but the whole 9/11 thing sure gave them a much-desired excuse to trample our civil liberties.

All to keep us "safe" of course.

Freedumb! also, too.

For me the root cause is economic.

The 60s were a time of a powerful middle class, a rarity in history.* So it was also a time of great unrest, when all kinds of people were feeling empowered, and tried to claim their rights. Blacks, women, students, environmentalists, everybody. This disturbed the powers that be, the money elites, business people, conservatives primarily.

They set out on a decades' long campaign to re-take control of society and that meant control of the media, attacking unions, regaining economic power, all kinds of stuff. A convenient starting point would be a memo/speech given by (later Justice) Lewis Powell to the Chamber of Commerce in 1973.

http://www.greenpeace.org/usa/en/news-and-blogs/campaign-blog/the-lewis-powell-memo-corporate-blueprint-to-/blog/36466/

And they've done it. They've systematically destroyed the middle class, and with the control of media dumbed down the conversation so much that people don't see the problem (answers don't matter if the questions are wrong), or don't have the spare energy to focus on the big issues, or the ability to do anything about it, or all three.

*Two other times when there was a strong middle class: Renaissance Europe, after the Black Death killed many people and drove the cost of labor up; and Revolutionary America, when "free" land enabled many to rise out of poverty--and look how that turned out. Today's conservatives are just the Tories of the era, but this time they are winning.

demanding their rights, along with everyone else. Demanding the vote if they were going to be sent off to war. Demanding a rational policy on that war, i.e. end it.

In other words, not-traditionally powerful groups challenged the elites.

I'm not likely to forget.

"Demanding the vote if they were going to be sent off to war." I was in college 1967-1971, and protested on campus.We protested about Kent State and the Invasion of Cambodia.

Nor am I likely to forget.

Maybe I didn't word it well enough.

I remember very well the day I had a gun pointed at me by some whackjob during a protest at Univ. of CO in Boulder over the Secret Bombing of Cambodia. I also remember that the focus of the protests for many was the draft, although others had a wider anti-war stance, including me.

But my point is that era of empowerment allowed MANY groups to step past traditional, conformational standards of behavior, and demand that their voices be heard.

Now things are different. Now there is "a combination of power, money and education in the service of creating an almost lethal restriction of what can be heard, said, learned and debated in the public sphere."

Now, unlike then, the people are dis-empowered.


Peace.

At least, for a bit.

(one among many, alas) is their default setting in favor of military adventures abroad.

Bobby and Gene were with us, and for us. So was McGovern. I'd be over the moon to have Democrats like that, instead of the current corporatist variety.

I've said before, on other threads, that it seemed like the light of possibility went out of our political life after Bobby was murdered, and that we have been fighting a defensive action, and losing, ever since. What gives me hope, finally, is the coming of a new coalition of minorities and younger voters, strong enough to beat back the Haters. I just hope they/we will also be strong enough to defeat the Money.

which was the first in American (and maybe world) history to have had widespread access to higher education due to the GI Bill, and to good jobs due to the unionization movement during & after the Depression.

enough to understand all of the injustices of the times. This taught the extreme right to start cutting back on education and social programs, start raising tuition, and phase out --liberal-- arts.

If you haven't lived through it, you are subject to how today's history looks back on the 60s.

Peace~~Felix

I blinked a couple of times & said, "Well, parts of them…"

certainly did get laid on us. I can't believe that drugs killed that many brain cells. I remember when references to the 60s started becoming derogatory. I remember feeling sad about this. I can't count how many times I've heard that joke-meme about the 60s, told as if it is also what the person believes.

Subtle and not-so-subtle racism had worked well for them. The GOP took full advantage of southern Democrats' chagrin over the Civil Rights Act of 1965.

The Democratic Party lost seven of the next ten presidential elections, and no Democrat was elected president that wasn't a southern white male during that period.

Notice in one of the concluding paragraphs, one in which he describes the essential elements of our uniquely US existance are essentially the same things we find to be most important in our society today?

Here is what he said:

"We in America already have moved very far indeed toward some aspects of state socialism, as the needs and complexities of a vast urban society require types of regulation and control that were quite unnecessary in earlier times. In some areas, such regulation and control already have seriously impaired the freedom of both business and labor, and indeed of the public generally. But most of the essential freedoms remain: private ownership, private profit, labor unions, collective bargaining, consumer choice, and a market economy in which competition largely determines price, quality and variety of the goods and services provided the consumer."

I think he would be shocked and appalled to see what Big Business has done to America and Americans.

