Corporate "Theft By Deception" Is Protected By Government

Some of the most obvious "Theft By Deception" is hidden in plain sight and has become so common that most people consider it normal and don't even seem to realize they're being robbed!

This isn't fringe conspiracy theory since the evidence to the most obvious of this can't be completely hidden; however they do rely on the most fundamental principle of propaganda, which is that "A lie repeated often enough becomes the truth," or at least it seems to.

If you search the internet you can find numerous legal definitions for "Theft By Deception" including Theft by Deception Law and Legal Definition, however, it doesn't get any simpler that the phrase itself, and one you think about how it's applies it becomes incredibly obvious that it's only enforced when it's committed by people without political power and they're often much quicker to prosecute when the victim has political power.



Searching the internet for "Theft By Deception" cases at any given time will turn up plenty of arrests and charges ranging from stealing thousands of dollars or occasionally millions, down to petty theft, by switching price tags at a department store, which they often watch surprisingly close, even though they cut employee levels at some places, like Walmart to ridiculously low levels, which is part of what makes it so inviting to many people, which should make it a form of entrapment. However, even the largest of these pale in comparison to the theft by deception that major corporations, including insurance companies, which carries out incredibly obvious scams on a massive scale every day that can be recognized simply by learning the fundamentals of insurance.

Insurance is pooled risk, which means that everyone pitches in a small amount to the pool of money available for emergencies, then when a disaster comes the person hit can draw on those funds; however administration costs have to be subtracted first, so the average policy holder can never get their money's worth, despite the propaganda that provide in the form of ads. If you check for various studies it's not hard to find a lot of them that say about ten percent of property claims are fraud, so you can subtract that from the amount of premium dollars right off the bat, and they also have to pay the salesman a commission, and the CEOs are getting massive payouts, and the bureaucratic expenses keep adding up.

In fact, the deceptive ads showing on TV almost non-stop are all payed for by premium dollars, which means that the more they spend on them the less they have for claims; therefore their claim that you can "save money by switching" is always a lie, which makes it an incredibly obvious form of theft by deception! But that's not all they also spend money from premium dollars to lobby against their own customers interests including the "Harry and Louise" that gave misleading messages about past health care plans, although those did have legitimate problems.

It's unlikely that more than sixty or seventy percent of the money people pay out in premiums is available for claim, which is why insurance companies balked when Obama required them to ensure that eighty percent of insurance premiums went to health care; but even if they did provide that as the laws supposed to require them, there's more bureaucratic expenses from the hospitals or pharmaceutical companies.

The vast majority of information about health care presented to the public is controlled by people that have a financial incentive to suppress research into single payer or how it works in other countries, since the politicians are collecting massive amounts of money in campaign donations from the health care industry and the media collects even more in the form of advertisements; which is a massive theft by deception, since all this money comes indirectly from the consumers who have no say in how it's used.

The entire advertising industry, not just for insurance, is all another form of theft by deception that the ruling class uses against the working class!

Does anyone believe that they maximize profits by providing truth in advertising?



Juliet Schor author of "Born to Buy" and Susan Linn author of "Consuming Kids" both wrote about how the advertising industry studies how to manipulate children from an early age and they even take advantage of proprietary information laws to keep their research secret so that consumers don't know how their being manipulated. They start their indoctrination from an early age, even in schools where advertising used to be banned, so that children are raised from cradle to grave being encouraged to buy stuff that they don't need and that doesn't improve their own quality of life.

Schor and Linn explained how this even interferes with the developing of critical thinking skills and prevents them from recognizing many of the these scams or scams being carried out by politicians which are often very similar. Marion Nestle does additional research exposing scams in the food industry; and Harriet Washington and Marcia Angell expose the pharmaceutical industry which are using on-stop deceptive ads to deceive their customers as well; and they all take advantage of trade secrecy laws making their manipulation tactics protected secrets in the court of law, although they can't keep it completely secret.

According to the Federal Trade Commission page about Truth In Advertising they regulate advertising to make sure they don't provide deceptive impressions, or so they say; however it doesn't take an in depth study to realize this is almost completely false when it comes to the most basic advertising it is almost always misleading and designed to deceive anyone that isn't paying attention. They claim they regulate gift cards, health care, environmental claims, and funeral home scams, which are among the biggest scams in the economy, although there are many more; however if they did a remotely decent job there wouldn't be nearly as much fraud at all. An enormous amount of this is easy to recognize with a little basic sense, but people that check with alternative media outlets or the most reliable non-fiction books, which aren't promoted on mainstream media, are much more likely to recognize that it's even worse than it looks!

Theft by Deception goes much farther than that, and it extends to the most fundamental claims of the so-called free enterprise system. In Naomi Klein's books, "No Logo" and "The Shock Doctrine" she exposes how corporations often have their supposedly competing products manufactured in the same sweat shops side by side while pretending to compete with each other. She also exposes how international organizations create "free trade" or "economic zones" that get tax breaks not available to other areas giving them major advantages, and they often don't protect workers or environmental rights. These "zones" often change their names or locations as consumer, worker, or environmental protection organizations find out about them and put political pressure on them to respect human rights. These are clearly designed to create a consolidated oligarchy which has been escalating over the last thirty of forty years as the largest corporations have been consolidated.



In the nineties before the traditional media consolidated into six oligarchies they still reported on some of the worst of these scams, including numerous sweat shops, and the antitrust scam at Archer Daniels Midland involving Mark Whitacre, a former executive, who became a whistle blower and went undercover for the FBI. While this investigation went on he caught another high ranking executive saying “We have a saying in our company: Our competitors are our friends. Our customers are the enemy.” The first reports I remember didn't specify who this person was, but it was clearly not Mark Whitacre. Additional reports came out saying that it was often repeated by numerous people and, whether he was the one on tape or not, Dwayne Andreas was one of them. Andreas also supposedly said, “There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians.” (Rats in the Grain by James B. Lieber, p. 306)

No doubt this contradicts the claims by most politicians, media pundits, and economists; however, it doesn't take much fact checking to see that major retail operations have all consolidated into a limited number of stores in any given town, with small of medium towns often only having one grocery store and larger ones having more but they often tend to be the same oligarchies competing against each other. They also often have common stock holders, interlocking board members with other corporations, and revolving doors for their executives that all come from upper class communities. Less than one percent of the public control all the major corporations in the world and they rig the economic system for their own benefit, which is Theft by Deception on a massive scale, yet since they also control major political parties there's little or no accountability.

Naomi Klein and Stacy Mitchell author of "The Big-Box Swindle" also reported how large department stores often use "slotting fees" which charge their suppliers for their shelf space, and these department or grocery stores have almost turned into consignment stores selling products for the same oligarchies. Slotting fees are a way to ensure that only large corporations can participate int eh economic system, and they're kept secret presumably signing non-disclosure agreements. Now they're only reported in alternative media outlets or books like Klein's and Mitchell's, but before traditional media consolidated into six oligarchies, in the nineties there were reports of this there as well. Slotting fees enable oligarchies from both retailers and manufacturing to almost act like one big company helping to give major advantages to their partners, which essentially means the entire free enterprise system where corporations compete against each other is a tragedy and a farce!

Instead they study consumer's behavior to see how much they can get away with and when consumers are complacent they slowly chip away at the volume or quality of products often while gradually increasing prices to see which level increases profits the most before people complain!



This scam was exposed in the nineties, yet instead of breaking up large corporations and tightening up antitrust laws to prevent it from happening again they did the opposite, allowing large corporations to continue consolidating, including the media. After reporting on it for a couple years, in relatively low profile news shows that most people don't watch they consolidated into six oligarchies, and gradually reduced coverage of epidemic levels of corporate fraud allowing them to escalate so bad that they turned into massive scandals instead of exposing them while they were small one time after another including Enron, World Com, Lehman Brothers and many more with massive scandals all exploding at once in the first few years of the Bush administration, then they cover it up creating minor reforms only for it to happen again in the 2008 meltdown and many more.

When BP had their massive spill and Wells Fargo got caught opening up massive amounts of fraudulent accounts they settled with the government for relatively minor fines, compared to their profits then used their left over profits to create propaganda images for themselves to convince the public they're doing much better now and that they're really very credible. However if BP spent that money on safety instead of propaganda the accident wouldn't have happened in the first place and regardless of what corporation is spending all this money on propaganda that's money that isn't available to serve the customers, so when you see massive propaganda ads, they should easily be recognized as a scam or another form of Theft by Deception.

