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udated last:

This page contains a mix of whatever doesn’t fit on the other pages listed in Joe's Index. I have Ben Waiting to start up a more organized Archive but for now this is it.....enjoy!

 

New stuff will be on the top of this page

Double Rainbow full on ...what does this mean?

Double Rainbow Music Version

Neurologist and author Oliver Sacks brings our attention to Charles Bonnett syndrome -- when visually impaired people experience lucid hallucinations. He describes the experiences of his patients in heartwarming detail and walks us through the biology of this under-reported phenomenon.

About Oliver Sacks

Since Awakenings first stormed the bestseller lists (and the silver screen), Oliver Sacks has become an unlikely household name, single-handedly inventing the genre of neurological anthropology. Full bio and more links

Year of your choice - NEWS stories
 

                   _1900_ (http://www.infoplease.com/year/1900.html ) 
                   _1901_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1901.html ) 
                   _1902_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1902.html ) 
                   _1903_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1903.html ) 
                   _1904_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1904.html ) 
                   _1905_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1905.html ) 
                   _1906_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1906.html )

     _1907_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1907.html )                                                                                                                              

                    _1908_ (  http://www.infoplease.com/year/1908.html ) 
                   _1909_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1909.html ) 
                   _1910_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1910.html
                   _1911_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1911.html ) 
                   _1912_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1912.html ) 
                   _1913_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1913.html ) 
                   _1914_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1914.html ) 
                   _1915_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1915.html ) 
                   _1916_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1916.html ) 
                   _1917_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1917.html ) 
                   _1918_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1918.html ) 
                   _1919_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1919.html ) 
                   _1920_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1920.html ) 
                   _1921_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1921.html ) 
                   _1922_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1922.html 
                   _1923_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1923.html ) 
                   _1924_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1924.html ) 
                   _1925_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1925.html ) 
                   _1926_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1926.html ) 
                   _1927_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1927.html ) 
                   _1928_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1928.html ) 
                   _1929_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1929.html ) 
                   _1930_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1930.html ) 
                   _1931_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1931.html ) 
                   _1932_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1932.html ) 
                   _1933_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1933.html ) 
                   _1934_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1934.html ) 
                   _1935_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1935.html ) 
                   _1936_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1936.html ) 
                   _1937_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1937.html ) 
                   _1938_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1938.html ) 
                   _1939_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1939.html ) 
                   _1940_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1940.html ) 
                   _1941_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1941.html ) 
                   _1942_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1942.html ) 
                   _1943_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1943.html ) 
                   _1944_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1944.html ) 
                   _1945_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1945.html ) 
                   _1946_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1946.html ) 
                   _1947_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1947.html ) 
                   _1948_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1948.html ) 
                   _1949_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1949.html ) 
                   _1950_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1950.html ) 
                   _1951_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1951.html ) 
                   _1952_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1952.html ) 
                   _1953_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1953.html ) 
                   _1954_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1954.html ) 
                   _1955_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1955.html ) 
                   _1956_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1956.html 
                   _1957_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1957.html ) 
                   _1958_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1958.html ) 
                   _1959_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1959.html ) 
                   _1960_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1960.html ) 
                   _1961_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1961.html ) 
                   _1962_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1962.html
 ) 
                   _1963_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1963.html ) 
                   _1964_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1964.html ) 
                   _1965_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1965.html ) 
                   _1966_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1966.html ) 
                   _1967_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1967.html ) 
                   _1968_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1968.html ) 
                   _1969_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1969.html ) 
                   _1970_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1970.html ) 
                   _1971_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1971.html ) 
                   _1972_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1972.html ) 
                   _1973_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1973.html ) 
                   _1974_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1974.html ) 
                   _1975_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1975.html ) 
                   _1976_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1976.html ) 
                   _1977_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1977.html ) 
                   _1978_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1978.html ) 
                   _1979_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1979.html ) 
                   _1980_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1980.html ) 
                   _1981_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1981.html ) 
                   _1982_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1982.html ) 
                   _1983_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1983.html ) 
                   _1984_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1984.html ) 
                   _1985_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1985.html ) 
                   _1986_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1986.html ) 
                   _1987_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1987.html ) 
                   _1988_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1988.html ) 
                   _1989_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1989.html
 ) 
                   _1990_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/1990.html ) 
                   _1991_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1991.html ) 
                   _1992_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1992.html )
 
                   _1993_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1993.html ) 
                   _1994_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1994.html
 ) 
                   _1995_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1995.html ) 
                   _1996_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1996.html ) 
                   _1997_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1997.html
 ) 
                   _1998_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1998.html ) 
                   _1999_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/1999.html 
                   _2000_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/2000.html ) 
                   _2001_ ( 
http://www.infoplease.com/year/2001.html 
                   _2002_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/2002.html ) 
                   _2003_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/2003.html ) 
                   _2004_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/2004.html ) 
                   _2005_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/2005.html )
                   _2006_ ( http://www.infoplease.com/year/2006.html
 )

Charlie Brown Christmas Dance

Text - to - Voice "you type in text, Avatar replies in audio"
 

Like what you hear? Click here to create your own talking character for FREE!

