	id AA24140; Sat, 12 Nov 94 11:46:42 CST
Subject: Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2 Num. 78


              Conspiracy Nation -- Vol. 2  Num. 78
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                    ("Quid coniuratio est?")
 
 
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DAVE EMORY -- JULY 5, 1992
Observations on America's 216th Birthday
 
 
DAVE EMORY:
Well good evening. Welcome back, once again, to *One Step 
Beyond*. It's time now to begin the prepared portion of tonight's 
program.
 
Now again, this broadcast is gonna be a little bit different from 
programs in the past. This is gonna go into the archive shows as, 
I guess... I haven't decided what to title it. But perhaps, 
"Observations on the Nation's 216th Birthday." Perhaps in 
parentheses, "Dave Emory's Credo." Because you're gonna hear as 
close to my own credo as I'm capable of playing for you on the 
air.
 
Last night, with some friends, I was observing some fireworks 
from afar. In fact, I came up to Foothill College here and I 
stood up on the hill and was watching several different fireworks 
displays. And as I was doing that, a strange sort of 
melancholy/depression came over me. I was observing some families 
with children, and it struck me as strange and sort of tragic 
that here, the country was observing its 216th birthday and in 
fact, the country might very well have been observing its own 
wake.
 
This country is in bad, bad, *bad* shape. Bad economically, the 
world's biggest debtor nation. We were the world's biggest 
creditor nation from the end of World War I through 1980. Ronald 
Reagan, who came in promising to hold down government spending 
and reduce the deficits, did the opposite. We used to have more 
money owed *to* us than any other nation on earth; we now owe 
more money than any other nation on earth. More than all of the 
Third World countries combined.
 
The savings and loans have gone belly up and the S&L bailout is 
gonna cost more than the second world war would've cost us, had 
it been updated to 1992 dollars. There is enormous insecurity in 
the commercial banks; they may be next. The Office of Management 
and Budget has forecast that several might go under this year. 
And you and me, i.e., the taxpayers, are gonna have to foot the 
bill for that one.
 
There's enormous corporate debt, because of the leveraged buyouts 
and the go-go financing of the 1980s. There's enormous consumer 
debt. The insurance companies are in bad shape, and many of the 
money market funds are privately insured.
 
The U.S. is losing its industrial base. Corporations are moving 
manufacturing facilities overseas at the cost of jobs to the 
United States in order to take advantage of the low labor costs, 
particularly in areas of the Third World.
 
There are enormous, *enormous* things being done to our legal 
system. The "new improved" Supreme Court and federal judiciary 
are doing some really scarey, scarey things. A recent Supreme 
Court decision made it legal to burn crosses (this under the 
rubric of "freedom of expression"), something I do not agree 
with. And even more significantly, there have been a number of 
decisions which have limited, court decisions which have limited 
the writ of *habeas corpus*. Lord Blackstone, generally viewed as 
the top scholar or authority on Anglo-Saxon law, wrote centuries 
ago that any, any limitation of the writ of *habeas corpus* 
represented a fundamental elimination of personal freedom as we 
understand it. Well that's going on right now. The Supreme Court 
made a decision that a grand jury does not have to be shown 
information, evidence which would acquit someone facing the grand 
jury; that the person is gonna have to go to trial in order to 
gain acquital, even if the grand jury could demonstrate that the 
individual in question was innocent. That represents an 
*enormous* step.
 
Under the drug seizure laws, a person's property can be 
confiscated if the authorities, i.e. the police, *suspect* the 
individual of being a drug dealer. Now that is a *remarkable* 
situation. Eighty percent of the people that have had their 
property confiscated have not even been *accused* of crimes. I 
don't mean convicted, they were not even *accused* of crimes. And 
then the individual whose property has been seized has to *sue* 
the government in order to get it back. The rules of evidence in 
a civil case are much looser than in a criminal case. And beyond 
that, if you've had all your property seized, how the hell are 
you gonna sue? You've got no money. That is a staggering, 
*staggering* legal precedent, or perhaps *illegal* precedent 
would be a better term under the circumstances. And it's one 
which threatens *all* of us. So you can basically... The 
authorities could say that they suspect you of *anything* -- 
terrorism, or subversive activity, and confiscate your property. 
It represents a serious step down the road to fascism. And that 
is a direction that I felt the United States has been, I feel the 
United States has been headed in for a long, long time.
 
