Cracking the Code Film - Peter Eric Hendrickson

I wanted to make a post before people start to wonder if I will ever post again.

I want to share with you, the reader of this blog, some information that the Internal Revenue Service does not want you to know. Why? Because the people working for the government have benefitted from the IRS convincing people something that isn't true.

I don't want this post to be construed as legal advice (as in, "here's what you should do to solve the problem."). This blog is for educational purposes only.

new tag for a new author

Shredded Tuna

Are we a fascist country?

These are some of the binding ties that hold many infamous fascist regimes together. I read this first in Free Inquiry, and just found it again on their website. It's a bit disconcerting at how well our country lines up so neatly with so many of these common attributes of fascism.

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism. From the prominent displays of flags and bunting to the ubiquitous lapel pins, the fervor to show patriotic nationalism, both on the part of the regime itself and of citizens caught up in its frenzy, was always obvious. Catchy slogans, pride in the military, and demands for unity were common themes in expressing this nationalism. It was usually coupled with a suspicion of things foreign that often bordered on xenophobia.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights. The regimes themselves viewed human rights as of little value and a hindrance to realizing the objectives of the ruling elite. Through clever use of propaganda, the population was brought to accept these human rights abuses by marginalizing, even demonizing, those being targeted. When abuse was egregious, the tactic was to use secrecy, denial, and disinformation.

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause. The most significant common thread among these regimes was the use of scapegoating as a means to divert the people’s attention from other problems, to shift blame for failures, and to channel frustration in controlled directions. The methods of choice—relentless propaganda and disinformation—were usually effective. Often the regimes would incite “spontaneous” acts against the target scapegoats, usually communists, socialists, liberals, Jews, ethnic and racial minorities, traditional national enemies, members of other religions, secularists, homosexuals, and “terrorists.” Active opponents of these regimes were inevitably labeled as terrorists and dealt with accordingly.

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism. Ruling elites always identified closely with the military and the industrial infrastructure that supported it. A disproportionate share of national resources was allocated to the military, even when domestic needs were acute. The military was seen as an expression of nationalism, and was used whenever possible to assert national goals, intimidate other nations, and increase the power and prestige of the ruling elite.

5. Rampant sexism. Beyond the simple fact that the political elite and the national culture were male-dominated, these regimes inevitably viewed women as second-class citizens. They were adamantly anti-abortion and also homophobic. These attitudes were usually codified in Draconian laws that enjoyed strong support by the orthodox religion of the country, thus lending the regime cover for its abuses.

6. A controlled mass media. Under some of the regimes, the mass media were under strict direct control and could be relied upon never to stray from the party line. Other regimes exercised more subtle power to ensure media orthodoxy. Methods included the control of licensing and access to resources, economic pressure, appeals to patriotism, and implied threats. The leaders of the mass media were often politically compatible with the power elite. The result was usually success in keeping the general public unaware of the regimes’ excesses.

7. Obsession with national security. Inevitably, a national security apparatus was under direct control of the ruling elite. It was usually an instrument of oppression, operating in secret and beyond any constraints. Its actions were justified under the rubric of protecting “national security,” and questioning its activities was portrayed as unpatriotic or even treasonous.

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together. Unlike communist regimes, the fascist and protofascist regimes were never proclaimed as godless by their opponents. In fact, most of the regimes attached themselves to the predominant religion of the country and chose to portray themselves as militant defenders of that religion. The fact that the ruling elite’s behavior was incompatible with the precepts of the religion was generally swept under the rug. Propaganda kept up the illusion that the ruling elites were defenders of the faith and opponents of the “godless.” A perception was manufactured that opposing the power elite was tantamount to an attack on religion.

9. Power of corporations protected. Although the personal life of ordinary citizens was under strict control, the ability of large corporations to operate in relative freedom was not compromised. The ruling elite saw the corporate structure as a way to not only ensure military production (in developed states), but also as an additional means of social control. Members of the economic elite were often pampered by the political elite to ensure a continued mutuality of interests, especially in the repression of “have-not” citizens.

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated. Since organized labor was seen as the one power center that could challenge the political hegemony of the ruling elite and its corporate allies, it was inevitably crushed or made powerless. The poor formed an underclass, viewed with suspicion or outright contempt. Under some regimes, being poor was considered akin to a vice.

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts. Intellectuals and the inherent freedom of ideas and expression associated with them were anathema to these regimes. Intellectual and academic freedom were considered subversive to national security and the patriotic ideal. Universities were tightly controlled; politically unreliable faculty harassed or eliminated. Unorthodox ideas or expressions of dissent were strongly attacked, silenced, or crushed. To these regimes, art and literature should serve the national interest or they had no right to exist.