Eisenhower also recognized that it applies to war as well when he said:



As social activists have been saying for decades, they never ask how we're going to pay for wars but always suppress funds for education or other social programs that are far more effective than war; and all these wars are based on lies! Yes, all, not just most of them, Vietnam signed a Declaration of Independence saying they wanted to choose their own government and the United States refused to allow it invading, there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and they knew it ahead of time; if you search more reliable history than the mainstream media you can find lies for every war, including World war Two! It's true that Hitler ahd to be stopped, but what they don't tell you is that part of the reason he rose to power in the first place was because they were more concerned about Communism than Fascism rising so many business people including Henry Ford Supported him.

Unfortunately, even though Eisenhower made a very good point in his speech where he pointed this out he didn't follow his own advice allowing a massive expansion of the military under his watch during the Cold War, which was also based on lies; and supporting coups in Iran and Guatemala and the early stages that led up to the Vietnam War. Eisenhower also allowed Allen Dulles and the CIA to conduct the most outrageous human research experiments under his watch and much more.

We used to have some politicians and even Supreme Court justices who recognized this and wanted some fairness, including Louis Brandies who said:



I haven't checked his record but, even if he didn't always back these words up with his actions, I find it hard to believe it he could be nearly as bad as Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch or Brett Kavanaugh, who aren't even doing a good job pretending to represent the public and would give corporations the right to eliminate workers rights, environmental protection, separation of Church and State or many other things, if they can get away with it, and to a large degree they already are!



If you search the internet for some of the largest prosecutions of "Theft By Deception" it's often the white collar people that are taught to participate in the traditional corporate sector, where their thefts are almost identical to business as usual, but they may have decided to try to steal from the people controlling corporations or from consumers in a manner that would damage corporate reputations, so they may have had to find someone to blame, but it's rarely, if ever the people at the top.

Fargo adman charged with swindling over $63,000 in high-end goods, services 09/24/2018

Hearing continued for Ridley insurance agent 09/18/2018

Deerfield Accountant Accused Of Stealing More Than $100,000 09/17/2018





Wikibooks: Professionalism/Mark Whitacre and Archer Daniels Midland

Dwayne’s World Dwayne Andreas has made a fortune with the help of politicians from Hubert Humphrey to Bob Dole. But, he says, their talk of “free markets” is just wind. Mother Jones 1995 “Tell me,” Andreas says to his number two man, who has just returned from a tour of the company’s plants in Eastern Europe, “what do they do for us in Bulgaria? Do they fix the prices? Or is there some kind of a free market?” .... Sitting behind a lunch of soy burgers, soy taco meat, and soy cheese dessert, Andreas announces that global capitalism is a delusion. “There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”

"Rats in the Grain" by James B. Lieber For instance in “Dwayne’s World,” a thoughtful Mother Jones piece by Dan Carney that appeared shortly before the raid, Andreas joked about price-fixing in other countries and mocked free enterprise, “There isn’t one grain of anything in the world that is sold in a free market. Not one! The only place you see a free market is in the speeches of politicians. People who are not in the Midwest do not understand that this is a socialist country.”

Cops Going Wild To Preserve Oligarchy?

Update 01/25/2019: Florida Department of Corrections indicated their priorities once again when they hired Zephen Xaver to train as a prison guard despite the fact that he had previously dreamed of going on a mass killing spree in high school, and dropped out of basic training in the army. This could have been exposed with a background check although I haven't seen reports to indicate whether this was done or not.

In addition to the police going on mass murdering sprees listed below and in previous articles there have also been several incidents where police academy, or in this case prison guard trainees that dropped out went on to become mass murders, including Michael Kenneth McLendon who dropped out of the police academy in Alabama before eventually going on a mass shootings spree, and just last month Laconia NH police recruit Noah Beaulieu was arrested for threatening to go on a mass shooting spree, and Eric Harris, who was raised in an authoritarian military family was rejected by the marines shortly before he went on his shootings spree at Columbine High School.

Zephen Xaver: Suspected Sebring bank shooter was a former prison guard trainee 01/24/2019 The Army also told I-Team Investigator Kylie McGivern exclusively that Zephen Xaver, 21, participated in basic training with the U.S. Army for a few months in 2016, but was separated before completing training, therefore, he was not awarded a military occupational specialty. ..... Florida Department of Corrections records show that Xaver was hired as a trainee prison guard at Avon Park Correctional Institution on Nov. 2 and resigned Jan. 9. No disciplinary issues were reported. Public records and neighbors said Xaver had arrived in Sebring last fall with his mother, living in a non-descript pre-fabricated home about 4 miles (6.5 kilometers) from the bank. No one answered the door Wednesday night after police finished searching the home. Public records and neighbors say he and his mother moved to Sebring in the fall from Plymouth, Indiana, a town south of Notre Dame University.

Update 02/08/2019: Another mass shooter went on a rampage a few weeks ago, which didn't get nearly as much attention, by a veteran who also wanted to be a police officer shooting four killing three of them before committing suicide. And in September and again in December two more Sheriff's Deputy's also killed family members before committing suicide; and these weren't reported widely by the media either. Not only does this raise additional questions about how often police go on shootings sprees but it also raise questions about whether or not they're being adequately reported or researched so they can find out the cause and how to prevent it.

In the last couple of days there was national reports about high rates of suicides among Chicago police that also indicated that there was a study of police nation wide showing that one-hundred-sixty-one of them committed suicide last year and another one-hundred-sixty the year before. Clearly they've been keeping track of this for a long time; however most of the details aren't normally reported to the public. A few years ago Fox Lake police officer Joe Gliniewicz allegedly committed suicide; however, as I reported previously there was one notable arrest made in that case which should raise doubts about the legitimacy of this claim. Another former Chicago officer was arrested for intimidating the coroner into coming to this conclusion; after he was arrested and charged they came to that conclusion, without mentioning him. Gliniewicz was implicated in epidemic levels of fraud or other serious crimes, which he almost certainly couldn't have gotten away with for so long.

I have no additional reason to assume that any of these other officer suicide might actually be murders to cover up corruption, but since their rate is sixty percent higher than the national average, I can't rule out that a small number of them might be to cover up additional police corruption.

However, even though more research is always helpful, they already have enough to learn that early child abuse and military hazing and indoctrination is a major contributing cause, or they should know this; yet, the media refuses to report on it and the politicians refuse to base policies on it. The reasons for this, as reported below clearly seems to be they're more concerned about controlling the public for the benefit of elites that control the economy and government, than they are about protecting the public.

Man who killed 3, himself in State College wanted to be a cop, relatives say 01/31/2019

Mass shooting in State College was one of 27 in January. That’s frightening: Nancy Eshelman 02/01/2019 Jordan Witmer grew up in Bellefonte, served three years in the military and recently returned home. He was licensed to carry a gun and told people he wanted to be a police officer. Shot four killing three then committed suicide.

Florida sheriff's deputy, Terry Strawn who was hired as school security kills 3 family members and himself in Plant City Fla. Dec. 19th 12/21/2018

Wife sent text messages to friend before she was allegedly killed by her husband, Kirk Keithley a Hillsborough County Fla. SO deputy then committed suicide 09/24/2018

Alarming number of officer suicides prompts outreach in Chicago 02/07/2019 Nationwide, at least 161 police officers reportedly took their own lives last year and 160 the year before, outpacing the number who died in the line of duty. Five and possibly six in Chicago have died since July. Experts on the subject say stress creates problems at home, relationship issues and worse.

Chicago Ill. police Sgt. Lori Rice found dead in apparent suicide 02/03/2019

Cop who witnessed apparent suicide of fellow officer, Lori Rice, ‘devastated,’ official says 02/06/2019

Chicago's cluster of police suicides raises alarms: 'The heroes need saving, too' 01/04/2019 A Department of Justice report in 2017 said Chicago's officer suicide rate was 60 percent higher than the national law enforcement average.

