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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
Ron Paul - It can happen here
 Tue Dec 21, 2004 2:33 pm
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http://www.antiwar.com/paul/?articleid=4189
It Can Happen Here
by Rep. Ron Paul
In 2002 I asked my House colleagues a rhetorical question with regard to the onslaught of government growth in the post-September 11th era: Is America becoming a police state?
The question is no longer rhetorical. We are not yet living in a total police state, but it is fast approaching. The seeds of future tyranny have been sown, and many of our basic protections against government have been undermined. The atmosphere since 2001 has permitted Congress to create whole new departments and agencies that purport to make us safer always at the expense of our liberty. But security and liberty go hand-in-hand. Members of Congress, like too many Americans, don't understand that a society with no constraints on its government cannot be secure. History proves that societies crumble when their governments become more powerful than the people and private institutions.
Unfortunately, the new intelligence bill passed by Congress two weeks ago moves us closer to an encroaching police state by imposing the precursor to a full-fledged national ID card. Within two years, every American will need a "conforming" ID to deal with any federal agency including TSA at the airport.
Undoubtedly many Americans and members of Congress don't believe America is becoming a police state, which is reasonable enough. They associate the phrase with highly visible symbols of authoritarianism like military patrols, martial law, and summary executions. But we ought to be concerned that we have laid the foundation for tyranny by making the public more docile, more accustomed to government bullying, and more accepting of arbitrary authority all in the name of security. Our love for liberty above all has been so diminished that we tolerate intrusions into our privacy that would have been abhorred just a few years ago. We tolerate inconveniences and infringements upon our liberties in a manner that reflects poorly on our great national character of rugged individualism. American history, at least in part, is a history of people who don't like being told what to do. Yet we are increasingly empowering the federal government and its agents to run our lives.
Terror, fear, and crises like 9-11 are used to achieve complacency and obedience, especially when citizens are deluded into believing they are still a free people. The loss of liberty, we are assured, will be minimal, short-lived, and necessary. Many citizens believe that once the war on terror is over, restrictions on their liberties will be reversed. But this war is undeclared and open-ended, with no precise enemy and no expressly stated final goal. Terrorism will never be eradicated completely; does this mean future presidents will assert extraordinary war powers indefinitely?
Washington DC provides a vivid illustration of what our future might look like. Visitors to Capitol Hill encounter police barricades, metal detectors, paramilitary officers carrying fully automatic rifles, police dogs, ID checks, and vehicle stops. The people are totally disarmed; only the police and criminals have guns. Surveillance cameras are everywhere, monitoring street activity, subway travel, parks, and federal buildings. There's not much evidence of an open society in Washington, DC, yet most folks do not complain anything goes if it's for government-provided safety and security.
After all, proponents argue, the government is doing all this to catch the bad guys. If you don't have anything to hide, they ask, what are you so afraid of? The answer is that I'm afraid of losing the last vestiges of privacy that a free society should hold dear. I'm afraid of creating a society where the burden is on citizens to prove their innocence, rather than on government to prove wrongdoing. Most of all, I'm afraid of living in a society where a subservient populace surrenders its liberties to an all-powerful government.
It may be true that average Americans do not feel intimidated by the encroachment of the police state. Americans remain tolerant of what they see as mere nuisances because they have been deluded into believing total government supervision is necessary and helpful, and because they still enjoy a high level of material comfort. That tolerance may wane, however, as our standard of living falls due to spiraling debt, endless deficit spending at home and abroad, a declining fiat dollar, inflation, higher interest rates, and failing entitlement programs. At that point attitudes toward omnipotent government may change, but the trend toward authoritarianism will be difficult to reverse.
Those who believe a police state can't happen here are poor students of history. Every government, democratic or not, is capable of tyranny. We must understand this if we hope to remain a free people.
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Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood! |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
| What did Frank Zappa say?
Tue Dec 21, 2004 2:38 pm
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Help I'm a Rock - The Mothers of Invention 1966
Help I'm a rock, help I'm a rock, help I'm a rock!
Ahahahahahahaaa
Help I'm a rock, help I'm a rock, help I'm a rock!
Somebody, please, please!
Help I'm a rock, help I'm a rock...
Wow man, it's a drag being a rock
Help I'm a rock...
I wish I was anything but a rock
Heck, I'd even like to be a policeman
Hey, you know what, you know maybe if I practised, you know
Maybe if I passed my driving test
I could get a gig drivin' that bus and pick some freaks up
In front of Ben Franks, right!
Help I'm a cop, help I'm a cop, help I'm a cop!
(Help I'm a rock...), help I'm a cop, help I'm a cop!