 

alex and chris part 1

Zebra 3 Readers is this what you have Be Waiting to see?
It is the animated version of the Peter Pan book/record set
"G.I. Joe: The Secret of the Mummy's Tomb"

Mob of People Start Dancing in Public Building (Mall) Lobby

Surfing Video (Big Wave)

http://www.wikihow.com/Make-a-Medicine-Bottle-Air-Horn

  • Use a heated screwdriver to make poking holes in the bottle easier.
  • If it's not working, make sure the straw is against the balloon on top.
  • The straw should be longer than the bottle itself.
  • The larger the straw (in circumference), the louder the sound will be.
  • Making the hole on the side larger will make it less of a strain on your cheeks to blow into it.
  • Experiment with different size bottles, holes, straws, different types of balloons, and the tensions of the balloons until you get the sound you want.
  • Vivek - Homeless Prophet

    SUV towing?

    http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=48335959

    SUV tows the Tow-truck

    MONEY AS DEBT
    Video #1 of five total

    How to use a RSS Reader
    (Install tips)

    Mood:  celebratory

    Now Playing:
    News Reader - how to use and install a RSS feed ( really simple syndication )

    Topic: MEDIA


          

    This little orange Icon lets you know the webpage url is ……..supported by an RSS feed (which many news websites are) The orange Icon is usually is on the left side and near the bottom of websites that have this feature.
    When ever I read a website I like I then look over the page for this little Icon, if its there I then know this website will work in my RSS reader client You click on the orange icon ….. then a new page will open ….. “Just copy that new page url address”  and paste it into “your reader” 
    And here is the “reader” that I am using its called
    Sharpreader  ... ....more
     
    Read my full RSS explanation on my Zebra3 Report Blog here:
     

    Have You Looked Outside - by Zak Smith
    anti-war song

    shot.jpg

    911 Caller With Gun in Home Invasion
    911 was called - then the bad guy gets shot by homeowner
     

    HURT
    ~by Jonnny Cash


    POST  IT  NOTES
     
    http://news.cnet.com/8301-13772_3-10039743-52.html?part=rss&subj=news&tag=2547-1_3-0-5

    As reported by my colleague Greg Sandoval in July, the Eepy Bird guys--you know, the fellows who have gained worldwide fame by dropping Mentos into Diet Coke--have decided to move on from explosive sweets.

    Instead, the pair have decided to work in the Post-it notes milieu for now, and as such, they've released a couple of new videos showcasing exactly how the little sticky pieces of paper can be transformed into what amounts to colorful Slinkys.

    And frankly, I never knew that the utilitarian notepads could be so much fun.

    click for information on board game
    waronterrorboardgame_.jpg

     

    WAR ON TERROR, THE BOARDGAME: It's got suicide bombers, political kidnaps and intercontinental war. It's got filthy propaganda, rampant paranoia and secret treaties and the Axis of Evil is a spinner in the middle of the board.

    Buy the War on Terror now! War on Terror, the boardgame in all it's finery.

    You can fight terrorism, you can fund terrorism, you can even be the terrorists. The only thing that matters is global domination - err, liberation. Read more about the game.

    JOE ANYBODY
    FOR PRESIDENT
    2008

    Traitors Way
    a protest song

     
    The Problem with Americans today
    is explained in this video ~joe anybody
     
    NOT GIVING A FUCK

    A Johnny Cash Music Video

    "Gods Gonna Cut You Down" Music Video by Johnny Cash

    Native Drums

     
    George Carlin
    "I Don't Vote"

     
    - flash video -
     

    A short cartoon

    Amazing young singer

     
    Al Franken: Where Rush Limbaugh's Facts Come From
     

    What to do the ''day after'' a
     Nuclear Bomb Explodes

    Page 10 pdf file - portland map
    nukedroppedinportlandmap.jpg
    Day After report for bomb-survival

    For example speaking of "Fitting in" check
    this video out we can all learn from this (i think)

        Please look at the above video entitled:
              Pyscho Killer - ITMFA
     

    June 13 2006 CONGRESS JUST GAVE THEMSELVES A RAISE
     
    I wonder how many days are in their average work week?
    Despite record low approval ratings,
    House lawmakers on Tuesday 6-13 -06
    For the 7th year in a row
    Embraced a $3,300 pay raise!
    That will increase their salaries to
    $168,500.

