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<span class="post_date" title="2017-04-26" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 1px; font-size: 12px;">APRIL 26, 2017</span>
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<a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/04/26/empire-abroad-empire-at-home/" rel="bookmark" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51); text-decoration: none;" class="">Empire Abroad, Empire At Home</a></h1>
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<span class="post_author_intro" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 14px; font-family: 'Signika Negative', sans-serif;">by</span> <span class="post_author" itemprop="author" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; text-transform: uppercase; letter-spacing: 1px; font-family: "Signika Negative", sans-serif; color: rgb(30, 30, 30); font-size: 14px;"><a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/author/richard-moser/" rel="nofollow" style="margin: 0px 0px 0px 5px; padding: 0px 0px 10px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(30, 30, 30);" class="">RICHARD
MOSER</a></span></p>
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<blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 16px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 8px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); border-left: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); max-width: 500px;" class="">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”</p>
</blockquote>
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Americans are taught to revel in our power and supremacy. Over 650 major military bases span the whole world. We wage endless wars. American corporations are the most powerful economic organizations in history. The fusion of economic and military power makes
our empire unlike any the world has ever seen.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
We may be “#1” but it is to this great empire that we have lost our souls and our democracy with it.[1]</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class=""><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class="">The New Paradigm</em></strong></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
No great wall separates U.S. foreign policy from domestic policy. The <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Institute_for_Policy_Research" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">Manhattan Institute</a> is
an influential think tank founded in 1978 by William Casey, former head of all U.S. intelligence and Director of the CIA. In a 2006 report “<a href="https://www.manhattan-institute.org/pdf/scr_04.pdf" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">Merging
Law Enforcement and Counterterrorism Strategies</a>,” they describe “The New Paradigm:”</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 16px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 8px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); border-left: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); max-width: 500px;" class="">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
We know too that globalization is a permanent fact. The international economy is the engine of our nation and the source of our wealth. It means that all the physical and conceptual walls associated with the modern, sovereign state—the walls that divide domestic
from international, the police from the military, intelligence from law enforcement, war from peace, and crime from war—are coming down.</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
The institutions and ideas U.S. elites used to project “<a href="http://archive.defense.gov/news/newsarticle.aspx?id=45289" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">full spectrum dominance</a>” onto the global
stage have eventually become part of the political order in the U.S. The “full spectrum” includes us.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
<a href="http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2012/10/imperialism-destroys-constitutional.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">It is empire — most of all — that dooms democracy and constitutional
republics</a>. As corporations have an insatiable drive for profit, empires have an insatiable drive for power. And that makes imperial actors hostile to the limits on authority, checks and balances, separation of powers and basic rights that the U.S. republic
at least aspired to.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
As the institutions of representative democracy become weaker and weaker — devoted only to serving the corporate power and global empire — the need for social control of the people becomes greater and greater.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class=""><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class="">Targeting Dissent in the USA</em></strong></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
The “McCarthyism” of the 1950s was the first modern wave of coordinated social control. Truman stoked the fear and hatred of communism to serve foreign policy, but soon, in the hands of the FBI and unscrupulous politicians, it was turned against domestic dissent.
The establishment decided that some ideas were so dangerous that American citizens did not have the right or capacity to think through them for themselves. The government would do the thinking for us.[2]</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Dissent was equated with treason, and it was not until the hard fought battles of the civil rights movement that dissent was once again seen as legitimate. It’s worth remembering that <a href="http://kingencyclopedia.stanford.edu/encyclopedia/encyclopedia/enc_communism/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">Martin
Luther King was widely accused of being a communist</a>.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Starting in the mid-50s, the FBI’s <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/topics/cointelpro" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">COINTELPRO</a> program attacked dissenters. While the civil rights and black
power movements were the primary targets of violent repression, almost all social movements were surveilled and disrupted. Today, protestors face <a href="https://waterprotectorlegal.org/standing-rock-water-protectors-report-escalating-surveillance-civil-rights-and-privacy-violations/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">escalating
penalties, police violence, surveillance, and intimidation</a>. Particularly since Trump’s election there have been a host of proposed laws that aim to <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/news/2017/04/02/un-americans-right-protest-grave-danger-under-trump?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">criminalize
first amendment rights of free speech and assembly.</a></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Nixon turned to the “War on Drugs” to <a href="https://harpers.org/archive/2016/04/legalize-it-all/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">create the domestic equivalent of war and suppress the political
movements</a>. The War on Drugs — <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/19/from-the-war-on-poverty-to-the-war-on-crime-review-elizabeth-hinton?CMP=share_btn_fb" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">waged
by Democrats and Republicans alike</a> — went after hippies, the young and the black community as a way of penalizing the populations on which the movements depended.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Now we know the outcome of the War on Drugs.</p>
