A MUST READ — LARRY ROMANOFF -- The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil Unrest

 

The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil Unrest

By    Larry Romanoff

Preparing For Civil War?

US authorities have for decades become increasingly prepared for mass civil disturbances resulting from government and corporate attacks on American society. We can recall that in the early 1980s the Hidden State launched its open war on the middle class by the savage FED-induced recession and the unilateral revocation of the social contract that had existed since 1946. At that time, the US government had already anticipated widespread public unrest, fully expecting mass protests and riots, and had made preparations to deal with them in the form of internment camps. In a real sense, the government had prepared for another civil war.

Like most of the “Great Transformation”, it began during Reagan’s reign with what was called “Rex 84”, an abbreviation for Readiness Exercise 1984, a plan by the US government to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest. This master plan involved the FBI, Department of Defense, the Emergency Measures group, the Secret Service, the CIA and altogether 34 government agencies.

My God and My Glock – The Theology of Guns in America

My God and My Glock – The Theology of Guns in America

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, January 20, 2020

Region: USA

Theme: Law and Justice, Police State & Civil Rights

The Glock is a series of  semi-automatic pistols designed Austrian manufacturer Glock Ges.m.b.H.

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According to Americans, God is a really pro-gun dude. In fact, one pastor of a New Bethel Christian Church gave a sermon where he announced that “God and guns were part of the foundation of this country.”, and invited his entire congregation to wear their guns to church to “celebrate our rights as Christian Americans”.

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Most US states permit the carrying of loaded and concealed weapons in churches. This has become a crusade where one’s belief in God and His Holy Gospels are at stake, with one minister claiming “When someone tells me that being a Christian and carrying firearms are contradictions, that’s just bull—“.

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In an article that Watching America translated from the German Die Tageszeitung was this passage:

Binary People in an Analogue World. What is an “Authoritarian Environment”? China versus The West

Binary People in an Analogue World. What is an “Authoritarian Environment”? China versus The West

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, December 31, 2019

Theme: Police State & Civil Rights

One day in Rome, I asked the policeman, “Is it okay if I park my car here, partially blocking the emergency entrance to the hospital? I just want to go across the street for a coffee for a few minutes.” And he said, “Sure, but leave the keys in it in case I have to move it quickly.”

Italy is not renowned as an authoritarian environment. It is so interesting to observe Americans, and indeed all those in Western Right-Wing politically-conservative societies like Canada, the UK and Australia, gleefully condemn other nations as ‘authoritarian’ when the US is by far the most authoritarian country in the world, excepting only a few theocracies like Saudi Arabia and Israel. The Americans condemn politically Left-Wing, socialist nations as authoritarian when they are in fact the antithesis of authoritarianism, and where the authoritarian mentality flourishes only in a religion-based Right-Wing society. It is only these places and peoples who live in a black and white world that are authoritarian by definition. The fact that Americans have this understanding exactly backwards is due 50% to propaganda programming and 50% to native ignorance.

The Criminalisation of Protest in America

The Criminalisation of Protest in America

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, December 29, 2019

Region: USA

Theme: Law and Justice, Police State & Civil Rights

The US today freely interferes in the governments of so many other nations, fueling unrest and financing violence, seeking to impose on these countries a peculiarly American form of “open government” which it can control, but has always severely restricted any such activity either suspected or real, on its own soil. We have already read about the Un-American Activities Act [1] and the extensive government policies to prohibit political activism or promote other forms of government or capitalism in those years, and I briefly mentioned the Sedition Act passed by President Woodrow Wilson‘s government in the early 1900s. [2]

This latter legislation was directed against all Americans and used to firmly silence criticism of government policies. Under this Act, the government engaged in countless illegal searches and seizures of property and imprisoned tens of thousands of US citizens simply for criticising Wilson’s desire for war. The authorities organised gangs to regularly intimidate and beat up citizens, unrelated to the propaganda war on the Germans. Wilson admitted openly that many of his laws and activities were unconstitutional, but often protected himself with claims of national security.

In 1940, under President Franklin Roosevelt, the US created a law known as the Smith Act [3] which made it a crime in the US to “knowingly or willfully advocate, abet, advise, or teach the … desirability or propriety of overthrowing … any government in the United States”. And for the following decades the government prosecuted thousands of individuals who proposed alternatives to the US system of capitalism, or promoted any form of socialism or attempted to form another political party. The act was exclusively intended to suppress any and all forms of political dissent in the United States. Many people were imprisoned or disappeared simply for publishing or circulating pamphlets or articles that discussed alternative political or economic views.

A Brief Introduction to Tibet

A Brief Introduction to Tibet

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, December 26, 2019

Region: Asia

Theme: History, Police State & Civil Rights

Westerners appear to have a willful blindness about Tibet, with strong opinions often held by those who haven’t been there and whose knowledge appears gleaned from misguided propaganda in the popular press. The Western media have imposed on our imaginations an image of a fabled theocracy where a reincarnated god rules over a peaceful people spinning prayer wheels in a pastoral idyll. The West’s fascination with Tibet has turned it into a mythic place upon which we project our dreams and our own spiritual fantasies. The result is what I call the Shangri-La syndrome (1), millions of Westerners choosing to believe in an attractive but wholly mythological, romantic fantasy which has never existed.

