Neo-fascists and terrorists against liberty come in all shapes and sizes and in every human era. 9/11 = the burning of the Reichstag. What followed in both cases evidences that history does indeed repeat itself.  But were most of us astute enough to see it happening again?

On September 11, 2001, seventy-one years after the Berlin Reichstag fire that Hitler exploited to make himself supreme dictator, a heart-rending tragedy struck the United States. More than three thousand people died suddenly in an inferno of flames in the pulverized wreckage of the most prestigious building of international capitalism: the World Trade Center in New York City.

No Air Force defense was triggered after the first and then after the second plane hit the most prominent target in the financial capital of the world. An F-16, where normally stationed, could have scrambled from about 20 miles away and could have saved the Pentagon from the third attack that followed 44 minutes later. Instead, there was no alert whatsoever when a still unidentified craft or missile struck the headquarters of America’s military might, opening a 15 ft diameter hole and penetrating deep into the building. Not a single defense shot fired – not even a beep – to warn people in the buildings.

The fourth hijacked plane went down at a 90º angle. The Government did not release the voice recorder from the cockpit. A piece of that plane was found two miles away from the point of impact. To those who have studied all reports available, the 9/11 Commission’s conspiracy theory never rose to the lowest level of a joke.

“Elementary!” Sherlock Holmes would say, but then our mainstream media (now generally known as the cloaca maxima media – the Roman Empire’s name for the main sewer of ancient Rome) – yes, friends and citizens, our mainsewer media did not report what could be easily deducted from obvious facts.

Deranged individuals at the service of global plutocrats moved to entrench a new kind of totalitarianism – inverted totalitarianism – disguised as democracy under a fake state of war against an invisible enemy called “terror.” Following 9/11, instant war drumming began against alleged foreign terrorists by an illegitimate administration. Later many facts were exposed proving that top criminals at the wheel of our government had long been seeking a new Pearl Harbor-type crisis to justify a war of aggression to steal the oil wealth of Iraq and to occupy that country as a base for further dominion of the region.

By spreading death and destruction at will upon defenseless populations in any region of the globe it chooses to attack, enslave, and pillage, the ruling global oligarchy hopes for forever-flowing profits. This insane permanent global war on an invisible specter of fabricated terror is being pitifully justified as America’s effort to establish and defend democracy. Such a deceitful justification has opened a new era, transforming the entire planet into a scientific battlefield that destroys our freedom and suspends civil liberties indefinitely – even habeas corpus which was granted to everyone since the days of the Magna Carta.

Does history repeat itself? Let us compare the events in 1933 Germany to the unfolding anti-democratic events that began with the 2000 election coup d’etat that ended America’s democracy, unfolded into a covert totalitarianism after the 2001 false flag attack of 9/11, and was followed by the dictatorial Patriot Act.

Seven decades ago Adolf Hitler abused democracy to establish his dictatorship. To do this Hitler manipulated President Hindenburg into dissolving the Reichstag and calling for new elections. He then sought a Nazi majority in the Reichstag to rubber-stamp whatever laws the big corporations financing him desired.

In Election 2000, George Bush usurped the presidency and crushed democracy when he subverted the vote of the people with the help of five treasonous black-robed Supreme Court justices. In one blow, they destroyed America’s 225-year Constitutional tradition of democratic elections by denying the people’s fundamental right of having all votes counted. Bush then got the well-paid support of a majority of goose-stepping neo-fascist in Congress to rubber-stamp everything his corporate masters desired as payback for financing his campaign (witness the colossal tax cut for the rich, corporate favors, and the anti-labor and anti-environmental laws pushed through during of the first year of his illegal administration).

In 1933 Germany, law enforcement officials were replaced by Nazi SA and SS troopers. Anybody harassed, arrested, beaten, or even murdered by these criminals had no one to turn to for help. (Extreme right-wing American racists as far back as the Nixon days secretly admired the Nazis.) That same year the Nazis began their attack on democracy by raiding the headquarters of the Communist Party to steal its membership list.

Half a century later, Republican neo-fascists repeated the same history by burglarizing the Democratic Party’s Watergate headquarters, which ended in Nixon’s resignation. That GOP crime was just a preview of coming attractions for Election 2000. During the days after the 2000 Election, GOP goons were bussed to Florida and paid to riot at vote counting locations to intimidate election officials into stopping their manual recount.

The pattern of historical repetition begins to appear clearly with an even more frightening contemporary aspect. While in Nixon’s times there existed independent investigative reporters willing to bust treasonous plots, today mainstream media is fully under the control of right-wing mega-corporations whose interests are carefully protected.

Göring and Goebbels, with Hitler’s approval, hatched a grandiose plan to shock public opinion and cause massive national panic. They coaxed and helped a psychotic communist to torch prepared combustible fuel caches set up by the Nazis (through an underground tunnel) to burn the Berlin Reichstag – the building where elected representatives of the Republic met in Congress. The crazed arsonist worked a long time to start many fires in the enormous edifice while the efficient German police were inexplicably and conveniently absent from this most important of government buildings. No one explained this abysmal lack of security, just as today no one can explain how allegedly 18 men with box cutters could hijack four airliners on the same morning or how the mighty Pentagon could be struck without warning 45 minutes after a colossal catastrophe hit New York City – even though the FBI had received information that strikes involving civilian airlines were being plotted.

Nazi reactions to the Reichstag catastrophe were without the least reflection as were, 70 years later, the Bush-ists’ reactions to the heart-breaking national tragedy of 9/11. Both the Nazis and the American right-wing chose to instantly beat revenge war drums and rattle swords to reap a maximum political bonanza from public shock, anguish, panic, and anger.

Investigate? Later. Reflect? Never! That might reveal the real causes behind the attack. That might bring to light the many acts of U.S. terrorism throughout the world. Let the press concoct polls created for propaganda and provocation. “98% of the people are lining up behind our glorious neo-Führer!” This is the kind of journalism that gives bullshit a bad name.

Unfurl the battle flags! Sing the national anthem! Unite the people behind the Commander-in-Chief, no matter how evil and corrupt. Sound familiar in both German and English? “Deuschland, Deutchland über Alles!”

Immediately after the fire, Hitler rushed from the scene to his newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, to oversee coverage of the story. He worked all night with Goebbels putting together tales of Communist plots to seize power violently. The same security apparatus allegedly caught with its pants down was suddenly so clever and efficient that it instantly spotted culprits and terrorists everywhere and was able to harangue Germany into a frenzy of violent revenge against Communists, Jews, gypsies, and all non-Arian races.

An emergency meeting of government leaders was held in Berlin. Hitler made himself a spectacle of deliberate rage to fan the flames. “The German people have been soft too long. Every Communist official must be shot. All Communist deputies must be hanged this very night. All friends of the terrorists must be locked up. And that goes for the Social Democrats and the Reichsbanner as well!” As a preamble to declaring war on the world, he literally declared war on his own people.

At a cabinet meeting held later in the morning, Chancellor Hitler demanded an emergency decree to overcome the crisis. He met little resistance from lawmakers or his cabinet. That evening, Hitler and Papen went to Hindenburg and the befuddled old man signed the Emergency Decree “for the protection of the state.” The Decree proclaimed: “Restrictions on personal liberty, on the right of free expression of opinion, including freedom of the press; on the rights of assembly and association; and violations of the privacy of postal, telegraphic and telephonic communications; warrants for house searches; orders for confiscations; as well as restrictions on property, are also permissible beyond the legal limits otherwise prescribed.”