<blockquote style="margin: 0px 0px 16px 20px; padding: 0px 0px 0px 8px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(136, 136, 136); border-left: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); max-width: 500px;" class="">
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Over the past few decades the American people have created a vast militarized penal system that is now the most powerful institutionalized racism in the US. And like the forms of institutionalized racism that preceded it, the penal system functions as an effective
form of social control. Discriminatory and militarized policing,<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> on-the-spot executions</a>,<a href="http://www.alternet.org/story/151732/21st-century_slaves%253A_how_corporations_exploit_prison_labor" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> slave-like
prison labor</a>,<a href="http://www.amnestyusa.org/our-work/issues/military-police-and-arms/police-and-human-rights/mass-incarceration-in-the-usa" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> mass incarceration</a>,<a href="https://www.aclu.org/issues/racial-justice/race-and-inequality-education/school-prison-pipeline" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> school-to-prison
pipeline</a>,<a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2013/12/05/us-forced-guilty-pleas-drug-cases" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> restriction of trial by jury</a>,<a href="http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2013/03/201332671936115766.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> lengthy
and mandatory sentencing</a>,<a href="https://www.scribd.com/document/265334919/NAPD-Statement-on-Predatory-Collection-Practices" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> predatory fine, fee</a> and<a href="https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prisons-then-and-now-faq%23.OPYxYTrl1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class=""> debt
traps</a>, and its gigantic sweep and size constitutes nothing short of a preemptive war against the most potentially rebellious parts of the population: the young, people of color, the poor.[3]</p>
</blockquote>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Mandatory sentencing laws passed by Congress and signed by Bill Clinton <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2017/02/17/i-sentenced-criminals-to-hundreds-more-years-than-i-wanted-to-i-had-no-choice/?utm_campaign=buffer&utm_content=buffer1500f&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_term=.d939c4b703bd" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">shifted
the power from judges to prosecutors.</a> By tilting power away from the judiciary and toward the executive, a highly “efficient” system of incarceration took shape.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Police often get <a href="http://thefreethoughtproject.com/u-s-police-routinely-travel-israel-learn-methods-brutality-repression/#Wol5FitTqxIwrp9g.01" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">military training
appropriate to an occupation force</a>, training that <a href="http://www.mintpressnews.com/trained-to-kill-the-policing-tactics-the-public-isnt-supposed-to-know-about/191639/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">emphasizing
weapons rather than conflict resolution</a>. The “oil cops” at Standing Rock were <a href="https://www.democracynow.org/2016/11/21/jeremy_scahill_tigerswan_security_linked_to" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">employees
of a private firm with ties to Blackwater</a>, the corporation that provided the mercenaries used by the US in Iraq and Afghanistan.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
The use of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/27/us-facial-recognition-database-fbi-drivers-licenses-passports" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">facial recognition software</a>,
the <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/03/13/rand-paul-is-right-nsa-routinely-monitors-americans-communications-without-warrants/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">recording and monitoring of electronic
and phone communications</a> and the <a href="http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/senate-votes-let-isps-sell-your-data-without-consent-n737921" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">commercialization of
internet browsing data</a> — all without consent or indictments — are part of the most sophisticated system of electronic surveillance ever created. Mass surveillance is a profound attack on the First Amendment. Knowing big brother is always listening <a href="https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2016/05/when-surveillance-chills-speech-new-studies-show-our-rights-free-association" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">chills
free speech, dissent and free association</a>.</p>
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The penal system chipped away other key provisions of the Bill of Rights including the protection from unwarranted search and seizure, <a href="https://www.facebook.com/innocenceproject/videos/10154163078667665/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">the
right to a trial</a>, and the most fundamental rights of <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/series/counted-us-police-killings" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">life, liberty, and pursuit of
happiness</a>.</p>
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With 2 million behind bars, a million of which slave away for big corporations and the military, the penal system is the main example of how the empire’s <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/02/us/training-officers-to-shoot-first-and-he-will-answer-questions-later.html?_r=0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">increasing
reliance on force and violence</a> to solve political problems turned inward toward the American people.</p>
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But, as intimidating and brutal as the penal system is — it also a last resort. The use of force is evidence that the empire is losing control over the hearts and minds of increasing numbers of its subjects.</p>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class=""><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class="">“Defense” on the Homefront</em></strong></p>
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The line between empire abroad and empire at home was further eroded by provisions of the <a href="https://armedservices.house.gov/hearings-and-legislation/ndaa-national-defense-authorization-act" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">National
Defense Authorization Act</a> (NDAA).</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
The 1990 NDAA, passed by Congress and signed by President and former director of the CIA George Bush, <a href="http://www.newsweek.com/how-americas-police-became-army-1033-program-264537" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">allowed
for the transfer of military weapons to domestic police forces</a> accelerating the militarization of the penal system.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
President Obama signed the 2012 NDAA which <a href="https://www.aclu.org/feature/indefinite-detention-endless-worldwide-war-and-2012-national-defense-authorization-act" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">extended
the rules of war worldwide</a> — in effect making the US. homeland a theatre of war — by allowing <a href="http://pandaunite.org/whatisthendaa/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">indefinite detention