Would Al Gore really have been any different on the NDAA? I would like to think so but I doubt it. Even if well intentioned he would remain at the mercy of the same forces constraining Obama.

The ultimate irony is that the Left is disarming itself both literally and figuratively and can no longer mount a serious opposition to the erosion of its own rights.

But would takin' it to the streets have taken Gore to the Oval Office? Not likely if it was a Coup D'état.

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn't a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.




I'd take it all the way back to the 1920s when they attacked and broke up the labor unions because of their heavy Communist presence and convinced the American public that Business Growth was the way to go.

By the 1950s, when they pounded the final nails, I think that's when our doom was sealed. If we'd still had strong populist organizations, the structure would have been there to organize and fight back in 2000. In fact, it never would have gotten to 2000.


The President of the Screen Actors Guild testifying at the WitchHunt Trials for the 1%

From Dan Moldea:

    President Ronald Reagan's professional life--his acting career, his personal financial fortune, and his rise in politics--has been interwoven with and propelled by a powerful, Hollywood-based entertainment conglomerate named MCA.  For nearly fifty years, Reagan has benefited both personally and financially from his association with this sixty-two-year-old company--formerly known as the Music Corporation of America--as well as from his close association with the firm's top executives:  Jules Stein, Lew Wasserman, and Taft Schreiber.

     Everyone involved has greatly profited from this relationship.  MCA helped to make its client, actor Ronald Reagan, a multimillionaire; and the favors that were returned by Reagan, the former president of the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) and the former governor of California, have helped to transform MCA into a billion-dollar empire and the most powerful force in the entertainment world today.

     Reagan and his closest friends have portrayed and defended the president's business transactions with MCA, which date back to 1940, as being totally above suspicion.  But there remain numerous unanswered questions and allegations about the relationship between Reagan and MCA.  These doubts raise delicate issues that involve possible personal and political payoffs--as well as links to major Mafia figures, particularly Beverly Hills attorney Sidney Korshak, who has been described by federal investigators as the principal link between the legitimate business world and organized crime.

     In 1962, the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice tried to resolve some of these questions, but their secret investigation was settled out of court before the evidence could be presented.  The results of the probe were never made public, and no one close to MCA was ever indicted.  However, through the Freedom of Information Act, many of these documents have been recovered and are excerpted in this book.

     These records show that Reagan, the president of SAG and an FBI informant against Hollywood communists, was the subject of a federal grand jury investigation whose focus was Reagan's possible role in a suspected conspiracy between MCA and the actors' union.  According to Justice Department documents, government prosecutors had concluded that decisions made by SAG while under Reagan's leadership became "the central fact of MCA's whole rise to power."

CONTINUED...

http://www.moldea.com/MCA.html

Thanks for the additional details.


Wasserman, Nancy, and Ronnie hobnobbing like old times.

...

MCA was the heavy hitter in the negotiations, having purchased the rights to Paramount’s pre-1948 library and supposedly engaged in talks for Universal’s. The decision was made to call Reagan back to the ranks, presumably in hopes that he could sway MCA and Wasserman toward a better deal for the actors. As Reagan recalled in his memoir, he didn’t want to return to the SAG presidency, as his “career had suffered” during his last tenure. But he called Wasserman (still, remember, his agent), and Wasserman advised him to buck up and take the job.

UM. ARE YOU GUYS SMELLING SOMETHING FISHY? Maybe some high-class, bastard fish that eats all the other, small, eager fishes and then pretends it’s the nicest fish in the pond?

Reagan fails to manufacture a deal that satisfied the guild members; they go on strike. For six weeks. Everyone’s pissed and anxious. Finally, he cuts a deal: The studios would put together a pension/welfare plan of sorts for the actors, and in exchange, the actors would give over ALL RIGHTS to ALL FILMS made before 1960. It was a mindbogglingly good deal for the studios, and a huge eff-you to the actors. And that, Scandals readers, is what they call screwing the pooch.

To add insult to injury, Reagan resigned from the SAG presidency in order to move into a joint production partnership with — you guessed it — MCA. When the United States government summoned a grand jury to investigate MCA’s monopolistic business practices in 1962, Reagan was called to the stand. In his testimony, sealed for 25 years, he admitted that he had been cut into a 25% ownership deal of General Electric Theater in ... wait for it ... 1959, after discussions with Wasserman.

...

