[Peace-discuss] DHS Gestapo

[Ricky Baldwin]

It was a creepy name from the beginning, and an even creepier idea.  The whole USA Patriot Act and related system needs dismantling.  Shame on Bush, shame on Congress, and shame on Obama, for setting it up in the first place and then for not shredding it by now.  It's also not the only form of police state we experience -- as we notice in the local papers of late.


But (p.s.) there's an easy confusion here between "heim-," which means "home" as in "Heimat" ("homeland"), and "geheime," which means "secret," in the full name of the infamous Nazi Gestapo.  It could be that whoever coined the name "Homeland Security" for our own US police state agency thought it was a clever pun, or that their German just wasn't very good, but we can't actually translate "Homeland Security" as "Geheime Staatspolizei."  The US system of totalitarianism -- or "inverted totalitarianism" as someone called it -- is also more sophisticated in my opinion and I believe enjoys more support in the population than the Nazi/fascist systems (although we do tend to underestimate how sophisticated they were, and how much support they did enjoy at the time).

 
Ricky Baldwin


"Speak your mind even if your voice shakes." - Maggie Kuhn


________________________________
 From: Carl G. Estabrook <galliher at illinois.edu>
To: Peace-discuss List <Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net> 
Sent: Saturday, November 26, 2011 9:21 AM
Subject: [Peace-discuss] DHS Gestapo
 

"Homeland Security" in German could be Geheime Staatspolizei: under Obama, they're working to live up to that name.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cifamerica/2011/nov/25/shocking-truth-about-crackdown-occupy
_______________________________________________
Peace-discuss mailing list
Peace-discuss at lists.chambana.net
http://lists.chambana.net/mailman/listinfo/peace-discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.chambana.net/pipermail/peace-discuss/attachments/20111128/fdb60a43/attachment.html>