It's a drag being a cop, I think I'd rather be the mayor
Always wondered what I was gonna be when I grew up, you know
Always wondered whether or not, whether or not I could make it,
You know, in society, because,
You know, it's a drag when you're rejected
So I tore the cover off a book of matches and I sent in
And I got this letter back that said, UHU, AHA
It can't happen here
It can't happen here
I'm telling you, my dear
That it can't happen here
Because I been checkin' it out, baby
I checked it out a couple a times, hmmmmmmmm
And I'm telling you
It can't happen here
Oh darling, it's important that you believe me
(Bop bop bop bop)
That it can't happen here
Who could imagine that they would freak out somewhere in Kansas...
Kansas Kansas tototototodo
Kansas Kansas tototototodo
Kansas Kansas
Who could imagine that they would freak out in Minnesota...
Mimimimimimimi Minnesota, Minnesota, Minnesota
Who could imagine...
Who could imagine
That they would freak out in Washington, D.C.
D.C. D.C. D.C. D.C. D.C.
It can't happen here
Ba ba ba ba ba ba ba ba
It can't happen here
It can't happen here
Everybody's safe and it can't happen here
No freaks for us
It can't happen here
Everybody's clean and it can't happen here
No, no, it won't happen here
I'm telling you it can't
It won't happen here
(Bop bop didi bop didi bop bop bop)
Plastic folks, you know
It won't happen here
You're safe, mama
You're safe, baby
You just cook a TV dinner
And you make it
(Bop bop bop)
No no no no
Oh, we're gonna get a TV dinner and cook it up
Go get a TV dinner and cook it up
Cook it up
Oh, and it won't happen here
(No no no no no no no no no no no
Man you guys are really safe
Everything's cool).
Who could imagine
Who could imagine
That they would freak out in the suburbs!
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool
I remember (tu-tu)
I remember (tu-tu)
They had a swimming pool.
And they thought it couldn't happen here
(duh duh duh duh duh)
They knew it couldn't happen here
They were so sure it couldn't happen here
But...
Suzie...
Yes yes yes--I've always felt that
Yes I agree man, it really makes it...yeah...
It's a real THING, man
And it really makes it
(Makes it)
Suzie, you just got to town,
And we've been, we've been very interested
In your development.
Forget it!
Hmmmmmmmmm
(It can't happen here)
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Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood! |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
| Sinclair Lewis
Tue Dec 21, 2004 6:52 pm
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http://etext.library.adelaide.edu.au/l/lewis/sinclair/happen/
IT CANT HAPPEN HERE by Sinclair Lewis
As Bush beats the war drums today, I am reminded of a novel Sinclair Lewis wrote nearly seven decades ago called "It Can't Happen Here."
It is the story of how fascism came to America. Lewis wrote his novel as Hitler and Mussolini stormed across Europe, bringing a new kind of social order to the fore. Fascism almost came to America -- President Roosevelt knew the country was at a crossroads: facism or communism, and he decided to push for a third way, reforming and democraticizing capitalism to get rid of its worst Robber Baron excesses.
That Roosevelt found a third way does not deny the essential truths of Lewis' book. The forces of fascism, spearheaded by men such as Huey Long, Father Coughlin, Gerald L.K. Smith and others, came close but never fully succeeded during the Great Depression in America.
But the history of America has always been a constant struggle between the forces of authoritarianism and the forces of democracy.
Fascism nearly won in the 30s, and again in the 50s with McCarthyism, and threaten once again now at the beginning of the new Millennium with the ascendancy of Bush to the presidency.
In "It Can't Happen Here," the president is Buzz Windrip, whose Corpo movement has taken over Washington D.C. at the bottom of the Great Depression. The novel even has counterparts for Cheney and Rumsfield -- a behind-the-scenes manipulator called Lee Saranson.
The protagonist of "It Can't Happen Here" is Doremus Jessup, a somewhat consdervative small-town New Egland newspaper editor.
Jessup was an old-fashioned conservative, but not of the ideological stripe of today's Republicans. He valued a certain independence of thought that turned out to be anathema to the marketing experts of yesterday's fascism.
As the editor of a small and therefore somewhat insigificant daily newspaper, Jessup doesn't deal directly with the powers that be. His contact with the face of fascism is through Shad Ledue, his own drunken, loutish handyman who has risen to the top of the local New England corpos. Ledue is one of the most convincing villains I have ever encountered -- and his violent demise is welcome.
