How Our Government Is Trying to Scare Us into Submitting to Corporate Dominance

[xchrom]

http://www.alternet.org/news-amp-politics/how-our-government-trying-scare-us-submitting-corporate-dominance

Shannon McLeish of Florida is a 45-year-old married mother of two young children. She is a homeowner, a taxpayer and a safe driver. She votes in every election. She attends a Unitarian Universalist church on Sundays. She is also, like nearly all who have a relationship with the Occupy movement in the United States, being monitored by the federal government. She knows this because when she read FBI documents obtained by the Partnership for Civil Justice Fund (PCJF) through the Freedom of Information Act, she was startled to see a redaction that could only be referring to her. McLeish’s story is the story of hundreds of thousands of people—perhaps more—whose lives are being invaded by the state. It is the story of a security and surveillance apparatus—overseen by the executive branch under Barack Obama—that has empowered the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security to silence the voices and obstruct the activity of citizens who question corporate power.

Mara Verheyden-Hilliard, executive director of the PCJF, said in a written statement about the released files: “This production [of information], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protesters organizing with the Occupy movement. These documents show that the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security are treating protests against the corporate and banking structure of America as potential criminal and terrorist activity. These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”

The FBI documents are not only a chilling example of how widespread this surveillance and obstruction has become, they are an explicit warning by the security services to all who consider dissent. Anyone who defies corporate power, even if he or she is nonviolent and acting within constitutional rights, is a suspect. These documents are part of the plan to make us fearful, compliant and disempowered. They mark, I suspect, a government attempt to end peaceful mass protests by responding with repression to the grievances of Americans. When the corporate-financed group FreedomWorks bused in goons to disrupt Democratic candidates’ town hall meetings about the federal health care legislation in August 2009, Eric Zuesse of the Business Insider notes, “there was no FBI surveillance of those corporate-organized disruptions of legitimate democratic processes. There also were no subsequent FreedomWorks applications for Freedom of Information Act releases of FBI files regarding such surveillance being used against them—because there was no such FBI campaign against them.”

The combination of intimidation tactics by right-wing fringe groups, which speak in the language of violence and hate, with the state’s massive intrusion into the personal affairs of the citizen is corporate fascism. And we are much farther down that road than many of us care to admit.

[Downwinder]

1. Monitoring football players would be more productive.

[Fumesucker]

3. And monitoring corporate executives would be even more productive than that n/t

[Downwinder]

5. They are the easiest.

They are in the same office every day, talking on the phone. All you have to do is pick up all of their communications. (Hello NSA)

[cer7711]

2. Fascism Should Rightly Be Called Corporatism

Fascism should rightly be called Corporatism, as it is the merger of corporate and government power.

—Benito Mussolini

I think the founder of 20th-century fascism—and its first successful practitioner—knew what he was talking about, don’t you? How well we’ve learned. USA! USA! USA!

Other pertinent quotes of “Il Duce”:

—The keystone of the Fascist doctrine is its conception of the State, of its essence, its functions and its aims. For Fascism the State is absolute, individuals and groups relative.

—Fascism is a religious concept.

—Let us have a dagger between our teeth, a bomb in our hands, and an infinite scorn in our hearts. (Sounds like the democracy-hating battle-cry of our very own Tea-Party congressmen . . .)

—The Liberal State is a mask behind which there is no face; it is a scaffolding behind which there is no building. (So says your enemy, Progressives! All the more reason to stand up and be counted . . .)

[DeSwiss]

4. ''To learn who rules over you, simply find who you are not allowed to criticize.'' ~Voltaire

- K&R

[HiPointDem]

6. kr.. i found this sentence rather chilling:

She is also, like nearly all who have a relationship with the Occupy movement in the United States, being monitored by the federal government.

[Arcanetrance]

7. Makes me happy I voted for my liberal progressive constitutional scholar of a president

Oh wait

[glowing]

8. They do this because they are afraid of People Power.

I remember when I fist joined Code Pink group in 2004 or 2005? It is also in FL and FL isn't really too good at having a large crowd or a lot of people able to involve themselves in planned actions. There are a lot of people who move in from lots of different regions. There isn't a lot of community sense about FL since so many move into the area from outside to begin life or to retire... There isn't an overwhelming sense of community and neighborly help outside one's circle. And everything that crashed in a larger sense around the country was allowed to happen here first.

I used to say that what FL was experiencing with job markets, increased prices of everything, depressed pay wages, and the corruption of a party that used people's fears and religion to hijack sensibilities about who was best to lead the state and local municipalities was a trial run for the country at large. The attacks on teachers with testing (implemented by the younger Bush brother) began happening here before NCLB. The corruption of people in power and on the take is rampant here. And CENTCom is located in the area.