The feelings that I had upon watching the fireworks, again, were 
feelings of melancholy. I felt particularly sorry for some of the 
children, who were enjoying the fireworks displays much as I used 
to when I was a child. Those poor kids don't face much of a 
future, unless all of us, all of us, start pulling together and 
correcting the awfully grave situation that we face.
 
One of the things that enabled people in Nazi Germany to remain 
idle while their country was hurtling down towards fascism was 
that basically, people "went along with the program". They 
*conformed*. Nobody wanted to appear to be out of step with his 
or her companions. And ultimately that conformity led to all the 
monstrous excesses of the Third Reich. And one of the things that 
I think has bedeviled the United States -- and I mean to use the 
term "bedeviled" quite literally -- is the fact that Americans 
are "going along with the program". People are doing what their 
neighbors do, doing what their compatriots do, "keeping up with 
the Joneses" so to speak. Well all that's going to be required in 
this country for people to find themselves in the midst of total 
"zeig heil" fascism, is for people to "keep up with the Joneses". 
Because the only "Jones" they're going to wind up keeping up with 
is the late Reverend Jim of the Peoples' Temple. And as I've 
looked at in numerous *Radio Free America* [CN -- Not the program 
featuring Tom Valentine; a different program of the same name] #6 
and #7, there are substantive indications that the Peoples' 
Temple was a CIA operation.
 
I'm going to re-read ('cause I've read it periodically over the 
years) a section from a book called *They Thought They Were 
Free*, subtitled "The Germans: 1933-1945". The book was authored 
by Milton Mayer, published in softcover by the University of 
Chicago Press, and copyrighted 1955.
 
What Mayer is writing about is the observations of a number of 
Germans who lived during the rise of Hitler. Some of them were 
ardent pro-Nazis; some of them were opposed to Hitler, but they 
stood by, they conformed. And they did nothing. And that's what 
resulted in the rise of German fascism.
 
I'm going to re-read just a section of this particular portion of 
the book. It's called, "But Then It Was Too Late". These are the 
observations of a German college professor on what it was like to 
experience the rise of the Third Reich. I'm not gonna read the 
whole section that I usually read, but just a section of it.
 
And one of the things that's important to take note of here is 
the role of conformity in the rise of fascism.
 
Reading now, from *They Thought They Were Free* -- and again, 
this is a German college professor speaking here:
 
  You see (my colleague went on), one doesn't see exactly 
  where, or how, to move. Believe me, this is true. Each act, 
  each occasion, is worse than the last. But only a little 
  worse. You wait for the next, and the next. You wait for one, 
  great, shocking occasion, thinking that others, when such a 
  shock comes, will join with you in resisting somehow. You 
  don't want to act, or even talk, alone. You don't want to "go 
  out of your way to make trouble."
 
  Why not? Well you are not in the habit of doing it. And it's 
  not just fear, fear of standing alone, that restrains you. It 
  is also genuine uncertainty.
 
  Uncertainty is a very important factor. Instead of decreasing 
  as time goes on, it grows. Outside, in the streets, in the 
  general community, "everyone" is happy. One hears no protest 
  and certainly sees none. You know, in France or Italy there 
  would be slogans against the government painted on walls and 
  fences. In Germany, outside the great cities, perhaps there 
  is not even this.
 
  In the university community, in your own community, you speak 
  privately to your colleagues, some of whom certainly feel as 
  you do. But what do they say? They say, "It's not so bad," or 
  "You're seeing things," or "You're an alarmist."
 
