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Americans Are Only Now Beginning to Learn that We Live in a Dictatorship

December 22, 2017

Americans Are Only Now Beginning to Learn that We Live in a Dictatorship

The first time when it became clear to me that I live in a dictatorship was in 2014 when reading, prior to its publication, the landmark (and still the only) scientific empirical study to address the question as to whether or not the United States federal Government is, authentically, a democracy — or, whether, alternatively, it’s instead more of a dictatorship, than a democracy. This study documented conclusively that America’s Government is the latter.

So, on 14 April 2014, I headlined “US Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy, Says Scientific Study”. Subsequently, my editor linked it to the published article at the Journal where the study was published, Perspectives on Politics, from the American Political Science Association, and the full study can be read there.

On 30 April 2014, was posted at youtube the video that remains, to this day, the best and clearest ordinary-language summary of what that badly-written academic study proved. See its explanation here:

That summary’s title is also better than the title of my article was; this excellent video headlines “Corruption is Legal in America”, which is another accurate conclusion from that study. Every American citizen should know what this 6-minute video says and shows from the academic study, because it explains how the super-rich, as a class, steal from everyone else (everyone who isn’t super-rich): They do it through corruption.

Then, that same person who created the video did another presentation of it, but this time with text accompanying the video, and this article was titled “One graph shows how the rich control American politics”, and it indeed showed how.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Why America’s Law Enforcement Empire Resembles Secret Police in a Dictatorship

December 14, 2017

Why America’s Law Enforcement Empire Resembles Secret Police in a Dictatorship

Secret police are characteristic of dictatorships, or so goes the conventional thinking on the subject. Police in democracies operate for the most part transparently and within a set of rules and guidelines that limits their ability to gratuitously punish citizens who have done nothing wrong. If a policeman operating under rule-of-law steps out of line, he can be held accountable. That is also conventional thinking.

But what happens when an ostensibly “democratic” police force becomes corrupted and starts doing things that are outside its zone of responsibility, and does so to benefit a political relationship that will in turn protect those who have broken the law under cover of carrying out their official duties? That is the characteristic of what we have been calling a “deep state,” where forces drawn generally from the political class and security services conspire together to control what the public is allowed to know while also manipulating nuisances like elections to make sure that the “correct” outcome emerges.

Indeed, deep state operating in a democracy or republic is far more dangerous that the secret police in a dictatorship. That is because in a system where the forces of the state are all-powerful, nearly everyone expects that what they read and what the government says is all a lie. In a democratic system there is what intelligence officers would refer to as plausible denial, which means that even when the government is behaving very badly much of the public will believe that it is acting honorably because they want to trust that the system works. And when the deep state includes management of the media, many citizens will likewise believe what they are reading or hearing is honest reporting, even when it is not.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Donald Trump didn’t create danger of presidential dictatorship, he inherited it

October 19, 2017

Donald Trump didn’t create danger of presidential dictatorship, he inherited it

Sen. Warren says Trump is losing to the Constitution — but is he?

Those who denounce Trump’s constitutional depredations and anti-democratic pronouncements are clueless about the real threat.

Americans nowadays have a bad attitude towards presidents. Many people are denouncing Donald Trump as a dictator. But the real problem in this nation is the dictatorial illiteracy that has allowed modern presidents to commandeer far too much power.

Trump’s saber rattling, rude outbursts and rancorous tweets have spooked folks far and wide. But most Americans are not sufficiently informed on recent history to recognize where Trump poses dire threats beyond the usual Washington machinations. Most citizens are unaware that both political parties have perennially championed bureaucratic aggrandizement over civil liberties.

Many of the experts who have condemned Trump are also clueless about how far federal control has stretched. Yale professor Samuel Moyn and Oxford professor David Priestland recently declared in a New York Times op-ed that “there is no real evidence that Mr. Trump wants to seize power unconstitutionally, and there is no reason to think he could succeed.”

But violating the Constitution is practically the job description for modern presidents. It was George W. Bush’s White House, not Trump, that asserted a “commander-in-chief override” entitling presidents to ignore the law and the Bill of Rights. Congress utterly failed to thwart that outrageous claim.

