Tuesday, September 30, 2008

The Battle Plan: Sarah “Evita” Palin, The Muse of the Coming Police State

by Naomi Wolf, from Huffington Post (at www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-wolf/the-battle-plan-ii-sarah_b_128393.html)

Please see my note following the article about how my own experience parallels hers and those of her fellow staff members.


You have to understand how things work in a closing society in order to understand "Palin Power." A gang or cabal seizes power, usually with an affable, weak figurehead at the fore. Then they will hold elections -- but they will make sure that the election will be corrupted and that the next affable, weak figurehead is entirely in their control. Remember, Russia has Presidents; Russia holds elections. Dictators and gangs of thugs all over the world hold elections. It means nothing. When a cabal has seized power you can have elections and even presidents, but you don't have freedom.

I realized early on with horror what I was seeing in Governor Palin: the continuation of the Rove-Cheney cabal, but this time without restraints. I heard her echo Bush 2000 soundbites ("the heart of America is on display") and realized Bush's speechwriters were writing her -- not McCain's -- speeches. I heard her tell George Bush's lies -- not McCain's -- to the American people, linking 9/11 to Iraq. I heard her make fun of Barack Obama for wanting to prevent the torture of prisoners -- this is Rove-Cheney's enthusiastic S and M, not McCain's, who, though he shamefully colluded in the 2006 Military Tribunals Act, is also a former prisoner of war and wrote an eloquent Newsweek piece in 2005 opposing torture. I saw that she was even styled by the same skillful stylist (neutral lipstick, matte makeup, dark colors) who turned Katharine Harris from a mall rat into a stateswoman and who styles all the women in the Bush orbit --but who does not bother to style Cindy McCain.

Then I saw and heard more. Palin is embracing lawlessness in defying Alaskan Legislature subpoenas --this is what Rove-Cheney, and not McCain, believe in doing. She uses mafia tactics against critics, like the police commissioner who was railroaded for opposing handguns in Alaskan battered women's shelters -- Rove's style, not McCain's. I realized what I was seeing.

Reports confirmed my suspicions: Palin, not McCain, is the FrankenBarbie of the Rove-Cheney cabal. The strategy became clear. Time magazine reported that Rove is "dialed in" to the McCain campaign. Rove's protégé Steve Schmidt is now campaign manager. And Politico reported that Rove was heavily involved in McCain's vice presidential selection. Finally a new report shows that there are dozens of Bush and Rove operatives surrounding Sarah Palin and orchestrating her every move.

What's the plan? It is this. McCain doesn't matter. Reputable dermatologists are discussing the fact that in simply actuarial terms, John McCain has a virulent and life-threatening form of skin cancer. It is the elephant in the room, but we must discuss the health of the candidates: doctors put survival rates for someone his age at two to four years. I believe the Rove-Cheney cabal is using Sarah Palin as a stalking horse, an Evita figure, to put a popular, populist face on the coming police state and be the talk show hostess for the end of elections as we know them. If McCain-Palin get in, this will be the last true American election. She will be working for Halliburton, KBR, Rove and Cheney into the foreseeable future -- for a decade perhaps -- a puppet "president" for the same people who have plundered our treasure, are now holding the US economy hostage and who murdered four thousand brave young men and women in a way of choice and lies.

How, you may ask, can I assert this? How can I argue, as I now do, that there is actually a war being ramped up against US citizens and our democracy and that Sarah Palin is the figurehead and muse for that war?

Look at the RNC. This is supposed to be McCain's America. But you see the unmistakable theatre of Rove's S and M imagery -- and you see stages eight, nine and ten of the steps to a dictatorship as I outlined them in The End of America. Preemptive arrest? Abusive arrest? "Newly released footage, which was buried to avoid confiscation, shows riot cops arresting and abusing a giant group of people for nothing."