Police investigating murder-suicide in Punta Gorda Belize by police officer Steven Ferguson 11/22/2018

Scripted media coverage of Joe Gliniewicz's "suicide" is incomplete at best

Chicago Ill. police officer dies by suicide on NW Side New Years Day 01/02/2019

The Latest: Police: Xaver had dreams of hurting students 01/2/2019 A northern Indiana police department has released a 2014 incident report in which Florida bank shooting suspect Zephen Xaver, then 16, said he had dreams of hurting other students in a classroom. ... Police also released log entries of further incidents involving Xaver, including one in March 2017 in which Michigan State Police advised that a girl was receiving messages from Xaver that he was “possibly thinking of suicide by cop and taking hostages.” .... ex-girlfriend of the suspect Alex Gerlach said she tried to warn people about Zephen Xaver’s potential for harm. ... “he got kicked out of school for having a dream that he killed everybody in his class, and he’s been threatening this for so long.”

Sebring bank shooting suspect arrested wearing T-shirt with symbols of death 01/24/2019

Recruit, Noah Beaulieu, 24 and Army veteran Allegedly Threatened Mass Shooting At NH Police Academy Graduation 12/13/2018

Michael Kenneth McLendon, 28, failed to complete basic training at the state police academy before killing ten people in the Geneva County Alabama massacre.

Columbine shooter rejected by Marines because of anti-depressant drug, sources say 04/29/1999

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Texas's two recent high profile murders by police officers isn't nearly as rare as the law enforcement would have us believe. There's substantial evidence to indicate that their hiring and training practices are a contributing factor, and that they may be more concerned with teaching police officers to blindly obey orders and to defend each other regardless of the circumstances, than to protect the majority of the public.

This doesn't mean, of course, that all police officers are corrupt or violent predators, however far more of them than most of us would believe are, and an even larger number are willing to look the other way; and the few that speak out, are often fired for doing so as many corrupt officers often get jobs in law enforcement elsewhere. Some of the cities that have the worst police often also have the worst crime problems as well; in many cases the cities that need the best often get the worst, since the best can get jobs where it's less dangerous.

When considering this, it might mean that even though the violent police are the ones being blamed first, the politicians that ignore the root causes of violence in many abandoned inner cities may actually be more at fault, since they fail to solve social problems before they escalate. A major part of the reason for this is also because they also want to hire police that suppress protests, as well from citizens that are pointing this out, so they can cater to the best interests of their campaign donors, often putting themselves above the law.

Caren Turner, the former Port Authority commissioner, demonstrated what she expected from police officers last Spring when she told cops "You may shut the f--- up!" after they pulled over a car where her daughter was a passenger, and interrupted her social plans. she was also an "ethics" aide for the Clinton's and had ties to Chris Christie who gave her the job she had at the time. she was never charged with anything, and the only reason that she lost her job is because the video went viral as a result of an internal investigation. Amazingly she admitted no wrong doing, and there's a good chance she can repair her reputation and get back into politics, while the vast majority of people in the working class or educated people that truly want to correct problems like this can never get appointed to a job like this, nor can they get the media coverage they need to become viable. This coverage is reserved for members of the ruling class or those they know will support their interests.



This is one of many demonstrations that police are not expected to enforce the laws equally, as I pointed out previously in Illusion Of Justice For Sale and Patrick Kennedy provided another incredibly obvious examples in the following excerpt from his book, where he describes how he almost hit a cruiser and did hit a security barrier:

"A Common Struggle" by Written by: Patrick J. Kennedy

Then I barreled straight toward the security station for the House of Representatives. I swerved into oncoming traffic, nearly hitting a US Capitol Police vehicle, which somehow dodged me and then made a quick U-turn to chase me. I slowed down but didn’t stop until my car slammed into the security barrier.

....

After making sure I wasn’t hurt, the Capitol Police quietly took me home and moved my car into the congressional parking lot. But word spread and someone from the media had noticed the banged-up car in the lot. Prologue

According to For Capitol Police, a Narrow Mission and Limited Tools 05/06/2006 Richard A. Baker, the Senate historian, said, "I can't see them keeping the members in line, It would be inappropriate," clearly indicating that they're not even trying to fix the problem. Like the incident with Turner, and many others including a lot of well connected people that got away with vehicular homicide, DWI, hit and run, and pedophilia, with little or no punishment which the vast majority of the public could obviously never get away with.

Brett Kavanaugh is an extreme example of this which is increasingly beginning to seem like an insane satire that can't possibly be true. He was implicated in perjury several times during his confirmation hearings for both the DC Court and the Supreme Court, about his knowledge of torture, stolen files and other incidents, before the current sexual assault charges came up, but they were quickly spun and suppressed, as they pushed his nomination on. They're not even doing a good job pretending they want to know the truth about the current scandal about the attempted rape accusations. And they treat it as if he's entitled to this job and that he should be given the same "innocent until proven guilty" assumption that defendants in criminal trials are supposed to get; however this isn't a criminal trial and the same standard doesn't apply to most working class people.

Virtually all political appointees, or candidates for higher office that are able to get campaign contributions from corporations and coverage from the media, including Brett Kavanaugh, are either from wealthy families, often with previous political history, in his case his mother was a judge, or they have the support of those who are from wealthy families. Which essentially means the political process is rigged and they act as if they're entitled to their jobs once chosen by other members of the ruling class, yet the vast majority of us are never even considered for these jobs. Donald Trump acts as if he's shocked that he's being treated so unfairly, yet he's never concerned about the women that have been sexually assaulted, except perhaps if it suits his political agenda. The same goes for both Parties which are full of politicians that use sexual assault as an issue when it's the other side being accused, yet defend the accused when it's there side. Hillary Clinton is one of the most obvious examples from the Democratic Party actively trying to smear some of her husbands accusers, and hiring David Brock who smeared Anita Hill. Nor are politicians concerned about the people that live in polluted areas that will get even worse if Kavanagh and Gorsuch continue ruling in favor of corporations or people who will be deprived of health care if they push their views on that or many other issues.

When police in many cities are trained to look the other way from crimes committed by the elites, while strictly enforcing laws, often even petty laws that don't do nearly as much damage as massive amounts of pollution, for the rest of us that is almost certainly a major reason for attitudes like Amber Guyger's as demonstrated in her Pinterest Account, which is similar to many other police officers, including the following memes she retweeted:





Amber Guyger also posted memes about "Sometimes there's justice sometimes there's just us" saying that if she has to explain it we wouldn't understand it, but her activity indicates that she might not be the one that understands it with memes like this. she also reposted a meme about a funeral for a police officer who died in the line of duty, saying that when "police riot they do it with class," indicating that she values there ceremonies glorifying police, not that there's much wrong with that, unless perhaps she demonstrates an attitude where it's the police against the civilian world, which she seems to do. Many police officers including her and perhaps Frank Borelli who I wrote about "Editor's Blog: To The Protesters & Haters" and Police have a hard time understanding why people are upset when police kill so many people often even the innocent, which she now seems to have done.

As I said before the most important problem probably isn't the police, it's the politicians that refuse to address the contributing causes of escalating violence, like increased child abuse, or abandoned inner cities without educational or job opportunities; however police are often outraged when Colin Kaepernick protest police shootings without offering to do anything about it. Police are also often expected to suppress protests about wars based on lies, shipping jobs overseas, union busting, environmental destruction, and many other things when the politicians that demand blind obedience from them and expect them to look the other way when elites commit crimes. I don't like police getting shot anymore than they do but some of these protests are trying to address the root causes of escalating violence.

Instead of hiring and training police or veterans to defend the country, when necessary and hiring teachers or social workers to minimize violence before it escalates, the political establishment is constantly pushing an ideology that is more concerned with controlling both the police and the public and their training of veterans and police is part of that including Juan David Ortiz who spent eight years in the military before spending almost ten years as a Border Patrol officer, working his way up to becoming a Supervisor. His entire adult life was working for the government going through boot camp training, presumably teaching him to blindly obey orders, twice.

He was also in what they call "intelligence" which is actually their propaganda term for espionage, presumably because he was a apparently Hispanic and might have been able to fit in with the immigrant community. Many Hispanics might not be willing to do this job, especially if they were reasonably well informed about our immigration policy which is designed to treat immigrants like second class citizens, and enable corporation to use them for cheap labor forcing other workers to compete with them to suppress wages. These immigrants are for the most part far less violent then the majority of the country. The majority Hispanic communities along the border are almost all below average when it comes to murder rates with many of them less than half the national rate; one of the few exceptions is Laredo Texas, which is only moderately above the national rate, but it turns out one of the most violent people in that city was a cop.