A few days after the Reichstag fire, as if by collective hypnosis, the Nazis were seen as all-knowing heroes. They deftly captured the lone culprit (an easy task, since, having helped him, they knew who he was) and grabbed a bunch of others as well. The Nazi Party was instantly believed to be courageous and patriotic. The more the Party blamed foreign and domestic Communists, painted German liberals and democrats as enemies, and threatened to crush its enemies by force, the more the public became deliriously titillated.

This happened in 1933. No independent investigation or a shred of evidence was brought forward about who had plotted the fire. The press and radio (owned by the state and its sponsors) trumpeted the Nazis as being the only force qualified to protect Germany from evil. Germany’s citizens were called upon to unite behind the Führer, to be seen as patriots or else. “You are with us or you are against us!” This climate of hysteria foreshadowed the ultimate destruction of Germany and death of millions in Europe and across the globe.

Seventy years ago, after the Reichstag burned, the neo-Nazi police was ordered to show no mercy to those suspected of independent thinking, i.e., those hostile to Hitler, and especially any alleged “Communist terrorists” who were suddenly believed to be hiding under the beds of all German-Jewish homes or wherever mixed blood might be found. The pure Arian race alone was German and trustworthy enough to goose-step for the Führer.

A similar mindless reaction was sponsored immediately by George Bush and his neo-fascist Republicans. We were told that we must accept limitations on our liberties in the name of national security. One of the most frightening threats to civil liberties was the draconian Senate bill deliberately rushed through by GOP neo-fascists that would dramatically expand the use of secret searches to every criminal case, going far beyond anything necessary to conduct investigations on terrorism. The bill permitted wiretap information to be used and disseminated without prior judicial review or safeguards. It created a new crime of “domestic terrorism,” which could easily transform protestors into terrorists if protestors engaged in conduct that “involved acts dangerous to human life” (this vague wording might include blocking traffic or dropping a banana peel on a sidewalk).

For example, Operation Rescue, the Environmental Liberation Front, and Greenpeace have all engaged in activities that could subject them to a Nazi-style prosecution as terrorists. Under this legislation, those who provide lodging or other assistance to “domestic terrorists” – which could includes parents and relatives of environmentalists protesters or literally anyone who objects to environmental exploitation – could have their homes wiretapped and be prosecuted.

Fascist-style patriotism translated into uncritical and sniveling support of whatever actions a half-witted Führer deemed appropriate as well as withholding constructive criticism.

Arab-Americans and people with Middle Eastern names or ancestors were vilified and subjected to special scrutiny by the Government and by their fellow citizens. No American should be persecuted or abused as “disloyal” because of race or national origin. This great democratic ideal is what makes America a civilized country. However, many liberals were cowardly silent and shamelessly unable or unwilling to voice opposition to the illegitimate Bush administration. The U.S. is perilously close to the same situation Germany was in 1933 when the democratic forces there put their tails between their legs and easily allowed Hitler to take over and destroy democracy and Europe along with it, because no one wanted to find out who really burned the Reichstag and for what reason.

After security laws were rubber-stamped by the Nazis, as was done in the U.S. with the passage of the Patriot Act I and II, there followed the first big Nazi roundup as truckloads of SA and SS roared through the streets busting in on known liberal and communist hangouts and barging into private homes. Thousands of citizens, Communists as well as Social Democrats and Progressives, were taken away into “protective custody” at SA barracks where they were tortured and many killed.

Always remember the FBI’s abuses and harassment of individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr. and the official violence it generated to disrupt the Civil Rights and Antiwar Movements. Remember the students killed at Kent State University and never forget the CIA’s history of helping some of the world’s most evil violators of human rights. Let us recall Kissinger’s role in Operation “Condor” where international squads under Latin American dictators sought, tortured, carved eyes out of people, killed, and made thousands disappear.

Next Hitler turned his attention to Election Day. All resources necessary for a big win were placed at his disposal by the same large industrialists who had helped him gain power and who now gladly coughed up millions of Marks. Representatives from Krupp munitions and I. G. Farben were among those reaching into their deep pockets; several American corporations were also included.

Today the same corporate beasts are supporting war, ecological devastation, exploitation of labor, oppressive dictators, censorship by media control, medical monopolies, and a pseudo war on drugs that covers up the reality of an ocean of ill-gotten money supporting political abuse and fraud.

The difference between the Nazi rise to power and the takeover of the American Government by neo-fascists is that neo-fascism is not a strictly national sickness. America is being overrun by a multi-national corporate network positioning itself above national governments and the law through world trade and financial manipulations. The WTO is a rising super-government voiding national sovereignty. U.S. administrators are the errand boys of mega-corporations that have supported the likes of Reagan, Bush I, Clinton, Bush II, and Obama for over a century. The Congressional record reveals that the Bush family supported Hitler and also shows that Bush Sr. was in business with the Bin Laden family. What other information do we need to wake up?

Our last hope is in massive, overwhelming peaceful opposition. Unless Americans – refusing to be divided by the mainstream media – march as one people to defend freedom and turn the tables on its ruling criminals, what happened in Florida will go down in history as the end of our Republic. It is our ethical duty as a free people to oppose tyranny and deceit, to take control of our government, and to sue for peace and justice for all. It can be done when we – united and free – fully engage our proverbial courage and refuse to support evil.

On May 21, 2009, Obama’s talk on national defense showed the Ship of State falling off course. Immediate correction is needed to avoid the looming iceberg and shipwreck in these dangerous waters and to reach safe harbor. TheLuminousCompass.com, An Instrument For Multi-Directional Awareness, offers accurate bearings focused on the Magnetic Pole of Reality.    … _ _ _ …    … _ _ _ …   … _ _ _ …

Excerpts from Barack Obama’s 5/21/09 speech
Obama: [M]y single most important responsibility as President is to keep the American people safe.

TheLuminousCompass.com: To keep the American people safe, it is obvious that you must stop all wars and bring our boys home as you promised. Using our troops to take control of the assets of weaker countries for oil companies is a crime. Once our boys are back home, we the People can take care of our own safety, as we are morally much better equipped than the Homeland Security circus with its silly color-coded alerts. Remember Katrina? Bring our soldiers home, save trillions by closing all foreign bases, and protect 30,000 American lives every year by listening to the majority that elected you and now wants single payer health insurance. Adjust course, stop the rhetoric, and really keep America safe.

Obama: We are less than eight years removed from the deadliest attack on American soil in our history.

TheLuminousCompass.com: Here we go again! Mr. President, please! Don’t imitate the neo-cons’ frames of fear. 9/11 (still unexplained) has been overused by corrupt politicians who resolved nothing in eight years, other than to spend billions for the profitable slaughter of more than one million civilians and several thousands Americans. This is where studying the past may explain the present and save the future. You call it “the deadliest attack on American soil in history” (it was if we forget the genocide of 500 Native tribes).

After over a year of pleading by widows of the victims, George Bush’s un-elected criminal administration appointed a rigged kangaroo 9/11 commission that spent less than half as much to “investigate” what really happened – while failing to address WHO financed and carried out such a massive plot – than was spent to expose Whitewater and Bill Clinton’s personal escapades. The Ship of State needs a course correction on this unfinished business if you, Mr. President, really do support CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN.

Start by convincing our treaty partners to summon their experts, detectives, and scientists to investigate the myriad crimes committed under the Bush regime, crimes that have nearly destroyed our Republic, worsened our so-called international reputation, and bankrupted the American people, while super-rich scoundrel-banksters are helped to steal what’s left in the US Treasury. In other words, order that justice be served. Only then will you show the world, with more than rhetoric, that America is at last returning to its senses. Unfortunately, if you get serious about restoring a real democracy with clean elections, thieving banksters and the war profiting plutocracy will do all they can to make your presidency shorter that JFK’s.