    Mantle Clock

    http://blip.tv/file/89357

     

    BLIP TV

    I THINK THIS VIDEO IS ABOUT POWER , SLAVES, & OIL
    wtf2122.jpg
    a blip tv video

    POOLSIDE
     NEOCON FILE
     ~ here
     

    POOLSIDE ARCHIVE
    #2 ~ here

     9-16-06- How to Stay alive,
    3 DAys inn the Woods
     
    also
     
    SURVIVAL TIPS {from Katrina Survivors}

    joetycoonmagcover_top10.jpg

    joeanybodyseat.jpg

    FUN LINKS

    ON SEPTBEMBER 10 2006
    I posted these links to try and put some amusmentmnet in to the air

    These links go to a variety of websites!

    +Some of the sites contain advertisement for adult material+

    The video links below are the sole reference which I have intended to share..,

    Not the advertisements or other links that are found on some of the same pages

    Please enjoy, I have Ben Waiting to share these videos with you all.

     

          IRAQ

     

    DOG MAD

     

    BULLDOZER

     

    DAVID CHESTERFIELD

     

    LEMONADE

     

    2 LEGGED DOG

     

    CRAZY CAR

     

    SAIGON TRAFFIC

     

    MAZE PRANK

     

    JETPACK MAN

     

    MR. WOO

     

    WEIRD ALIEN VIDEO

     

     

    POOL TRICKS - AMAZING

     

     

    Song of the Wolf

     History Lesson
    from the
    Mohawk
    Nation News
    **************

    22.10.2006 16:57:34   write comment
    Ancient history lesson
    TRANSFORMATION OF “ADODARHO”, CHAIRMAN OF IROQUOIS CONFEDERACY: INDIGENOUS WOMEN OFFER TO COMB OUT BUSH AND HARPER’S SNAKES



    MNN. Oct. 22, 2006. The formation of the Rotinonhsonnion:we/Six Nations Iroquois Confederacy was preceded by the founders, Dekanawida, Ayonwatha and Jigosaseh, overcoming a treacherous remorseless power-hungry man. Our ancestors had the challenge. This miserable despicable man was determined he was going to take over the whole world. He led one of the nations, Onondaga, and was later transformed into “Adodharo”. He enjoyed causing fear among them and other people. He drove himself into such a hateful state of mind that he thought he could control everyone.



    Living out his delusions caused sicknesses among the people throughout Turtle Island. People were fighting and killing each other. Societies were breaking down. His behavior infected everybody else. After a while, the people began to realize their own worst fears.



    Adodharo had grandiose ideas of his own omnipotence. He wanted to control everything from a high position of power over life and death to satiate his madness. He was symbolically depicted as a man who had live serpents coming out of his head. This illustrated the kind of mind he had, that of a twisted destructive sense of his own self-importance.



    His stance was similar to the systems of governance that had developed in other parts of the world. For example, Louis XIV called himself the “Sun King” taking onto himself the power of the sun. As such he meted out untold cruelty to the French population. And he could stay on the throne for life. He made a declaration that, “We will eradicate the Iroquois from the face of the earth”. After many years of warfare with us, his successor came here begging for peace and signed the “Peace of Montreal, 1701”.



    Alexander the Great, Ghengis Khan and others were the Adodarhos of their nations. Today they are being promoted as great people of the past. In their time the people didn’t think of them as being great. They thought of them as being insane. The people couldn’t stop their incessant warfare and cruelty.



    The chaos on Turtle Island was finally ended. Deknawida recognized that Adodharo’s way of thinking was actually a disease of the mind. He brought a egalitarian system of peace where no one had power over another. This is the Kaianereh’ko:wa/Great Law of Peace, the greatest and oldest system of democracy ever developed anywhere on earth. True Democracy came from the minds of the Indigenous people of Turtle Island, not from Greece. The Great Peace is believed to have lasted approximately 3,000 years and was broken in 1609 when Champlain invaded the Mohawks. People all over the world have tried to emulate what we accomplished.



    Dekanawida and Ayonwatha had to remove the perverted twisted thinking from Adodharo’s mind. They symbolically combed the serpents out of his head until he became calm and humbled himself before the people. He was knocked off his high position to become equal to everyone else. After his recovery, he became the chairman of the Rotinonhsonnion:we/Six Nation Iroquois Confederacy.



    When the confederacy was formed it was always understood no one was above anybody else. Here the women could cut a man down to size. Chiefs and clan mothers were actually the servants of the people.



    Today the mothering instinct of the Indigenous women makes us feel sorry for people like George Bush and his protégé, Stephen Harper. They have deluded themselves into thinking they are all-powerful. In fact Bush is powerful because he sits on top of an arsenal of deadly weapons. He has his finger on the nuclear button with which he can incinerate the whole world. We are concerned that such a confused person could be in that kind position and a danger to all of us.



    We are worried about these two young mixed-up boys. We want to straighten them out before its too late. We have to bring them back to reality. We want to show them the true compassion that comes out of the minds of the indigenous people. This is how we brought Adodharo out of his confused state to one of equilibrium with the people.



    If the women aren’t allowed to carry out this ceremony, then these two men will destroy themselves and possibly others around them. The difficulty with people in their positions is that they think they don’t need anyone.