  And you *are* an alarmist. You're saying that *this*, must 
  lead to *this*, and you can't prove it. These are the 
  beginnings, yes, but how do you know for sure when you don't 
  know the end? And how do you know, or even surmise, the end?
 
  On the one hand your enemies -- the law, the regime, the party 
  -- intimidate you. On the other, your colleagues "pooh pooh" 
  you as pessimistic or even neurotic. You are left with your 
  close friends, who are naturally people who have always 
  thought as you have. But your friends are fewer now. Some 
  have drifted off somewhere, or submerged themselves in their 
  work. You no longer see as many as you did at meetings or 
  gatherings. Informal groups become smaller, attendance drops 
  off in little organizations, and the organizations themselves 
  wither.
 
  Now, in small gatherings of your oldest friends, you feel 
  that you are talking to yourselves, that you are isolated 
  from the reality of things. This weakens your confidence 
  still further, and serves as a further deterrent to... to 
  what? It is clear all the time that if you are going to do 
  anything, you must make an occasion to do it; and then, you 
  are obviously a troublemaker. So you wait, and you wait.
 
  But the one, great, shocking occasion, when tens or hundreds 
  or thousands will join with you, never comes! *That's* the 
  difficulty.
 
  If the last and worst act of the whole regime had come 
  immediately after the first and smallest, thousands, yes 
  *millions*, would have been sufficiently shocked -- if, let 
  us say, the gassing of the Jews in '43 had come immediately 
  after the "German Firm" stickers on the windows of non-Jewish 
  shops in '33. But of course, this isn't the way it happens. 
  In between, come all the hundreds of little steps, some of 
  them imperceptible, each of them preparing you not to be 
  shocked by the next. Step "C" is not so much worse than step 
  "B". And if you did not make a stand at step "B", why should 
  you at step "C"? And so on, to step "D".
 
  And one day, too late, your principles (if you were ever 
  sensible of them) all rush in upon you. The burden of self- 
  deception has grown too heavy. And some minor incident -- in 
  my case, my little boy, hardly more than a baby, saying, "Jew 
  swine" -- collapses it all at once and you see that 
  *everything*, everything has changed, and changed completely 
  under your nose. The world you live in, your nation, your 
  people, is not the world you were born in at all. The *forms* 
  are all there, all untouched, all re-assuring: the houses, 
  the shops, the jobs, the meal times, the visits, the 
  concerts, the cinema, the holidays. But the spirit (which you 
  never noticed because you made the life-long mistake of 
  identifying *it* with the forms) is changed. Now you live in 
  a world of hate, and fear. And the people who hate and fear 
  do not even know it themselves. When everyone is transformed, 
  no one is transformed. Now you live in a system that rules 
  without responsibility even to God.
 
  The system itself could not have intended this in the 
  beginning. But in order to sustain itself, it was compelled 
  to go all the way. You have gone almost all the way yourself.
 
  Life is a continuing process, a flow, not a succession of 
  acts and events at all. It has flowed to a new level, 
  carrying you with it, without any effort on your part. On 
  this new level you live, you have been living more 
  comfortably every day -- with new morals and new principles. 
  You have accepted things that you would not have accepted 5 
  years ago, a year ago, things that your father, even in 
  Germany, could not have imagined. Suddenly it all comes down, 
  all at once. You see what you are, what you have done. Or 
  more accurately, what you haven't done. For that was all that 
  was required of most of us -- that we do nothing.
 
                   [...to be continued...]
 
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Aperi os tuum muto, et causis omnium filiorum qui pertranseunt.
Aperi os tuum, decerne quod justum est, et judica inopem et 
  pauperem.                    -- Liber Proverbiorum  XXXI: 8-9 

 Brian Francis Redman    bigxc@prairienet.org    "The Big C"
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"Justice" = "Just us" = "History is written by the assassins."
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