Obama: We know that al Qaeda is actively planning to attack us again.

TheLuminousCompass.com:  Here we go again! See what we mean? You’re off course, caught in the Republican paranoid counter current. The millions who lost families to American bombers, drones, white phosphorus, aggression, calumnies, and lies are dreaming of revenge.

A remedy can be found in Dennis Kucinich’ proposal for a Department of Peace and in answering his call: “Come home, America.”

Countries that have suffered centuries of abuse are breeding more and more people who hate the Anglo-American evil empire. We do not need a Sherlock Holmes to figure that many are planning to fight back.

However, Mr. President, do not replace “change we can believe in” with “terror we can believe in!” Time to wake up! As long we fail to punish ALL those who ordered and committed torture, we’re in deadly danger. Jews, Christians, and Muslim should remember that the first suicide terrorist was a biblical hero. First blinded and tortured, Samson then took his revenge and collapsed the temple of his tormenters by killing himself along with 3000 Philistines in the region we now call the Gaza Strip. Same number as 9/11. A coincidence?

Obama: We know that this threat will be with us for a long time, and that we must use all elements of our power to defeat it. 

Already, we’ve taken several steps to achieve that goal. For the first time since 2002, we’re providing the necessary resources and strategic direction to take the fight to the extremists who attacked us on 9/11 in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

TheLuminousCompass.com: The Bush Doctrine of never ending war and of taking the fight to the terrorists while invoking 9/11 over and over are a myopic looking-back as well as a repetition of the same catastrophic errors.

Obama: [T]he Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, the Bill of Rights-these are not simply words written into aging parchment. They are the foundation of liberty and justice in this country, and a light that shines for all who seek freedom, fairness, equality, and dignity around the world… I’ve studied the Constitution as a student, I’ve taught it as a teacher, I’ve been bound by it as a lawyer and a legislator.  I took an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution as Commander-in-Chief, and as a citizen, I know that we must never, ever, turn our back on its enduring principles for expedience sake.

TheLuminousCompass.com: The people desperately want to trust you. These are not words an honest man can speak lightly, especially as a President. Your predecessor blabbered many such empty words and never respected the Constitution. Of course, he was not legitimately elected; he was appointed to reside in the White House by a lunatic court majority. You, Mr. President, on the other hand, have been given a mandate by a large majority of the people for CHANGE WE CAN BELIEVE IN. Therefore, you must act with courage and honesty and use your eloquence to educate the millions who placed their hopes in you to save the People, not just the banksters. By doing so you can become a truly great President.

Obama: From Europe to the Pacific, we’ve been the nation that has shut down torture chambers and replaced tyranny with the rule of law. That is who we are.

TheLuminousCompass.com: Mr. President, take time to review history. Start with the book Hugo Chavez gave you, Open Veins of Latin America. Examine the shameful genocide and continued oppression of Amer-indian Natives. Learn about the 1973 murder of President Salvador Allende in Chile. Take a good look at your first employer, Henry Kissinger, that international criminal who took part in Chile’s fascist criminal tragedy. Regard what our government did in Timor, Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Panama. Read Howard Zinn’s, A People’s History of the United States. Consider the 2002 CIA coup against democratically elected President of Hugo Chavez and the flood of corporate media lies about what happened there. Learn about the shocking U.S. interference in Bolivia’s democracy. Consider the half century of economic sanctions against the people of Cuba, only because Cuba rejected savage capitalism. Take notice that corporations, like the hypocrites they are, avoid comments when their Chinese communist partners sell us cheap labor and massacre Tibetan people in their own homeland. The list is too long. But you are an educated man. Surely you get the point.

Here is a clear image of what we as a nation have become in the eyes of the world:

The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis…It’s a scintillating stratagem. ~ Harold Pinter

Mr. President, your credibility can only be sustained by your teaching truth to our young people who worked so hard to elect you. That’s why you need to learn from the most maligned President in the world: the courageous Hugo Chavez, who stood firm for free education and free health care for all his people. He removed the power of thieves and is working to return his country’s commonwealth to the common good. Instead of giving away the people’s treasury to worthless banksters and corporate cronies, he nationalized crooked banks and warned the others to straighten out.

Obama: After 9/11, we knew that we had entered a new era-that enemies who did not abide by any law of war would present new challenges to our application of the law.

TheLuminousCompass.com: There you go again, adopting Bush’s BS. To begin with, 9/11 was a major crime still to be seriously investigated. No new era was started and “the war on terror” is a false verbal frame repeated to fool simple people. 9/11 was either an act of well-financed, super-organized revenge or the most sophisticated false flag operation ever produced to provide big enough public terror to justify immediate massive military action (conveniently pre-planned) for global expansion of “the evil empire” and to fatten the bottomline of the oil-military-financial complex. In this sense, one might say that Bush’s “mission impossible” did succeed. So, Mr. President, you are duty-bound to take a serious look at recent history to realistically understand the present and be prepared for the future.

Obama: [F]aced with an uncertain threat, our government made a series of hasty decisions. I believe that many of these decisions were motivated by a sincere desire to protect the American people.

TheLuminousCompass.com: Apologizing for Bush’s crimes is a serious deviation from your course. You are too intelligent not to know it. George Bush gave numerous brays about protecting the American People, but Katrina alone tells the real story. The list of wrongs and crimes is too long and you are not uninformed. The People are not dumb. They may go into denial for a while, but unless you correct course, they will soon see that they have been deceived again. Think carefully about that, Mr. President.

Obama: Now let me be clear: We are indeed at war with al Qaeda and its affiliates. We do need to update our institutions to deal with this threat. But we must do so with an abiding confidence in the rule of law and due process; in checks and balances and accountability.

TheLuminousCompass.com: Again, you adopt Republican frames of fear, this time with Nixonian flair. Let us see how faithfully you follow the rule of law. Start by applying our laws to the past, present, and future and bypass feel-good rhetoric. As long as Justice remains Justice, we do not need to update our institutions. Instead, let us restore our Bill of Rights, restore habeas corpus, restore due process, all precious rights the preceding criminal administration trashed. Your administration needs to be busy restoring, not updating.

Obama: I knew when I ordered Guantanamo closed that it would be difficult and complex.

TheLuminousCompass.com: Exactly what is so difficult and complex about closing Guantanamo and housing its 250 prisoners in our penitentiary-bloated country, now holding 3 million of its citizens behind bars? Hard to find space when America has built more prisons than colleges in the last 20 years? What is so difficult about that when it was as easy as snapping his fingers for Bush to round up five hundred kidnapped derelicts and a few genuine enemy combatants and have them shipped like animals from one side or the world to the other? Americans know when they are hearing...oh baloney!

Obama: We’re confronting some of the most complicated questions that a democracy can face. But I have no interest in spending all of our time re-litigating the policies of the last eight years.

TheLuminousCompass.com: Spending all our time? Whose time? What time? Re-litigating? What? The treason, fraud, and myriad crimes that have devastated our people have never been litigated. We have courts and law enforcement to handle criminals. You, Mr. President, need take no time other than to order that justice be done. You can attend to your work undisturbed by the wheels of justice grinding on.

If we are a country under law, as you affirm, then we are duty bound to investigate and prosecute all crimes. We cannot gloss over the colossal economic fraud that has plunged America and the world into an economic and human catastrophe! Changing the dialogue to avoid action will only serve to make it obvious that America is at the end of the line as a free nation and cannot be trusted.