Without Reagan and the policies he pushed through at Wasserman's behest, there would be no Rupert Murdoch — or at least no News Corp. the way we know it. No massive Disney empire. Six entities would not provide the vast majority of your entertainment. The media landscape could conceivably look much different — more diverse, and less obsessed with synergy and cross-plugging and multi-platform hits. Whether in 1947, 1952, 1959, or 1984, Reagan’s interests were Wasserman’s interests — and those interests were very rarely the interests of the citizens Reagan was entrusted to protect.

...

http://thehairpin.com/2012/11/scandals-of-classic-hollywood-ronald-reagan-plays-the-president

They kept it off the Tee Vee

of not being able to fight back anymore with Democratic methods. It is we who are circling the wagons--not the MIC.

and looking for a picture of the despicable Saint Ronny whose admirers can be found in both parties.

television and religion are the two biggest culprits IMHO

Hegelian Dialectic and the false flag facilitation. When Obama is done, his predecessor will seem tame by comparison. This drone thing is so horrible it defys even imagination. One guy on America Speaks recently said that maybe a thousand-foot diameter asteroid in mid-Kansas might be the best thing for mankind in general. What have we left our children by our timid reactions only working through political processes that have been dead for decades.

from a very important man.

Why is Democracy Now the only place I hear from this patriot?

How much longer will Democracy Now be around? I fear its days may be numbered.

That never occurred to me, but in light of what's going on...
:shiver:
They removed liberal radio in liberal markets like Seattle & Portland.
There are numerous sports and rightwing stations there already - good signal and well promoted.

What next?
Free Amy Goodman?

I thought my marching days were over... I'd march for that, however.

his complaint Hedges v Bush? So he is talking about this guy that fled the country? So he is questioning the intelligence on this guy, the Government claims had ties with Al Qaeda. So he is questioning the President of the United States credibility as commander in chief? No, President Obama did not violate his rights. He is defending the rights of the deceased. The best way to shut this guy up is to put out the evidence on the decease in public display. I believe President Obama. If President Obama as Commander in chief of our armed forces had information this guy was a threat to the United States, even though he had the privilege of being a citizen was dealt with appropiately. This fella had every chance to stay in this country and face charges. I'm behind the President 100 percent.

Last edited Sun Feb 10, 2013, 11:08 PM - Edit history (1)

... click on the link, read the entire article, and LISTEN to the entire 20 minute video. As a matter of fact, listen to it twice, because the video was taken backstage and Ellsberg is grabbing a bite to eat and sometimes his words are illegible. I too, love PO. Like a son. BUT, you must not close your mind on this subject. Ellsberg is not defending that American terrorist necessarily that was killed with the drone over there. Ellsberg voted for PO twice, just like I did. I am behind PO 100% too, like you. BUT I am 100% against the MIC and the continuing of this open-ended (never-ending) war. The MIC has bankrupted this country. And as great as these drones are, they still can't tell the difference between the guilty and the innocent. And what are you going to do when our drones start flying around your neighborhood killing innocents? Please read and listen to what Daniel Ellsberg says, OK? You cannot make an informed decision about such an important topic without knowing all the facts. Respectfully...

Edited: to correct name of Daniel Ellsberg.

... arthritisR_US. (Hope your arthritis is not as bad as mine )

....and the public rejects greed and hates Wall Street then the Fat Cats who OWN the government will consider those people to be Enemies of the State.

Forget "Church and State", we have "Money and State" and idiot politicians who obsess with the idea that commerce is more important than liberty. Hell, they will take away your liberty for even REMOTELY interfering with commerce.

"Occupy" is tolerated as long as it doesn't actually affect profits. Once it does then here comes the riot cops.

that is the best and most apt I have ever read.

Now, can we PLEASE see a Wall Street Banker treated like this poor guy?

http://www.democraticunderground.com/101797835

the only way to rob a bank is to own it, they have proven that in spades!

Now we honor the memory of their sacrifices by shrugging and changing the channel.

Blacks from the end of Reconstruction until the end of Jim Crow -- only in the last 30 years or so have African-Americans have presumed legal equality. Before that, they were fair game for Southern Sheriffs, racist militias and hate groups.

Labor organizers and political radicals -- as recently as 1979, 5 members of a Left-wing group were gunned down in the street in Greensboro, NC by a Klan death squad led by an FBI informant while the local police were ordered to take a "lunch break."

Student dissidents -- Kent and Jackson State -- showed that if sufficiently aroused, the U.S. military is capable of shooting unarmed demonstrators in America.

Muslims have been targeted for COINTELPRO-style operations for decades, and Malcolm X was one such target.