12. Obsession with crime and punishment. Most of these regimes maintained Draconian systems of criminal justice with huge prison populations. The police were often glorified and had almost unchecked power, leading to rampant abuse. “Normal” and political crime were often merged into trumped-up criminal charges and sometimes used against political opponents of the regime. Fear, and hatred, of criminals or “traitors” was often promoted among the population as an excuse for more police power.

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption. Those in business circles and close to the power elite often used their position to enrich themselves. This corruption worked both ways; the power elite would receive financial gifts and property from the economic elite, who in turn would gain the benefit of government favoritism. Members of the power elite were in a position to obtain vast wealth from other sources as well: for example, by stealing national resources. With the national security apparatus under control and the media muzzled, this corruption was largely unconstrained and not well understood by the general population.

14. Fraudulent elections. Elections in the form of plebiscites or public opinion polls were usually bogus. When actual elections with candidates were held, they would usually be perverted by the power elite to get the desired result. Common methods included maintaining control of the election machinery, intimidating and disenfranchising opposition voters, destroying or disallowing legal votes, and, as a last resort, turning to a judiciary beholden to the power elite.

I can't tell which way this country will eventually tilt, full on fascism or communism, but it appears that much of the groundwork has been laid for either outcome.

Regarding slavery

After watching the cringe inducing(at least for me) video on slavery that was posted a while back, I figure this story deserves some light. Found at projectcensored.org there is a short piece that explains the current situation with regards to forced labor. It's a sad situation that humans can still be bought and sold like any other commodity. That the slave trade can create revenues of somewhere between $9.5 billion and $32 billion is absolutely astounding. The clever way that debt slave's are created draws uncomfortable parallels to our own credit industry. I don't say that to diminish the actual abuse of real debt slaves, but when adults spend a significant portion of their lives paying off school, home, car and whatever else loans, it seems only a few steps away from forced labor, especially when the interest rates are absurdly high. In reluctant agreement with the video mentioned before, I do wish more attention was paid to current modern day slaves, and less focus and energy wasted on the former slaves of our country. With more slaves in bondage today, 27 million, than at any other time in human history, it's time to end this cruelty once and for all.

Ron Paul on martial law

Kind of blurry video, and not sure of the date, but yay merry christmas, this should cheer you up.

Paul Krugman on the economic turmoil ahead

"Whatever the new administration does, we're in for months, perhaps even a year, of economic hell. After that, things should get better, as President Obama's stimulus plan -- O.K., I'm told that the politically correct term is now "economic recovery plan" -- begins to gain traction. Late next year the economy should begin to stabilize, and I'm fairly optimistic about 2010."

Found at Alternet. Not exactly a rosy forecast, but sounds reasonable to me. Also makes a good point about how China may struggle without being able to export as much crap to out shores. And I like useless gadgets as much as anyone, but we probably do need to reduce our trade deficits by a large measure. We basically don't make anything anymore and are obsessed with buying shit, doesn't seem to be a sustainable position for an economy. Maybe if we can get everyone to stay sick and in poor health we can all get jobs in health care.

Pastor Sam Kinison

FED lowers rates to nothing

Over at the MarketBeat blog on the Wall Street Journal, the news is the FED, for the first time in history, has a zero-interest rate policy. The first line of the article is some what disconcerting. "No more messing around". Certainly they weren't messing around prior to the drop to zero. "The Fed’s efforts include lots of purchases of agency debt, mortgage-backed securities and other types of debt as well" , well that doesn't seem good. All of that debt is bad debt, insolvent and toxic, can the FED absorb those kinds of losses. Oh, yeah, forgot, they can just invent more money to take care of any losses. "But investors are likely to pile into more esoteric debt securities following the unexpected aggressiveness from the central bank." Cause that worked last time around, when the housing market imploded. I have heard calls for the abolishing of the FED on grounds that it might not even be a legal operation constitutionally, I think I'll call for it's demise on grounds of idiocy at this point. They are going to pump shitloads of money into the system and further erode my buying power just so Wall Street can be comfortable taking risks again. I don't know enough about economics and the FED to be truly righteous in my anger, but damn, between the bailouts and stock market collapse and foreclosures and automaker implosions and whatever else decides to hit the shitfan, I feel like we're being taken for a ride here, and it's not much fun.

Crimes Against Humanity: Israel

I came upon this article by Chris Hedges on Alternet, on the ongoing atrocities of Israel against the Palestinians living in the Gaza strip. I've decided to post it here in its entirety.