Obama: [A]s President, I too am bound by the law. The United States is a nation of laws and so we must abide by these (lawful) rulings…I am not the only person in this city who swore an oath to uphold the Constitution-so did each and every member of Congress…I ran for President promising transparency, and I meant what I said.

TheLuminousCompass.com: We The People continue to hope that you mean these all-important affirmations.

Obama: [T]o a call for a fuller accounting, perhaps through an independent commission.  I’ve opposed the creation of such a commission because I believe that our existing democratic institutions are strong enough to deliver accountability.

TheLuminousCompass.com: Have they delivered full accountability in the last eight years? Did they call to account the Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Rice, and the rest of the neo-con mob?

Obama: The Department of Justice and our courts can work through and punish any violations of our laws or miscarriages of justice.

TheLuminousCompass.com: So, let’s get started. The crimes America must deal with are so many and so serious that a major investigating commission, numerous grand juries, and ultimately a full Nuremberg-type special court are absolutely essential. The attempted destruction and plunder of our country deserves as much attention as did prosecuting Nazi crimes against humanity.

Correct course, Mr. President. There is a big iceberg dead ahead!

Let’s look at terrorism soberly and without the usual fake political hysterics. The first suicide terrorist was glorified in the Old Testament. His name was Samson.

Two kinds of terrorists

There have always been two kinds of terrorists on earth: those motivated by suicidal despair and the hideous satanic ones motivated by greed and power-lust.

The first suicide terrorist was glorified in the Old Testament. Samson was his name.  What turned Samson, a man of God, into a terrorist?  Clearly, it was sorrow and despair, to start. He was betrayed by Delilah, the woman he loved. Having found out that Samson’s long hair was the secret of his great strength, she cut it off while he slept, thereby depriving Samson of his power.  Delilah then delivered him to his enemies, who blinded him and chained him to a heavy grinding stone wheel.

After many years of suffering, his hair and strength came back and with it Samson’s chance for revenge. Invoking the same Semitic God terrorists invoke today, Samson brought down the temple of the Philistines.  Coincidentally, that temple stood in the area of Palestine known today as the Gaza Strip.

Similarities with 9/11

An additional eerie coincidence to 9/11 is that Samson’s suicide terror killed 3000 Philistines, just about as many as died in New York on 911.

The still unexplained 9/11 attack against America was obviously not due to the far-fetched, grotesque conspiracy theory invented by the 9/11 Commission and narrated in its ridiculous fairytale report. So, who was responsible for 9/11? Either desperate men who were denied justice and lost their loved ones as well as their desire to live after suffering brutal military aggression, or evil, greedy men seeking to create a large enough cause for war, like another Pearl Harbor (which is what they hoped for to justify an endless aggression and to conquer and dominate the earth under a “new world order”).

The history of North and South America is a history of terrorism and depredation by the invading Europeans and their fantastic nightmarish religions.  But that is another story.

It’s no holds barred and all out war against the Odious Oids who are shredding our moral code as set forth in the Declaration of Human Rights. To be victorious, we must create powerful audio-visuals that give citizens the information they need to bring change to America and the world.

A Film Student’s Breakfast

“Federico Fellini could help save democracy,” said Lorenzo, an 18 year-old UC Santa Barbara film student, to his classmates during the complimentary Sunday brunch served by retired actress Rona Barb to her youthful room tenants.

“My dad,” voiced Roger, another film student, “says democracy is dead, and our civil justice system and lawyers are being neutered by corporations that want to get away with murder without having to pay damages. My dad’s an attorney — he knows.”

“That’s right,” said Lorenzo. “My father is making a movie about corporations stealing the planet from under our feet by using frames. It’ll blow people’s minds. My dad worked with Fellini. He saw people in Italy change after City Of Women came out.”

“That’s the craziest thing I ever heard!” jumped in Ms. Barb, participating in the discussion while pouring tea.

“No, it’s not crazy at all!” protested Lorenzo. “The movie I’m helping my father make is about framing ideas to reshape the way we see the world. I learned a lot about that subject when I assisted in filming Professor Lakoff.”

“Okay, okay, but changing how we see the world and saving democracy? Changing the way Italian men see women? Wow! That’ll take a lot more than a movie,” argued Ms. Barb as the boys laughed.

“It’s like stopping global warming. That will take a lot more than Al Gore’s movie.”

“Some books changed the world, and movies can do it faster,” insisted Lorenzo. “For years the media has been putting down trial lawyers as if every lawyer was a bad guy. They pushed Congress to vote against public protection and cut damage awards so low that lawyers can no longer take big corporations who hurt people to court. People lost and business won.”

“So, what’s that got to do with a movie about saving democracy?” Ms Barb queried.

“A lot. If you’re hurt, you should have the right to sue. So corporations spread the myth that trial lawyers are all bad. That’s a dirty corporate trick. Professor Lakoff suggests that we call attorneys ‘public protection attorneys,’ not ‘trial lawyers.’ The ‘public protection attorney’ frame reminds people of the good attorneys do. It would look real bad for business to try and smear public protection, right? That’s all got to do with framing language! The word ‘trial’ is a scary word, but ‘protection’ — that’s a good word. People would wonder what is really going on if they saw ‘tort reform’ as an attack on public protection. Get it? Cutting protection for people — that’s not reform, that’s a con job.”

“So? I still don’t get it. What’s that got to do with a movie saving democracy?” persisted Ms. Barb.

“Well,” Roger, answered, quoting his dad, “‘Lawyers should never have to defend themselves in propria persona in the court of public opinion.’ They know better. That’s what they always tell other people. Well, they ought to follow their own advice. A movie can show Americans that controlled media is destroying our civil defense system. That’s part of democracy.”

“Thanks, Roger! Good argument! I rest my case,” beamed Lorenzo.

Sound frames and images of light

Young energy is our greatest national asset. Let’s help put that energy to work. To be a civilized nation, America must do all it can to unfold the full potential of our youth. Young adults finish college and are unable to find jobs that put what they learned to good use. Many grads end up bagging groceries or flipping burgers for years. What future do we offer them? None! The real question then becomes: “Are we a civilized country?” Gandhi was once asked what he thought of Western civilization. He replied: ” I think it would be a very good idea.”

An unforgettable film about civilization and the renewal of respect for human rights, a film showing how nations, after the horrors of World War II, attempted to establish a global civilization under international law with conscience and responsibility toward all life — this is what we need. For a brief period, countries achieved common consent on civilized principles and spelled them out in the magnificent 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. All UN Member States solemnly agreed “[t]o cause it [the Declaration] to be disseminated, displayed, read and expounded principally in schools and other educational institutions, without distinction based on the political status of countries or territories.” That was a solemn promise. Most failed to honor it, including the U.S.

Now 58 years later the appointed pResident of the US and his Attorney General think that human rights are quaint, old-fashioned ideas written on weird, out-of-style documents — like the US Constitution, the Geneva Convention, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Exposing this stark contrast through the power of cinema will shock most audiences, and that is why we need such a movie.

So, film students got talking about coming to democracy’s rescue with what the great master of film, Fellini, called cine magia – cinemagic. When informed, young people want to take up the cause and honor that pledge of 1948 by inspiring citizens to act in defense of humanity’s future.

Uneco’s film, Deflating The Elephant, will illustrate the crucial articles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which are essential to our survival in this dangerous century, and vividly frame one of humanity greatest achievements with cinematic images. After viewers of Deflating The Elephant see how far we have fallen since the Declaration’s creation, their hearts and minds will be transformed and moved to renew the covenant.

