Demos, Despots and Dirty Tricks by George Paxinos Some of us these days wonder where our world is going, or, perhaps, better said, where our world WENT?
How can it be that peaceful elderly folks, simply walking down a shopping street in Miami, can get picked up and kept for up to 11 hours in handcuffs?
Is this new ... or is it rather truer to say that there actually IS nothing new under the sun?
Perhaps it is informative to take a peek back at what we'd prefer to forget and which was our most un-favoured subject at school (at least, it was mine!):
History Why was it so easy for the German people to accept Hitler's promise of peaceful streets again, after Communists and Nazis had fought running battles on them for years?
Had the Nazis NOT battled the Communists, but had they tolerated peaceful demonstrations, perhaps this would not even have been an issue, HAD the other side, the Nazis, REALLY had something to offer that was better than what the Commies had to show.
Perhaps it is only when one has nothing to show, or is hiding a secret hand with a fifth ace that one will not show or cannot show without being called out to a High Noon justice, that it is advantageous to deflect attention from it by provoking a ruckus outside, while preparing to skim the table of the honest players' hard-earned cash?
Certainly, Hitler's rise to power was greatly aided by the street troubles. Without them, he would not have had the German people so willing, at almost any price, to see their streets calm again. Peaceful protest by the people, especially the elderly, is the one thing any dictator must fear: students are expected to get radically violent, they are young, impetuous and impatient, while older folks' opinions are always looked upon with fear by would-be oppressors, for the elderly have lived through enough history of their own, to have seen the differences between times and so make a more rational judgement as to the state of current affairs, and are also more likely to be listened to than younger, more intolerant hotheads.
Now recently, in the USA, demonstrators have been demonised, most recently with targeting of innocent older people, concerned citizens caring only for some modicum of social justice.
Suddenly, these inoffensive older folks have become an object of fear.
Why?
And by whom?
Well, an easy guess is, someone on the rise to absolute power, just like Hitler was. There is nothing any despot fears more than the people taking to the streets to protest him clear out of office — just look what happened to Slobodan Milosevic and Eduard Shevardnadze quite recently — imagine it might happen to the (p)Resident of the White House.
But how to protect against it happening to him? How to make the people get off the streets so it doesn't happen — and in an election year, as people are waking up to the scams of corporate government, that unwelcome election results don't happen either?
How to make people willingly give up their hard-won "Freedoms, that the world hates us for having"?
Well, I should say, the answer is right there! ... let's see ... what would YOU do anything to protect?
Well, next to your own family members and of course yourself, your valuables, perhaps, which a lot of envious, starving people might really hate you for having — your FREEDOMS!
Where do you put them?
Like other valuables, in a place of safekeeping, of course!
OK, so when your valuables are in that place of safety, you can't walk around as usual with them, with your jewellery showing, or your Rolex flashing that you've made it, have a certain amount of freedom (if only financial), but — what the heck? — they are SAFE!
Where could this safe place be? In your own safe, of course, if you can afford one, or, safer still, in a safe in the bank! Then they are doubly-protected!
Even better would be, if the entire US Army and Department of Homeland Security would protect them for you!?
And they WILL!
-- especially your greatest asset of all — your FREEDOMS, the ones the whole world hates us for!
Now we hear that Mr Ridge has determined upon whatever rumoured evidence likely never to appear in a court of law, that a situation of danger makes a Code Orange (Clockwork Orange???) level of alertness necessary!
... Just strangely, at the end of a year!
— and it is always good to start a new year with a great resolution, and get used to the idea that an old situation has been left behind with the old year, and a new situation has arisen, which will be the new paradigm for the new year ... and perhaps for all eternity, if we get used to it, and to so many, many things, and situations, we CAN!
And, sooo conveniently — in an ELECTION YEAR! — (why rock the boat, by the way, "and change jockeys in the middle of a race"?) — when the present administration is keeping us all so safe?
A New Year's resolution like, say, "We accept the level of state security necessary to protect our Freedoms (for which the entire rest of the world hates us!), and so we give them into the safe, safekeeping hands of our Department of Homeland Security! OK, so we can't walk around with them on our sleeves! — because, if we did, then SOMEONE OUT THERE (some goddam raghead) — might STEAL THEM from us!"