Journalists were arrested – for reporting. Amy Goodman and ABC producers were arrested. Jane Hamsher of Firedoglake and others were forced to lie face down as armed agents tied their hands behind their backs. The riot police wore the black S&M gear of the Rovian fantasy life and carried the four foot batons cops carry in North Korea. All this is not John McCain's imagery or strategy: it is Karl Rove's.

In McCain-Palin's America, citizens who are protesting are being charged as terrorists. This means that a violent war had been declared on American citizens. A well known reporter leaked to me on background that St Paul police had dressed as protesters and, dressed in Black -- shades of the Blackshirts of 1920 -- infiltrated protest groups. There were also phalanxes of men in black wearing balaclavas, linking arms and behaving menacingly -- alleged "anarchists." Let me tell you, I have been on the left for thirty years and you can't get three lefties to wear the same t-shirt to a rally, let alone link arms and wear identical face masks: these are not our guys. Agent Provocateurs framing protesters and calling protest "terrorism" constitutes step ten of a police state:

"In what appears to be the first use of criminal charges under the 2002 Minnesota version of the Federal Patriot Act, Ramsey County Prosecutors have formally charged eigth alleged leaders of the RNC Welcoming Committee with Conspiracy to Riot in Furtherance of Terrorism... [they] 7 1/2 years in prison under the terrorism enhancement charge which allows for a 50% increase in the maximum penalty."

"Paid, confidential informants... infiltrated the RNCWC on behalf of law enforcement. They allege that members of the group sought to kidnap delegates to the RNC, assault police officers with firebombs and explosives, and sabotage airports in St. Paul. Evidence released to date does not corroborate these allegations with physical evidence or provide any other evidence for these allegations than the claims of the informants. Based on past abuses of such informants by law enforcement, the National Lawyers Guild is concerned that such police informants have incentives to lie and exaggerate threats of violence and to also act as provocateurs in raising and urging support for acts of violence."

Under the Palin-Rove police state, you will see escalating infringements on your access to a free internet:

"Sarah Palin was baptized at Wasilla Assembly of God...Last Sunday our research team released a video, a ten-minute mini-documentary, focusing on the Wasilla Assemblies of God and the video seemed on the verge of a massive "viral" breakthrough when YouTube pulled it down, citing 'inappropriate content'. At the point the video was censored by YouTube it had been viewed by almost 160,000 people. The short of it is that YouTube has censored a video documentary that appeared to be close to having an effect on a hard fought and contentious American presidential election..."


Under the coming Palin-Rove police state, you will witness the plans now underway to bring Iraqi troops to patrol the streets of our nation. This is not McCain's fantasy: it is Rove's and Cheney's.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, there will be no further true elections. Mark Crispin Miller has done sensational and under-reported investigating t o establish that – as I warned – indeed the GOP staffers on the US Senate Judiciary Committee have been.

The evidence is also buried on the Website of the Majority House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

WASHINGTON -- Republican staff members of the US Senate Judiciary Commitee infiltrated opposition computer files for a year, monitoring secret strategy memos and periodically passing on copies to the media, Senate officials told The Globe. >From the spring of 2002 until at least April 2003, members of the GOP committee staff exploited a computer glitch that allowed them to access restricted Democratic communications witho ut a password. Trolling through hundreds of memos, they were able to read talking points and accounts of private meetings discussing which judicial nominees Democrats would fight -- and with what tactics.

– "Senate panel's GOP staff spied on Democrats" By Charlie Savage, Globe Staff | January 22, 2004


Do you think that spying like this will ever end under a Palin-Rove regime? Dream on. If she and McCain are elected, then every single strategy memo and speech and debate prep note from every opposition candidate from now and on into forever will be read by the regime in power while it is still in the computers of the challengers.

