Reaganomics of Resistance

The Reaganomics of resistance. To some, this turn of phrase rings oddly to the ears. For others, it seems an honest submission to debate about how to change civilization for fairer. Reaganomics assumes that market makers create the conditions, in which humanity lives. By investing money in certain sectors, the capstone income earners create the markets, in which most people work and earn money. I think most well-learned men , no matter the source, would agree with this.

Within the resistance movement, there exists classes just as their does in society. From millionaires to recent college graduates, the latter of whom exist at net worths in the red, individuals have taken it on themselves to inform their brothers and sisters.

A contradiction inherent to this model, unfortunately, is that the allocations of wealth are concentrated among the older and more established people. Therefore, upstarts, and even some well-established truthers, have difficulties, not only breaking into the movement in online journalism and analog self-organization, but even finding the time to prepare contributions or a business plan, since a vast majority of the the youth (and many adults, of course) have to work more than full-time to try and gain some semblance of financial sustainability, and, they hope, an eventual financial independence, though i doubt such a thing exists.

Innumerable are those who seek to enlighten. From a diverse array of backgrounds they emerge, contributing daily tiny actions friendly to peace and decentralization--lawyers, Professors, graduates, students and well-rounded people everywhere. The material, out of which the peace patriots (those in favor of truth, peace and decentralization) are crafted, is indeed diverse. But, a considerable amount of this economic volume lies among few individuals.

This is not a call to a socialist re-organization of the peace and decentralization movements. This is a call for a broad investment program, in which people with insights and skills are made available to the peace patriots, who constitute a broad-base and diverse opposition movement to the historically-rooted status quo.

In some ways, the concept is reminiscent of the New Deal initiatives enacted under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, although instead of creating organizations, it turns individuals into one-man-or-woman NGO's, to put it coldly.

The subsidies need not be great, for the results to prove historical. Individuals from all neighborhoods of society have great capacity to affect change.

Empire and Depopulation in the Land of Blood and Fire, Latin America

Rooted in conquest, the United States has a long history of imperial expansion. Even George Washington called the United States an “infant empire.” With increasing power, especially after World War II, imperial strategies by the US grew bolder, and high-level planners maintained that the US should “hold unquestioned power” in the chosen global order.

These ambitions pertained not only to the Western hemisphere, but also the former British Empire, the Far East, and Eurasia. These goals represented, and still do, the aspirations for “full spectrum” territorial holdings. As if from fiction, dyed by Machiavellian irony, the social Darwinism of a new empire danced upon civilization’s fulcrum. The American empire, as has been consistently noted by thinkers, seemed to almost pick up seamlessly from where the waning British Empire left off.

As was the America's policy with Native Americans, the British Empire pursued similar, if not the same, depopulation policies in lands the world over, such as in Ireland, as evidenced by the “Printed Book,” which outlined how Britain would turn Ireland into, in their words, a plantation. It might therefore be concluded, that policies of depopulation have been a keystone component to the expansion of the British Empire, and its descendent the Anglo-American Empire.

In the southern Hemisphere, these imperial yearnings rear themselves plainly.

In July 2009, the US and Colombia made public a secret deal to permit the US to use seven Colombian military bases. The official purpose is the prevention of narcotrafficking and, of course, terrorism, “but senior Colombian military and civilian officials familiar with negotiations told The Associated Press that the idea is to make Colombia a regional hub for Pentagon operations.”

Colombia has become the leading recipient of US military aid, despite a terrible human rights record in the hemisphere since the Central American wars of the 1980’s. The establishment of US military bases in Colombia represents steps towards restoring Washington’s capacity for military intervention in the region. Not only as US military aid increased to the region, but so too has the training of Latin American officers, whose focus is on light infantry tactics to combat “radical populism.” (Chomsky)

It is relevant to note that, in Latin America—as is so in Africa—rather progressive depopulation policies have been fully implemented and supported by Empire plenipotentiaries. In Brazil, in my personal experience, it is highly difficult to find a bottle of water devoid of a cocktail of added ingredients, such as the former rat-poison, sodium floride. This in, of all places, one of the more affluent regions of Latin America.

On Dec. 10, 1974, National Security Council under Henry Kissinger published, “National Security Study Memorandum 200: Implications of Worldwide Population Growth for U.S. Security and Overseas Interests.” The study posits population growth in “Lesser Developed Countries” (LDCs) as a sustained threat to U.S. national security. In November 1975, President Gerald Ford adopted the memorandum as official policy in the LDC’s through birth control, and also, implicitly, famine and war. Brent Scowcroft, who followed Kissinger as national security adviser, CIA Director George Bush, secretaries of state, treasury, defense, and agriculture were publicly tasked with the assignment.

Kissinger’s arguments were not original, since the Royal Commission on Population served as a major source. In that commission report, King George VI (1936-1951) considers “what measures should be taken in the national interest to influence the future trend of population.” It advanced the thesis that Britain was under great duress from population growth in its colonies, because “a populous country has decided advantages over a sparsely-populated one for industrial production.”

Increasing population and industrialization in her colonies “might be decisive in its effects on the prestige and influence of the West,” especially effecting “military strength and security.”

NSSM 200 singled out 13 “key countries” of “special political and strategic interest”: India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Turkey, Nigeria, Egypt, Ethiopia, Mexico, Brazil, and Colombia. Population growth in these states, according to the memorandum, was particularly troubling, since it would increase their relative political, economic, and military strength. http://www.schillerinstitute.org/food_for_peace/kiss_nssm_jb_1995.html


Not just military strength has been used against “third world” populations. Also, sophisticated methods of domination, such as divisive and developmentally torturous propaganda and covert tampering with food supplies in service of a eugenics philosophy; and tampering of overall environmental quality through technologies such as terraforming, whereby planes and jets of various types line the sky with aerial spray constituted with barium salts, aluminum, as well as other chemical-melanges.

There have been hints of these latter programs in pop-music. Off the album “Modern Guilt,” presented by Beck, the song “Chemtrails” highlights that which is officially known as “terraforming”:

I can't believe what we've seen outside
You and me watching the jets go by
You and me watching a sky full of chemtrails
That's where we belong

And with the “third world” sneaking into places like Troy, New York, whose mostly black residents paid little attention to the 2008 Presidential campaign—since it would minutely affect, if at all, their personal plights, no matter the color of the President—it is rather obvious that this military operation is, and will continue to be, a globalizing phenomenon.

In his book, Listen, Yankee, published early on in the Cold War, U.S. sociologist C. Wright Mills wrote in the voice of Cubans, who felt threatened by US hubris. The book was highly sympathetic to the violent Cuban Revolution.

“We Cubans are part of Latin America—not of North America. We speak Spanish, we are mainly rural, and we are poor. Our history is not like your history; it is part of Latin American history. And Latin America is 180,000,000 people, growing faster than you are growing, and scattered over a territory more than twice as large as the U.S.A.”


