificially induced shelter shortage. Chronically ill end up in the streets. There are millions in cars, tent cities, squatting, eeking it out in the outskirts but nonethless sick from the poisons.
Murica is a country of megacities and poisoned suburban sprawls, that have outgrown their carrying capacities . Most rural areas are destroyed by pesticides mining , fracking , dumping of nuclear waste, catastrophes from climate change like wild fires-floods-hurricanes that make the land,water, and soil even moore toxic.
The mid west of chicago ohio the great lakes, the south the east coast have nasty old nuclear reactors, that spew radioactive shit into the environment. The reactors are surrounded by tens of thousands of tons, of highlevel radioactive waste. A lot of that shit leaks and it is hidden.
Reactors are in megacities in the west that barely have enough drinkable water to support the populations Pheonix, Santa Barbara, hanford washington idaho. The western usa is a radioactive shithold from uranium, nuclear reserbations and nuclear bomb testing and manufacturing.
The megacities that have evolved in this radioactive-chemical-sewer, human wasteland, have air that is barely breathable, from toxic-chemical, heavy metal and radionuclide microparticles. The megacities are approaching their maximum-population carrying capacities of drinkable water and infrastructure.
Hitler did not have concentration camps he created an infrastructure of extermination death camps. The was a psychopathic monster and mass murderer. Murdered hundreds of millions for bloodlust. The stakes are much higher now with the nuclear death cults.
Scizophrenia is a brain disease . It is known to run in families. It can occur in people with trisomies. So can people on the autism spectrum. Ita can occur from single-strand chromosome breaks as cysic fibrosis and cerebral palsey can.
DeleteSchizophrenia is another mischaracterized brain sydrome that is labeled as an emotional illness in the corpoerate "Blame the victim sociery." Scizophrenics can become homeless and fall pray to substance abuse as any homeless person can under such harsh living circumstances. Ask any family members of such unfortunates, how hard it is to take care of loved ones with this disease. There are many people with downs sydrome, parkinsons disease, early alzeimers, other neurological diseases living in the strets in this degenerate innhumane society now. They are boted from group homes and have no family left to help them.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/recovery-road/201901/schizophrenia-is-brain-disease
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Recovery Road
Schizophrenia Is a Brain Disease
It should be classified with other brain diseases including Alzheimer’s Disease.
Posted Jan 17, 2019
Pixabay
Source: Pixabay
Schizophrenia is a physical disease of the brain characterized by an imbalance of neurotransmitters and damaged brain tissue.
Other diseases of the brain, such as Parkinson’s Disease, Alzheimer’s Disease, stroke and brain tumors also involve changes in brain tissue. In Alzheimer’s Disease, structures called plaques and tangles cover the brain and alter normal function.
About 50% of individuals with Parkinson’s Disease struggle with psychosis that often looks like schizophrenia. Schizophrenia commonly presents like an early onset Alzheimer’s Disease, with a break from reality and cognitive deficits. Despite these similarities, schizophrenia is still called a mental illness while other brain diseases are classified as physical.
There are more things, Lucilius, that frighten us than injure us, and we suffer more in imagination than in reality. -- Seneca
DeleteThe mind that is anxious about the future is miserable. Lucius Annaeus Seneca
Fear keeps us focused on the past or worried about the future. If we can acknowledge our fear, we can realize that right now we are okay. Right now, today, we are still alive, and our bodies are working marvelously. Our eyes can still see the beautiful sky. Our ears can still hear the voices of our loved ones. Thich Nhat Hanh
The French philosophes, American liberals and Progressives and in general academia all share a Utopian vision which almost inevitably leads to violence and disaster. Why the French Revolution instead of s wonderful French Utopia?
ReplyDeleteThe Things That Make European Nations Weak - Based British https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hBGx5zNsuCo
Chernobyl and Fukushima Radionuclide death denialists-Climate denialists-Species:Xtinction:Denialists
DeleteAll pretty much The Same Ilk
All Pretty Much Life Haters and Greedy Assholes
All Pretty Much Psychopaths
Corporatusts Trump Supporters
Mercer and Koch Lackeys
Hateful Child Killers
Pronuclear Weapons
Genocidists
Dominionists
Trophy Hunters
Racists
Nazis
Misogynists
Evil Monkeys
You have left out Communists.
DeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
DeleteThis bogus Pronuclear Mercenary and Whore, Cherry picks its data and cherry picks where it gathers its data . The Pacific ocean is full of millions of tons of nuclear waste dumped there by nuclears ist countries, from fukushima, from radionuclide runoff from nuclearist countroes.
ReplyDeleteJay T. Cullen
@JayTCullen
Jun 14
Five years of work by the @FukushimaInFORM team who monitored #Fukushima contamination in Canada’s ���� oceans summarized in a poster @MEOPAR_NCE #MEOPAR2019 annual meeting with @whoi_cmer @Cafe_Thorium @uOttawa @UBC @uvic @DFO_Science @HealthCanada pic.twitter.com/ZJI2YsLJ8c
Such a terrible liar and scumbag. In an honest socity , it would have it's credentials revoked.
Canada's Northernmost Permafrost in the Arctic Collapses 70 years early
ReplyDeleteHunziker
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/06/21/permafrost-collapses-70-years-early/
June 23, 2019