Presidents have amassed vast authority because they are judged on their rhetoric and purported goals, not on their constitutional fidelity. Former president Barack Obama’s drone assassinations of U.S. citizens were non-issues because observers think he “meant well.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Venezuela: Dictatorship, Collapse And Consequence

August 11, 2017

Venezuela: Dictatorship, Collapse And Consequence

If you want to outline the numerous failures of ideological and economic socialism, just name any socialist nation and you are sure to uncover an endless supply of examples. In fact, many countries where socialism is not total but making considerable inroads often suffer from severe decline — the U.S. being one of them. Whatever socialism touches it destroys, because forced interdependency does not work. It is a broken concept with no large scale successes (this includes China, which suffers from considerable poverty and a totalitarian government despite it being the most successful garbage economy out of a host of other garbage economies). Yet, proponents of socialism keep trying again and again claiming that “this time is different.”

So ample have been socialism’s failures in the past several years that socialists have resorted to a classic blame game in order to maintain the delusion. You see, when you bring up nations at the very end of the socialist cycle on the verge of extinction — nations like Venezuela, all you are going to hear is the argument that it was “the evil western capitalists that sabotaged the experiment.”

This is a fascinating journey into cognitive dissonance. Because in order to believe this nonsense, you have to first ignore the cold hard reality that socialist policies and politics have permeated every aspect of most western nations to the point that they can no longer be called free market societies. The fact is, IF sabotage of Venezuela can be proven as the cause of its economic ills rather than the inherent pitfalls of socialism, it would merely be a group of socialist nations sabotaging another socialist nation. “Capitalism” plays no part in this mess whatsoever.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

A World Hangs in the Balance

September 25, 2016

A WORLD HANGS IN THE BALANCE

The overwhelming number of well-funded groups “fighting for change” in this world are misdirected. Intentionally so.

These groups are designed to go off track, eliminate freedom, and produce answers that bring about more top-down control.

I can’t emphasize that strongly enough:

—The use of dupes and pawns, organized into groups, which cause more chaos and try to demoralize and box in THE INDEPENDENT INDIVIDUAL.

But the independent individual must survive, because he is where civilization begins.

The independent individual must understand this: his rational powers, and his imagination and creative impulse, are the foundation of anything that could be called civilization.

He can sacrifice these abilities on some altar of expediency or fear, but if he does, his light goes out.

Virtually ALL well-funded groups in the world who opt for change and betterment, under the banner of “greatest good for everyone,” are controlled.

They are paid for and run as fronts for global takeover. Their workers on the ground are clueless.

The elites we call the Globalists are basically promoting the following message: “If consent is withdrawn from our brilliant structure, life will go down the drain. We must have more groups who support our structure.”

Who basically withdraws consent? THE INDIVIDUAL.

Those individuals who sacrifice their own rational power and imagination are, in effect, consenting to the Globalist takeover.

That takeover is not civilization in any meaningful sense of the word.

It is tyranny.

Tyranny takes everything from the independent individual, and gives it to the permanently dependent individual.

And then, as the vortex spins deeper, more people become dependent, and the tyrants allow them just enough to survive on the margins.

Every sane person wants a better world, but most sane people don’t yet recognize how that impulse can be twisted against them. Do you believe power-elites would promote their vision under the banner of “a police state” or “dictatorship, poverty, and loss of hope for all”?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Turkey’s Erdogan Clears Path to Dictatorship

May 14, 2016

Turkey’s Erdogan Clears Path to Dictatorship

The ouster of Turkish Prime Minister Davutoglu marks another troubling milestone in President Erdogan’s consolidation of dictatorial power, a development that Alon Ben-Meir sees as further enflaming the region.

The forced resignation of Turkey’s Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu suggests only one thing — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is totally absorbed by his lust for power, will tolerate no one in his government to deviate from any of his political positions. Prime Minister Davutoglu was no exception.

Although the Turkish constitution grants the Prime Minister executive powers while leaving the role of the president largely ceremonial, this is not what Erdogan had in mind when he asked then-Foreign Minister Davutoglu to form a new government following the last election.

President Barack Obama walks along the Colonnade at the White House with Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Dec. 7, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

President Barack Obama walks along the Colonnade at the White House with then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey, Dec. 7, 2009. (Official White House Photo by Pete Souza)

Erdogan’s ambition and aggressive drive to spread his Islamic agenda are what has determined every political move he made. Seeking to constitutionally transfer the executive authority of the country to the Presidency is the final step to legally consolidate his power, albeit he was already exercising such power throughout his tenure as Prime Minister for 11 years.