John F. Kennedy saw the relationship between Latin America and the United States differently. In his 1961 Alliance for Progress speech, he said:

“Our continents are bound together by a common history, the endless exploration of new frontiers. Our nations are the product of a common struggle, the revolt from colonial rule. And our people share a common heritage, the quest for the dignity and freedom of man…”

A quick review of who has, historically, owned what in the former colonies—say, for instance, central banks, military dictatorships, and agriculture—ought to quickly dispel any notions that there are many places in Latin America—in the world, upon further research—that have lastingly escaped from under the boot of the British Empire.

In the post-World War II world, the United States armed forces acquired an expansive know-how about the methods of military operations effective against guerrilla armies, mostly by way of US military operations in Latin America, and, in particular, southeast Asia. Virtually every Latin American country, by 1967, had a U.S. Military Group (MILGRP in Pentagonese) to invoke US military assistance to Latin American military forces. The groups were under the command of the United States Southern Command.

Along the way, the “economic medicine” (the catchall phrase for the process of “structural adjustment” or “austerity measures”) of the keystone global financial institutions, the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, helped to exacerbate the problems, while furthering the interests of the Anglo-American rulers.

Upon taking office, Richard M. Nixon instructed one of his rivals for the Republican presidential nomination, Governor Nelson A. Rockefeller of New York, to travel to Latin America and advise police recommendations for the new administration.

Protest met Rockefeller most everywhere he went. Peru, Chile, and Venezuela requested he not come.

In “The Rockefeller Report,” Rockefeller laid out a convincing case that Latin America and the United States faced friction in their historical interrelationship. He suggested that a new accord ought to bond the regions together thereafter. Included in this new deal, would be entailed a discriminatory lenience by the United States for authoritarian rule in Latin America. By the late 1960’s, indeed, Rockefeller championed the claim that “no one country today can effectively protects its own internal security by itself,” hinting of a future regionalism in which entire continents would share a singular system of finance and governance. In Rockefeller's episteme, what would be needed was an ideology supportive of the axiom that “only through hemisphere cooperation can these problems, which so vitally affect internal security, be adequately dealt with.” Not only was the power of the US, Britain and Europe to be fused together, but so too were the remnants of colonial rule which kept Latin America moving forward , in an orderly manner, towards progress.

February 1946 saw F. Kennan, the US State Departments former lead expert on the Soviet Union, send the famous “Long Telegram” to the state department from the US embassy in Moscow. The Long Telegram embodies his version of realist views regarding US-Soviet relations during the Cold War. Needed, in his view, was a “long-term, patient, but firm and vigilant containment of Russian expansive tendencies…the military significance to us of the Latin American countries lies today rather in the extent to which we may be dependent upon them for materials essential to the prosecution of a war, and more importantly in the extent to which the attitudes of the Latin American peoples may influence the general political trend in the international community…”

He is a near hopeless cynic, stating that “it seems to me unlikely that there could be any other region of the earth in which nature and human behavior could have combined to produce a more unhappy and hopeless background for the conduct of human life than in Latin America.” (Holden & Zolov)
The United States Central Intelligence Agency, since its inception in 1948, has been a key tool for high-level policy planners in its projects and programs throughout the world. The Doolittle Commission Report, published in 1954, outlined as an official policy of the United States to deter and stop Communism.

Needed was “an aggressive, covert, psychological, political and paramilitary organization more effective, more unique and, if necessary, more ruthless than that employed by the enemy. No one should be permitted to stand in the way of the prompt, efficient and secure accomplishment of this mission.” In their song Washington Bullets (album: Sandinista!), The Clash work the covert action of the CIA into their lyrics:


And in the Bay of Pigs in 1961,
Havana fought the playboy in the Cuban sun,
For Castro is a colour,
Is a redder than red,
Those Washington bullets want Castro dead
For Castro is the colour...
...That will earn you a spray of lead



When Bolivia was defeated by Paraguay in the Chaco War of the 1930’s, a government perceived by the people to be loyal only to the upper class had lost much of its legitimacy. There was widespread dissatisfaction amongst the working class and farmers of Bolivia. The loss of territory and lives had discredited the ruling class, whilst participation in the armed forces had given farmers a political consciousness. From the end of war until the Revolution of 1952, new ideologies stirred amongst the working classes and their demands became more audible.
The Nationalist Revolutionary Movement (MNR) grew to be a party with a broad and more useful base of support. Denied victory in the president election of 1951, the party thereafter succeeded in coming to power the following year through revolution, which began with a hunger march through La Paz that was supported by most sectors of civil society.

The military was demoralized and calls by the high-command for unity in the armed forces, against the revolutionary movement, failed. Many officers, in fact, either went abroad during the period, charged each other with coup attempts, or deserted.

By the onset of 1952, the MRN attempted to gain power by force, plotting with General Antonio Seleme, the junta member in charge of the internal administration and the national police. The party, on April 9, seized arsenals and distributed them to civilians. Armed miners marched on La Paz, successfully blocking troop access to the city. At the close of three days fighting, the army had surrendered, and Paz Estenssoro assumed the Presidency on April 16, 1952. (Global Security)

Many referred to the multiclass MNR as “reluctant revolutionaries.” The party did not look to the Soviet Union for a model of government, but, instead, to Mexico. During the first year of Estenssoro’s presidency, however, the more radical faction in the party compelled MNR to carry about high-frequency reform. And so therefore, universal suffrrage was established in July 1952, and the party quickly purged officers from the armed forces considered to be sympathetic with Conservative Parties, reduced troop size and military budget. Plagued by infighting, the party eventually dissolved in 1964, leaving Bolivia in chaos.

The U.S. government responded to the Bolivian Revolution of 1952 with massive economic assistance, despite that the country was one of the weakest in Latin America. By the end of the 1950’s, Bolivia was the largest recipient of U.S. aid in Latin America. By 1958, one-third of the Bolivian national budget was aid from the U.S. government. The aid funded highways construction, food imports, health and educational services and the country’s military forces. The U.S. received Bolivia’s cooperation in blocking or moderating some of the social and economic reforms embarked upon by the radical wing of the revolutionary movement.