without trial or justification</a>, in violation of the <a href="http://www.counterpunch.org/2012/01/18/why-the-ndaa-is-unconstitutional/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">constitutionally guaranteed
right of Habeas Corpus.</a></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
The <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/ndaa-legalizes-propaganda-2012-5" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">NDAA also included provisions</a> that allowed the “<a href="https://nsnbc.me/2013/07/23/how-the-ndaa-allows-us-gov-to-use-propaganda-against-americans/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">US
government to broadcast American produced foreign propaganda in the U.S.</a>” And that is a lot of propaganda. In <a href="https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/military/story/2012-02-29/afghanistan-iraq-military-information-operations-usa-today-investigation/53295472/1" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">2009,
$580 million was spend in Iraq and Afghanistan on the information war</a>. Another <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/us-government-pentagon-fake-al-qaeda-propganda-videos-a7348371.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">$500
million was spent by the Pentagon to produce fake Al-Qaeda videos</a>. The NDAA essentially legalized the propaganda efforts of the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ED63A_hcd0" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">CIA
that were revealed as far back as 1975.</a></p>
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The first amendment is precise and sweeping: ‘Congress shall make <strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class=""><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class="">no law</em></strong>…abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press…” The Bill of Rights is designed to protect the people from the power of government not to protect government from the people.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
In the last weeks of his term, Obama signed off on a bi-partisan effort to amend the 2016 NDAA and establish a “<a href="https://www.portman.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/press-releases?ID=F973E46B-AA8C-4F3E-91B4-8EC0FC7F2F3E" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">counter-propaganda”
program</a>, once again placing government in a position to determine what is propaganda and what is not. In a free country, that is the job of the people.</p>
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The chilling logic behind Obama’s <a href="http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2012/04/obama-has-prosecuted-more-whistleblowers-than-all-other-presidents-combined.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">record
prosecution of whistleblowers under the Espionage Act</a> and the Russian-baiting unleashed by the Clinton machine was taken to it’s extreme conclusion when Trump’s CIA director Mike Pompeo targeted Wikileaks as “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/video/national/cia-director-calls-wikileaks-a-non-state-hostile-intelligence-service/2017/04/13/bb80ea8e-2082-11e7-bb59-a74ccaf1d02f_video.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">a
non-state, hostile intelligence service</a>,” in a <a href="https://theintercept.com/2017/04/14/trumps-cia-director-pompeo-targeting-wikileaks-explicitly-threatens-speech-and-press-freedoms/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">direct
threat to free speech, free press </a>and public access to information. Yet, in the last days of his term Obama insured that the <a href="https://www.dni.gov/index.php/intelligence-community/members-of-the-ic" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">17
secret police forces</a> would be able to freely <a href="https://www.commondreams.org/views/2017/01/15/obama-expands-surveillance-powers-his-way-out?utm_campaign=shareaholic&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=socialnetwork" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">share
raw data and information gathered on millions of American citizens.</a></p>
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They can know all about us but we cannot know about them.</p>
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If the elites trusted the old forms of social order and enculturation— the media, educational system, family, military, church, or even the Constitution itself — to maintain order, would they need to create a system of mass surveillance, incarceration, and
propaganda?</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class=""><em style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class="">What a strange moment we live in!</em></strong></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
The revolutionary vision of the Declaration of Independence, the checks on tyranny that structure the U.S. Constitution and the limits on government power listed in the Bill of Rights — though they be flawed and two and a half centuries old — are far more advanced
than the form of government we now have. <a href="http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/jimmy-carter-us-oligarchy-bribes" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">There is no democratic representation in the
U.S. today </a> The U.S. empire and the corporate power have done what the old British empire could not.</p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
Only <a href="http://befreedom.co/2016/12/06/standing-rock-challenge-to-the-establishment-school-for-the-social-movements/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">massive and disruptive social movements</a> can
unmask the abuses of power to truly test the limits of our rights. The most important question: <a href="http://befreedom.co/how-do-we-organize-a-hundred-million/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">how
do we organize the social movements necessary to restore democracy?</a></p>
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<strong style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word;" class="">Notes.</strong></p>
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1/ See the work of <a href="http://americanempireproject.com/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">The American Empire Project</a>, “Empire, long considered an offense against America’s democratic heritage,
now threatens to define the relationship between our country and the rest of the world. The American Empire Project publishes books that question this development, examine the origins of U.S. imperial aspirations, analyze their ramifications at home and abroad,
and discuss alternatives to this dangerous trend.” Also see Andrew Bacevich’s many articles and books such as <a href="http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/2334/andrew_bacevich_on_the_new_american_militarism" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">The
New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War.</a></p>
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2/ Ellen Schrecker, <a href="http://press.princeton.edu/titles/6698.html" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">Many Are The Crimes: McCarthyism in America</a></p>
<p style="margin: 0px 0px 20px 10px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; font-size: 18px; line-height: 1.7em; font-family: Georgia, serif; max-width: 560px; color: rgb(17, 17, 17);" class="">
<a href="http://befreedom.co/2017/03/04/organize-the-white-working-class/" style="margin: 0px; padding: 0px; word-wrap: break-word; color: rgb(51, 51, 51);" class="">3/ https://befreedom.co/2017/03/04/organize-the-white-working-class/</a></p>
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