Jessup is a man whose essential honesty makes him a hero, yet the first time that Ledue sends Jessup to jail, Jessup does not feel so brave. He wants to feel like an honorable man for going to jail, because evil men like Windrip, Saranson and Ledue only send honorable men to jail. But Jessup is also a respectable old New Englander to whom jail is a place only bad people go. Jessup is not a superman, he is merely a decent human being who in the end becomes an underground fighter for democracy.
Written in the time of Hitler and Mussolini, Sinclair made fascism a real American phenomenon -- and not just a transplanted European nightmare.
Mr. Bush and his cohorts are taking their lines right out of "It Can't Happen Here," which is why I recommend everyone read the book now.
Under Corpo rule, political dissidents which included not only communists and socialists but political conservatives like Jessup, were thrown willy-nilly into concentration camps, and joined forces there in a new American underground.
Are we going to let today's half-wits lead the war into War and Depression?
Read "It Can't Happen Here" and ponder that question.
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Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood! |
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mark sky
Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 3616
Location: SW coast of Oregon |
| I still have that album
Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:31 am
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In vynal in good condition
We had a local group "the Rats" that did music like that
Then there were the "Fugs"
it was almost 40 years ago
back then they did have a swimming pool
but they had to dig it up to put in a bomb shelter
"theres no time to delay ~ theres trouble coming everyday"
play your har~monica son... |
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Mech
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 8237
Location: THE 4th REICH USA |
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Wed Dec 22, 2004 12:58 am
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Zappa quotes.
"Diamonds on velvets on goldens on vixen,
On comet & cupid on donner & blitzen,
On up & away & afar & a go-go...
Escape from the weight of your corporate logo!"
"Washington, D.C.: a city infested with
statues -- and Congressional Blow-Boys
who WISH they were statues."
"Thanks to our schools and political leadership,
the U.S. has acquired an international reputation
as the home of 250 million people dumb enough to
buy 'The Wacky Wall-Walker."
"Americans like to talk about (or be told about) Democracy but, when put to
the test, usually find it to be an 'inconvenience.' We have opted instead
for an authoritarian system disguised as a Democracy. We pay through
the nose for an enormous joke-of-a-government, let it push us around, and
then wonder how all those assholes got in there."
"If you wind up with a boring, miserable life because you listened to your
mom, your dad, your teacher, your priest or some guy on TV telling you how to
do your s!@#, then YOU DESERVE IT."
"Government is the Entertainment Division of the military-industrial complex."
"The manner in which Americans "consume" music has a lot to do with leaving
it on their coffee tables, or using it as wallpaper for their lifestyles,
like the score of a movie -- it's consumed that way without any regard for
how and why it was made."
"Drop out of school before your mind rots from exposure to
our mundane educational system. Forget about the Senior
Prom and go to the library and *educate yourself* if you've
got any guts. Some of you like *pep rallies* and plastic
robots who tell you what to read. Forget I mentioned it.
Rise for the flag salute." |
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Terlingua
Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 13
Location: Texas |
| Old Stuff
Wed Dec 22, 2004 1:41 am
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quote:
Help I'm a Rock - The Mothers of Invention 1966
There was a cut of that song on an albums I had by a group called The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.
I had an album by The Fugs, too. Alan(sp?) Ginsgerg was on it. Yodelin' Yippee, River of s!@#, In The Garden. The National Haiku Contest.
How about The Chrome Cyrcus or The United States of America - groups from way back then that I had albums by? If you like electronic music The United States of America were innovators. They had something called a ring modulator. "A couple of quarts of beer" and the sound would seem to go around in circles.
God bless Frank Zappa - a true genius. |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
| Re: Old Stuff
Wed Dec 22, 2004 2:17 am
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quote:
Originally posted by Terlingua
quote:
Help I'm a Rock - The Mothers of Invention 1966
There was a cut of that song on an albums I had by a group called The West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band.
I had an album by The Fugs, too. Alan(sp?) Ginsgerg was on it. Yodelin' Yippee, River of s!@#, In The Garden. The National Haiku Contest.
How about The Chrome Cyrcus or The United States of America - groups from way back then that I had albums by? If you like electronic music The United States of America were innovators. They had something called a ring modulator. "A couple of quarts of beer" and the sound would seem to go around in circles.
God bless Frank Zappa - a true genius.
Crome Syrcus was an incredible band. Love Cycle was the name of the album, there was a long cut on it, and a flute player. They also did a ballet or something. United States of America with Joe Byrd and Dorothy Moskowitz was the most psychoactive of the 60's bands, with "Garden of Earthly Delights", which was NOT about beer, a drug you would probably not consume when listening to USofA.
Zappa was spot on when it came to politics. Only now are his visions coming true. His Synclavier work was, along with Negativland, groundbreaking Sampling collage work.