The implementation of economic stabilization measures was carried out based on demands from Washington, and further U.S. aid was a condition of the nation’s success. In 1956, put in charge of the stabilization effort in Bolivia was U.S. lawyer George Jackson Eder, a stark monetarist, who deemed the only way in which inflation could be controlled was through the cutting of government spending; cuts in government spending, as a rule, hit social services first. These are the sorts of policies vehemently pursued by keystone global financial institutions, the IMF and World Bank. (Holden & Zolov)

In Cuba, revolution brewed at the end of the 1950’s, when Fidel Castro led an insurgent army of eighty two guerrilla fighters into Cuba on Dec. 2 1956. This attempted revolution was a failure. But, the small guerillas force received a boost when senior staff writer at the New York Times, Herbert L. Mathews, published a number of articles on the movement. Having been taken to Castro’s camp, in order to interview the revolutionary leader, Mathews secured for the times—and Castro and his men—not only articles in the Times, but, also, a picture of the armed leader, along with his signature. This demonstrated that Castro was, indeed, alive and active. The articles represented a sensational coup of sorts for the Times, a la classical American-style yellow journalism of the early twentieth century. Years later, at the tail-end of the 1970’s, Castro boasted how he had tricked Mathews into believing his force was much larger than it had, in reality, been. In his article, Mathews wrote: “General Batista cannot possibly hope to suppress the Castro revolt… Havana does not and cannot know that thousands of men and women are heart and soul with Fidel Castro…it does not know that hundreds of highly respected citizens are helping senor Castro, that bombs and sabotage are constant.”

As soon as Fidel’s July 26 movement succeeded in January 1959, relations between Cuba and the U.S. took a certain downturn. In question were the sweeping economic reforms carried out by Cuba, which were taken by Washington as signs of a communist takeover. In early 1960, Cuba re-embarked on diplomatic relations with the Soviet Union, eventually sovietizing the Cuban political system in the 1970’s.

In March 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower began the process that would, eventually, manifest into the Bay of Pigs, for which President John F. Kennedy would take the blame. Eisenhower secretly authorized the CIA to develop an invasion force of anti-Castro exiles. As the new Cuban government expropriated ever more property owned by U.S. investors, tensions mounted. Washington responded with an economic embargo on October 13, a mere two weeks before the U.S. presidential election. Both Kennedy and Nixon made statements in favor of U.S. government backing of an exile invasion force; this after both candidates had been briefed on the situation by the CIA. Nixon even spoke of “cutting off the significant items that the Cuban regime needs in order to survive, by cutting off trade…”
Operation Zapata, a U.S. sponsored invasion of Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, was only one of myriad covert operations conducted by and on behalf of U.S. state-enterprise interests against the Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

The CIA, with Eisenhower’s authorization, had trained 1,300 Cubans. On April 17, 1961, the exile force invaded Cuba with the belief that its arrival would spark a revolution, but, on the other hand, the force was easily suppressed by the regime and people. The failure worked against the United States, helping to legitimize Castros' control, for his regime had, after all, defeated the imperial United States. Kennedy would have to admit the operations' incipience was of origin in the United States. (Holden & Zolov)

In 1973, the CIA, with the help of Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, engineered the overthrow and assassination of democratically elected leader Salvadore Allende in Chile. Allende had engaged in a campaign to nationalize American-owned firms and land. The CIA enabled General Augusto Pinochet to replace Allende, who then tortured and murdered thousands of Chileans in a brutal domestic purge. To ensure Allende would never come to power, before having to resort to “jackals,” the United States, through the CIA, spent three million dollars campaigning against him, mostly through radio and print social marketing. Allende had a warm relationship with Cuba and had openly criticized the invasion of the Bay of Pigs.

This all was in line with the earlier outlined U.S. policy which invoked control of Latin American countries as key to U.S. primacy. In 1971, Nixon’s National Security Council articulated, that if the U.S. could not control Latin America, then how could it expect “to achieve a successful order elsewhere in the world?” (Nimmo)

The expense of control meant depopulation towards a more manageable level. The weapons in this war are, by no means, merely economic and military, but technological in the highest sense of the word. To be sure, just as lengthy an article could be dedicated to the “radical populism” igniting many peoples across Latin America.


1. Holden, H. Robert. (2002) Latin America and the United States: A documentary History. New York: Oxford University Press, doc. No. 71 A Realist Views Latin America George F Kennan.

2. Holden, H. Robert. (2002) Latin America and the United States: A documentary History. New York: Oxford University Press, doc. No.68 A Charter for Covert Action? The Congress of the United States and the Doolittle Commission.

3. _____. Bolivian Revolution, 1952, Global Security 2010.
Accessed at: http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/bolivia.htm

4. Holden, H. Robert. (2002) Latin America and the United States: A documentary History. New York: Oxford University Press, doc. No. 77 Taming a Revolution in Bolivia George Jackson Eder.

5. Holden, H. Robert. (2002) Latin America and the United States: A documentary History. New York: Oxford University Press, doc. No. 78, 81,84 With Castro in the Sierra Maestra Herbert L. Mathews, Debating Cuba and Castro, Lessons of the Bay of Pigs John F. Kennedy.

6. Nimmo, Kurt. CIA Assasination Program Revealed: Nothing New Under the Sun, Infowars.

Accessed at: http://www.infowars.com/cia-assassination-program-revealed-nothing-new-under-the-sun/

Conquering Naivete and Channeling Active Resistance

In the peace and decentralization movements, as if by bio-psychological defense mechanism, critical analysis is clipped by a nagging propensity to incorporate the unobjectivity of naivete in its dialogue and action. Although the ere in understanding might not be fundamental in the ongoingness of cultural events and sociality, it is a phenomenon worthy of illumination. To be sure, it seems quite a natural desire to, now and then, fantasize that the way things are aren’t truly so dire.

Analysts of current affairs, from all backgrounds and dispositions, showcase a tendency to underestimate the dark genius driving the world’s political economy, if only periodically. This bio-psychological urge speaks to the mind’s knack for protecting the individual by not uploading it with a torrential flood of data and information that seem to imply that, survival in the long-term, might not be readily attainable. Similar discipline is demonstrated in most people’s perception of death, assuming, as we generally tend to do, that our death’s are reserved for a day far off in the future. In a more dramatic manifestation of this, many people disbelieve in death as an ending.

It is a fundamentally unscientific process to observe and participate in the events of our own daily lives, since we are already the participants. The cognitive tick of thinkers to trick themselves into believing falsities, when pondering their own lots, comes into play for a variety of reasons, from vanity to strategy. Vanity when one doesn’t wish to come to terms with a perceived lack of stuff, things or the popular conception of beauty; strategy when the desperate individual needs all strength and energy to pull through adversity, and cannot spare any for mere worrying. In other words, when action is the order of the day.

When unobjectivity or, in other words, the absence of flawed premise, becomes colored by naivete, in a movement where the determined search for a truth of crystalline purity favors the drivers of civilization, found in truthful and moralistic exploration, discovery and research, the said movements methods of understanding and knowing are undermined.

For instance, when pro-peace and pro-decentralization economists talk of the state of the global financial and economic systems, they often declare the present as a time of international recession, and the future as a time of international depression.

Many of these same economists, in a perhaps negligible manifestation of doublethink, simultaneously perceive the total magnitude of today’s systemic cataclysms as an entirely different transpiration. That, in fact, we are not experiencing a recession-soon-to-be-depression, but, rather, a social, political and economic re-engineering of the way things are--that is, the status-quo--towards a new, singular international order, in which no other population groups enjoys a standard of living above another population group.