As I've pointed out in previous articles, this violence often begins at an early age with child abuse often used to teach blind obedience and escalates later in life, sometimes including bullying and hazing in military or police boot camps. David Couper, former police chief of Madison Wisconsin, has also expressed concerns about hazing and bullying in the police academy and how it teaches cadets to treat citizens the way they're abused in the academy, as he explains in the following article:

Hazing and Bullying in the Police Academy 12/16/2013

Last week I read an article in the New York Times Magazine about police training in Atlanta. It reminded me of my days in the Marines – not my 33 years in the police.

I spent a decade on active and reserve duty as a U.S. Marine. I was an enlisted man and went through a tough 12-week boot camp in San Diego in the late 1950s.. The things I were asked to do and bear made sense given my chosen occupation: I was to be a fighting man — to seek out, engage, and destroy an enemy

When I left the Marines and set off to become a police officer, I thankfully was trained as a police officer and not a soldier. That made sense to me as I quickly understood that there was a big difference between the two.

“As I was setting up my classroom at their training academy, I looked out the window and observed a formation of their new police recruits. I decided to go outside and get a closer look. The recruits were standing in three ranks—it was an inspection, a situation I could easily relate to from my days as a Marine.

“Suddenly, the training instructors started yelling at the new officers. Some were ordered to do push-ups by way of the familiar military command: ‘Drop and give me ten.’ In addition, I heard the instructors calling the young officers ‘assholes.’ I returned to the classroom in time to greet the chief and his command staff. I introduced myself and the curriculum for the next three days, then asked, ‘Are your officers permitted to call citizens names?’ They seem shocked, ‘We have rules against doing that. Why do you ask?’

“’Well,’ I replied, ‘I was watching your new officers outside this window and observed your trainers calling them very derogatory names. You know, it really doesn’t matter if you have rules against such conduct because when their teachers call them names, they will think that it’s okay for them to do the same to citizens. And if you ever try to discipline them, their defense will simply be, ‘That’s what the department taught me.’”

“I recently learned that the department never did change. Their academy remains stress-based, military, and intimidating. I don’t know if their training officers ever stopped calling recruit officers names. But one thing I do know, is that if they don’t stop, I predict they will continue to have problems with officers disrespecting citizens. How could they expect any different kind of an outcome?…

“Half of our nation’s police academies train in an atmosphere police trainers themselves identify as stress-based; that is, intimidating, even bullying. This makes half of American police academies more like military boot camps or correctional facilities than places in which college-educated young men and women are prepared to be professional police practitioners… Complete article

This type of hazing escalates authoritarian education from earlier life, especially if the students are subject to abuse that they may not know of, which is often the case. It teaches cadets to blindly obey orders and that those in power should be allowed to treat those without political power in demeaning manners. This intimidation is also used to teach cadets to go along with the program and reinforces the blue wall of silence giving cadets the impression that defending authority is more important than defending the public, and often may teach them an us against them attitude that many police officers have including Amber Guyger, and perhaps, Juan David Ortiz.

David Couper seems to think that hazing should be an acceptable part of training in the military, I'm not sure I agree especially since we're constantly fighting one war after another based on lies and as I explained in previous articles including Philip Zimbardo, Lucifer Effect, Stanford Prison Experiment and Eli Roth’s Milgram/Obedience experiment much more extensive than most people realize this hazing and bullying teaches escalating violence as well as blind obedience, and that the government has been studying how to do just that. Stanley Milgram claimed that he did his research so he could understand why the Nazi's blindly obeyed orders, and it could help to understand this, but this research was supported by the Office of Naval Research, which simply isn't in the business of teaching their cadets to question orders. The standard Propaganda justification is often "We follow orders or People die," as Jack Nicholson says in "A Few Good Men," however here in the real world those orders are often based on lies, so there should be little doubt that Howard Zinn was far closer to the truth when he said:



Juan David Ortiz, Joseph James DeAngelo, and Manuel Pardo all went through boot camp training at least twice, it would take further research to confirm whether or not they were also abused earlier in life, however Dorothy Otnow Lewis and James Garbarino along with other researchers into the subject have both found that almost all, if not all mass murderers, have been subject to more than the usual amount of abuse as a child before they became mass murderers, and sometimes when they're taught to blindly obey orders using abusive methods their emotional problems are often mistaken for positive qualities that the military and the police want, including their willingness to blindly accept what ever orders they're given, even if they're often based on lies.

Eulalio “Leo” Tordil, another police officer I previously reviewed in Media Downplaying Two Police Killing Sprees Ignoring Solutions, also went through boot camp training twice and demonstrated that it became a way of life for hims as he "subjected his stepdaughters to 'intense-military-like discipline — push ups, detention in dark closet' and used violence against his wife," before eventually killing them. Amber Guyger, and numerous other veterans or police officers that have been implicated in murder have also demonstrated that this type of military hazing was often incorporated into their social lives, dealing with friends or family who didn't always appreciated it, and it often turned into escalating abuse like David Couper warned against.

Fortunately there are some police officers, in addition to David Couper, that are trying to reform the system; David Brown former police Chief of Dallas, the same city Guyger worked for, was in the process of implementing reforms when he left shortly after the shootings of five Dallas police officers by another veteran that was outraged by police shootings of black people in 2016. He accurately pointed out that a major part of the problem was that the political establishment was putting to much responsibilities on police officers.



The clear implication should have been that we need to hire more social workers teachers and mental health professionals to deal with problems before these problems escalate to the point where police have to be called in. It should also be obvious that we also need more economic opportunities instead of shipping jobs overseas, to suppress wages and make rich people richer, and that when training people to kill, in wars based on lies, to solve their problems than abandoning them as they return to cities where there are no economic opportunities and they realize that the police aren't there to protect everyone equally and are often helping to suppress legitimate protests or reforms that it might be a contributing cause to this violence. I don't mean to justify the shooting by Micah Xavier Johnson, however there should be little or no doubt that his military training combined with oppressive police practices against minorities is a major contributing factor, and ignoring this for emotional reasons won't help solve the problem.

After pointing out that we needed more teachers and social workers, in a addition to police reform David Brown welcomed the Black Lives Matter protesters and encouraged them to consider community policing as part of his reform. It probably shouldn't have been the most important part of the reform, but he was head of the police department, not the school department so it would be helpful; but unfortunately the same police union that is currently helping to try to downplay Amber Guyger's murder charges and implicate the victim in drug charges, even though he previously had a clear record, is resisting this reform. Obama's speech in Dallas indicated that he also thought that we needed to do more to improve educational and mental health solutions, but he didn't follow up with anything, nor did any other politician and they resumed their efforts to privatize the education system and cut social programs while escalating corporate welfare and corruption.

If they keep marginalizing the best reformers that actually push for solutions that work, it's inevitable that more people will come to the conclusion that the police aren't here to "protect and serve" everyone equally, and although the vast majority of them won't go to extremes, once in a while someone else like Micah Xavier Johnson or Gavin Eugene Long will strike out again.

When the people the government trains to defend us often kill each other or us, maybe they're doing something wrong.



I went into many more police killings in A Brief History of Cops Convicted of Murder and the following are some additional more recent articles including additional sources about the police killing mentioned in this article:

Fort Worth area police agree with Dallas chief: Their plates are too full 07/17/2016

Border Patrol Supervisor Arrested In Texas, Held In 'Serial Killing Spree' 09/11/2018

A woman’s daring escape from a Border Patrol agent helped reveal a ‘serial killer,’ police say 09/17/2018 Juan David Ortiz, accused in the killing of at least four sex workers in Laredo, Tex., where he is a supervisor with the Border Patrol. Webb County-Zapata County District Attorney Isidro Alaniz said he believed Ortiz acted alone in the murders while off duty. He is a 10-year veteran of the agency and worked in intelligence, authorities said. He is being held on $2.5 million bond.

The Border Patrol Serial Killer Is Part of a Long, Troubled History 09/19/2018 Ronald Anthony Burgos-Aviles, now a former Border Patrol agent, was charged with two counts of capital murder in June 2018.