Halloween 1990, we marched with Allen Ginsburg in New York for about 5 miles. We got to talk to him at length about the up and coming Gulf War 1. Very gentle man.
The Fugs, "CIA Man" still makes sense after 41 years. They were considered the "dirty" Mothers of Invention!!!
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Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood! |
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Terlingua
Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 13
Location: Texas |
| Amazing!
Wed Dec 22, 2004 3:26 am
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I bet I could spend the next 5 years asking everybody I meet that looks over 50 if they have heard of any of those bands and not get a yes answer.
You reminded me of another one from that era - Pearls Before Swine. Part of their album cover, or maybe it was an included poster, was Hieronymus Bosch's painting "The Garden of Earthly Delights."
I did some searching on the Internet and am amazed at how much info there is now on those old bands. Jazz Trumpeter, Don Ellis, was on The United States of America's album. Don is another one that checked-out way too early.
I know I didn't dream or imagine this, but I am positive my Jefferson Airplane Takes Off album listed Dorothy Moskowitz as the singer. I wondered for many years if Grace Slick and Dorothy Moskowitz weren't the same person. Now I wonder if it wasn't some kind of typo. do you have any info on that? |
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Terlingua
Joined: 02 Dec 2004
Posts: 13
Location: Texas |
| ???
Wed Dec 22, 2004 3:31 am
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I thought some more about that. Maybe it wasn't Dorothy Moskowitz, but it was a Polish or Russian name like that. Not Signe Anderson or Jorma Kaukonen. |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
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Wed Dec 22, 2004 4:06 am
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It was Signe Toley Anderson on vocals on Jefferson Airplane Takes Off
Don't forget Bloodwyn Pig, with Mick Abrahams from Jethro Tull.
There was also an obscure band from Phoenix called, The Eclectic Mouse, who intrigued me.
Back to topic.....
What I found cool about the 60's was the acceptance of diiferent types of music. You could see Richie Havens, Joni Mitchell, Lothar and the Hand People, and The Nice all together. Maynard Fergusen was loved. The main topics were Peace and Love, Anti-War, and psychedelia. Every enlightened band, musician, artist, writer, and film maker was warning everyone about the fascist takeover of the country, right after the JFK assassination, and perhaps the 60's was the last remnent of when people made a difference.
_________________
Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood!
Last edited by Swamp Gas on Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:33 am; edited 1 time in total |
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mark sky
Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 3616
Location: SW coast of Oregon |
| AlMost
Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:31 am
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the most asstounding billy grame was
the SF west
it was not at the careocell?
it was not at fillmore west...
i can not remember, but it was in down town brown SF
on stage Donovan started, and JiMi finished
by rolling across the stage, eating the strings
ballons were loosed from the cealing nets
somehow, i am still alive
don't ask about the peaze.....dispensors
at the doors
probably experimental distribution |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
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Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:40 am
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The only time I was at the Fillmore West was in 1998, to see The Residents on Halloween Night.
Was the place you saw Jimi and Donova The Old Waldorf?
Saw Camel there once
Fillmore East...Was there many times
Emerson, Lake, and Palmer.....First night they played in the US
Jefferson Airplane
Earth Opera
Spirit
King Crimson (original lineup)
Curved Air
Gentle Giant
Yes
The Doors
Pink Floyd (early)
Led Zeppelin (first night in US)
Iron Butterfly
The Grateful Dead (woman sprayed "Electric Water" on everyone, then they played for what seemed like days)
and many others
The bathroom always was like walking into a Turkish Den
 
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Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood! |
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mark sky
Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 3616
Location: SW coast of Oregon |
| Avilon
Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:44 am
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below Van Ness
that was the place
with egg cartions pasted on the walls
to contain the sound
Pink Floyd played there and never recorded
as many a place i hAVE HERD THEM
the roof opened
the sound was
and little gingerbread men
could never put it together again
yet called their ex periment crazzyes |
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mark sky
Joined: 14 Oct 2000
Posts: 3616
Location: SW coast of Oregon |
| basikly
Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:50 am
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the mus ik was free
the world was free
as always
there were a few times when life expanded
yet consequences required
"more" |
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Swamp Gas
Joined: 06 Jun 2001
Posts: 4254
Location: On a Hill in the Lowlands |
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Wed Dec 22, 2004 5:59 am
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Was it The Carousel, Avalon Ballroom, or Winterland?
I know The Carousel was near Market and Van Ness.
Played at The Avalon once in early 80's with a Doors tribute band called "Strange Daze"
Miss those days, but the Spirit still lives on in us.
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Heard it from a pilot who spoke real gooooood! |
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