Still, this no-brainer does not remain at the nucleus of economic discourse,and the remaking of civilization and political-economic society continues to be conceived of as a cyclical recession and depression, with the most pessimistic of this lot conjecturing that the hardships will continue for thirty to fifty years. But, as these same recession-turned depression “pessimists,” in many cases, also acknowledge, if the re-engineering process towards a transnational and corporate feudal order succeeds to varying degrees, we can seek no reprieve for, probably, the duration of a neo-dark age (a couple centuries).

This re-engineering, to be sure, is experienced by those who must live through it as a linear process, and so divvying it up in stages, such as recession and depression, is a useful tool in facilitating an understanding of the unfolding. Eventually, though--say, in fifty years--it will be useless to claim we are still in a depression that has it seeds in the 2008 “banking crisis.”

Considering that the pre-eminent mode of social organization, other than the planet, is the nation-state--in nearly all cases, not only a public, but also a private initiative--in this contemporaneously engineered world order, transnational conglomerates, the planet’s keystone centralizing forces, will attack nation-states so as to ensure they endure at subsistence level until the nation-state fades as a means for the individual, and his group, to “find themselves.”

From then on, theoretically, what’s left over of humanity, will live lifetimes on communitarian-style plantations devoid of technology for personal use. A hyper-rational and hyper-scientific social environment, in which goods and services are issued as opposed to earned and owned, will delegate all high technology to “authorities,” who are appointed according to habits reminiscent of crony capitalism. Conservatively, such an order could entrench itself, in a near complete manner, by mid-point this century.

In this social environment, the individual will have been so propagandized and therefore developmentally tortured--first by public education, then by television and film--that the processes of networking certain ideas in the mind, and the associated neural arrangements, will be, in many individuals, dramatically inhibited. This will then inhibit the potential for free thought outside authorized philosophies and worldviews. .

Therefore, fundamentally so, the conditions needed for the smooth functioning of a truly free market culture, in the infrastructural, cultural and psychological realms, will have been demolished. What mainline economists and many alternative economists are not incorporating into their analyses, solutions and philosophies is that, with a manufacturing base stalled decades in the past, the west’s economic woes cannot be solved in the economics paradigm alone or, for that matter, in any single paradigm. Does this, then, proceed the need for a re-conceptualization of mainline western scholarship, reason and logic?

The magnitude of the crisis in mind, the vertically-managed disassembling of culture, society and civilization, by a well-organized cabal of capstone market makers and their assets--who, through investment, created, conservatively, the last 150 years of culture and political economy in the former British Empire--cannot be reformed or recovered, with the hope of stopping there and having things truly improved for the better. Instead, a reorganization movement, of centrifugal flow, must counter a radically unequal allocation of wealth.


Re-engineering the economy down to such a size, by confiscating the capital and hoarding it amongst a ruling elite--saved for investments in line with the downsizing--is convenient for market makers, who, aware that the modern world was designed in the eyes of the British Empire, learned a lesson when the Empire’s wealthiest and most privileged subjects--New Englanders--were the ones to revolt most definitively. The poorer a people, the less likely the success of any sort of revolutionary and reformative skirmishes. Indeed, the less likely the people are to stand up for themselves. Therefore, the safer the fortunes of those proclaiming a neo-divine right of corporate kings.

In light of the desperation, to be certain, objectivity need not be the driver of exploration, discovery and research in the truth movement, although it must be divinely valued. Emotion and feeling can inform the individual, as well as objectivity itself, therefore making these bio-chemical exchanges important to the processes of understanding and knowing. Of most importance, emotion and feeling can inform the individual of what action to take, beyond ratiocination.

The sorts of action to be taken promote independence. By self-organization, the individual not only weans himself off dependence and domestication--two conditions of citizenry amid deference--but, moreover, learns how to take care of himself.

Direct action includes initiatives like growing one’s own food (with the expectation of feeding oneself and others), protecting wealth through diversification (into gold and silver), learning self-defense, informing oneself about circumstantial problems and solutions. Community action includes informing others, while building up a social network of awakened and proactive individuals who are seeking, not only to help themselves, but, also, others.

By partnering with local farmers, offering them assistance in their endeavoring, business or information (by, for example, strategically informing them of their industry’s plight, and offering them solutions), one increases his likelihood of enjoying access to pure food in times of crisis, shortage or famine.

In summation, what I am trying to get across here (in an arrogantly convoluted manner), is that we cannot deny that the collapse of cultures, societies and civilization is upon us, and those who are sitting on the planet’s wealth seek to profit from it. Therefore, we must now be responsible by obsessing over our shortcomings and the solutions thereto. By returning earnership and ownership to the estate of the individual, and giving what’s earned and owned value by denying the use of forceful theft and violence as a viable means of wealth attainment, power can be returned to the increasingly empty lives of global consumer-peasant and peasant classes.

There Is No Incrementalism in Resistance

There is an old story, which tells of a frog in a pot. When the frog was put in the pot while the water inside was boiling, the frog would immediately leap out to safety. But, when the frog was placed into a cool pot, which was then heated up, it would remain in the pot until, eventually, it was cooked and dead. Now, I’ve never put a frog in boiling pot of water, nor have I ever tried to steam a frog, but the thought remains. Then again, maybe it depends on the frog.

For ages, however, this old tale has served as a metaphor for rulers, who, with their instinct of self-preservation intact, have used symbols along specific lines to lead individuals and the collective-mind, according to their self-declared jurisdiction and oft dark desires. Just as the latter frog might have only cooked because the process was incremental, those who make global policies rule by a philosophy of control that can be termed “incrementalism”; in other words, they are ever-so-patient in getting their way.

The capstone income-earners, the rulers--that is, those to whom the mass of wealth and power, in a contrived, yet natural manner, flows--direct investments, actions and reactions so as to unendingly consolidate, secure and promote their unswerving pre-eminence on earth. As monopoly men, they steer economic society in such a way that they increase their profit share. With goods and services on a centralizing course, those at the core of an economic system manage to perpetuate this arrangement. After all, that is how they view it: as managing the planet.

That such behavior is maintained, even when it is only those at the core of the system who benefit, at the fatal expense of a great many, speaks to the psychopathic nature of those who, in their minds, have successfully worked towards becoming CEO’s of the planet. In the captain’s helm of the neo-politburo, which guides the command-and-control economy of Western Civilization in its current stage, conscience is composed of an entirely different arrangement of matter as down below in the gallows, “where the men hang on for their dear lives.”

In incrementalism, the rulers persuade people to follow the path which, in their minds, will most likely result in the preservation of power for themselves. There is too, of course, a pseudo-spiritual or pseudo-religious aspect to this power, as the abuse of it, and the masochistic wielding of it, satiates their sick yearnings, perceived to be of luciferan origin by some of the players. Preserving the power, to be sure, is merely a means to an end, and this is where incrementalism comes in.