    As we can see we are in a state of emergency. Bush has all the symptoms of someone going off the deep end, such as wanting to take over the whole universe. For the good of the world, we indigenous mothers want to speak to these men. We are worried. Symbolically they both need a good spanking with the red willow to bring them back to reality and “skennen:en” just like when we put our chiefs in their place when they get out of hand.



    George and Stephen, we want to comb the snakes out of your hair and sing to you to soothe your nerves. Your minds will become clear and you will no longer be dilusional. This method works on Turtle Island because the ceremony is rooted in our traditional practices. It doesn’t come from European-spawned psychiatry and psychology, which is formed elsewhere for other people. You guys don’t need expensive psychiatric treatment. We’ll help you for nothing. Don’t be afraid to come off your high pedestal and join us. We are not afraid of falling because we’re not on top of anyone. We have this innate knowledge of egalitarianism that comes from our relationship with and connection to the natural world.



    This act was done at the beginning of the formation of our Confederacy and is the same process today. It brings those with grandiose ideas of themselves back into the “circle”. We want you to participate with us. Instead of going into outer space, we want to bring you back down to earth so that you won’t harm yourselves or others. The earth could be a beautiful and plentiful place. But we have a lot of work to do to restore it.



    We want those around you to start telling you the truth even it means losing their jobs. How many thousands more have to die in Iraq, Afganistan, Indian communities and your prisons before you stop this insanity.



    Why should this nuclear threat be hanging over the heads of all humanity where one guy can push the button and kill us all? Putting one man into such a positions is not only out of balance, it’s insane. The people worldwide can’t be wrong when they say that one man is causing more trouble in this world than anyone else has ever done before. You’re the president, Mr. Bush. You have a responsibility to serve the people. You can start acting like Adodharo who spent the rest of his life bringing true peace to many nations on Turtle Island.



    Kahentinetha Horn

    MNN Mohawk Nation News
    Kahentinetha@mohawknationnews.com

    AlterNet

    Fascist America, in 10 Easy Steps

    By Naomi Wolf, Chelsea Green Publishing
    Posted on April 28, 2007, Printed on April 28, 2007
    http://www.alternet.org/story/51150/

    Editor's note: This is adapted from Wolf's forthcoming book "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot."

    Last autumn, there was a military coup in Thailand. The leaders of the coup took a number of steps, rather systematically, as if they had a shopping list. In a sense, they did. Within a matter of days, democracy had been closed down -- the coup leaders declared martial law, sent armed soldiers into residential areas, took over radio and TV stations, issued restrictions on the press, tightened some limits on travel and took certain activists into custody.

    They were not figuring these things out as they went along. If you look at history, you can see that there is essentially a blueprint for turning an open society into a dictatorship. That blueprint has been used again and again in more and less bloody, more and less terrifying ways. But it is always effective. It is very difficult and arduous to create and sustain a democracy, but history shows that closing one down is much simpler. You simply have to be willing to take the 10 steps.

    As difficult as this is to contemplate, it is clear, if you are willing to look, that each of these 10 steps has already been initiated in the United States by the Bush administration.

    Because Americans like me were born in freedom, we have a hard time even considering that it is possible for us to become as unfree, domestically, as many other nations. Because we no longer learn much about our rights or our system of government -- the task of being aware of the Constitution has been outsourced from citizens to professionals such as lawyers and professors -- we scarcely recognise the checks and balances that the founders put in place, even as they are being systematically dismantled. Because we don't learn much about European history, the setting up of a department of "homeland" security -- remember who else was keen on the word "homeland"? -- didn't raise the alarm bells it might have.

    It is my argument that, beneath our very noses, George Bush and his administration are using time-tested tactics to close down an open society. It is time for us to be willing to think the unthinkable -- as the author and political journalist Joe Conason has put it -- that it can happen here. And that we are further along than we realize.

    Conason eloquently warned of the danger of American authoritarianism. I am arguing that we need also to look at the lessons of European and other kinds of fascism to understand the potential seriousness of the events we see unfolding in the United States.

    1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy.

    After we were hit on Sept. 11 2001, we were in a state of national shock. Less than six weeks later, on Oct. 26, 2001, the USA Patriot Act was passed by a Congress that had little chance to debate it; many said that they scarcely had time to read it. We were told we were now on a "war footing"; we were in a "global war" against a "global caliphate" intending to "wipe out civilization." There have been other times of crisis in which the United States accepted limits on civil liberties, such as during the Civil War, when Lincoln declared martial law, and the Second World War, when thousands of Japanese-American citizens were interned. But this situation, as Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda notes, is unprecedented: All our other wars had an endpoint, so the pendulum was able to swing back toward freedom; this war is defined as open-ended in time and without national boundaries in space -- the globe itself is the battlefield. "This time," Fein says, "there will be no defined end."

