Italian Fascist Headquarters in Rome
Si! Ja! Ya! Da! Oui! Yes!
Sir, Yes Sir!
Yes sir, yes sir, three bags full! Sir!
LANL, despite our high security has been an open society in many ways, but this has been shifting significantly over the last decade.
In this post, the Good Doctor summarizes Naomi Wolfe's 10 Steps to Close an Open Society. For the knuckleheads in the crowd (and there seem to be a few who simply cannot grasp the relevance of this kind of post to LANL) we also describe this relevance from our own point of view. Collectively our audience (what appears to be a steady 100+ daily readers) have a lot more detailed evidence of these steps being taken locally. We wonder if anyone but the hecklers and sycophants will speak up. (Hecklers and Sycophants are still welcome of course, but we will tease you mercilessly!)
10 STEPS TO CLOSE AN OPEN SOCIETY by Naomi Wolfe
1. Invoke a terrifying internal and external enemy
Internal:
* Spies (goes with the territory)
* Cowboys and Buttheads (Thanks Pete, thanks a lot!)
* Polygraphers
* Piss Collectors
* Incompetent and Self-Serving Middle-Management
.
.
.
External:
* Evil Enemy Nations who want our secrets
* Evil Terrorists who want our secrets
* Greedy and Incompetent Bechtel who want ???
* Executive Branch who wants to give us to their corporate friends
* Legislative Branch who wants to shut us down because we are "evil"
and/or give the golden goose to their corporate friends
.
.
.
2. Create a gulag
* We already have the fences and guards.
* When will we quit worrying that the automated badge readers won't let us in and start worrying that they won't let us back out?
* Wen Ho Lee spent a year in Solitary *before* they proved anything (or not)...
* When will the results of our Urine and Poly tests (false positives and all) be used to prosecute the implied crimes related (illegal drug use, mishandling/misreporting/misthinking)?
3. Develop a thug caste
* Internally, our middle-to-upper management often fit this description.
* We have some powerful bureaucracies in the lab that fit this as well.
* Our guards have been pretty careful to avoid this image in the past, will this last?
* New "crimes" (anti-policy activities) may provide the thug cast new opportunity to exercise their (metaphorical) sappers, batons, tear gas, and stun guns. These new policies include drug-testing and searching of private vehicles (don't shop over the lunch hour and leave a bottle of wine in your car... that is technically against policy... alcohol on lab property), don't even pretend to take a picture with a personal camera or cell phone on lab property (say of the 3 pissmobiles lined up all red-white-and-blue), be in your office by 8 and don't leave it for 9-10 hours excepting the required minimum 30 minute lunch... the list goes on and the "thugs" are standing by for their orders to "enforce" them.
* Bechtel is a "privately held corporation". They can hide behind a different mask than DOE to protect their potential thuggery.
4. Set up an internal surveillance system
* This comes with the territory.
* But it can be amped up and abused.
* And the various new policies being put in place seem to support that potential abuse.
* Nanos encouraged us to weed out the Buttheads and Cowboys sitting next to us... sound like Fascist Italy and Germany and a few hundred other places?
5. Harass citizens' groups
* Notice how unwelcome any dissent in this environment is.
* The list is too long to put here.
6. Engage in arbitrary detention and release
* If you don't show for your piss test in 30 minutes (by policy) you are considered to have failed and you are fired. If you show and cannot produce, you are not allowed to leave and after 2 hours are "escorted" to see a doctor to determine the reason.
* During Wen Ho Lee, NEST years, people were taken from their homes in the middle of the night for Polygraphs. Maybe they could have refused, but I don't know if we know that. Did anyone refuse? How did it turn out?
*Wait until YOU find yourself on a no-fly (terrorist watch?) list because you:
A) attended some dissenting rally
B) spoke up in public (including a blog)
C) read a blog (not trying to chase anyone off here!)
7. Target key individuals
Threaten civil servants, artists and academics with job loss if they don't
toe the line.
* We might *all* be considered "key individuals". The abuse we are suffering (including the implied threat of it) might very well be little more than this Step being taken in a larger arena. Big as we feel in some ways here, we are "small potatoes" to the larger forces at work.
8. Control the press
* This is an important feature of these blogs... to gather relevant press information, to vet it against our own experience, to discuss it' s implications... and to notice what is NOT being published, what the biases are, etc.