Totally authoritarian rule, complete domination and subordination, are the makings of a well-organized and orderly system in which rule is guaranteed to those who have previously wielded it. According to their logic, why they deserve to rule is quite simple: because they have previously ruled, and so therefore it is natural.

However, it is far from easy to implement such measures of control. Historically, in order to do so, ruling classes have, without fail, resorted to bringing in such systems slowly, so that, just as the frog won’t jump from slowly boiled water, people won’t notice and, therefore, act. In incrementalism, there are naturally stages through which society passes, and, as each stage comes into view, the paradigm of society shifts, although the general trajectory is logical in light of its predecessor.

There is no incrementalism in resistance. In a civilization scientifically dissected by/ for the capstone class, opposition to the dominant culture and its overseers would be futile were it to be bit-by-bit; that is, slow motion resistance can never re-create such a civilization towards less nihilistic and grotesque movements. Therefore, our civilization cannot incrementally be reoriented, not when “full spectrum dominance”, the literal construction of an omnipotent God as the system, is the never-ending agenda.

For these reasons, it is crucial for those who seek to help to become self-sustainable. This is done by learning skills such as acquiring even small plots of land, gardening for food, learning weapons skills, investing and securing wealth through gold and silver, seeking a network of reliable friends and family, and educating oneself and others in the techniques of control, consistently utilized by rulers, to protect the cognitive fabric of man.

"Top-Secret America" covered by Washington Post

The Washington Post Covers “Top-Secret America”

According to the official line, in order to ensure the safety of US citizens in the wake of the 9/11 attacks, the United States government created a panoply of agencies. But, after a two-year investigation, the Washington Post--a paper known to have a considerable connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, and to actively promote opinion pieces linked to the intelligence realm-- argues that this complex of agencies and institutions “has become so large, so unwieldy and so secretive that no one knows how much money it costs, how many people it employs, how many programs exist within it or exactly how many agencies do the same work.”

The particular course of recent events, which sprouted from 9/11, rhymes with those in the wake of the Reichstag burning in 1933 Germany, encompassed by the Reichstag Fire Decree (officially called the ‘Order of the Reich President for the Protection of People and State.’) Like the Patriot Act for the American people, the Reichstag Fire Decree served to nullify most civil liberties enjoyed by the German people. “The sadistic machine simply rolls over us,” Victor Klemperer, a German Jew married to an Aryan, wrote from underneath the fledgling Nazi Regime in the early thirties.

To be sure, one notable difference between the two policies is that, while the Patriot Act has been accused of vagueness, the Reichstag Decree, according to Wikipedia, “was not accompanied by any written guideliness from the Reich government.” Now, that’s vague.

And then, when you consider what took place in those late February days of 1933, amidst the brisk air of a waning winter, one sees how the streets could grow so cold; that is, how the Reichstag Decree made way for the atrocities of the Nazi Regime.

Here are some important differences between Germany post-Reichstag fire and the US Patriot Act:

Less than two years after the Reichstag Decree, in mid-1934, a wave of terror helped to give further meaning to the Decree. This “Night of the Long Knives (Nacht der Langen Messer) successfully purged the SA (Sturmabteilung) and Nazi Party generally of those opposed to Hitler’s cult of personality and the dictatorial status of his decrees arisen from its intriguing veneer.

Moreover, long before the purge of key members of the Nazi leadership,in the months after Hitler’s appointment to Chancellor and the burning of the Reichstag, the Dachau concentration camp was already created. In this period, the “sadistic Nazi Machine” lent its support of those in its ranks who had little or no aversion to arresting Communists, Socialists, and labor leaders not in line with the Party. At Dachau, conditioning ensued to normalize the dehumanization of concentration camp prisoners.

In a parallel move designed to promote internal coordination among the Nazi leadership, Special Courts were created to try political dissidents.

For a time after 9/11, life on the domestic front in the US stayed rather politically open and economically stable, although Washington furthered its racket of war in pursuit of “full spectrum dominance” abroad. The legal framework of the United States, just as it was in Nazi Germany after the Reichstag burning, had been, nonetheless, revolutionized.

There is, to be sure, a difference in policy sequence between the two states. While the Nazi’s transformed the domestic front into an active police state, and then went to war in Europe; in the United States, foreign war policies in the Mid-East were pursued first, while a brutal crackdown on the domestic front was put on the backburner.

All the same, the US state-enterprise apparatus and the policy planners who steered it did erect a National Security State to, allegedly, ward off terrorists who were fundamentally terrorists, unable to be re-educated, and unendingly enraged at how freely we lived. The way in which the National Security State has been unraveled, on the domestic front, does differ from the way in which the similar system of Nazi Germany was unraveled there.

In the United States, incrementalism-- a theory of governance designed to lead a population towards a particular outcome, slowly so they don’t notice--has been the technique employed, in the first decade of the 21st century, to transform the state towards a neo-socialistic fascism aimed towards keeping the American population in control amidst a long-lasting economic Downturn (depression and collapse), which just so happened to be engineered by the financial wing of this governing body.

It appears that, in the most dangerous time in our world’s history, “Top-Secret America” inherits a crumbling, yet vast empire. The general attitude of this “top secret world,” as the Post refers to it, dictates our future.

Top-Secret America inherits a newly transformed legal framework, partially hidden by an incessant propaganda machine with the potential to evolve the atomized, though historically part-free American population into accepting collectivized austerity, and their role in the new dark ages. Warren Buffett defined this new role as “a nation of sharecroppers.”

The parallel government of which the Post writes--the paper refers to it as a “top-secret world,”--“amounts to an alternative geography of the United States, a Top Secret America hidden from public view and lacking in thorough oversight.

The investigation found: about 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies working on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security, intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States; an estimated 854,000 people, upwards of 1.5 times more people as live in Washington D.C., have top-secret security clearances; in greater Washington, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been erected since September 2001. They stand on the equivalent of nearly three Pentagons or 22 US Capitol buildings.

More than two-thirds of the intelligence programs reside in the Department of Defense. In these intelligence programs, very few senior officials - called Super Users - have access to information regarding all of the department’s and their activities.

Retired Army Lt. Gen. John R. Vines, who commanded 145,000 troops in Iraq, was stunned by the complexity of this system.

"I'm not aware of any agency with the authority, responsibility or a process in place to coordinate all these interagency and commercial activities," he said in an interview. "The complexity of this system defies description."

Direct of the CIA, Leon Panetta, said he has begun outlining a five-year plan for his agency. The reason? Spending levels since 9/11 are unsustainable.

“Particularly with these deficits, we’re going to hit the wall. I want to be prepared for that,” he said. “Frankly, I think everyone in intelligence should be doing that.”

What is this wall, to which Panetta refers? Many renowned economists and, increasingly so, mainstream economists are forecasting a continuing economic Downturn and eventual collapse in the United States. This coming collapse is helped along by the gutting of US industries over the past 20-30 years through the phenomenon popularly known as “outsourcing,” as well as unsustainable tax revenue allocation on the part of Washington and the uberclass lobbyists who run it.