Incendiary News Killers in brown-shirt uniforms: How the U.S. Border Patrol brutalizes the masses 09/20/2018

After Arrest Of Suspected Golden State Killer, Details Of His Life Emerge 04/26/2018

Activist says ‘Amber Guyger deliberately went to Botham Jean’s apartment in anger’ after previous noise complaint 09/17/2018

Shaun King: BREAKING: Two different witnesses have said that they are 100% sure that they heard Dallas Police Officer Amber Guyger repeatedly knock/bang on the door of #BothamJean - demanding that he open the door. 09/14/2018

2 Different Versions of Amber Guyger’s Story Appear on 2 Different Warrants Related to the Shooting of Botham Jean 09/14/2018

Check Out What Appears To Be Amber Guyger's Pinterest Account 09/14/2018

Dallas Chief Says She Can’t Fire Amber Guyger for Killing Botham Jean, But Dept Rules Imply Otherwise 09/20/2018

Execution scheduled for Manuel Pardo former Florida cop, Navy-man and Marine convicted of nine murders 12/10/2012 Date of Murder: January-April 1986

Manuel Pardo a former police officer and navy veteran killed 9 in Florida Date of Murder: January-April 1986

Gerard John Schaefer was a serial killer from Florida, USA. He was imprisoned in 1973 for murders (convicted of two but allegedly committed nine or more) he committed as a Florida policeman. Date of Murder: 1969 - 1973

At Trial, Officers Undermine Notion Jason Van Dyke Feared For His Life When Killed Laquan McDonald 09/19/2018 According to a recent study published in Granta magazine, one in three Americans who are killed by someone they don’t know are killed by police. Eight percent of male homicides in America are committed by police, according to a study in the American Journal of Public Health. One-third of Chicago’s city budget is devoted to funding its police force, and from 1986 to 2015, police shot one Chicagoan a week on average. The majority of victims of police shootings are black; the vast majority are people of color.

Off-duty CHP officer and wife dead in apparent murder-suicide near Jackson, sheriff says 09/04/2018

Conn. Officer charged with assaulting wife, holding family hostage 09/10/2018

Probe found Fla. police chief told officers to pin unsolved crimes on random black people: report 07/12/2018

Former HPD officer goes on trial in murder-for-hire case 04/24/2018

Tribal officer charged with using excessive force during arrest at casino privateofficer.org 09/15/2018

Plainclothes NYPD Cops Are Involved in a Staggering Number of Killings 05/09/2018

Whistleblower Cop Wants to Come Back; Beleaguered Baltimore Police Reject Him 05/03/2018 Many police fired for serious crimes often get jobs elsewhere, but not those that expose crimes.

Lawyers for family of man fatally shot by cops during distress call want NYPD penalized over allegedly destroyed evidence 06/27/2017

NYPD cop who encouraged 2-year-old niece to use N-word in Instagram video gets suspended without pay 07/05/2017

John Avvento, Ex-NYPD cop who struggled with painkiller addiction after he was injured on the job dies from apparent overdose 06/29/2017 After retiring from the NYPD, he was convicted of helping a drug crew deliver cocaine in Brooklyn.

Conrad Lariviere a Mass. cop on Facebook mocks protesters hit by car in Virginia: 'Hahahaha love this' 08/14/2017

Patrick Gandara a Oklahoma police officer arrested on allegations of child sexual abuse 08/12/2017

NYPD cop commits suicide inside his Queens home 08/13/2017 Not including Sunday’s death, four active NYPD officers committed suicide this year, according to NYPD stats.

Baltimore Cops Carried Toy Guns to Plant on People They Shot, Trial Reveals 01/31/2018

Popular Texas blogger dubbed 'La Gordiloca' is ARRESTED on two felony counts for scooping police on a story about a public servant's suicide 12/26/2017

Brooklyn Federal Judge clears way for trial on whether NYPD has pattern-or-practice of perjury: https://www.newsday.com/news/new-york/brooklyn-judge-to-clear-way-for-civil-trial-focused-on-cop-perjury-1.14514874 … 10/17/2017

Insane Video Shows Cops Attack Fellow Cop, Handcuff, Shackle, Taser Him—for Being Sick 10/16/2017

UPDATE: Former Police Chief Pleads Guilty To Murder; Tells Family “I’m Sorry” 10/15/2017

WATCH: Crazed Cop Beats Innocent Man With a Baton, Forces Him Onto Electric Train Tracks 10/13/2017

Cop Violently Rapes Two Little Boys, Pleads Guilty, Gets Work Release Instead of Prison 10/12/2017

Ex-NJ cop gets no jail 'slap on the wrist' for plot to burn down captain's house 09/29/2017 Christian Pedana, A former township police officer accused of scheming to set fire to his captain's house avoided prison Friday after agreeing to testify against an ex-cop convicted in a series of vengeful plots.

Inside the first database that tracks America’s criminal cops 09/12/2017

Former Hercules Ca. cop gets 28 years for drive-by shooting 10/08/2017 John Goodner a retired Hercules police officer who was convicted of attempting to murder his estranged wife was sentenced to 28 years in prison Friday.

SEE IT: Utah nurse arrested for refusing cop's order to draw blood from unconscious patient 09/01/2017

‘Thou Shalt Not K..’: BOOM!—Cop Kills Mentally Ill Man as He Recites Ten Commandments 08/19/2017

Kevin Alexander Ex-Alabama correctional officer who traveled to Florida for sex with teen had duffel bag full of loaded guns, ammunition 08/10/2017

Matthew Boynton a Griffin Ga. cop cleared in wife’s shooting charged with making false statements 07/28/2017

Baltimore cops, giving police everywhere a bad name 07/20/2017 A Baltimore police officer named Richard Pinheiro was caught by his own body camera planting — allegedly — illegal drugs at the scene of an arrest.

Second Shelby County Sheriff’s Office Deputy Named in Murder For Hire Plot 07/1/2017 Jeremy Drewery and now Lonny Costello

WATCH: California Cop Grabs Woman Selling Flowers by the Hair and Slams Her Into the Pavement 07/18/2017

City pays out for multiple complaints against Española NM Police Officer 05/16/2018

An immigrant called 911 to report a crime. Police took him to ICE in handcuffs. 02/14/2018

Manchester police officer collapses minutes before expected guilty plea in hit-and-run 01/24/2018

Jeremy Russo a Border Patrol agent commits suicide after shooting at police 09/27/2016

2nd trooper suing Mass. State Police never shredded documents involving arrest of judge's daughter despite order, she says 11/12/2017

Western Wyoming police officer to be sentenced for 2-year-old boy's death 10/31/2017

Fla. Police deputy smashes patrol car through ex-wife's house while high on prescription drugs - and with her inside 10/25/2017

Vietnam veteran wins $760,000 in excessive force case against Kremmling Colorado police 10/11/2017

Former Madison policeman sentenced to 35 years in prison for sexually abusing children 10/11/2017

William Paul Taylor Ex-Idaho police officer jailed in Bend in parents' deaths 09/15/2017

Ohio Officer off the job after saying police should've 'choked the life out of' a suspect 09/13/2017 The officer's body camera recorded several questionable comments he had with another officer that included: "What did we tase him for? Why didn't we just choke the ******** life out of him?" "I'm a little aroused at this Davis (the suspect), just so you know," followed by him laughing. Choking an unruly suspect is "better than shooting them and going to (expletive) jail."

2 Dallas officers file whistleblower suit claiming retaliation for reporting misconduct Oct. 2015 A Dallas police officer thought he was doing the right thing by reporting a fellow officer who tried to fight a handcuffed youth and a supervisor who egged it on. But instead of being praised for coming forward, Officer Christopher Worden and his supervisor, Sgt. Jason Scoggins, believe they were punished, according to a whistleblower lawsuit they filed Oct.1 in Dallas County Civil District Court.