Israel's 'Crime Against Humanity'

by Chris Hedges

Israel’s siege of Gaza, largely unseen by the outside world because of Jerusalem’s refusal to allow humanitarian aid workers, reporters and photographers access to Gaza, rivals the most egregious crimes carried out at the height of apartheid by the South African regime. It comes close to the horrors visited on Sarajevo by the Bosnian Serbs. It has disturbing echoes of the Nazi ghettos of Lodz and Warsaw.

“This is a stain on what is left of Israeli morality,” I was told by Richard N. Veits, the former U.S. ambassador to Jordan who led a delegation from the Council on Foreign Relations to Gaza to meet Hamas leaders this past summer. “I am almost breathless discussing this subject. It is so myopic. Washington, of course, is a handmaiden to all this. The Israeli manipulation of a population in this manner is comparable to some of the crimes that took place against civilian populations fifty years ago.”

The U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in the occupied Palestinian territory, former Princeton University law professor Richard Falk, calls what Israel is doing to the 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza “a crime against humanity.” Falk, who is Jewish, has condemned the collective punishment of the Palestinians in Gaza as “a flagrant and massive violation of international humanitarian law as laid down in Article 33 of the Fourth Geneva Convention.” He has asked for “the International Criminal Court to investigate the situation, and determine whether the Israeli civilian leaders and military commanders responsible for the Gaza siege should be indicted and prosecuted for violations of international criminal law.”

Falk, while condemning the rocket attacks by the militant group Hamas, which he points out are also criminal violations of international law, goes on to say that “such Palestinian behavior does not legalize Israel’s imposition of a collective punishment of a life- and health-threatening character on the people of Gaza, and should not distract the U.N. or international society from discharging their fundamental moral and legal duty to render protection to the Palestinian people.”

“It is an unfolding humanitarian catastrophe that each day poses the entire 1.5 million Gazans to an unspeakable ordeal, to a struggle to survive in terms of their health,” Falk said when I reached him by phone in California shortly before he left for Israel. “This is an increasingly precarious condition. A recent study reports that 46 percent of all Gazan children suffer from acute anemia. There are reports that the sonic booms associated with Israeli overflights have caused widespread deafness, especially among children. Gazan children need thousands of hearing aids. Malnutrition is extremely high in a number of different dimensions and affects 75 percent of Gazans. There are widespread mental disorders, especially among young people without the will to live. Over 50 percent of Gazan children under the age of 12 have been found to have no will to live.”

Gaza now spends 12 hours a day without power, which can be a death sentence to the severely ill in hospitals. There are few drugs and little medicine, including no cancer or cystic fibrosis medication. Hospitals have generators but often lack fuel. Medical equipment, including one of Gaza’s three CT scanners, has been destroyed by power surges and fluctuations. Medical staff cannot control the temperature of incubators for newborns. And Israel has revoked most exit visas, meaning some of those who need specialized care, including cancer patients and those in need of kidney dialysis, have died. Of the 230 Gazans estimated to have died last year because they were denied proper medical care, several spent their final hours at Israeli crossing points where they were refused entry into Israel. The statistics gathered on children—half of Gaza’s population is under the age of 17—are increasingly grim. About 45 percent of children in Gaza have iron deficiency from a lack of fruit and vegetables, and 18 percent have stunted growth.

“It is macabre,” Falk said. “I don’t know of anything that exactly fits this situation. People have been referring to the Warsaw ghetto as the nearest analog in modern times.”

“There is no structure of an occupation that endured for decades and involved this kind of oppressive circumstances,” the rapporteur added. “The magnitude, the deliberateness, the violations of international humanitarian law, the impact on the health, lives and survival and the overall conditions warrant the characterization of a crime against humanity. This occupation is the direct intention by the Israeli military and civilian authorities. They are responsible and should be held accountable.”

The point of this Israeli siege, ostensibly, is to break Hamas, the radical Islamic group that was elected to power in 2007. But Hamas has repeatedly proposed long-term truces with Israel and offered to negotiate a permanent truce. During the last cease-fire, established through Egyptian intermediaries in July, Hamas upheld the truce although Israel refused to ease the blockade. It was Israel that, on Nov. 4, initiated an armed attack that violated the truce and killed six Palestinians. It was only then that Hamas resumed firing rockets at Israel. Palestinians have launched more than 200 rockets on Israel since the latest round of violence began. There have been no Israeli casualties.

“This is a crime of survival,” Falk said of the rocket attacks. “Israel has put the Gazans in a set of circumstances where they either have to accept whatever is imposed on them or resist in any way available to them. That is a horrible dilemma to impose upon a people. This does not alleviate the Palestinians, and Gazans in particular, for accountability for doing these acts involving rocket fire, but it also imposes some responsibility on Israel for creating these circumstances.”