According to the trickle-down theory of economics, the investments of those who hold the greatest volume of wealth in any given economic system make that society and culture. Along this line of thinking, in the present day, that uberclass which makes such investments value war and austerity for the globe.

The business plans, whose logic support these values, depend on standardization of global commerce, and a world population that continues to be consenting to coercion and manageable.

The article further details how, daily in the United States, 854,000 civil servants, military personnel and private contractors holding top-secret security clearances are scanned into offices electronically guarded by electromagnetic locks, retinal cameras, and fortified walls that eavesdropping equipment cannot penetrate.

The Post contends: “this is not exactly Dwight D. Eisenhower’s ‘military-industrial complex,’ which emerged with the Cold War and centered on building nuclear weapons to deter the Soviet Union. This is a national security enterprise with a more amorphous mission: defeating transnational violent extremists.” Now, that the laws on the books for the US domestic front are reminiscent of those of a police state, who are the “transnational violent extremists” among us.

Most of the details about this Mission are classified, including how money is spent. Last year, the budget of US intelligence was publicly announced as $75 billion. This figure, to be sure, leaves out many military operations and/or domestic counter-terrorism programs.





Washington Post Article:

http://projects.washingtonpost.com/top-secret-america/articles/a-hidden-world-growing-beyond-control/

On the Awakening at Western Civilization's Sunset

In the present day, individuals live between ways of life. In our temporal age of constant flux, existence can be dizzying. As things change, most exercise the powers of hope so as to cope, and, in the process, lose their will to act, for hope is a passive occupation. But, as many people these days are commenting on, many have chosen not to settle for a pair of fingers merely crossed for a better tomorrow. While most countries lose their sovereignty to interdependence through globalization of the current international system-- the process of which empowers a very real uberclass that lives above and beyond common law and traditions--many populations have begun to more fervently identify with their native countries, and even their local communities.

These “stirring” individuals have had enough of the long Anglo-American treadmill of exploitation and domination. They wish to restore Basic Freedoms given to them by Nature or God. In this essay, we’ll focus on the US-based part of the overall Global Awakening dubbed by US foreign policy hawk, Zbigniew Brzezsinki, the “global political awakening.” Although the ideas corresponding to the Peace and Patriot Movement--participants of which henceforth referred to as Peace Patriots-- are revolutionary in scope, many do not wish for the typical sort of Revolution. In other words, their work is not designed to replace one Regime with Another.

On the contrary, a radical revision of the role of Institutions--Institutions which, in the eyes of a near-majority of those who associate themselves either with the Peace Movement or the Patriot Movement are the obsolete, but everpresent machinery of a deep power structure designed to steer society--should work towards fostering conditions of freedom in all nations.

This would entail knowing the true leaders of the Corporations, Foundations (as the joke goes, especially those with “free” or “private” in their literature), Steering Committees and Governments which make economic and social society, instead of focusing on Presidents and Prime Ministers, who are once removed from the true policy makers in Government and Corporate Directorships; that is, those who truly make the decisions about what to promote in the mainstream.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, as the Business Plans of contemporary Corporations called for the expansion of markets into foreign countries, this power structure became globalized. And today, unlike in any other time period, the reach of the elite (elites have always existed, and, as Aldous Huxley assumes, always will) extends across the entire planet. To see this, one need only look at the transnational dealings of market maker Goldman Sachs or the transnational eco-terrorism of British Petroleum (in the Gulf), the War Racketeer, Shell (in Iraq), other Big Oil players, BigPharma, the chemical industry and so on. The gross sum = Eisenhower’s Military-Industrial Complex.

Some of the big-picture-economic philosophies (“big picture” meaning the large brushstroke, an overview of the present age, and not its opposite, the countless micro-policies giving rise to the big picture, the way thing are at any given time) of the Peace Patriots, regarding how to fairly remake society, are typically associated with the right-wing of the political spectrum. As an aside, this right-to-left-wing political spectrum doesn’t hold in water, if not for it’s over-simplicity, for the apolitical nature of many people, who do not see themselves primarily as the citizens of political organizations.

Those aforementioned “right-wing” ideas stem from the work of Adam Smith who wrote in detail of Free Markets and Capitalism, which he saw as coming to fruition in conditions of “perfect freedom” and given to “natural liberty.” By way of “free associations,” individuals could enter into the marketplace, sell their labor, and acquire the goods they needed and wanted, with little or no third-party interference. Theoretically, ubiquitous competition would team-up with its partner cooperation to set fair prices and weed out poor quality. Many of these people most readily identify themselves as libertarians.

It is not, however, only libertarians who give attitude to the American-Global Awakening to the elitist colorization of power structures, but also many people who, had they not awoken and unsubscribed to what some have termed the “false right-left wing paradigm”, would consider themselves liberals or democrats, not Republicans, the close cousin of libertarianism. These individuals collectively give the Peace Patriots its progressive tones.

The Progressives among the Peace Patriots value a responsible environmentalism, and scoff at the political-environmentalist rhetoric highlighting as our gravest threat “Global Warming” and “Overpopulation.” They might instead choose to bring up legal charges against the world’s largest polluter--the United States Department of Defense and Pentagon--on the road to abolishing these war making machines altogether. As Major General Smedley Butler, the most decorated marine in US history, wrote: War is a Racket. War benefits those psychopathic individuals and Corporations with the resources enough to make wars.

Another element of this section of the Peace Patriots is a progressive economic policy, whereby public representatives invest for the country based on fair formulas and an altruism that is first rewarded, and then adopted in the culture of the elected leaders. Progressive-Libertarianism in economics would promote the values of entrepreneurship through free associations, the new organizations and Institutions arisen therefrom, and a framework designed to give Representatives the privilege to be a conduit for beneficial collective endeavors.

The Peace Patriots represent an unprecedented progressive-libertarian political movement. Not only is the movement globalized yet diverse, but, also, its main-progenitors are scholastically informed activists, who, in an important demonstration of nuance, are wholly uninterested in the Presidents, Prime Ministers and Political Parties historically used to distract such movement’s away from those whom truly guide their lives.

This movement is very much skeptical of revolutions and the solutions handed-down from mass media and in spectacular speeches.

The history of Revolutions is not one of populist--that is, for the people-- victories, but, rather, social cataclysms that oft led to the splintering, decay and eventual elitist-driven remaking of cultures. As these societies came closer to Revolution, what is today termed “partisanship” increasingly ruled. This is precisely what we see transpiring today.

In France, at the end of the eighteenth century, that Revolution gave rise to the Reign of Terror and the attempted consolidation of Europe, and beyond, in the form of the Napoleonic Wars; In Russia in 1917, Revolution gave rise to Leninist and Stalinist Gulags and Great Purges, and a highly stratified socialist System in which psychological domination by education and the manipulation of the command-and-control economy greased the wheels; the National Socialist Revolution of 1933 Germany gave rise also to dictatorship and genocide.