Universal Declaration of Human Rights

Preamble Whereas recognition of the inherent dignity and of the equal and inalienable rights of all members of the human family is the foundation of freedom, justice and peace in the world,

Whereas disregard and contempt for human rights have resulted in barbarous acts which have outraged the conscience of mankind, and the advent of a world in which human beings shall enjoy freedom of speech and belief and freedom from fear and want has been proclaimed as the highest aspiration of the common people,

Whereas it is essential, if man is not to be compelled to have recourse, as a last resort, to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law,

Whereas it is essential to promote the development of friendly relations between nations,

Whereas the peoples of the United Nations have in the Charter reaffirmed their faith in fundamental human rights, in the dignity and worth of the human person and in the equal rights of men and women and have determined to promote social progress and better standards of life in larger freedom,

Whereas Member States have pledged themselves to achieve, in cooperation with the United Nations, the promotion of universal respect for and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms,

Whereas a common understanding of these rights and freedoms is of the greatest importance for the full realization of this pledge,

Now, therefore,
The General Assembly,
Proclaims this Universal Declaration of Human Rights as a common standard of achievement for all peoples and all nations, to the end that every individual and every organ of society, keeping this Declaration constantly in mind, shall strive by teaching and education to promote respect for these rights and freedoms and by progressive measures, national and international, to secure their universal and effective recognition and observance, both among the peoples of Member States themselves and among the peoples of territories under their jurisdiction.

Article 1 All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.
Article 2 Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status.
Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.
Article 3 Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person.
Article 4 No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.
Article 5 No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.
Article 6 Everyone has the right to recognition everywhere as a person before the law.
Article 7 All are equal before the law and are entitled without any discrimination to equal protection of the law. All are entitled to equal protection against any discrimination in violation of this Declaration and against any incitement to such discrimination.
Article 8 Everyone has the right to an effective remedy by the competent national tribunals for acts violating the fundamental rights granted him by the constitution or by law.
Article 9 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary arrest, detention or exile.
Article 10 Everyone is entitled in full equality to a fair and public hearing by an independent and impartial tribunal, in the determination of his rights and obligations and of any criminal charge against him.
Article 11 Everyone charged with a penal offence has the right to be presumed innocent until proved guilty according to law in a public trial at which he has had all the guarantees necessary for his defence.
No one shall be held guilty of any penal offence on account of any act or omission which did not constitute a penal offence, under national or international law, at the time when it was committed. Nor shall a heavier penalty be imposed than the one that was applicable at the time the penal offence was committed.
Article 12 No one shall be subjected to arbitrary interference with his privacy, family, home or correspondence, nor to attacks upon his honour and reputation. Everyone has the right to the protection of the law against such interference or attacks.
Article 13 Everyone has the right to freedom of movement and residence within the borders of each State.
Everyone has the right to leave any country, including his own, and to return to his country.
Article 14 Everyone has the right to seek and to enjoy in other countries asylum from persecution.
This right may not be invoked in the case of prosecutions genuinely arising from non-political crimes or from acts contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 15 Everyone has the right to a nationality.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his nationality nor denied the right to change his nationality.
Article 16 Men and women of full age, without any limitation due to race, nationality or religion, have the right to marry and to found a family. They are entitled to equal rights as to marriage, during marriage and at its dissolution.
Marriage shall be entered into only with the free and full consent of the intending spouses.
The family is the natural and fundamental group unit of society and is entitled to protection by society and the State.
Article 17 Everyone has the right to own property alone as well as in association with others.
No one shall be arbitrarily deprived of his property.
Article 18 Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.
Article 19 Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.
Article 20 Everyone has the right to freedom of peaceful assembly and association.
No one may be compelled to belong to an association.
Article 21 Everyone has the right to take part in the government of his country, directly or through freely chosen representatives.
Everyone has the right to equal access to public service in his country.
The will of the people shall be the basis of the authority of government; this will shall be expressed in periodic and genuine elections which shall be by universal and equal suffrage and shall be held by secret vote or by equivalent free voting procedures.
Article 22 Everyone, as a member of society, has the right to social security and is entitled to realization, through national effort and international co-operation and in accordance with the organization and resources of each State, of the economic, social and cultural rights indispensable for his dignity and the free development of his personality.
Article 23 Everyone has the right to work, to free choice of employment, to just and favourable conditions of work and to protection against unemployment.
Everyone, without any discrimination, has the right to equal pay for equal work.
Everyone who works has the right to just and favourable remuneration ensuring for himself and his family an existence worthy of human dignity, and supplemented, if necessary, by other means of social protection.
Everyone has the right to form and to join trade unions for the protection of his interests.
Article 24 Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay.
Article 25 Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness, disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his control.
Motherhood and childhood are entitled to special care and assistance. All children, whether born in or out of wedlock, shall enjoy the same social protection.
Article 26 Everyone has the right to education. Education shall be free, at least in the elementary and fundamental stages. Elementary education shall be compulsory. Technical and professional education shall be made generally available and higher education shall be equally accessible to all on the basis of merit.
Education shall be directed to the full development of the human personality and to the strengthening of respect for human rights and fundamental freedoms. It shall promote understanding, tolerance and friendship among all nations, racial or religious groups, and shall further the activities of the United Nations for the maintenance of peace.
Parents have a prior right to choose the kind of education that shall be given to their children.
Article 27 Everyone has the right freely to participate in the cultural life of the community, to enjoy the arts and to share in scientific advancement and its benefits.
Everyone has the right to the protection of the moral and material interests resulting from any scientific, literary or artistic production of which he is the author.
Article 28 Everyone is entitled to a social and international order in which the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration can be fully realized.
Article 29 Everyone has duties to the community in which alone the free and full development of his personality is possible.
In the exercise of his rights and freedoms, everyone shall be subject only to such limitations as are determined by law solely for the purpose of securing due recognition and respect for the rights and freedoms of others and of meeting the just requirements of morality, public order and the general welfare in a democratic society.
These rights and freedoms may in no case be exercised contrary to the purposes and principles of the United Nations.
Article 30 Nothing in this Declaration may be interpreted as implying for any State, group or person any right to engage in any activity or to perform any act aimed at the destruction of any of the rights and freedoms set forth herein.

Few clearly perceive how dangerous the world situation is becoming. Inhuman money controls mass media and deliberately broadcasts as many frivolous distractions as possible to keep people from noticing the fascist beast closing in on millions of unsuspecting victims. Current diabolical schemers make Hitler and Stalin look like dilettantes. Their skills at diverting attention by frequently sounding terror-lurking-under-every-bush alarms have been honed to perfection. A movie can expose them with scandalous evidence.

As a boy, I experienced arrogant Italian Fascism and the evil of rightwing fanatical religionism. In December 2000, when America was flagrantly betrayed by five black-robed hypocrites, shivers of horror went down my spine. Our grassroots organization immediately net-published a large front-page headline: “DAY OF INFAMY – Fascist Coup in the United States!” which was printed over a photo of marching Nazi SS troopers. Friends objected that to use the word “fascist” was an exaggeration. Now, six year later, most are as outraged as we were then and have been ever since.

In 2004, a second national election was stolen by the same fascist cabal and American democracy de facto ceased to exist, except in the deluded minds of sleeping TV network audiences.

That year, University of California Berkeley Professor George Lakoff’s book, Don’t Think of an Elephant, appeared and was an instant bestseller. What it revealed is how linguistic frames influence social conditions.

Reading Don’t Think of an Elephant was a stunning clarification for me of how evil ideas throughout history are framed to allow “the few” to control and oppress “the many.” Indeed, ideas projected through invisible linguistic frames can transform the mind.