9. Dissent equals treason
* There are voices in the commentary on our blogs that seem to precisely say this. LANS policy on misuse of government resources could easily be used (and may already) to slam the lid on people even glancing at these blogs on "company time and equipment". This might be well within their policy but their motivation is surely to intimidate potential dissenters.
* Very few bloggers (Pat the Dog, Pinky, The Brain, Strangelove Ourselves, MaskedCalvin, Oppy, Feynman, et alii) seem to be too excited about exposing their "true names" and few of the commentors seem to be interested in this. Hmmm???
* Doug, Brad and Eric are the only ones to speak up in-persona. Brad is the only one within immediate reach of LANS/Bechtel and as it has been pointed out, he only has a little to lose by this self-exposure compared to say, an early-mid career employee.
10. Suspend the rule of law
* By accepting a job and a security clearance, many of us have (voluntarily?) given up some rights explicitly and implicitly. How many of these they add as a condition for employment or clearance (adding drug-testing and polygraph screening, ...) and the (increasing?) consequences of refusing or of not passing (different than failing) are a close parallel to this. Get us to waive the "rule of law" around privacy and habeus corpus and ???
This Post is framed around the 10 steps in:
10 STEPS TO CLOSE AN OPEN SOCIETY by Naomi Wolfe
* Naomi Wolf's ‘The End of America: A Letter of Warning to a Young Patriot’
will be published by Chelsea Green in September.
6 comments:
This is paranoia, nothing like this is happening!
{hands over ears singing lalalaLaLaLaLALaLALaLAAAAaAaAaAAA!!!!}
I tried to read that Naomi Wolfe girl when she published those Feminist books (The pretty myth and those other ones?). My wife said I wasn't getting any if I didn't "catch up" a little. It was all feminist claptrap.
What does *she* know about government or fascism... or you either!
These 10 steps are just a misunderstanding of real and necessary steps required to make us *safe* from the people who hate our freedom that will follow us home if we interfere with the decider and make him stop supporting the troops by bringing them home before the oilfields are all under control of Halliburton and before Blackwater can take over security properly.
You handle our most sensitive secrets and important weapons against terror, you *should* have to work with a polygraph strapped to your testicles, catheterized to obtain a continuous stream of urine with a good bitch-slapping every few days to remind you of your butthead-cowboy place. In fact, you need to invent a brain-scan machine for us so we can monitor your every thought, that way if you get out of line we can fry you through the same wires. Besides if you are going to be difficult about it we can just record your brain and put it in a more cooperative person.
You stupid, liberal, pinko, commie, egghead fags want to see my way of life destroyed. You want to pry my guns (all 50 of them) from my cold dead (and clutching) hands, you want to tell Wal-Mart that they can't lock those nasty Mixscans inside over night while they clean and stock, they don't belong here anyway. Let's build a fence and shoot at them while they try to climb over cuz they hate our freedoms and our decider, besides *somebody* has to do our dirty jobs cuz we sure don't.
You are stupid and you stink since you don't take baths like I do (once a week whether I need it or not).
And my wife says you are stupid too (don't you honey? honey? where did you get off to? honey? Put that gun down... it's loaded and set on automatic... honey!!!!!!!!!!! ! ! ! !!!!!!! ! ! ! !!!!!! ! ! !! ! ! .... . . .. . . . )
Juvenile and dull and lame.
Nobody cares about this stuff, just shut up and quit whining and do your job.
How do you expect Bechtel and BushCheney to squeeze more golden eggs out of you if you are squealing and whining all of the time?
I lived through those times. It was a good part of the reason I, along with dozens of immigrants from Europe were willing to risk our souls developing the unthinkable weapon.
To see the same fascist activities right here in my beloved country makes me turn over in my grave.
Thanks Naomi... You said it well.
- Oppy
YOU said it well Oppy.
- Doc
The Voices say, "Stay home today...and clean the guns ..."
But what about my insecure job, my frozen salary, my shrinking benefits, my (heh, heh) 401k "retirement"?
Still, The Voices are getting louder ... more insistent ... more ... believable ...
But there's the mortgage ... and the loan for the Hummer ...
Ahhhhhhh!!!!
The Prozac prescription has run out ...
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