For more than 15 years, Davutoglu served Erdogan with the utmost loyalty — first as his top foreign policy adviser, then his Foreign Minister, and for the past two years as his hand-picked Prime Minister. Erdogan chose Davutoglu for this post precisely because he expected him to continue to be his “Yes man.”

Being that as Prime Minister, Davutoglu would assume leadership of the AK Party, Erdogan expected him to push for the transformation of the largely ceremonial Presidency into the most powerful executive position in Turkey, which Davutoglu pursued in a lukewarm manner as this would constitutionally diminish his own powers considerably.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

US Blocks 9/11 Suits against Saudis while Compensating Saudi Bombing Victims

May 14, 2016

US Blocks 9/11 Suits against Saudis while Compensating Saudi Bombing Victims

A brief summary of how the US oligarchy has been throwing its ‘own’ civilians under the bus in favor of its terrorist friends in the Saudi dictatorship.

Robert Barsocchini is an internationally published author who focuses on force dynamics, national and global, and also writes professionally for the film industry. Updates on Twitter. Author’s essay ‘The Agility of Tyranny: Historical Roots of Black Lives Matter’.

References listed at Youtube page.

The American Dictatorship

April 15, 2016

The American Dictatorship

Even for the post of U.S. President, the preferences of the American people have only a marginal, if any, impact upon the selection of the person to occupy that post.

In Colorado’s Republican race to win delegates to the Republican National Convention for selecting the Republican Presidential nominee, there was no primary, and there was no caucus. As the Republican magazine National Review headlined on April 11th, attempting to justify what a Republican wag had just headlined as “Cruz Celebrates Voterless Win”: “Donald Trump Laid a Colorado Goose Egg because He Was Disorganized and Amateurish.” Their argument (since they campaign for any Republican but Trump) was: he lost “because he was disorganized and amateurish” — not because he had been cheated by the Party-hierarchy.

National Review explained that, in the process which had been set up by the Colorado Republican Party (it’s set up by each individual state’s Republican Party, not by the National Republican Party), “delegates to the national convention would be selected at congressional-district conventions and the Republican’s state convention” [NR’s illiterate writer there meant “the Republicans’ state convention” and couldn’t distinguish between “Republican’s” and “Republicans’,” so used the wrong one], and this was done in order to “give Colorado’s delegates more flexibility,” not done in order to require delegates to reflect the Republican (or any other) electorate in Colorado (since NR doesn’t like even its own Party’s electorate).

This was the explanation that was provided by that magazine, which backs Cruz, and which has been campaigning ferociously against Trump. Their article was built upon, and extensively quoted, the justifications put forth by one particular Cruz delegate, who said, “The grassroots made the decision that Ted Cruz was the best candidate for us, and the grassroots made the decision to come out for Cruz and absolutely swept the table.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Democracy Is No Better Than a Monarchy… or a Dictatorship

January 26, 2016

Democracy Is No Better Than a Monarchy… or a Dictatorship

“Flaming Lunatic”

MUMBAI, India – The Dow managed a small bounce late last week. The bounce came as crude oil gushed higher, back above $30 a barrel. What next? We wait to find out…

We had dinner in London last night, before boarding a plane for India.

“A large part of the U.S. population must feel threatened by any kind of intelligence,” said a voice at a nearby table. A group of Englishmen were discussing U.S. politics. We eavesdropped.

“Can you imagine? That Trump… he seems like a flaming lunatic. His campaign is nothing but telling voters that he’s a good negotiator. He thinks it’s all just making deals with people. All that matters is getting a good deal.

palin-endorses-trump-cartoon-luckovich Implanting a thought…

“Now he thinks people will vote for him because he got an endorsement from that total idiot Palin. What is the matter with Americans? How did they get to be so stupid?”

We almost got up from our chair. It was time to straighten these Brits out. But what would we say? Besides, it is a fair question: How did Americans come to be so stupid?