Lakoff’s scientific explanations brought back memories of working with Federico Fellini and learning from him how cinematic images change society. For example, after Fellini’s Casanova and City of Women, I had watched downcast Italian males leaving theaters, stunned. Exaggerated Italian machismo was crushed by these great films and never fully recovered.

Fellini’s demolition of century-old prejudices and Lakoff’s linguistic art of framing suggested to me a potential cinematic cure for America.

It was my good fortune to share Federico’s thoughts about dreams and metaphysical questions while he was conceiving his mysterious story, The Voyage of G. Mastorna. This work contains some of his visions and speculations about the human state in this world and after death. During that unforgettable experience, Fellini explained how cinematic images liberate, dissolve fear, and open our lives to perceiving the subtlest aspects of the world. That “sceneggiatura”– The Voyage of G. Mastorna — is now known as the most famous never-filmed-screenplay in the history of cinema.

Fellini’s insight on the magic of light gives us a glimpse of the profundity of his art. He said:

“What is light? If cinema is images, light is its evident essence. In cinema, light is idea, sentiment, color, profundity, atmosphere, style, narrative, poetic expression. Light is the magic power that adds, cancels, softens, suggests, exalts, alludes, underscores, and renders the fantastic credible and acceptable, or, on the contrary, creates transparencies through which the gray daily reality becomes rich, fairytale like. With a single reflector and a pair of lights an opaque face, with as much expressiveness as a bare knee, appears intelligent, mysterious, fascinating; an open, benevolent, peaceful face becomes sinister, menacing, frightening.
The poorest scene — squalid, shabby — can with light reveal enchanting or ominous aspects…barely moving a 5000 watt light and lighting up an opposite light, all the feelings of anguish vanishes and everything is serene, comfortable, homey. Finally, film is written with light; the style of an authentic filmmaker is expressed with light.”

How they stole our Commonwealth

Exposing how we have been robbed is sobering.

Conservatives used many deceiving frames to steal from us. We’ll tackle here just a few of the metaphors they employed to deform one of democracy’s most fundamental pillars: justice.

Mixing Fellini’s cinematic secrets with Lakoff’s scientific brilliance is like mixing nitro and glycerine — which makes up dynamite. Liars and thieves are in for a big surprise.

The neo-crooks have been fanning the flames of a still unexplained 9/11 tragedy into a fabulously profitable perennial frame: “war-on-terror.” What should have been an international police hunt by civilized nations has turned into a deadly, trillion-dollar con job. In reality, there is no war. The phony “war” frame provides a legalistic and pseudo-moral justification for flag waving, criminal wars of aggression, and the dismantling of our Constitution. The 9/11 Commission colluded with Bush and Cheney so that the inseparable twins were conveniently questioned together – to avoid contradictions — behind closed doors, and not under oath for fear of future indictments for obstructing justice. The questioners were all tail-wagging administration’s lap dogs.

Lights and cameras will capture the criminal activities of the national security organizations that colonize the world with prisons, torture chambers, and concentration camps. The horrors of so-called rendition (criminal kidnapping with torture outsourcing) and the deployment of massive domestic electronic spying networks that outrageously violate the Constitutional rights of American citizens and intrude even on their attorney-client privilege will be exposed.

What was once a country of laws is now a country run by a self-declared fundamentalist despot claiming the privilege to violate any law he chooses. The film will show how fundamentalist Christianoids want to control women’s bodies and intrude in the privacy of our bedrooms, just as Mussolini did in 1929 with the Lateran Pact that gave the Pope and Vatican clergy control of family law and imposed obligatory religious education. The danger of religionistic fanatics, whether Muslim mullahs or Texas Baptist Christianoids, deserves close monitoring.

“[I]n order to understand the danger posed by Christian fundamentalist, we must first take a look at what they believe. What is it that these folks hold to be fundamental? What is it that they insist one must do in order to be saved? The answer is threefold: First, in order to be a Christian, a person must believe that the Bible is the one and only infallible, truly inerrant, source of truth, and that the holy books of all other religions are of demonic origin; secondly, one must believe in an afterlife, that every human being will end up in either Heaven or Hell. And finally, it is essential that one understand that in order to go to Heaven he must accept Jesus Christ (the only Son of God) as his own personal savior, otherwise, and without exception, regardless of how good a life he may have lived, he will be sent to the agonizing fires of an eternally burning Hell. That is their doctrine … that is what they believe to be The Truth of God. From: “The Most Evil People in the World,” by Doug Soderstrom, Ph.D.

In his book: Gangs of America, Ted Nace reveals the impostrous way the U.S. was taken over by big business. Historically, it was the battle between democracy and corporations that started the American Revolution. The Boston Tea Party was an action to block the British East India Company, the most powerful corporation that ever existed, from monopolizing the American commodities markets, starting with tea. The American Revolution was a pragmatic economic rebellion against an overbearing corporation and an oppressive government thoroughly intertwined with it.

The East India Company had planned to replace independent local merchants with a company-owned distribution system, i.e., an early version of what we now call “vertical integration,” like, for example, oil companies owning wells, refineries, and gas stations.

Boston pamphleteers — we had a free press then — laid out the scenario in detail, warning that if the British were to succeed in bringing the tea distribution system under sole control of the East India Company, they would inevitably repeat the same scheme for other imported commodities. Sound familiar? Think of the WTO.

The East India Company, if once they get Footing in this (once) happy country, will leave no Stone unturned to become your Masters. They are an opulent Body, and Money or Credit is not wanting amongst them. They have a designing, depraved, and despotic Ministry to assist and support them. They themselves are well versed In TYRANNY, PLUNDER, OPPRESSION and BLOODSHED. Whole Provinces labouring under the Distresses of Oppression, Slavery, Famine, and the Sword, are familiar to them. Thus they have enriched themselves, Thus they are become the most powerful Trading Company in the Universe. Excerpt from a broadside signed “A Mechanic,” Philadelphia, December 4, 1773.

Imagine a private company so unaccountable that it conducts its own criminal trials and runs its own jails; so dominant it possesses a 250,000 man army, twice the size of Britain’s, to fight company wars; and so predatory that for more than two centuries it squeezes the economy of the richest country in the world until observers report that some regions have been “bled white.” A third of Parliament owns stock in it, and a tax on its tea constitutes 10% of the government’s revenues. Even the King is dependent on periodic “loans” from the company!

When the cargo ship Dartmouth arrived in Boston Harbor on the night of December 16, 1773, approximately 150 men assembled at the home of the Boston Gazette and Country Journal’s founder. They came from many backgrounds: some were apprentices, some tradesmen, some wealthy owners of businesses. By dawn, the entire shipment of tea had been destroyed. The American Revolution would soon be underway.

One glaring example in a long record of uncontrolled corporate evil was unleashed against this country in 1936:

[C]onsider this unpunished crime, committed by the leadership of General Motors, together with Standard Oil of California, Firestone Tire and Rubber Company, B. F. Phillips Petroleum, and Mac Manufacturing.

In 1936, the five companies formed National City Lines, a holding company that proceeded to buy electric trolley lines and tear up the tracks in cities across the nation. Each time it destroyed a local trolley system, National City would license the rights to operate a new system to a local franchisee, under the stipulation that the system convert to diesel-powered General Motors buses.