Ala. police officer jailed for arriving late, drunk to court 08/18/2017

Raymond Licon Jr., El Paso officer argued with wife on the phone as his baby drowned in overflowing bath, police say 07/16/2017

Video released by the Tulsa Police Department shows off duty Sergeant Dedlorn Sanders punch an on duty police officer that had responded to the area for a disturbance. 07/15/2017

former Atlanta-area police officer John Kiernan Fort Lauderdale hotel guest caught on camera punching out valet 07/1/2017

3 Liberty County officers indicted in Harris County 10/05/2012

Off-duty Kennesaw officer’s wife shoots him during domestic dispute 10/26/2017

Lt. Greg Abbott Ga. Officer to woman during traffic stop: 'We only kill black people, right?' 08/31/2017

NC Teens Charged With Deputy’s Murder After Sheriff Covered Up Girl’s Rape Claims 08/05/2017 Ridgeway had been in a dating relationship with Clifton beginning in June 2015, when she was 16 years old and he was a school resource officer at her high school, according to a no-contact order for stalking and sexual misconduct her family member filed in February 2016.

Police trainers have a duty to face, & address, the downsides of anger in police training 08/29/2017

Wasserman Schultz Threatened Police Chief For Gathering Evidence On Her IT Staffer’s Alleged Crimes [VIDEO] 05/24/2017

Who is Caren Turner and why did she become the focus of a viral dashcam video? 04/25/2018 While a Democrat who raised money for Hillary Clinton, Turner was appointed to the Port Authority last year by former Gov. Chris Christie, as part of a pair of appointments that included former GOP state Sen. Kevin O'Toole. Turner was the pick of Senate Majority Leader Loretta Weinberg (D-37), who was pushing for more women on the board. A. No. While the video shows her haranguing police over the traffic stop, dropping the names of elected officials she knew, and her position as a Port Authority commissioner who oversees 4,000 police officers, the Tenafly police did not charge her with obstruction. But the chief of police made a call to the Port Authority's Inspector General, which led to an internal investigation and ultimately her resignation.

Transit official's videotaped berating of police ends with her resignation 04/25/2018

Video shows Port Authority commissioner telling cops: 'You may shut the f--- up!' 04/24/2018

Ex-Clinton 'Ethics' Aide Resigns After Taped Tirade At Cops: "You May Shut The F**k Up!" 04/25/2018

Off-Duty Cop Tasing an 11-Year-Old Should Provoke a Clear Wakeup Call for Police Reform 09/14/2018

White Nationalist Who Worked for DHS Reportedly Attended White House Policy Sessions 08/31/2018

Political Conventions In The Era Of The National Security State 08/28/2012

Media Downplaying Two Police Killing Sprees Ignoring Solutions

Is Oligarchy Creating Second Wave Of Fake Progressives? If So Why?

During the 2016 election an old pattern, of politicians pretending to be progressive for the duration of the campaign, became even more obvious to anyone paying enough attention. Hillary Clinton didn't even do a good job pretending, so she was incredibly easy to spot, which is why Trump got elected, but that raises the question of why she couldn't have done a better job pretending to care, when she had so many political advisers, and she'd been preparing for this run for years if not decades.

But there's also been a massive increase in sincere support for progressives at the grassroots; and it's even resulted in a few wins, or at least it seems to, although like in many other cases, once politicians get elected they often show that they're more willing to compromise, or in many cases serve the corporate interests they pretended to oppose during campaigns.

Part of the problem is that the consolidated media and political establishment has acted as if some simple basic principles are above reproach and aren't even subject to criticism, even when they're wrong, then they repeat them over and over again so often that a shocking percentage of the public accepts them without criticism. Sometimes this even seems reasonable, like when morning high profile politicians or celebrities, even when they spend their life supporting wars based on lies, like John McCain. Some of this seems like basic manners, which is reasonable; however, in the political establishment it doesn't work both ways like when John McCain called Code Pink "Low-life scum" for protesting wars based on lies.

So progressives like Washington Babylon who wrote How Long Was Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Planning Her Run For Public Office? 08/28/2018 have a legitimate concern when they complain about her tweet about John McCain after he died:



Rep. Pramila Jayapal was one of the few progressives that won in 2016 and she also tweeted The halls of Congress will never be same with out Senator John McCain. A man who devoted his life to serving this country, Senator McCain had an unwavering commitment to our democracy, even in his final days. 1/3 08/25/2018 but they both opposed the Iraq War, and although Andrew Stewart from Washington Babylon expressed concerns about her ties to the Ted Kennedy campaign, he also opposed the Iraq War.

Relentless support for the false claim that we're "fighting for freedom" in all these wars around the world is routinely used to justify one war after another based on lies, and it's accompanied by an enormous amount of propaganda to glorify the veterans that blindly follow wars based on lies automatically declaring them all to be heroes, without looking at their records. Not that I'm opposed to the majority of the veterans that sign up with good intentions, but their government has been lying to them from the beginning and they've been going along with the propaganda; and some of the best veterans that have done the most to solve major problems are veterans that have spoken out against wars based on lies, in some cases even refusing to serve; but though these might be the real heroic veterans, exposing lies from politicians that betray us all, they're the ones demonized as cowards.



One of the other biggest issues that is accepted almost without question is the media's control of the election process, and the fact that they're controlled by only six corporations that dominate over ninety percent of the national media, and a handful of the biggest other sources, like the Washington Post or Los Angeles Times, are controlled by billionaires so these oligarchs can decide which candidates are viable by simply refuses to cover them, which is far worse than anything that the Russians could do, assuming there is something to this story, yet Rep. Pramila Jayapal jumped on the Russia conspiracy bandwagon without questioning the media's role in rigging the elections when she tweeted: The president just can't get his story straight about that Trump Tower meeting with Russian operatives. He doesn't tell the truth. And that's why the Mueller investigation is so critical. 08/05/2018

Another major issue that is almost never questioned in the traditional media is that we have to chose between a strong economy and the protection of the environment; however they never dump enormous amounts of toxic waste in the backyards of the wealthy to preserve the strong economy, and this incredible double standard is almost never questioned in the traditional press, nor do they ever remind the majority of the public of the full cost of energy when it means polluting areas where the working class or poor live.

Another major issue they never remind the public is the fundamentals of insurance, which is pooled risk, meaning that the money they spend on ads comes from premiums, and when they compete by spending more on this then it makes all competitors less efficient not, more, and this is even worse when you consider the fact that they spend even more of your premium dollars lobbying against Single Payer of to confuse the issue and create propaganda bout how inefficient government health care is, despite the fact that many other countries that already have it are much more efficient than our system.

In all fairness the current wave of progressives looks better than past candidates, and some of them seem to have a better chance of wining, including Ayanna Pressley and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez who are both considered shoe-ins, in their districts, now that they've won the primary; and polls seem to indicate that Andrew Gillum and Stacey Abrams both have a good chance of winning, partly because they're both up against extremist supporters of Trump who are also catering to racists viewpoints with their campaign.

However there's an incredibly long track record of them looking much better during the campaign but then showing their true intentions after they get elected like when Barack Obama promised not to hire lobbyists and put on a "comfortable pair of shoes" and march with protesters in office if he won, both promises that he broke among many others, and he also added insult to injury with his joke about taking big payments from Wall Street before leaving office, then showing that it wasn't just a joke after he started doing that, and now he wants us to believe he's trying to rally us against Trump, as if he's better than him? Ben Jealous hasn't done any better with his calculated slur saying "are you fucking kidding me?," after being asked if he was a Socialist. It's virtually guaranteed that he understood this would attract some attention, presumably catering to people that might not rush to embrace the Democratic Socialism that was supported by Bernie Sanders, who made an effort to educate the public about it correcting false assumptions from media propaganda, showing that he's a calculated politician and still losing in the polls.

Ben Jealous is one of Sanders supporters that blatantly began defending Hillary against Trump while the primaries were still going on as if it was a foregone conclusion that she would win, raising major doubts about whether his support for Sanders was all that sincere in the first place, since speaking out at that time could have made a difference, and prevented Trump from being elected in the first place.

But why is the entire political establishment behaving in such in insane manner in the first place?

Something simply isn't making sense. The political establishment knows how to do a better job rigging elections or convincing the public that they're at least trying, yet they aren't doing it and that's why Trump is in office.

It's virtually guaranteed that there are undisclosed objectives that partly explain what is going on and why; and that if they were disclosed there's a strong possibility that many people will be reluctant to believe it. However, there are somethings we can be sure of regardless of those undisclosed motives are, including the fact that the vast majority of the control of powerful institutions, including the media, oil companies, military supply corporations and other Wall Street corporations along with the entire political establishment are controlled by a small fraction of the public.