Of course, the same question could be asked of almost any nation. And it being Friday as we write this, and we being laid low by an epizootic and airline travel, we dug into our archives for an answer…

The American Brain

[Ed note: Originally published on November 5, 2004]

“There is no point in asking why Americans get caught up in the presidential election ritual, even when the campaigns are obviously manipulative and the candidates are far from the best the country has to offer. […] All rituals rest upon faith, not logic; all involve suspension of disbelief; and all seem as reasonable to the faithful as they seem absurd to unbelievers.”

– Forrest McDonald, The American Presidency

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dictators, Democracy, and Almighty Oil in the MENA Region

January 18, 2016

Dictators, Democracy, and Almighty Oil in the MENA Region

95% of transport fuels in the world are derived from oil. This makes it hard to argue that renewable or other non-petroleum sources of fuel could cut into oil’s market share, at least in the near term. Transportation, and thus petroleum, is essential to growing economies like China and India and petroleum security will continue to be essential for the global economy.

So who controls oil? You guessed it; the Middle East and North Africa dominate the global oil sector and the future of energy security.

With the exception of Canada and the U.S., across the board, these countries are dictatorships or false democracies that are often subjected to artificial elections where the outcome is always in favor of the current “democratically” elected dictator.

Why are most Middle East governments dictatorships?

Simply put, dictatorships are easier and more efficient to deal with, especially with something as precious as petroleum security. For businesses involved in the oil industry, Dick Cheney said it best: “The good Lord didn’t see fit to put oil and gas only where there are democratically-elected regimes friendly to the United States. Occasionally we have to operate in places where, all things considered, one would not normally choose to go. But, we go where the business is.”

Essentially, dictators provide Western companies with immense wealth and the opportunity of vast and cheap reserves. At the same time, these Western companies are headquartered in countries with democratically elected representatives in government. These democratic governments, although against their core values, will need to deal with hostile and mismanaged governments in the Middle East and North Africa. They do this to secure petroleum and keep Western oil companies active, efficient, and profitable in the Middle East & North Africa, and of course to feed the insatiable appetite for oil in the West.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Bread, circuses and inequality – a dishonest bargain

November 21, 2015

Bread, circuses and inequality – a dishonest bargain

How does consumerism undermine democracy?

Flickr/dcmaster, CC BY-NC 2.0

China leads the way

the Chinese people surrender democratic citizenship for the promise of individual gain through private consumptionOver the decade of the 2000s I visited China several times. At some point on each trip a Chinese acquaintance would assure me, unsolicited on my part, that “the Chinese” were not interested in democratic rights. Rather, their priority was material improvement, greater incomes for greater private consumption.

Whatever the validity of this interpretation of collective will, it summarises the governing strategy of China’s dictatorial regime. It involves a bargain in which the Chinese people surrender democratic citizenship for the promise of individual gain through private consumption.

The iron link between dictatorship and private consumption goes far to explain 1) the obsession of the Chinese rulers with maximising economic growth, and 2) the political role of the middle class. Given the clear absence of policies to reduce inequality, rapid growth becomes the necessary mechanism for the state to deliver its part of the consumerist bargain. Far from being a force for democratisation, the rise of a consumerist middle class provides the political support for dictatorship, albeit a minority support.

The bargain of democratic rights for material gain that we see in China is not limited to dictatorial regimes. On the contrary, it serves as the mechanism for the transition from representative democracy to disenfranchised dictatorship.

Consumerist route to tyranny

The disastrous effect of consumerism on global environmental sustainability is well documented. The private automobile represents the most obvious example of the triumph of consumerism over making the planet fit for human life.

Consumerist ideology treats society as a collection of individuals, each seeking to maximise their private consumption

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Verging on Plutocracy? Getting Real About the Unelected Dictatorship

November 20, 2015

Verging on Plutocracy? Getting Real About the Unelected Dictatorship

plutocrat

In politics as in medicine, excessively mild remedies are typically based on overly placid diagnoses. Look, for example, at the highly esteemed Columbia University historian Eric Foner’s recent letter of congratulations and advice to Democratic Party presidential candidate Bernie Sanders in The Nation. As I have argued in a previous CounterPunch essay, Foner’s missive failed to correct Sanders on the candidate’s incredibly tepid and watered-down definition of democratic socialism as little more than a Scandinavian welfare state. It sent Eugene Debs spinning in his grave when it argued that “socialism today” is about “the need to rein in the excesses of capitalism.” Those were the exact same words used by Hillary Clinton in the first Democratic Party presidential debate, reflecting on what she feels is occasionally necessary to preserve the profits system and what she felt should never be confused with socialism.