By 1949, more than 100 electric transit systems in 45 systems had been torn up and converted. In April of that year, a federal jury convicted GM and the other firms of conspiracy to commit anti-trust violations. But the judge set the fine for each company at $5,000. Seven executives were fined one dollar each. After the conviction, the companies went back to purchasing transit systems, removing electric trolley lines, and replacing them with buses. Gangs of America, Introduction p. 7.

As Atlanta mayor and former United Nations ambassador Andrew Young once observed, “Nothing is illegal if 100 businessmen decide to do it.”

In 1882-83, Judge Stephen Field’s Ninth Circuit Court, with twisted judicial sophistry, established the personhood of corporations in Santa Clara County v. Southern Pacific. This self-evident absurdity has proven to be a menace to democracy and humanity.

Judge Field’s tortuous legalese behind the creation of immortal, frankensteinian corporations coincided with the view of Professor John Norton Pomeroy, namely:

“The truth cannot be evaded that, for the purpose of protecting rights, the property of all business and trading corporations IS the property of the individual corporators. A state act depriving a business corporation of its property without due process of law, does in fact deprive the individual corporators of their property. In this sense, and within the scope of these grand safeguards of private rights, there is no real distinction between artificial persons or corporations, and natural persons.”

Ted Nace explains why an understanding of this is critical:

As simple as this false argument sounds, it was a significant departure from established legal doctrine, which had always made a distinction between corporate property and individual property. The most crucial distinction is that owning shares in a company allows a person to own property without being subject to the sort of accountability to the community that normally attends the ownership of property [emphasis added]. For that reason, courts had never assumed that shareholders in a corporation should expect equal rights; on the contrary, the enjoyment by corporate shareholders of privileges such as limited liability justified applying special restrictions to corporations and their owners. Gangs of America, p. 118.

It is self-evident that giving legal personhood to a corporation, while enjoying all other rights, also creates the right to do wrong and escape responsibility. In the 2006 California primaries, the residents of Humboldt County said enough is enough and successfully challenged corporate personhood.

In states across the country Tuesday, primary elections named candidates for Congress, governorships and other important offices. But the most interesting, and perhaps significant, election did not involve an individual. Rather, it was about an idea.

In Northern California’s Humboldt County, voters decided by a 55-45 margin that corporations do not have the same rights — based on the supposed “personhood” of the combines — as citizens when it comes to participating in local political campaigns.
Until Tuesday in Humboldt County, corporations were able to claim citizenship rights, as they do elsewhere in the United States. In the context of electoral politics, corporations that were not headquartered in the county took advantage of the same rules that allowed individuals who are not residents to make campaign contributions in order to influence local campaigns.

But, with the passage of Measure T, an initiative referendum that was placed on the ballot by Humboldt County residents, voters have signaled that they want out-of-town corporations barred from meddling in local elections.

Measure T was backed by the county’s Green and Democratic parties, as well as labor unions and many elected officials in a region where politics are so progressive that the Greens — whose 2004 presidential candidate, David Cobb, is a resident of the county and a active promoter of the challenges to corporate power mounted by Democracy Unlimited of Humboldt County and the national Liberty Tree Foundation — are a major force in local politics.

The “Yes on T” campaign was rooted in regard for the American experiment, from its slogan “Vote Yes for Local Control of Our Democracy,” to the references to Tuesday’s election as a modern-day “Boston Tea Party,” to the quote from Thomas Jefferson that was highlighted in election materials: “I hope we shall crush in its birth the aristocracy of our monied corporations which dare already to challenge our government to a trial by strength, and bid defiance to the laws of our country.”

Just as Jefferson and his contemporaries were angered by dominance of the affairs of the American colonies by King George III and the British business combines that exploited the natural and human resources of what would become the United States — and wary of the machinations of those who would establish an American economic royalism — so Humboldt County residents were angered by the attempts of outside corporate interests to dominate local politics.

Wal-Mart spent $250,000 on a 1999 attempt to change the city of Eureka’s zoning laws in order to clear the way for one of the retail giant’s big-box stores. Five years later, MAXXAM Inc., a forest products company, got upset with the efforts of local District Attorney Paul Gallegos to enforce regulations on its operations in the county and spent $300,000 on a faked-up campaign to recall him from office. The same year saw outside corporations that were interested in exploiting the county’s abundant natural resources meddling in its local election campaigns.

That was the last straw for a lot of Humboldt County residents. They organized to put Measure T on the ballot, declaring, “Our Founding Fathers never intended corporations to have this kind of power.”

“Every person has the right to sign petition recalls and to contribute money to political campaigns. Measure T will not affect these individual rights,” explained Kaitlin Sopoci-Belknap, a resident of Eureka who was one of the leaders of the Yes on T campaign. “But individuals hold these political rights by virtue of their status as humans in a democracy and, simply put, a corporation is not a person.”
Despite the logic of that assessment, the electoral battle in Humboldt County was a heated one, and Measure T’s passage will not end it. Now, the corporate campaign will move to the courts. So this is only a start. But what a monumental start it is!

Sopoci-Belknap was absolutely right when she portrayed Tuesday’s vote as nothing less than the beginning of “the process of reclaiming our county” from the “tyranny” of concentrated economic and political power.

Surely Tom Paine would have agreed. It was Paine who suggested to the revolutionaries of 1776, as they dared challenge the most powerful empire on the planet, that: “We have it in our power to begin the world over again. A situation similar to the present hath not happened since the days of Noah until now. The birthday of the new world is at hand, and a race of men, perhaps as numerous as all Europe contains, are to receive their portion of freedom from the events of a few months.”

It is time to renew the American experiment, to rebuild its battered institutions on the solid foundation of empowered citizens and regulated corporations. Let us hope that the spirit of ’76 prevailed Tuesday in Humboldt County will spread until that day when American democracy is guided by the will of the people rather than the campaign contribution checks of the corporations that are the rampaging “empires” of our age.

Expanding on the danger of corporate personhood, the movie screen will explode with images of corporate abuse against individuals and society.

The near future in light of history

America won its greatest victory against Italian fascists, German Nazis, and Japanese imperialists while fighting for democracy under the leadership of liberal President Franklin Delano Roosevelt. After WWII, humanity renewed its hope in the flowering of a great civilization founded on the principles of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights: a world in which nuclear holocausts like Hiroshima and Nagasaki would never again happen; where war, death-camps, fascist oppression, and gulags, would forever be mere memories of past insanity; where international law would settle disputes and people everywhere would become self-governing; where victorious nations would cease selling instruments of death and instead spread the profitable tools of healthcare, economic prosperity, and environmental conservation.

However, the realization of this hope, this beautiful dream, never did come to pass.

Bloodshed and destruction quickly resumed and continue to this day: Korea, Vietnam, Palestine, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Iran, East Timor, Africa, Cambodia, Chile, Argentina, Bosnia, and Iraq. Why did all members of the UN including the U.S. fail so miserably? Because of the perennial Oids!

The Odious Oids – who are they?

Thomas Paine said: “He who dares not offend cannot be honest.” So, we are going to tell you about the Oids, and then insult them with every name in the book. Read on. 
Christianoids

To pre-empt the extreme rightwing’s evil reaction to well-deserved insults, we refer hateful and blind Christianoids to the ultimate authority on how to deal with hypocrites: Jesus of Nazareth — but not the fictional straw-Jesus invented by triple-born-again fundamentalists (we say “triple-born-again” advisedly because to be a Christian already means to be born again, so to be a “new born” Christian means to be a “new born-new born,” which equals being born three times!).