    Creating a terrifying threat -- hydralike, secretive, evil -- is an old trick. It can, like Hitler's invocation of a communist threat to the nation's security, be based on actual events (one Wisconsin academic has faced calls for his dismissal because he noted, among other things, that the alleged communist arson, the Reichstag fire of February 1933, was swiftly followed in Nazi Germany by passage of the Enabling Act, which replaced constitutional law with an open-ended state of emergency). Or the terrifying threat can be based, like the National Socialist evocation of the "global conspiracy of world Jewry", on myth.

    It is not that global Islamist terrorism is not a severe danger; of course it is. I am arguing rather that the language used to convey the nature of the threat is different in a country such as Spain, which has also suffered violent terrorist attacks, than it is in America. Spanish citizens know that they face a grave security threat; what we as American citizens believe is that we are potentially threatened with the end of civilization as we know it. Of course, this makes us more willing to accept restrictions on our freedoms.

    2. Create a gulag.

    Once you have got everyone scared, the next step is to create a prison system outside the rule of law (as Bush put it, he wanted the American detention centre at Guantánamo Bay to be situated in legal "outer space") -- where torture can take place.

    At first, the people who are sent there are seen by citizens as outsiders: troublemakers, spies, "enemies of the people" or "criminals." Initially, citizens tend to support the secret prison system; it makes them feel safer, and they do not identify with the prisoners. But soon enough, civil society leaders -- opposition members, labor activists, clergy and journalists -- are arrested and sent there as well.

    This process took place in fascist shifts or anti-democracy crackdowns ranging from Italy and Germany in the 1920s and 1930s to the Latin American coups of the 1970s and beyond. It is standard practice for closing down an open society or crushing a pro-democracy uprising.

    With its jails in Iraq and Afghanistan, and, of course, Guantánamo in Cuba, where detainees are abused and kept indefinitely without trial and without access to the due process of the law, America certainly has its gulag now. Bush and his allies in Congress recently announced they would issue no information about the secret CIA "black site" prisons throughout the world, which are used to incarcerate people who have been seized off the street.

    Gulags in history tend to metastasize, becoming ever larger and more secretive, ever more deadly and formalized. We know from firsthand accounts, photographs, videos and government documents that people, innocent and guilty, have been tortured in the U.S.-run prisons we are aware of and those we can't investigate adequately.

    But Americans still assume this system and detainee abuses involve only scary brown people with whom they don't generally identify. It was brave of the conservative pundit William Safire to quote the anti-Nazi pastor Martin Niemöller, who had been seized as a political prisoner: "First they came for the Jews." Most Americans don't understand yet that the destruction of the rule of law at Guantánamo set a dangerous precedent for them, too.

    By the way, the establishment of military tribunals that deny prisoners due process tends to come early on in a fascist shift. Mussolini and Stalin set up such tribunals. On April 24, 1934, the Nazis, too, set up the People's Court, which also bypassed the judicial system: Prisoners were held indefinitely, often in isolation, and tortured, without being charged with offences, and were subjected to show trials. Eventually, the Special Courts became a parallel system that put pressure on the regular courts to abandon the rule of law in favor of Nazi ideology when making decisions.

    3. Develop a thug caste.

    When leaders who seek what I call a "fascist shift" want to close down an open society, they send paramilitary groups of scary young men out to terrorize citizens. The Blackshirts roamed the Italian countryside beating up communists; the Brownshirts staged violent rallies throughout Germany. This paramilitary force is especially important in a democracy: You need citizens to fear thug violence, and so you need thugs who are free from prosecution.

    The years following 9/11 have proved a bonanza for America's security contractors, with the Bush administration outsourcing areas of work that traditionally fell to the U.S. military. In the process, contracts worth hundreds of millions of dollars have been issued for security work by mercenaries at home and abroad. In Iraq, some of these contract operatives have been accused of involvement in torturing prisoners, harassing journalists and firing on Iraqi civilians. Under Order 17, issued to regulate contractors in Iraq by the one-time U.S. administrator in Baghdad, Paul Bremer, these contractors are immune from prosecution.

    Yes, but that is in Iraq, you could argue; however, after Hurricane Katrina, the Department of Homeland Security hired and deployed hundreds of armed private security guards in New Orleans. The investigative journalist Jeremy Scahill interviewed one unnamed guard who reported having fired on unarmed civilians in the city. It was a natural disaster that underlay that episode, but the administration's endless war on terror means ongoing scope for what are in effect privately contracted armies to take on crisis and emergency management at home, in U.S. cities.

    Thugs in America? Groups of angry young Republican men, dressed in identical shirts and trousers, menaced poll workers counting the votes in Florida in 2000. If you are reading history, you can imagine that there can be a need for "public order" on the next election day. Say there are protests, or a threat, on the day of an election; history would not rule out the presence of a private security firm at a polling station "to restore public order."

    4. Set up an internal surveillance system.

    In Mussolini's Italy, in Nazi Germany, in communist East Germany, in communist China -- in every closed society -- secret police spy on ordinary people and encourage neighbors to spy on neighbors. The Stasi needed to keep only a minority of East Germans under surveillance to convince a majority that they themselves were being watched.