These corporations use their control of the media to give coverage to politicians that pretend to serve the interests of the majority, and routinely demonstrate that they don't once in power. They study how to manipulate emotions and distract people with their prejudices and social political beliefs, including single issue voters that only pay attention to gun control or abortion.

One of the strongest critics and leading organizers of progressives fighting to reform this corrupt system, Chris Hedges, even adopted a claim that occasionally raises doubts about him, although it's extremely hard to believe that he would cave to corporate interests. If he was incline to cave to corporate interests, then he would simply get in line and work his way back into traditional media like many other journalists that have been fired for being overly progressive, even though they almost always look for another excuse to officially fire them; and he certainly wouldn't be rallying protesters year after year.



For one reason or another, Chris Hedges adopted a slogan, during the Occupy Wall Street protests that rose in 2011 and peaked in 2012, before fading, that says that, "It’s Not Our Job To Take Power, It’s Our Job To Fight Power!" His justification for this was partly that according to Karl Popper people attracted to power, “rarely been above average, either morally or intellectually, and often below it.” He follows this up with a story from Henry Kissinger’s memoirs where he quotes Nixon saying, "'Henry, Henry, they're going to break through the barricades and get us!' And that's exactly where we want people in power to be." This version might not be the exact quote from Kissinger's memoirs, but it was repeated over and over again in Link TV for a couple years.

This is very amusing, but allowing the elite political establishment to continue controlling all these major institutions and counting on them being afraid of us to motivate them to doing the right thing isn't working, instead we need to get people in both the media and in elected office, along with other powerful positions that actually want to do a good job, and, since they're going to be under pressure from the oligarchies that have been trying to convince politicians to cave for hundreds of years, they still need pressure from a well informed public to ensure that they do a good job.



In all fairness Chris Hedges was one of the leading creators of alternative media outlets, and he's repeatedly endorsed Green Party candidates, even though they can never get enough media attention to win at statewide or national elections and only win a handful of local elections where people are more educated and organized. And, the current batch of progressives does seem to be better than past groups, thanks, perhaps in part to extreme measures being carried out by the Trump administration and that the Democratic Party helped him get into office, since the people recognized how bad their propaganda was in the first place, so without making any major changes within the establishment there are more people at the local level voting for better progressives.

But there's still one example after another of progressives looking like the great hero only to turn around and sell out to the same corporations that progressives are protesting against, including Colin Kaepernick who went to all that trouble to stand up against police brutality then sold out to Nike, and apparently this deal was made years ago.



Something about this simply doesn't make sense, it's turned out to be a disaster for Nike who may have tried to appeal to progressives with this sponsor, and they might have accompanied it with some online social media bots, that are almost certainly paid for, but it's predictably failing as many well informed progressives recognized this as a sell out and some of them immediately wrote about it, while the right wing, that is often more susceptible to deceptive advertising are boycotting.

It's a disaster for Nike and they have educated people that understand marketing and social trends that must have seen it coming.

This is actually relatively trivial, but there are dozens of these trivial things to distract us fro more important issues and if you look at them carefully little or nothing the mainstream media and political establishment is doing makes any sense; and there are an enormous number of these pundits and politicians that have demonstrated that they're really not quite that stupid, even if some of them might be. Even Trump, or perhaps I should say especially Trump isn't that stupid; he's demonstrated in the past when he left the Reform Party and rejected David Duke, that he knows that in politics that the racist fringe are a dead end in politics, or at least they were and they still would be if the political establishment wasn't behaving in a fanatical manner taking advantage of the right wing to such an insane extreme that even they're recognizing they've been fooled and giving Trump the obsession coverage that he needed to make him seem like a rational alternative, to people that respond to emotions and irrational and racists arguments.

They're constantly reminding us that Donald Trump has access to the greatest and most reliable espionage information, which they refer to by it's propaganda term, "intelligence," in the world, yet relies on the most absurd conspiracy theories; yet the mainstream media also has access to many of the best scholars and history books in the world without needing secret information that is often unreliable from the espionage organizations, as well. this should clearly mean that they must understand that environmental damage causes by climate change can't go on forever without doing massive amounts of damage; and if it's combined with a constant state of war that it will inevitably get out of control as many previous empires have collapsed in the past, only with modern technology it'll be even worse, yet they're obsessed with irrational conspiracy theories as well.

They have to know that if they keep arguing around in circles about fabricated stories that these will eventually catch up with them and even destroy the people behind their gated communities. Are they suicidal?

Caitlin Johnstone points out in some of the absurdities in the following article, although she may not go far enough:

We Are Being Played 09/06/2018

If any evidence existed to be found that Donald Trump had illegally colluded with the Russian government to rig the 2016 presidential election, that evidence would have been picked up by the sprawling surveillance networks of the US and its allies and leaked to the Washington Post before Obama left office.

Russiagate is like a mirage. From a distance it looks like a solid, tangible thing, but when you actually move in to examine it critically you find nothing but gaping plot holes, insinuation, innuendo, conflicting narratives, bizarre mental contortions to avoid acknowledging contradictory information, a few arrests for corruption and process crimes, and a lot of hot air. The whole thing has been held together by nothing but the confident-sounding assertions of pundits and politicians and sheer, mindless repetition. And, as we approach the two year mark since this president’s election, we have not seen one iota of movement toward removing him from office. The whole thing’s a lie, and the smart movers and shakers behind it are aware that it is a lie.

And yet they keep beating on it. Day after day after day after day it’s been Russia, Russia, Russia, Russia. Instead of attacking this president for his many, many real problems in a way that will do actual damage, they attack this fake blow-up doll standing next to him in a way that never goes anywhere and never will, like a pro wrestler theatrically stomping on the canvass next to his downed foe. (Which Trump has faked in a famous video clip) ......

You don’t have to get into any deep conspiratorial rabbit hole to consider the possibility that all this drama and conflict is staged from top to bottom. Commentators on all sides routinely crack jokes about how the mainstream media pretends to attack Trump but secretly loves him because he brings them amazing ratings. Anyone with their eyes even part way open already knows that America’s two mainstream parties feign intense hatred for one another while working together to pace their respective bases into accepting more and more neoliberal exploitation at home and more and more neoconservative bloodshed abroad. They spit and snarl and shake their fists at each other, then cuddle up and share candy when it’s time for a public gathering. Why should this administration be any different? .....

Would a billionaire WWE Hall of Famer and United States President understand the theater of staged conflict for the advancement of plutocratic interests, and willingly participate in it? I’m going to say probably. Complete article

Caitlin Johnstone seems to imply plutocrats are motivated solely by greed, which I don't doubt is a major part of their motivation, and there's an enormous amount of evidence, which isn't hard to find assuming people want to see it to support this motive; however, they're taking it to an extreme so insane that it won't serve their own greedy interests since they have to know that it will eventually lead to their own destruction, unless they think they can at least save themselves, although they don't seem to concerned about the rest of us. There have been some recent articles about members of the oligarchy having a secret plan to survive the "Apocalypse," or what ever damage is expected to come from Climate Change; however it's hard to imagine how they could possibly do that if the society that enables their wealth starts to fall apart then they're at risk of more extreme retaliation than many former tyrants in the past.

Previously I wrote another article that included a citation of another similar conspiracy theory from Caitlin and went a little father speculating that it might be part of an even bigger conspiracy theory where Philip Corso claimed he shared alien technology with multi-national corporations, which would have had enormous implications on recent development of modern technology of all kinds including space travel medical advances, computer technology and much more. This could potentially be big enough to explain a large number of unsolved mysteries, once all the details are worked out, including how ancient megaliths were moved, and the mysteries surrounding many mystics. I'm sure I notified her of it, but she didn't respond, and when I noticed her respond to another person claiming that she was "a secret Nazi" I notified her again when I tweeted Can't believe "Caitlin is a secret Nazi" conspiracy theory; however I suspect she might be a secret supporter of #AncientAliens theory about researching #ClimateChange with controlled #Disclosure by those that have inside knowledge! 08/21/2018 and she didn't respond to that as well.