Under the Palin-Rove police state, citizens will be targeted with state cyberterrorism. Bruce Fein of the American Freedom Agenda, a former Reagan official, warned me three years ago that the Bush team went after a Republican who had crossed them through cyberstalking: they messed with his email, messed with his phones and I believe messed with his bank account -- he became a cyber-pariah, unemployable and haunted. With modern technology, there really is less place to hide from the state than there was in East Germany in the Cold War era. I remember feeling a chill: of course. That is the wave of the future once we breach the protections around citizens of FISA and the fourth amendment. That way lies the abyss for us all.

Am I trying to scare you? I am. I am trying to scare you to death and ask you to scare your Republican and independent friends most of all. How do you know when it is war on citizens? When there are mass arrests, journalists are jailed, the opposition is infiltrated, rights are stripped and leaders start to ignore the rule of law.

Almost everyone I work with on projects related to this campaign for liberty has been experiencing computer harassment: emails are stripped, messages disappear. That's not all: people's bank accounts are being tampered with: wire transfers to banks vanish in midair. I personally keep opening bank accounts that are quickly corrupted by fraud. Money vanishes. Coworkers of mine have to keep opening new email accounts as old ones become infected. And most disturbingly to me personally is the mail tampering I have both heard of and experienced firsthand. My tax returns vanished from my mailbox. All my larger envelopes arrive ripped straight open apparently by hand. When I show the postman, he says "That's impossible." Horrifyingly to me is the impact on my family. My childrens' report cards are returned again and again though perfectly addressed; their invitations are turned back; and my daughters many letters from camp? Vanished. All of them. Not one arrived. Try explaining that to a smart thirteen year old. Try explaining it in a way that still makes her feel secure and comfortable.

I am not telling you this because it's about my life. I am telling you this because it is about your life -- whoever you are, Conservative or Liberal, independent or evangelical. Your politics will not protect you in a police state. History shows that nothing portects you in a police state. This is not about my fear and anxiety: it is about what awaits you and everyone you love unless you see this for what it is:

Scharansky divided nations into "fear societies" and "free societies." Make no mistake: Sarah "Evita" Palin is Rove and Cheney's cosmetic re-branding of their fascist push: she will help to establish a true and irreversible "fear society" in this once free once proud nation. For God's sake, do not let her; do not let them.
__________

My Note To Ms. Wolf’s Article

What Ms. Wolf and her fellow staff members have encountered directly parallels my own.

In April, 2005, I published an article, Washington’s Darkest Secret, which revealed that George Bush was told by George Tenet in early August, 2001, of hard intelligence that al Qaeda planned to attack the United States using airplanes as guided missiles. All Tenet did not know was the exact date, the specific targets or the names of the highjackers – which, it turns out, the FBI had in its files.

Following its initial publication and as I was working on a follow-up piece, my home was broken into and office files disturbed, phones were tapped, my e-mails interrupted and accounts were corrupted, snail mail arrived opened and the bank that held the mortgage on my home – which happens to own a federally-regulated US bank – tried to foreclose on a technicality. Only fast and fancy footwork by my lawyers stopped the bank in its tracks.

Everything she describes is not only happening to her, it is happening to other Americans, as well.

My Comrades-in-Journalism Are At Fault, Too

Already, there is a massive amount of finger pointing about who is to blame for yesterday’s failure of the rescue package in the House. Democrats blame Republicans, Republicans blame Democrats, dogs blame cats and vice versa. Alas, my former brothers and sisters toiling in business journalism’s verdant field must shoulder their share of the blame, not for yesterday’s vote but for not really covering what led to the need for such a vote.

So, to help former colleagues still covering business news for a living, I offer a few observations about the current financial crisis that may improve their coverage in the future because there are some inconvenient truths they need to face squarely and fix successfully.

The business media claims to cover business, and its reporters cover nothing more closely than Wall St. Your knowledge is what separates you from other beat reporter; it is why there is a business media. But the beat covered by many publications, reporters and editors has collapsed.

For business reporters, editors and producers, there are only two options when considering what happened, neither particularly pleasant.