There’s one part of Foner’s letter that I forgot to mention in my previous essay even though it is intimately related to his alignment with milquetoast radicalism and Hillary’s fake-progressive corporatism. It comes at the beginning of the letter’s sixth paragraph, when he says that contemporary socialism seeks “to empower ordinary people in a political system verging on plutocracy.”

I’m all for and indeed about empowering ordinary people, but I had to stop and read that statement a second time and ask myself: did the nation’s leading left-liberal historian really just describe contemporary U.S. politics as merely verging on plutocracy? You don’t have to be a radical Marxist to think that’s pussyfooting around the matter. Over the past three plus decades, liberal mainstream political scientists Martin Gilens (Princeton) and Benjamin Page (Northwestern) reported last year, the U.S. political system has become “an oligarchy,” where wealthy elites and their corporations “rule.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Western Democracy Is An Endangered Species On Its Way To Extinction

August 26, 2015

Western Democracy Is An Endangered Species On Its Way To Extinction

The British Labour Party no longer represents the working class. Under UK prime minister Tony Blair, the Labour Party became a vassal of the One Percent. The result has been a rebellion in the ranks and the rise of Jeremy Corbyn, a principled Labourite intent on representing the people, a no-no in Western “democracies.”

Corbyn is too real for the Labour Party Blairites, who hope to be rewarded with similar nest eggs as Blair for representing the capitalist One Percent. So what is the corrupted Labour Party doing to prevent Corbyn’s election?

The answer is that it is denying the vote to Corbyn supporters. You can read the story here:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/britains-labour-party-purge-is-underway-preventing-supporters-from-voting-for-jeremy-corbyn/5471194

The illegal Egyptian military dictatorship that overthrew on Washington’s orders the first democratically elected government in Egyptian history has issued an edict prohibiting journalists from contradicting the military dictatorship. In brief, the dictatorship installed by Washington has outlawed facts.

Washington rejected the government that the Egyptian people elected, because it appeared that the democratically elected government would have a foreign policy that was at least partially independent of Washington’s. Remember, according to the neocons who, together with Israel, control US foreign policy, countries with independent foreign policies, such as Iran, Russia, and China, are America’s “greatest threats.”

The Egyptian military thugs, following Washington’s orders, have more or less eliminated all of the leadership of the political party that was democratically elected. The party was called the Muslim Brotherhood. In the presstitute Western media, the political party was described more or less as al Qaeda, and how are the ignorant, brainwashed, and propagandized Americans to know any difference? Certainly neither “their” government nor the presstitute media will ever tell them.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

America’s Biggest Lie – Dictatorship Or Democracy?

August 7, 2015

America’s Biggest Lie – Dictatorship Or Democracy?

The Deceit About Being A ‘Republic’ Versus A ‘Democracy’

One of my recent articles at several sites, “Jimmy Carter Is Correct That the U.S. Is No Longer a Democracy” generated many reader-comments (such as here) saying things like, “The US has always been a republic. There are no true democracies in the modern world.” This will be my response to all who expressed that view:

You miss the point that Carter made, and that I there documented to be true, which is no semantic issue (“democracy” versus “republic”), but which instead concerns the basic lie about what the United States of America really is now:

Is this a representative democracy, such as its Founders intended and such as it was famous and honored throughout the world for being, until at least around 1980?

Or, is it instead a nation that’s ruled by a tiny elite, an aristocracy, which in this country consists of its 500 or so billionaires, who buy the politicians whom ‘we’ ‘elect’?

Is the U.S. now, basically, a fraud? Is it a dictatorship, instead of a democracy? Is it some kind of aristocracy, which controls the government here?

That’s not a semantic issue, at all. America’s first political party was called the “Democratic Republican Party,” but could as well have been called the Democratic Party or the Republican Party, because those two terms are essentially synonymous in any nation that has a large population, in which the public elect representatives to represent them, instead of directly vote on the policies that the government is to pursue — to place into its law, and to enforce by its duly authorized police or otherwise, and to adjudicate by democratically appointed judges and/or juries.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

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