Instead of Revolution, Peace Patriots champion a global spiritual and psychological Awakening, which is posited to then propel humanity to a next stage of maturity. The “unwashed masses” will then understand, and choose to deal with, the techniques of domination designed to coerce and control their lives and species: for instance, psychological terrorism in the form of toxic stimuli (the sounds and images of propaganda and public relations), contrived crises (false flag), crises generally, fear-mongering, economic scarcity, the alteration of human biochemistry by the introduction of toxic chemicals into the environment (through food, inoculation, and aerial spraying), and other forms of new eugenics.

The Awakening will function to undermine the usefulness of such techniques.

What does an awakening at civilization’s sunset entail?

The term “global political awakening” can be attributed to Zbigniew Brzezinski. He has referred to the phenomenon as “a truly transformative event on the global scene.” He goes on:

“For the first time in human history almost all of humanity is politically activated, politically conscious and politically interactive. There are only a few pockets of humanity left in the remotest corners of the world that are not politically alert and engaged with the political turmoil and stirrings that are so widespread today around the world. The resulting global political activism is generating a surge in the quest for personal dignity, cultural respect and economic opportunity in a world painfully scarred by memories of centuries-long alien colonial or imperial domination.”

Brzezinski sees the Global Awakening as among the most dramatic and significant phenomenon in geopolitics that has ever taken place, and it “is apparent in radically different forms from Iraq to Indonesia, from Bolivia to Tibet.” Brzezinski asserts, “the worldwide yearning for human dignity is the central challenge inherent in the phenomenon of global political awakening.” He writes further:

“America needs to face squarely a centrally important new global reality: that the world's population is experiencing a political awakening unprecedented in scope and intensity, with the result that the politics of populism are transforming the politics of power. The need to respond to that massive phenomenon poses to the uniquely sovereign America an historic dilemma: What should be the central definition of America's global role?”

In his book, “Out of Control,” Brzezinski defines two issues of “major importance”: how to define concepts freedom and the good life. He argues, “the first pertains to the meaning of citizenship and the second to the essence of the human being.” In the same book, he discusses the conflation of morality and law. That, increasingly, what is legal is considered moral, and that which is illegal, is considered immoral, not the other way around. So, therefore, by making new law, one can make new morality.

In the book, Brzezinski outlines the way in which corporate-dominated mass media gives to the child his view of the world. He pens:

“On the whole, the values conveyed by the media repeatedly manifest what justifiably might be called moral corruption and cultural decadence.

“Today, for much of the world--and especially for the young-- television is the most important instrument both for socialization and education. In that respect, it is rapidly replacing the roles traditionally played by the family, by the church, by the school.

“Television gives the young viewer a first glimpse of the outside world. It first defines--and does so compellingly, by combining the visual and the audio impact--the meaning of the good life...It conditions desires, defines aspirations and unacceptable behavior.”

Brzezinski continues by enunciating the “staggering” facts on televisions effects on behavior. How so many people spend so much time glued to their television sets. As far as the so-called “programming” televisions offers, the “programs” “clearly extol self-gratification...normalize violence and brutality, encourage sexual promiscuity through example and stimulated peer pressures...the result is loss of control over social behavior.”

As Bertrand Russell, the British philosopher, historian, mathematician, and social critic wrote in his book, “The Impact of Science on Society,” the importance of mass psychology “has been enormously increased by the growth of modern methods of propaganda. Of these the most influential is what is called “education.”

A nagging question, which has gone under-emphasized by most analysts of the Global Awakening, is what exactly Brzezinski means with his term?

Could it be that he truly means that, because the mass media extends to almost every corner of the globe, the ability to plug people into the grids of power has worked to be a coup over people’s minds? Is his language consciously doublespeak intended to confuse Peace Patriots and their colleagues the world-over into thinking they can take it easy? Or, more optimistically and, I think, more likely, as the present continues to shape a future System more desperate and hopeless than the current one, are larger numbers of people becoming inclined towards, or welcoming of, Populist Activism?

For each action, there is an opposite and equal reaction. Let’s now take a walk in our minds on one of Einstein’s thought dreams. Imagine the development of an immense power, abused and expanded upon. A tyrant leading an exhaust-less War of Terror aimed to so change the environment of a people, that they themselves are also changed in the process. Imagine the remaking of societies and purges by Lenin, Stalin, Hitler, and Mao, but not just within their imaginary-line borders; instead, by way of a Global State, a World Regime--if you will. Imagine the power such a Global Institution causes. According to Newton’s laws of motion, there is to this series of tyrannical Actions myriad opposite Reactions.

What one observes in the reading of history is that, often as power centralization quickens, decentralizing tendencies arise and contradict that primary trend, thereby at least slowing it. Andrew Gavin Marshall elaborates on the primary way in which Technological Globalization has changed the world:


“The Technological Revolution has led to a diametrically opposed, antagonistic, and conflicting geopolitical reality: never before has humanity been so awakened to issues of power, exploitation, imperialism and domination; and simultaneously, never before have elites been so transnational and global in orientation, and with the ability to impose such a truly global system of scientific despotism and political oppression. These are the two major geopolitical realities of the world today. Never in all of human history has mankind been so capable of achieving a true global political psycho-social awakening; nor has humanity ever been in such danger of being subjected to a truly global scientific totalitarianism, potentially more oppressive than any system known before, and without a doubt more technologically capable of imposing a permanent despotism upon humanity. So we are filled with hope, but driven by urgency. In all of human history, never has the potential nor the repercussions of human actions and ideas ever been so monumental.”

Generating these countering trends is a sort of information war, ongoing. Although it might sound cliche, the impact of today on history is unimaginable. The volume of the vector that jet-propels modern man’s exchange of symbols and language on is greater than all those ages we consider the turning points of our Civilization: greater than European fascism and World War II; greater than the American and French Revolutions; greater than the Renaissance; the Black Plague, and on and on down the ages.

The exchange of symbols and language is not repeating history, or even rhyming with history--as Twain would have it--but truly making it. As high technology and communications have divorced the present from bygone ages, the associated quickening in society’s primary events, also known as “progress”, have enlarged the impact of decisions and actions by individuals like never before.

Moreover, we live today in the digital age, like flies through a digital matrix of widow webs. Although many futurists envisaged, and still do, the nature of a technetronic society as non-intimate, and likely to usher in a near-totally atomized public of robot zombies, the truth of the situation points towards a near-opposite reality.

Issues such as those brought up by the 9/11 Truth Movement have become mainstream political issues, according to Time Magazine. As the incrementally creeping Abuse of Power protects, first and foremost, the “witting” Uberclass, as well as the armies of opulent and psychopathic cronies, the Global Awakening reacts and intensifies.