Perhaps I have a suspicious mind, but if I were a would-be dictator such as even the particularly patriotic obtuse are beginning to recognise in the top US politician today, and his pirate-crew junta, having ripped off the rights and it looks like the savings and social benefits of so many with legislation friendly mainly to the already ultra-rich, I'd do it this way:
- I'd make sure demonstrations COULD NOT be peaceful, no matter how peaceful the intent of the demonstrators.
- I'd get the fuzz to start the action, then demonise all, young and old alike, and let them be thoroughly defamed by a servile monopoly press.
- I'd also be making sure that the internet will come under my control, by hook or by crook (in my own opinion, likely by both).
- I'd then give a nation-wide, heavily-moralising speech, with many references to "Western Civilisation", "Christian Values", "God", and the morality which the speaker himself feels no obligation whatever to conform to in his own actions, national and international.
- As that speaker, I'd call for restraint, making myself look like a reasonble, moderate voice of calm and reason, and a return to the "Rule of Law" — whatever that might mean to a lawless person, as he himself has proven to be.
- And at the next peaceful demonstration, I'd make sure that violence, by the police and by trained instigator-provocateurs, reaches new proportions, even should, by great restraint, the demonstrators prove resolutely peaceable and unmoved by police and other provocative action.
- Even in this far-out case, I'd have my media blow up only my own side of the story, and that out of all proportion, and disseminate their lies as the absolute, God's-honest, unimpeachable truth.
- I then would re-moralise before the nation, and appear as a clear voice of reason in what would appear in the press to be an impending, uncontrollable chaos, warning of measures not willingly taken to control Freedoms, etc.
- The next demonstration would then be characterised by unprecedented violence. Someone, some convenient Neo-Osama never to be caught — unless some poor flunky serves as the patsy in the case — will do something incredibly heinous, my guess being some sort of poison gas, which will cause many public casualties, and, for good measure, some of the police will be sacrificed too.
- I should then again go on nationwide television, and with stern and sombre face, carefully grimmed and greyed in the dressing-room, roundly condemn the "riots" and — finally, with many regrets — introduce a ban on public demonstrations and the Right of Assembly — for at least — according to me, "during a 'Time of War'" — or perhaps "Until further notice".
- QED.
If any of the above takes place within relatively short notice, be warned.
After reading these two articles:
Legal observer details police violence against FTAA protesters in Miami
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2003/dec2003/miam-d16.shtml
and "This is not America"
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5384.htm
turn to:
http://www.awitness.org/news/november_2001/nazi_anti_terrrorism_bill.html
and cheeck out how it was done before, and how it is about to be done again ... your departed civil rights have kissed your ass goodbye, and you are all about to become meat for the barbed-wire canning factory.
A quote from the previous webpage:
Hitler concentrated his attacks on the Marxists lumping them together with the trade unions and the Social Democrats ... "The activities of subversive organizations are to be combatted with the most drastic methods. Communist terrorist acts are to be proceeded against with all severity and weapons must be used ruthlessly when neccesary ..." Hitler, Feb 4th, 1933. On Feb 22 Göring issued another order which had far reaching consequences. The Prussian police force was to be reinforced by enlisting auxiliaries to "combat the growing excesses of the radical left" ... Recruitment was limited to the SA and SS ... who were virtually given freedom of the streets ...
As an afternote, there IS a way out, of course!:
Simply put, if everyone with some sense of social responsibility simply went out to sit out on the streets in front of their houses and refused to go to work until the dictatorial new rules of social conduct were rescinded, or the government stepped down, the results could be one of:
- The government steps down.
- Police violently clear the streets, making it perfectly clear what kind of state you are presently living in, and also making clear your foremost duty, which would be to overthrow that kind of state, as per your First and Second Constitutional Amendments.
- You all get fired — and don't go back to work, so the economy collapses, the fuzz realise it is hopelss, and join the demonstrators like recently in Georgia, and a true people's government takes over from the fleeing pirates.
Your call.
— George, geopax@bluewin.ch
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