Anyway, it was 2006 mid-term election time. People were beginning to finally wake up to the horrors of Bush/ Cheney on a national level (and it was really clenched after the experiences of the hurricanes and particularly Hurricane Katrina and the ethnic cleansing that seemed purposely enacted). FL sees its own number of hurricanes and we know that the response from the govt to the gulf coast region, and in particular to New Orleans, was cruel, inhumane, and NOT what normally occurs after a devastating blow like a Hurricane's destruction can land. It's still not been taken care of.

So, 2006 was a year that was kind of a big organizing year that pulled all kinds of activists and party people together to try and form coalitions in order to try and regain some power control back to the people. I remember a few meetings where a lot of people showed up for action dates. Kids from campus and different anti-war group members were meeting up. And these meetings had a lot of "new" people show up that I'd never seen before.

All the other times we had met, there were very limited amounts of people who could actually show up. 10 people actually sitting in a room together was a good night. Mostly, we had to make plans and send out e-mails and post actions on MySpace (that was the more popular at that time over FaceBook). Our little tiny, barely any attendance group because we were all very busy women in our own lives, were completely saturated with "outsiders". We weren't doing anything illegal, however, there was a planned action to hang banners off of the overpasses on a few highways. This was something we had to keep on the down low with people who we knew were trustworthy because if other people knew, the action could be stopped or taken down before the effort could get off the ground.

It was an action I refused to take part in because there were college kids who had more freedom to handle these actions and because I was and continue to be in a life that being arrested would hurt my family (my stepson). There were a couple of suspicious types that showed up for a meeting just before the overpass hanging and the peaceful protest against the war outside of MacDill AFB (also host to CENTCom). Basically, an intelligence gathering operation of who people were and what level of "threat" we supposedly were to the "machine".

It seemed so silly. I knew I wasn't a threat and that a FL action of protest was so small most of the time that it was a bit humiliating to me as a citizen to see such apathy from the community at large. And at that time, because I was one of the people who showed up for our meetings, I had a secretary/ treasure roll (small amts of money that basically paid for poster board and marker supplies). But my name was in association with the group. I'm rather sure there was a file on me during those years. It was also during this time that weird things happened to my email account, random people requested being my friend with very little on their page (fake accounts), and strangest thing was with my mom, every time she flew in or out to visit from VT to us to see us and her grand-baby, her bags were searched.

After 2008 and Obama's election was won, it was impossible to get anyone together for anything, people lost jobs, moved out of the area, and gas was too expensive to make plans to get together without thinking of how it would eat into the little money anyone had anyway. The economy tanked here first and really crashed after it hit the banks/ Wall St. The TeaParty response was crazy and lunatic and grabbed up a few "lefties" at first because it began with angry people upset at the govt.

The initial people's who were interested in the anger were more tuned into the corruption of the govt in its collusion with Wall st and the banks. Plus it grabbed the anger or the now "independent Voter" who were upset that they had been lied to and that Bush and congress had let them down. I think there was a thought that with the Ron Paul supporters, lefty people who had been mad for a long time, and general angst could create the force needed to engage govt... But it was hijacked by AstroTurfing types of entities and quickly became the new KKK rally. People who realized that their newly formed angry coalition of citizens was being used. Those who stayed or turned to the TeaParty became disgruntled Republicans.

It was Occupy that finally came into its own and captured the real spirit of the anger. And without a "head", there wasn't really a leader that could be taken down. On the other hand, without the organizational forces of having leaders, the movement is somewhat at an impasse. There does need to be a coordinated effort to train and rally people within the network to areas of govt (like the Tea-Baggers did) who will do the right things for The People and not be beholden to the monied interests that hold our "leaders" in govt hostage or just purely corrupt them.

It's a sick and twisted govt that we have allowed to grow up around us. And sadly, the 2nd amendment advocates for keeping arms in case they need to take out the "evil govt forces" are the same ones, for the most part, are the one's who willingly and loudly followed and drowned out others voices against going to war, especially with the case of the Iraq War which had nothing to do with 9/11... Even Afghanistan isn't really the country that we should still be bogged down within. It was a good place for a Sauudi prince to set up shop and train radical extremists in the mountain/ border area. And that prince was at one time on the CIA's pay roll.

[Redfairen]

9. k/r*

[regjoe]

10. Alex Jones agrees

[woo me with science]

11. Kick