    In 2005 and 2006, when James Risen and Eric Lichtblau wrote in the New York Times about a secret state program to wiretap citizens' phones, read their emails and follow international financial transactions, it became clear to ordinary Americans that they, too, could be under state scrutiny.

    In closed societies, this surveillance is cast as being about "national security"; the true function is to keep citizens docile and inhibit their activism and dissent.

    5. Harass citizens' groups.

    The fifth thing you do is related to step four -- you infiltrate and harass citizens' groups. It can be trivial: a church in Pasadena, whose minister preached that Jesus was in favor of peace, found itself being investigated by the Internal Revenue Service, while churches that got Republicans out to vote, which is equally illegal under U.S. tax law, have been left alone.

    Other harassment is more serious: The American Civil Liberties Union reports that thousands of ordinary American anti-war, environmental and other groups have been infiltrated by agents, and a secret Pentagon database includes more than four dozen peaceful anti-war meetings, rallies or marches by American citizens in its category of 1,500 "suspicious incidents." The equally secret Counterintelligence Field Activity (Cifa) agency of the Department of Defense has been gathering information about domestic organizations engaged in peaceful political activities: Cifa is supposed to track "potential terrorist threats" as it watches ordinary U.S. citizen activists. A little-noticed new law has redefined activism such as animal rights protests as "terrorism." So the definition of "terrorist" slowly expands to include the opposition.

    6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release.

    This scares people. It is a kind of cat-and-mouse game. Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn, the investigative reporters who wrote "China Wakes: the Struggle for the Soul of a Rising Power," describe pro-democracy activists in China, such as Wei Jingsheng, being arrested and released many times. In a closing or closed society there is a "list" of dissidents and opposition leaders: You are targeted in this way once you are on the list, and it is hard to get off the list.

    In 2004, America's Transportation Security Administration confirmed that it had a list of passengers who were targeted for security searches or worse if they tried to fly. People who have found themselves on the list? Two middle-aged women peace activists in San Francisco, liberal Sen. Edward Kennedy, a member of Venezuela's government (after Venezuela's president had criticized Bush), and thousands of ordinary U.S. citizens.

    Professor Walter F. Murphy is emeritus of Princeton University; he is one of the foremost constitutional scholars in the nation and author of the classic "Constitutional Democracy." Murphy is also a decorated former Marine, and he is not even especially politically liberal. But on March 1 this year, he was denied a boarding pass at Newark, "because I was on the Terrorist Watch list," he said.

    "Have you been in any peace marches? We ban a lot of people from flying because of that," asked the airline employee.

    "I explained," said Murphy, "that I had not so marched but had, in September 2006, given a lecture at Princeton, televised and put on the Web, highly critical of George Bush for his many violations of the Constitution."

    "That'll do it," the man said.

    Anti-war marcher? Potential terrorist. Support the Constitution? Potential terrorist. History shows that the categories of "enemy of the people" tend to expand ever deeper into civil life.

    James Yee, a U.S. citizen, was the Muslim chaplain at Guantánamo who was accused of mishandling classified documents. He was harassed by the U.S. military before the charges against him were dropped. Yee has been detained and released several times. He is still of interest.

    Brandon Mayfield, a U.S. citizen and lawyer in Oregon, was mistakenly identified as a possible terrorist. His house was secretly broken into and his computer seized. Though he is innocent of the accusation against him, he is still on the list.

    It is a standard practice of fascist societies that, once you are on the list, you can't get off.

    7. Target key individuals.

    Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't toe the line. Mussolini went after the rectors of state universities who did not conform to the fascist line; so did Joseph Goebbels, who purged academics who were not pro-Nazi; so did Chile's Augusto Pinochet; so does the Chinese communist Politburo in punishing pro-democracy students and professors.

    Academe is a tinderbox of activism, so those seeking a fascist shift punish academics and students with professional loss if they do not "coordinate," in Goebbels' term, ideologically. Since civil servants are the sector of society most vulnerable to being fired by a given regime, they are also a group that fascists typically "coordinate" early on: the Reich Law for the Re-establishment of a Professional Civil Service was passed on April 7, 1933.

    Bush supporters in state legislatures in several states put pressure on regents at state universities to penalize or fire academics who have been critical of the administration. As for civil servants, the Bush administration has derailed the career of one military lawyer who spoke up for fair trials for detainees, while an administration official publicly intimidated the law firms that represent detainees pro bono by threatening to call for their major corporate clients to boycott them.

    Elsewhere, a CIA contract worker who said in a closed blog that "waterboarding is torture" was stripped of the security clearance she needed in order to do her job.

    Most recently, the administration purged eight U.S. attorneys for what looks like insufficient political loyalty. When Goebbels purged the civil service in April 1933, attorneys were "coordinated" too, a step that eased the way of the increasingly brutal laws to follow.