Israel seeks to break the will of the Palestinians to resist. The Israeli government has demonstrated little interest in diplomacy or a peaceful solution. The rapid expansion of Jewish settlements on the West Bank is an effort to thwart the possibility of a two-state solution by gobbling up vast tracts of Palestinian real estate. Israel also appears to want to thrust the impoverished Gaza Strip onto Egypt. There are now dozens of tunnels, the principal means for food and goods, connecting Gaza to Egypt. Israel permits the tunnels to operate, most likely as part of an effort to further cut Gaza off from Israel.

“Israel, all along, has not been prepared to enter into diplomatic process that gives the Palestinians a viable state,” Falk said. “They [the Israelis] feel time is on their side. They feel they can create enough facts on the ground so people will come to the conclusion a viable state cannot emerge.”

The use of terror and hunger to break a hostile population is one of the oldest forms of warfare. I watched the Bosnian Serbs employ the same tactic in Sarajevo. Those who orchestrate such sieges do not grasp the terrible rage born of long humiliation, indiscriminate violence and abuse. A father or a mother whose child dies because of a lack of vaccines or proper medical care does not forget. A boy whose ill grandmother dies while detained at an Israel checkpoint does not forget. All who endure humiliation, abuse and the murder of family members do not forget. This rage becomes a virus within those who, eventually, stumble out into the daylight. Is it any wonder that 71 percent of children interviewed at a school in Gaza recently said they wanted to be a “martyr”?

The Israelis in Gaza, like the American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, are foolishly breeding the next generation of militants and Islamic radicals. Jihadists, enraged by the injustices done by Israel and the United States, seek to carry out reciprocal acts of savagery, even at the cost of their own lives. The violence unleashed on Palestinian children will, one day, be the violence unleashed on Israeli children. This is the tragedy of Gaza. This is the tragedy of Israel.

Welcome to the USSA

In this country called America, Americans like to think of themselves as practitioners of Capitalism, "the unknown ideal" as Ayn Rand called it; that reachable dream of luxurious laziness achieveable through the discipline of hard work and lofty ambitions where everyone is given a fair chance and competition rewards the most talented of respective trades.

George Carlin said it best: It's called the American Dream because you have to be asleep to believe it.

But are we truly operating in a capitalistic system? Nope. Stick with me, I'm going to prove my point.

What follows are the Ten Planks of Communism and how they have been implemented in American society.

1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.

14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868), Bureau of Land Management (and various zoning laws), school and property taxes.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

The misapplication of the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1913), The Social Security Act of 1936; Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933; various State "income" taxes. Bill Clinton called it "paying your fair share"

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritence.

Federal & State estate Tax (1916); reformed Probate Laws, limited inheritance by arbitrary inheritance tax statutes

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

Government seizures, tax liens, Public "law" 99-570 (1986); Executive order 11490, sections 1205, 2002 which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development; the imprisonment of "terrorists" and those who speak out or write against the "government" (1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill); the IRS confiscation of property without due process. Asset forfeiture laws are used by DEA, IRS, ATF etc...)

5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

The Federal Reserve Act (1913); The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation; the Exchange Stablization Fund; the President's Working Group on Financial Markets.

6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State.

The Federal Communication Commission and the Department of Transportation mandated through the ICC Act of 1887, the Commissions Act of 1934, the Insterstate Commerce Commission of 1938, The Federal Aviation Administration, Executive Orders 11490, 10999, State-issued driver's licenses and DOT regulations.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state, the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

"Corporate capacity", The Desert Entry Act and the Department of Agriculture, read "controlled or subsidized" rather than "owned", Department of Commerce and Labor, Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, and the IRS control of corporations through government regulation.

8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Americans call it Minimum Wage and slave labor like dealing with our Most Favored Nation trade partner; i.e. Communist China. We see it in practice through the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor. The National debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a two "income" family. Woman in the workplace since the 1920's, the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assorted Socialist Unions, affirmative action (a program of racial hatred against white people), the Federal Public Works Program and of course Executive order 11000.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of
the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.

Americans call it the Planning Reorganization act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public "law" 89-136. These provide for forced relocations and forced sterilization programs, like in China.

10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

Children are indoctrinated with state propaganda through the public school system, inculcating in the children a sense of complacency towards the communal debt system which they are brought up through the state to recognize as their sole provider and savior. This is affected through the Department of Education, the National Endowment for the Arts, and Outcome Based "Education".

Does changing the words of these programs change their meaning and affect the outcome differently? Or is it because we live in America and that we have the most uniquely inspired political document written that we believe we aren't communists?

http://www.libertyzone.com/Communist-Manifesto-Planks.html