Deflating the Elephant takes us into the Dantesque other-worldly nightmare of triple-born Christianoids who commandingly claim that a fetus is an unborn soul or child even when the Bible, their ultimate authority, contradicts them. Scripture speaks of life from birth to death, not from conception to decay, of the soul entering the body when the body receives its first breath, and ending when it exhales its last. To “expire” is defined as “to die; to breathe one’s last breath; to exhale; to breathe out.” Confer Genesis 2:7: And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

Clearly, the body of Adam came to life not when God completed the molding of his flesh from clay, but when his body received its soul by inhaling the spirit, which is God’s breath and which must return to God when we breathe out or exhale our last breath.

When we die, our flesh and organs are still living and are in fact viable enough to be transplanted into another person. However, once the soul is gone with the last breath, the body –even if parts of it are technically living — is not a person. So it is for the fetus.

Whether it is aborted by nature or choice, the fetus never incarnated the divine breath, the soul. Until the first breath vivifies it into a person, the fetus is only a vessel, a body, and not a living human being. This fact will never be accepted by Christianoids because it is one more politically inconvenient truth. Unborn flesh (a miscarried fetus?) has never been legally considered a person. Even so, fascist rightwing pseudo-Christians backing the Bushist partyline are unabashedly trying to trump thousands of years of precedent.

Jesus would lash out against these Christianoids — witness his kicking the moneychangers out of the temple — for he never spared the feelings of hypocrites (hypocrite Ann Coulter so perfectly incarnates nasty neo-fascism that she uses this Jesus episode to attack liberals when most money changers are conservatives; in doing this she dumbly set herself up again as the proverbial dumb blonde she is). So, Deflating the Elephant will treat hypocrites by throwing caution to the wind and mercilessly hurling at them every insult in the book, just as Jesus did without fear:

Matthew 23:
13 But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!…

14 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye devour widows’ houses, and for a pretense make long prayer: therefore ye shall receive the greater damnation.
15 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves.
16 Woe unto you, ye blind guides…
17 Ye fools and blind!…
19 Ye fools and blind!…
23 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law: judgment, mercy, and faith. These ought ye to have done and not to leave the other undone.
24 Ye blind guides, who strain out a gnat and swallow a camel.
25 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess.
26 Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also.
27 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchers, which indeed appear beautiful outwardly, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness.
28 Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity.
29 Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! because ye build the tombs of the prophets and garnish the sepulchers of the righteous…
33 Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers! How can ye escape the damnation of hell?

So, who are the Oids!? They are that recurring percentage of psychotics throughout history that makes peace and justice impossible. It is imperative that Oids be exposed if we are to cure humanity and create a progressive world.

By way of explanation, adding “oid” to any word alters its meaning to: “made in the form of” or “pretending to be.” For example, when “oid” is affixed to the word “sphere,” it becomes the word “spheroid,” which means “made in the form of a sphere” (not a real sphere). “Oid” is, therefore, a label for “hypocrites” and for all those who pretend to be something they are not. A Christianoid can then be defined as “a pseudo-Christian” or anyone pretending to be a follower of Jesus while at the same time supporting war, torture, and the death penalty.”

Let’s be creative here.

A patrioid is a flag-waving idiot who forgot that the flag represents the Union established by the U.S. Constitution. “Monkeys can wave flags, but that does not make them patriots!” noted Scott Ritter (who is a real patriot).

All evildoers can be lumped under a single label: “humanoids” — that is, beasts made in the shape of humans.

What makes the Oids what they are? It takes great writers and film authors to penetrate and expose the dark workings of reptilian brains in humanoid form. Indeed, to explain the intrinsic Oid madness and how to deal with it is a Dantesque, Shakespearean, or Fellinesque task.

Emotional honesty vs. political correctness

Recently Senator Murtha – who is to be highly commended for is outspokenness against the war — protested criminal military actions in Iraq. While he deserves praise for this, it is evident that Senator Murtha is unfortunately still a victim of political correctness. After the Haditha massacre committed by U.S. troops, he said: “One woman, as I understand it in talking to the officials in the Marine Corps, was bending over her child, pleading for mercy, and they shot her in cold blood. That’s the thing that’s so disturbing.” What an astounding hyper-understatement!

As much as Senator Murtha must be admired for his courage, in following the Washington-accepted PC communications style imposed by the conservative culture of hypocrisy, he failed to galvanize public condemnation. How can murder in cold blood be referred to as simply “disturbing” — is such a satanic crime not outrageous beyond belief? Diabolical? Insane? Nauseating? Evil? Does it not call for Divine vengeance?

To bring it home, just imagine yourself finding your own family slaughtered in cold blood and hearing someone politely saying: “I am troubled” or “I’m disturbed.” Emotionally honest people express their pain and anger openly and directly.

One trick satanic corpo-media uses is to make justified outrage and righteous indignation look like hysteria. Any sincere expression of shock and revulsion in the face of a crime is treated as excess so insistently by criminal media whores, that all truth is neutralized and soon forgotten.

This is how the odious media-oids subliminally train decent people to restrain sincere dismay, disgust, and rage to grotesque levels of apparent indifference to the suffering of others. We are told by inhuman monsters never to “lose our cool,” never to let anger roar to the level of rage in our voices, never to dare call killers murderers, especially if they are a part of our own despicable government.

Roots of terrorism

The kind of shameful injustice deliberately perpetrated in Haditha against the innocent without remorse, honest apology, or meaningful restitution is the proverbial root of all terrorism and the cause of endless violence.

Deflating the Elephant will examine some historical instances of terrorism with the stark realism of Gillo Pontecorvo’s famous film, The Battle of Algiers (which the Pentagon is studying today).

One example: For centuries, Samson, a suicide terrorist, has been viewed as a biblical hero, invoking the same Semitic God as he brought down a crowded temple in Gaza and killed 3000 Philistines as Muslims invoke when they slaughter innocents and blow themselves up. This evokes a strange similarity to the destruction of Manhattan’s World Trade Center 3000 years later. Samson did not bring down the temple because he hated freedom — that’s bush-shit — he did it after having been cruelly blinded and brutally chained to a stone mill for many years. He probably loved freedom, but had no hope for it or for justice being done. As a consequence, he committed an internecine terrorist act.

Not a single corporate media whore has mentioned the glaring fact that the Bible regards Samson’s act of terror as a good thing. For centuries Christian cultures have accepted it as justifiable revenge on the part of a badly persecuted Jewish Samson. The neo-cons never called him a terrorist! Figure out that one. Doesn’t God talk to Bush? Is God a racist? Is America the only “nation under God” or is God above all nations? Confusing, to say the least.

Deactivating the Oids

Let’s confront this failed Administration of appointed criminals and all who betrayed us in Congress, regardless of party, and kick them out of office. We can do it by peaceful resistance, boycotts, loud protests, massive turnouts at the polls, cleaning up our voting and election systems, and, if it becomes necessary, by calling general strikes in the spirit of a full-fledged Gandhian revolution.

Our reward will be an economically sustainable future where wealth is multiplied by all, for all, with fair compensation for labor and renewal of our environment so that at last we can lift the poor out of despair, increase our general security and wellbeing, and eliminate most crime.

A stirring progressive future

In conclusion, a stirring progressive future can be ours if we educate ourselves and invest some of our time and resources to actualize the principles contained in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the U.S. Constitution. By learning the art of language framing we can participate in deactivating the Oids and in finally deflating the elephant. When progressives unite in their common vision, the fascists who have taken over our country will scurry into the woodwork. Then our world will be renewed and the future will be very bright.

Both the 2000 and 2004 elections were stolen. Ref. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s Rolling Stone article.
To learn how the Oids did it and about their plans to steal the next one, read Greg Palast’s Armed Madhouse.