    8. Control the press.

    Italy in the 1920s, Germany in the '30s, East Germany in the '50s, Czechoslovakia in the '60s, the Latin American dictatorships in the '70s, China in the '80s and '90s -- all dictatorships and would-be dictators target newspapers and journalists. They threaten and harass them in more open societies that they are seeking to close, and they arrest them and worse in societies that have been closed already.

    The Committee to Protect Journalists says arrests of U.S. journalists are at an all-time high: Josh Wolf (no relation), a blogger in San Francisco, has been put in jail for a year for refusing to turn over video of an anti-war demonstration; Homeland Security brought a criminal complaint against reporter Greg Palast, claiming he threatened "critical infrastructure" when he and a TV producer were filming victims of Hurricane Katrina in Louisiana. Palast had written a bestseller critical of the Bush administration.

    Other reporters and writers have been punished in other ways. Joseph C. Wilson accused Bush in a New York Times op-ed of leading the country to war on the basis of a false charge that Saddam Hussein had acquired yellowcake uranium in Niger. His wife, Valerie Plame, was outed as a CIA spy, a form of retaliation that ended her career.

    Prosecution and job loss are nothing, though, compared with how the United States is treating journalists seeking to cover the conflict in Iraq in an unbiased way. The Committee to Protect Journalists has documented multiple accounts of the U.S. military in Iraq firing upon or threatening to fire upon unembedded (meaning independent) reporters and camera operators from organizations ranging from al-Jazeera to the BBC. While Westerners may question the accounts by al-Jazeera, they should pay attention to the accounts of reporters such as the BBC's Kate Adie. In some cases reporters have been wounded or killed, including ITN's Terry Lloyd in 2003. Both CBS and the Associated Press in Iraq had staff members seized by the U.S. military and taken to violent prisons; the news organizations were unable to see the evidence against their staffers.

    Over time in closing societies, real news is supplanted by fake news and false documents. Pinochet showed Chilean citizens falsified documents to back up his claim that terrorists had been about to attack the nation. The yellowcake charge, too, was based on forged papers.

    You won't have a shutdown of news in modern America -- it is not possible. But you can have, as Frank Rich and Sidney Blumenthal have pointed out, a steady stream of lies polluting the news well. What you already have is a White House directing a stream of false information that is so relentless that it is increasingly hard to sort out truth from untruth. In a fascist system, it's not the lies that count but the muddying. When citizens can't tell real news from fake, they give up their demands for accountability bit by bit.

    9. Dissent equals treason.

    Cast dissent as "treason" and criticism as "espionage." Every closing society does this, just as it elaborates laws that increasingly criminalize certain kinds of speech and expand the definition of "spy" and "traitor." When Bill Keller, the publisher of the New York Times, ran the Lichtblau/Risen stories, Bush called the Times' leaking of classified information "disgraceful," while Republicans in Congress called for Keller to be charged with treason, and right-wing commentators and news outlets kept up the "treason" drumbeat. Some commentators, as Conason noted, reminded readers, smugly, that one penalty for violating the Espionage Act is execution.

    Conason is right to note how serious a threat that attack represented. It is also important to recall that the 1938 Moscow show trial accused the editor of Izvestia, Nikolai Bukharin, of treason; Bukharin was, in fact, executed. And it is important to remind Americans that when the 1917 Espionage Act was last widely invoked, during the infamous 1919 Palmer Raids, leftist activists were arrested without warrants in sweeping roundups, kept in jail for up to five months, and "beaten, starved, suffocated, tortured and threatened with death," according to the historian Myra MacPherson. After that, dissent was muted in America for a decade.

    In Stalin's Soviet Union, dissidents were "enemies of the people." National Socialists called those who supported Weimar democracy "November traitors."

    And here is where the circle closes: Most Americans do not realise that since September of last year, when Congress wrongly, foolishly, passed the Military Commissions Act of 2006, the president has the power to call any U.S. citizen an "enemy combatant." He has the power to define what "enemy combatant" means. The president can also delegate to anyone he chooses in the executive branch the right to define "enemy combatant" any way he or she wants and then seize Americans accordingly.

    Even if you or I are American citizens, even if we turn out to be completely innocent of what he has accused us of doing, he has the power to have us seized as we are changing planes at Newark tomorrow, or have us taken with a knock on the door, ship you or me to a navy brig and keep you or me in isolation, possibly for months, while awaiting trial. (Prolonged isolation, as psychiatrists know, triggers psychosis in otherwise mentally healthy prisoners. That is why Stalin's gulag had an isolation cell, like Guantánamo's, in every satellite prison. Camp 6, the newest, most brutal facility at Guantánamo, is all isolation cells.)

    We U.S. citizens will get a trial eventually -- for now. But legal rights activists at the Center for Constitutional Rights say that the Bush administration is increasingly and aggressively trying to find ways to get around giving even U.S. citizens fair trials. "Enemy combatant" is a status offence -- it is not even something you have to have done. "We have absolutely moved over into a preventive detention model -- you look like you could do something bad, you might do something bad, so we're going to hold you," says a spokeswoman of the CCR.

