Turnkey tyranny

Edward Snowden and censoring Nature Bats Last

Seemorerocks

Today something happened that I was starting to fear wouldn't.

Edward Snowden walked out of Sheremyetovo airport and into a new life in the Russian capital.

I would say that he will need some pretty good security because I have little doubt that the US government and the CIA will be after revenge.

Still, Moscow is probably the safest place in the world at the moment because after 60+ years of cold war the Russians know their old foe well and have the means to protect him from Uncle Sam.

I have a friend here who, as a young man was a dissident in the Soviet Union. He knows his own country well.

He says that as bad as the old Soviet regime was they don't hold a candle to the people who now rule the world from New York and Washington.

He wasn't talking about Stalin. He was talking about Stalin's heirs.

By the time my friend was protesting (and preparing to emigrate) NOBODY believed the narrative any more - even people in the KGB would do their job and then go home to be another person.

People would make compromises and pay formal obeisance to the System while protesting in little, harmless ways.

The difference is, as another friend said to me once "we KNEW we were being lied to"

The tragedy is the majority of people, lulled to sleep through consumerism and a daily dose of trivia, escape, and lies, actually believe the narrative that is fed them.

So too do those who rule us.  I'm sure these are not cynical people - they believe in the Rightness of what they are doing.

Solzhenitsyn said at one stage that for evil to happened people have to believe in what they are doing. 

What of the small number of people who do NOT believe the narrative and to warn those who are willing to listen? 

What should they expect?

We should get a clue from the fate of Bradley Manning this week, from Julian Assange confined to the Ecuadorian embassy in London and from the determination of the Americans to punish Edward Snowden even if that means violating international law.

Two other events that will not make the news should also give us a clue.

Yesterday, Guy McPherson's website Nature Bats Last was blocked. If you try and enter the site a '403 Forbidden' message is all you'll get.

Of course there is the reasonable explanation that this is quite routine and there is nothing to get excited about.  A bit of paranoia perhaps?

Yes, but then there is another explanation as well.

This morning I was met by a message from Mike Ruppert that he was OFFline and had no internet - for the second time in two weeks.

Coincidentally, CollapseNet was offline for a while, concurrently.

Mike has his own story about what happened to him last time he was knocked him off the internet that persuaded him that this was the action of the NSA.

These are acts of harassment, warnings if you like, against people who dare to stand out from the crowd and tell the truth; to warn people and to encourage them to walk away from empire, to resist.

It's not hard to imagine how this might happen.  It need not be a decision made by the top brass in the Pentagon (although Mike Ruppert's experience in Venezuela indicates he did get the attention of some very highly placed people). Any goon sitting in an office in Denver, Colorado could get details of every communication, every word that Mike has uttered. It is not hard to imagine that they could get the local internet company to flick the switch for a while.

Or shut down Guy McPherson's site.

It is clear that the Constitution of the United States has effectively been replaced with the Patriot Act.

It is clear that, however egregious the acts of the Obama regime are, it is not yet a tyranny.

I believe that Julian Assange and Edward Snowden have it right when they talk of turnkey tyranny. 

The shredding of the constitution, the NDAA, NSA surveillance and the building of a surveillance state -  all this is preparing for the day when something happens that threatens the powers-that-be.

Then all they need to do is flick the switch.

UPDATE: Mike Ruppert is back online but Guy McPherson's site remains blocked
(12:00 NZT)