This may seem hard to believe, especially for those who haven't looked at many of the major unsolved mysteries, however, there's an enormous amount of evidence to challenge some of the most prominent beliefs of both science and religion. Skeptics routinely claim that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, which is a reasonable request, and there is extraordinary evidence of a major unsolved mystery in the form of ancient megaliths weighing over a hundred tons, including the Colossi of Memnon weighing 720 tons moved 420 miles to a slightly higher altitude, that have been moved by ancient civilizations, allegedly without the use of advanced technology. However experiments to replicate this feat had limited success up to ten tons proving that they could move it with an enormous amount of effort and coordination breaking many ropes and other problems, experiments between ten and forty tons were rare and involved cheating and still only moved megaliths short distances if at all, they didn't even try to move bigger ones.

This raises major doubts about whether or not society evolved naturally without the influence of an unknown advanced intelligence or not. There are also major unsolved mysteries surrounding many mystics throughout history including those that inspired or reinforced religion. This might raise the question or whether or not there is a god after all, and if this evidence supports it.

However if there is something perceived as God there are obvious doubt about some of the assumptions about him raises by Epicurus over two thousand years ago who said, “Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is not omnipotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Then whence cometh evil? Is he neither able nor willing? Then why call him God?”

George Carlin raised similar objections phrasing them a little differently.



The vast majority of notable explanations for this fall into one of two categories, and both of them are seriously flawed. Religious people believe in a God that is good and make up incredibly bad excuses for all the atrocities inspired by religion, and can't explain why, if this isn't what God had in mind, he couldn't find a way to say that this isn't what he wanted and provide better advise, instead of all these superstitions. So-called scientific people routinely pretend that some of the biggest unsolved mysteries don't exist at all, and often come up with incredibly lame excuses or distractions to prevent people from taking them seriously, then resort to ridicule when all else fails.

The most common assumption about these ancient megaliths and the ancient aliens theory is that it's part of the version featured by the History Channel; however that is full of an enormous number of colossal blunders, which anyone can see with a basic background in science. And they typically try to fit their explanations into one of the two leading categories, in some cases dividing the aliens up to good and evil battling each other.

None of these high profile pundits from either the pseudo-scientific skeptics or the religious believers ever seem to consider the possibility that an unknown advanced intelligence of some sort with an undisclosed motive might be the explanation for this. Ancient Aliens theorists often do consider the motives of the aliens, but unfortunately they mix it up with an enormous number of blunders or jump to the conclusions that religious myths are literal truths and base their assumptions on those, even though there is often evidence to indicate that so-called revelations, whether they come from God or Ancient Aliens mistaken for God, are clearly false with evidence to prove it.

If my own theories about Ancient Aliens as I've described in previous articles including Spectacular Heart Transplant for Sophia But at What Cost; Researching Poor, Slaves, Prisoners, To Benefit Ruling Class With Alien Technology?; and Hurricane Apocalypse Coming With or Without Fringe Conspiracy Theory, are close to the truth then there might actually be some kind of plan as disclosed in an unreliable manner through alleged revelations from an unknown advanced intelligence religious people think of as God, which might actually be aliens.



If God or Ancient Aliens plan involves an undisclosed research project, it could be for a limited time, and once it is over then the benefit of the research could theoretically be shared with everyone. This isn't a guarantee, of course, and if they were looking out for the best interest of the human race they wouldn't have been shrouding their activities in secrecy and deception for thousands of years, so even if it were true we wouldn't be able to trust them to follow through on any promises they might have made with the people they're sharing technology with.

After the article about an alleged member of the White House administration wrote "I Am Part of the Resistance" in the NYT several people including Caitlin Johnstone raised doubts about his or her motive and whether or not he or she really was looking for the best interest of the majority, especially since the article claimed that he or she supported large portions of the agenda from the Trump administration. If you accept it as it's being portrayed, even if he was trying to prevent Trump from doing something so drastic it would threaten our country, this isn't the most effective way to prevent it, and it would be far more effective to do so public even if it meant getting fired or resigning. Caitlin Johnstone accurately pointed out that if they wanted to take major steps to remove him they could, instead they keep arguing back and forth without accomplishing anything except to distract people from more important issues.

However, if there is something to my Ancient Aliens theory, and they have some kind of plan for controlled disclosure, and perhaps some of them even convinced themselves that they'd be looking out for the best interest of everyone if they shared all this technology they could think of themselves as the resistance that is eventually planning to bring about disclosure. If so they would run into the same absurd flaws in logic. If that was the case then the most effective way would be to come out with the truth and share the technology with everyone, and start reforming the political and economic system while repairing the massive amount of damage done to the environment.

Some things are simply not that complicated.

Perhaps they come up with the same old excuse that was famous long before Jack Nicholson said, "You Can't Handle the Truth!" However, if that is what they thought, then the way to address the situation would have been to do their best to prepare people so that they could handle the truth, then share it with them, instead of jumping from one scam after another.

If "Ye shall know them by their deeds," then they've shown their objectives with their deeds, which is to continue manipulating people with one scam after another. If this is part of a way of ushering in some kind of reform when, and only when, it suits their purposes, then the clear implication is that they don't want complete reform, perhaps instead enough reform to usher in some environmental protection that will save those in on the scams, and perhaps enough to get people to go along with the scam and continue abandoning those without political power.

For one reason or another there are a long list of arbitrary blunders that don't make any sense by many people allegedly trying to disclose the truth, including claims that an astronaut can see a tractor trailer from space, that someone saw sputnik orbiting the planet, that her husband made seismograph in his garage, that someone needed to know how many people were in a building in order to install air conditioning, or that Easter Island even supported 150,000 people while they were carving the Moai, which are all false, yet don't seem to have any relevance, except to raise doubts about the credibility of the people making the statements in a way that few or any people would notice or attach any relevance.

Even if this theory isn't true, however, there's still evidence to indicate that all high profile pundits or reformers seem to make their share of blunders, and many of them are so obvious that it's hard to believe that it's accidental.

It should also be clear that complete reform should enable everyone to get a reasonable education so that they can sort through all these details. In the short term major steps can be taken to allow people from all segments of life to participate in the political process, accessing the information they need to make decisions, and this should include allowing diverse groups of people to control the media.

There should be no doubt that the First Amendment was designed to prevent a small fraction of the public from controlling almost all of the media which is the situation we're in now, enabling them to rig elections by simply refusing to cover candidates they don't like; or that point out flaws in wars based on lies; remind the public about the fundamentals of insurance showing our current system is a scam; remind the public how Single payer could fix this; or how patents are being given to corporation even though the government is financing the research for drugs; or that it should just as illegal for corporations to poison people through pollution as it is if they intentionally put arsenic in their drink.

The list of simple principles that most people should understand without question could continue but the media establishment repeats spin over and over again to scam the public, whether or not the Ancient Aliens theory is true or not.

But if it is partly true then people should be prepared for it; and if it's not then the skeptics should be able to provide a better explanation for major unsolved mysteries.

And if there were part of the "resistance" that knows something about it they should stop fooling themselves to believing that they're trying to bring about disclosure by going along with the deception. If people involved in this cover up they're not part of the "resistance" unless they come out with the truth ASAP unconditionally.

If we can get more progressives elected to office thanks in part to the insane policies of the Trump administration inspiring people to vote against him, great, but we need to be prepared for the so-called progressives that have been promoted, secretly or not by the political establishment to try to back pedal, and we need to pressure them to keep their promises every step of the way. And, no matter why the political establishment is behaving so insane, we need to do more to teach rational thinking to the majority of the public so they're be able to participate in the process. Right now, as the media has even pointed out the people in the South are the ones that are being hit the worst for their irrational denial of science about climate change and North Carolina that is currently going through one of the worst storms they've seen recently passed a law to ban climate change science from impacting government policy. Other Southern States have been doing similar things for decades; if they can use this to educate the voters and help elect the two relatively progressive nominees that's a start; but much more has to be done.



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Transcript of Chris Hedges speaking at #NATGAT 07/09/2012 None of them ever achieved formal positions of power, the Liberty Party that fought slavery, the suffragists that fought for women's rights, the labor movement and the Civil Rights movement, ever achieved positions of power, and the failure of those of us who care about the open society is that we forgot that it's not our job to take power, it's our job to fight power. There's a wonderful scene in Kissinger's memoirs – do not buy the book!

[laughter]

– where it's 1971 and Nixon has ringed the White House with buses to keep out the antiwar demonstrators, and he's standing at a window with Kissinger going, "Henry, Henry, they're going to break through the barricades and get us!" And that's exactly where we want people in power to be.

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