The first adjective that would come to mind about Tibet is ‘desolate’. Those who have been in the far North beyond the Arctic Circle, or above the tree line in the North American Rocky Mountains or the European Alps, will have some idea of the Tibetan landscape – which is 10,000 feet above the tree line. There is nothing hospitable about the isolated conditions or climate in Tibet and few of us would live there by choice. Tibet is a high-altitude desert with little oxygen, almost no rainfall, and harsh temperatures. Only sparse numbers of the hardiest animals can survive there and, in much of the land, the severe climate means that nothing, or almost nothing, can grow. No one in Tibet has ever seen a tree or even a bush.

Arbitrary Law Enforcement in the US

Arbitrary Law Enforcement in the US

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, December 05, 2019

Region: USA

Theme: Law and Justice, Police State & Civil Rights

Glenn Greenwald wrote that “the most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The US administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice”. This is the power of a dictator. (1)

Paul Craig Roberts put it very well when he wrote,”The US government claims it is unaccountable if proceedings for controversial actions are secret, that if something is “secret”, the government needn’t prove that it’s legal.

This has created a body of US law, the ultimate effect of which has been to completely insulate the executive branch from legal challenges and judicial review for anything it deems a national security matter. If the White House declares any policy a classified national security secret, no one will ever be able to have standing to challenge it before a court of law. From this, nobody has standing to sue in court and the government avoids any ruling on the constitutionality of its actions. (2) The American system of government is totalitarian at its core, what NSA employee William Binney called a “turnkey totalitarian state”. (3) (4)

It is true that the US President can imprison for life, or execute, any individual in any country with a complete absence of evidence, charges, lawyers or courts, simply on his whim, without any recourse. But it goes much deeper and farther than this, well beyond matters of national security or terrorism, extending to the daily actions of life, and most especially directed against those who are critical of the government, who investigate government malfeasance and who publish revelations of official crimes. But perhaps the real danger is not that the elected Congress has been omitted from the loop, but it is those of secret government rather than the President who are making these decisions.

The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil Unrest

The Next American Revolution? Anticipated Civil Unrest

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, November 27, 2019

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy, History, Militarization and WMD, Police State & Civil Rights, US NATO War Agenda

Preparing For Civil War?

US authorities have for decades become increasingly prepared for mass civil disturbances resulting from government and corporate attacks on American society. We can recall that in the early 1980s the Hidden State launched its open war on the middle class by the savage FED-induced recession and the unilateral revocation of the social contract that had existed since 1946. At that time, the US government had already anticipated widespread public unrest, fully expecting mass protests and riots, and had made preparations to deal with them in the form of internment camps. In a real sense, the government had prepared for another civil war.

Like most of the “Great Transformation”, it began during Reagan’s reign with what was called “Rex 84”, an abbreviation for Readiness Exercise 1984, a plan by the US government to detain large numbers of American citizens in case of civil unrest. This master plan involved the FBI, Department of Defense, the Emergency Measures group, the Secret Service, the CIA and altogether 34 government agencies.

Economic Upheaval and the Rise of the US Police State

Economic Upheaval and the Rise of the US Police State

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, November 22, 2019

Region: USA

Theme: Global Economy, History, Police State & Civil Rights

By the end of the Vietnam War, US corporations were no longer competitive in the world economy and were losing the bulk of their domestic market to imports, leading to de-industrialisation and the large-scale relocation of manufacturing to Asia, primarily China. Since then, the US has experienced large and increasing trade deficits regardless of currency exchange rates or other external conditions. With its military adventures financed entirely on debt, the US also began running increasingly larger budget deficits, with increasingly fewer funds for public programs like social welfare or education, or to maintain or rebuild its already-dilapidated physical infrastructure.

After the US abandoned the gold standard and unilaterally scuttled the Bretton-Woods agreement, debt financing for the Vietnam War resulted in a massive expansion of the money supply, leading to a decade of ruinous inflation. It doesn’t appear widely known or understood that during that single decade the US dollar depreciated by about 95%. As one measure, in 1971 a typical 3-bedroom home in an attractive suburb cost around $25,000 while ten years or so later that same home was priced at around $250,000.

History of America’s Labor Movement

History of America’s Labor Movement

By Larry Romanoff

Global Research, October 17, 2019

Region: USA

Theme: History, Police State & Civil Rights

In contrast to most other industrialised nations, the US has never accepted the concept of labor unions, which were always denigrated in the media as a kind of dangerous socialism that would exploit workers. But it was always true that it was capitalism that exploited workers and socialism that attempted to protect them. Thanks to the media, most Americans today still have this understanding backwards from reality. Neither the US government nor its corporations have ever held workers or employees in much regard. There was a brief period after the Second World War during which enlightened corporate self-interest driven by fear produced a rather benign labor landscape, but that illusion was dispelled by the 1980s when the numbers of industrial private-sector workers with any kind of union fell by about 70%, largely through the harsh capitalist and legislative climate. The majority of American workers still wanted labor unions, but the anti-union conspiracy was too powerful.

The FBI infiltrated labor unions and installed corrupt officials in attempts to destroy them from the inside. When those attempts failed and labor organisers showed signs of being successful, they were either simply murdered or framed and convicted of crimes, and often executed. The US government has for all of its history acted with absolute disregard for the law, whenever the law became inconvenient to the purpose at hand. One of these purposes was the crushing of labor, where the government frequently not only fabricated criminal charges against union organisers but convicted them under laws that had never existed. In one famous case, labor organisers trying to create a mine workers union in Pennsylvania were charged by the state with murder and conspiracy. When these charges failed to hold, the organisers and about a dozen union members were hanged for “obstinacy”.