Two Reasons

If you provided appropriate, arms-length scrutiny of the financial-services industry, including investigative work, opinion, analysis and rigorous beat reporting that provided decision-makers and readers with fair warnings of the coming collapse, the coverage was ignored by people who could have stopped it in time. Or, you didn’t do the job in the first place.

The answer is a complicated mix of the two. But that means the best case for the business media is that what it writes doesn’t matter or get read, so why bother?

It pains me to say so, but there was a failure of journalism in the Wall St. crisis, as big and devastating as journalism’s failure during the run-up to the Iraq war. Had reporters been digging through the underlying documents of credit swaps and the other convoluted financial products being created, my hunch is that a lot of the current problems might have been avoided as few of them could have withstood the bright light of public scrutiny.

Sadly, you did not do your job.

Best And Brightest

The current generation of business reporters is probably the best-educated and most sophisticated ever. Everyone knows they are entirely capable of providing the needed scrutiny and requisite scepticism, if properly directed. This didn’t happen so there is a leadership deficit in newsrooms.

True, business journalism has been thinned of its most experienced ink-stained wretches, as has happened on nearly every other major beat, thanks to the media’s financial troubles. Investigative reporting is a thing of the past. We all paid a price paid for this and it is another issue for editors and publishers to work through.

Business media outlets that claim to provide authoritative coverage of Wall Street during good times should be first in line for scrutiny now. These would include any publication with the words “wall” and “street” in its name, as well as anything named “deal,” “New York,” “business,” “investors” and, for that matter, “times” and “day.” For some reason, Bloomberg boasts of its supremacy in covering the markets that just blew up; it missed the story entirely. Oh well. By the way, the good folks at Business Week, Forbes and Fortune are culpable, as well.

Coming Criticism

Criticism of business publications and networks is harsh already and will get more biting. Much of the criticism will be unfair, driven by ignorance, opportunism and an anti-business bias on the left along with a congenital anti-journalism bias on the right. Some of it will be very fair.

On the other hand, as the messy process of finger-pointing begins, it is worth remembering that the bailout is only part of the hardship ordinary people are bearing for the financial services industry’s excesses. The first part comes in the yet-to-be-measured equity loss, not to mention mental anguish, borne by most of the four million people who lost their homes. Basically, the massive foreclosure crisis is simply a wholesale transfer of wealth from the bottom to the top. British and European newspapers and networks have done a better job of covering this in the US than have our own, home grown, media.

The second part is the extended recession we are entering. Millions of people will lose their jobs, their health care and their hope for the future. There is a lot of talk about “Main Street” but too little coverage of what is occurring to the people who read or watch your coverage yet live off of Manhattan Island.

Third is the losses suffered by pension and mutual funds from Wall Street’s sale of billions of dollars worth of defective and possibly fraudulent products. It will be hard for the business media to explain this, but it will be much harder for their readers who are seeing the value of their mutual funds, 401(k) plans, IRA’s and other savings schemes disintegrate before their eyes.

Falling Resources, Rising Responsibility

The last decade has seen a dramatic decrease in journalism’s resources, unfortunately occurring just as journalism’s responsibilities have increased.

The disemboweling of the SEC, the Office of Thrift Supervision, the Comptroller of the Currency, bank examiners, the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, the Justice Dept. and other key federal agencies, piled more and more responsibilities on the press – responsibilities it did not recognize in time that it had and was not prepared to shoulder in any event.

At least three times since the turn of the 21st century, the only business activity so unique, special and important that it is specifically protected by the US Constitution, failed the country miserably: Reporting on what was in the Patriot Act, the lies being fed to the nation to trumpet the unnecessary Iraq war, and now the collapse of the financial sector.

These aren’t trivial matters; indeed, providing tough, independent, in-depth reporting on them is the reason journalism exists. But when owners, publishers, reporters, editors and producers collectively fail to do their job, our nation is less free and, in the case of the current crisis, a lot poorer.