Make no mistake that, by any historical standards, the fast flux of man’s modern society is, in religious terms, truly a transfiguration. Websters defines “to transfigure” like this: “to give a new and typically exalted or spiritual appearance to.” To Christians, one keystone example of this is Jesus’ appearance upon the mountain. Matt. 17: 1-9

Now, how do You live and pray while wide-awake at Civilization’s Sunset?

Please see: Andrew Gavin Marshall. The Global Political Awakening and the New World Order, published by Global Research:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=19873

Poway Skatepark now under Boot of Big Bro?

All around us, technological innovations have digitalized society to such a point that the whereabouts of each of us can be known at all times. From GPS in passports, cell phones and cars, to computer cameras and microphones, privacy today is little more than a fading memory.

The bizarre surveillance grid, easily observable by each of us, represents a grave threat to the harmonious functioning of society, as data collection empowers the collectors. In the suburbs of San Diego, California, where, alongside southern California generally, skateboarding was born to relieve surfers of boredom on days when the surf was flat, skateboarding culture’s clash with overbearing city and county statutes has reached a new level.

The official reason behind biometric identification at a skatepark in Poway, California is to prevent vandalism, bullying, blah blah blah (read: et cetera). But the new requirement for skaters and parents to enter the park through a “biometric” thumb scanner represents one small instance amidst an American landscape increasingly dotted by militarized architecture.

In order to access the park, skaters and others visitors must go through the turnstile after their thumbprint is taken by the device.

Park users were asked to register at the park and will be required to sign a liability waiver, provide a thumbprint and have their photo taken, which will then be uploaded to a computer. Registration and admittance to the park is free--how considerate.

Not surprisingly, considering their near ubiquitous presence on US streets, computerized surveillance cameras were also installed at the park. Thereby, city officials can match video of violators with filed photos. Depending on the severity of actions, park-goers may be denied access to the park for days, weeks or indefinitely.

Poway senior recreation supervisor, Greg Sundberg, claims the skate park has experienced many problems in the recent past, such as vandalism in restrooms, graffiti, fires and visitors bringing bicycles into the park, which is not permitted.

“I think it’s a great idea,” Poway parent Shelly Smart said of the scanner.

Manufactured by NextgenID, the scanner cost the city $5,700, according to Frank Casteleneto, a city engineer. Altogether, the city spent $91,000 on recent security upgrades to the park., despite California’s 28% unemployment rate. City staff believe the scanner will also help prevent minor violations, like skaters not wearing helmets or kneepads, or kids sneaking bicycles into the park.

Identification cards were originally planned to help secure the park, but the idea was scrapped due to the likely prevalence of card-swapping among people. Out-of-town visitors will be required to provide a thumbprint for temporary access to the park. Sundberg said the new system would enable the city to restrict usage to certain age groups on specific days.

“We can program these scanners so that we can have a kids-only day … or an adults-only day,” he said.

Poway residents, Josh Thomas, 17, and Rancho Bernardo resident Matt Valencia, 18, said they see the scanner as violating their rights. The two did, however, plan on submitting their prints so that they could continue to use the park.

“I don’t want (the park) to be trashed, but I don’t think this is the way to go about doing it,” Josh said.

Ramona residents Erika Jacons and Adam Small visit the park several times throughout the week. Although Jacobs said she undesrstands the city’s want to create a safe environment and maintain the park, she believes the security camers would have sufficed as deterrent enough.

There are “so many ways to get around [the thumbscanner],” said Jacobs, 20. “Kids are smart.”

Is the biometric scanner at Poway an isolated incident? Or is it merely a symptom of an increasingly monitored everyday life in the United States?

In the first decade of the 21st century, much of the world has witnessed the unveiling of a total information network, whose stated purpose is to defend against terrorists, namely Al Qaeda. Could it instead be to ensure that people and society are highly predictable? In countries like Britain, all e-mails and telephone conversations, after having been handed over to the proper authorities by Internet Service Providers, are organized and stored by supercomputers. In the United States, electronic wiretapping goes back 150 years. The technology has been a seriously contested issue in the US on and off for 50 years.

Technocract (read: unelected leader)Zbigniew Brzezinski has written extensively on what he terms “a distinct new historical era,” particularly in his book "Between Two Ages." The ages referenced here are the industrial era and technetronic era. Part of this new age entails a move by the US, and most of the west, away from industrial society and into a technetronic society. He wrote:

“The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society would be dominated by an elite, unrestrained by traditional values. Soon it will be possible to assert almost continuous surveillance over every citizen and maintain up-to-date complete files containing even the most personal information about the citizen. These files will be subject to instantaneous retrieval by the authorities.”

ECHELON is a code word for an automated global interception and relay system operated by the intelligence agencies of five nations, including the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. The United States National Security Agency (NSA) is the capstone of the project. The earth-orbiting listening posts of which ECHELON is comprised are, officially, on the front lines in the United States-led war on terrorism. The signal-seeking spacecraft play a crucial role in eavesdropping on nations, as well as within the borders of the US itself. Some reports suggest that cell phone traffic, ground line chats and faxes, telexes and satellite telecommunications links, as well as Internet emails are intercepted across the globe. The information, once electronically recorded, is organized by supercomputers running with state-of-the-art software.

Zbigniew Brzezinski’s nephew, Mathew Brzezinski, penned a book called “Fortress America,” which details what he argues is an emerging siege mentality in the US intended to create a maximum security state, such as those security states the United States has financed all over the world in "periphery" countries; that is, countries on the fringe of the anglo-american empire. Other terms for these lands are the vestigial "Third World" moniker and "developing countries" label.

Mathew writes that the manufacture of such sophisticated surveillance technology is simple, but that getting it into place and solving legal issues is not.

"The technological and legal foundations for blanket surveillance had already been laid in 2003," Brzezinski wrote in his book. "All that was lacking was the political and social will to bring all this technological wizardry to bear in the war on terror. It wouldn't happen overnight or without another catastrophic incident, something that upped the ante and put America in the same survival mode on par with Israel: a nuclear detonation, a biological outbreak, a mass casualty event. But if the stakes were high enough, would we be more willing to accept life in a maximum security surveillance state?"

Brzezinski’s scrupulous book centers on this question: How much disruption will the American people tolerate as its government tries to find “the balance between security and liberty?”

So, as the everyday lives of US citizens are monitored in perpetuity, will the invasive nature of such surveillance technologies remain tolerated? Although the main purpose of such an infrastructure might be to collect revenue through fines, the machinations could be abused further, aiding in a sort of domestic purge as economic and social tensions reach a crescendo.

The thumbscanner at Poway can be seen as a relatively harmless measure taken by city officials concerned about the safety and appearance of the park. But, considering the generally non-threatening nature of young adults, except for the to-be-expected hooliganism, one must ask: will the thumbscanner, alongside the surveillance cameras, pay itself off to the benefit of Poway residents, all the while without sucking young skateboarders and their parents out of cash for minor offenses?