    Most Americans surely do not get this yet. No wonder: It is hard to believe, even though it is true. In every closing society, at a certain point there are some high-profile arrests -- usually of opposition leaders, clergy and journalists. Then everything goes quiet. After those arrests, there are still newspapers, courts, TV and radio, and the facades of a civil society. There just isn't real dissent. There just isn't freedom. If you look at history, just before those arrests is where we are now.

    10. Suspend the rule of law.

    The John Warner Defense Authorization Act of 2007 gave the president new powers over the national guard. This means that in a national emergency -- which the president now has enhanced powers to declare -- he can send Michigan's militia to enforce a state of emergency that he has declared in Oregon, over the objections of the state's governor and its citizens.

    Even as Americans were focused on Britney Spears's meltdown and the question of who fathered Anna Nicole's baby, the New York Times editorialized about this shift: "A disturbing recent phenomenon in Washington is that laws that strike to the heart of American democracy have been passed in the dead of night … Beyond actual insurrection, the president may now use military troops as a domestic police force in response to a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, terrorist attack or any 'other condition.'"

    Critics see this as a clear violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, which was meant to restrain the federal government from using the military for domestic law enforcement. The Democratic Sen. Patrick Leahy says the bill encourages a president to declare federal martial law. It also violates the very reason the founders set up our system of government as they did: Having seen citizens bullied by a monarch's soldiers, the founders were terrified of exactly this kind of concentration of militia power over American people in the hands of an oppressive executive or faction.

    Of course, the United States is not vulnerable to the violent, total closing down of the system that followed Mussolini's march on Rome or Hitler's roundup of political prisoners. Our democratic habits are too resilient, and our military and judiciary too independent, for any kind of scenario like that.

    Rather, as other critics are noting, our experiment in democracy could be closed down by a process of erosion.

    It is a mistake to think that early in a fascist shift you see the profile of barbed wire against the sky. In the early days, things look normal on the surface; peasants were celebrating harvest festivals in Calabria in 1922; people were shopping and going to the movies in Berlin in 1931. Early on, as W.H. Auden put it, the horror is always elsewhere -- while someone is being tortured, children are skating, ships are sailing. "Dogs go on with their doggy life … How everything turns away/ Quite leisurely from the disaster."

    As Americans turn away quite leisurely, keeping tuned to Internet shopping and American Idol, the foundations of democracy are being fatally corroded. Something has changed profoundly that weakens us unprecedentedly: Our democratic traditions, independent judiciary and free press do their work today in a context in which we are "at war" in a "long war," a war without end, on a battlefield described as the globe, in a context that gives the president -- without U.S. citizens realizing it yet -- the power over U.S. citizens of freedom or long solitary incarceration, on his say-so alone.

    That means a hollowness has been expanding under the foundation of all these still free-looking institutions, and this foundation can give way under certain kinds of pressure. To prevent such an outcome, we have to think about the "what ifs."

    What if, in a year and a half, there is another attack -- say, God forbid, a dirty bomb? The executive can declare a state of emergency. History shows that any leader, of any party, will be tempted to maintain emergency powers after the crisis has passed. With the gutting of traditional checks and balances, we are no less endangered by a President Hillary than by a President Giuliani, because any executive will be tempted to enforce his or her will through edict rather than the arduous, uncertain process of democratic negotiation and compromise.

    What if the publisher of a major U.S. newspaper were charged with treason or espionage, as a right-wing effort seemed to threaten Keller with last year? What if he or she got 10 years in jail? What would the newspapers look like the next day? Judging from history, they would not cease publishing, but they would suddenly be very polite.

    Right now, only a handful of patriots are trying to hold back the tide of tyranny for the rest of us -- staff at the Center for Constitutional Rights, who faced death threats for representing the detainees yet persisted all the way to the Supreme Court; activists at the American Civil Liberties Union; and prominent conservatives trying to roll back the corrosive new laws, under the banner of a new group called the American Freedom Agenda. This small, disparate collection of people needs everybody's help, including that of Europeans and others internationally who are willing to put pressure on the administration because they can see what a United States unrestrained by real democracy at home can mean for the rest of the world.

    We need to look at history and face the "what ifs." For if we keep going down this road, the "end of America" could come for each of us in a different way, at a different moment; each of us might have a different moment when we feel forced to look back and think: That is how it was before, and this is the way it is now.

    "The accumulation of all powers, legislative, executive and judiciary, in the same hands … is the definition of tyranny," wrote James Madison. We still have the choice to stop going down this road; we can stand our ground and fight for our nation, and take up the banner the founders asked us to carry.

    Naomi Wolf's "The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot" will be published by Chelsea Green in September.

    © 2007 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.
    View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/51150/

    DRUMS April 19, 2006 (recorded)

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