About a week ago I wrote on my Blog that after four and a half years of reading news stories that scare the hell out of me and everyone else I know, I would be quite content to just have things back the way they were before 911 - you know, some good news, some bad news, a little give, a little take, and plenty of activity moving us toward global peace and justice.

That was our world then. Remember?

Today we are in a world where "Endless War" is our lot, and like beasts of burden, we are expected to take this on our backs, and not complain. Our masters have made the mess we are in and we are supposed to be willing to just go in and kill other people whose masters have made the mess they are in and not ask questions.

I'm sorry to be so unobliging, but my children and my children's children will have to live in whatever world we leave them and for that reason, I am highly motivated to speak out and continue to do so until there is no more breath left in me. But some days it is particularly hard. Today was one of them.

First of all, there was the news item yesterday about the teacher who was suspended for telling the truth. Let's take a look at this for just a minute:

High school in turmoil over teacher's remarks

[...] Bennish's statements ran the gamut.

He said that in Bush's State of the Union speech, the president was, in effect, "threatening the whole planet."

"Sounds a lot like the things that Adolf Hitler used to say - we're the only ones who are right, everyone else is backwards," Bennish said.

He told students he was "not saying that Bush and Hitler are exactly the same."

"But," he said, "there's some eerie similarities to the tones that they use."

He talked extensively about U.S. foreign policy and capitalism. At one point, he questioned Bush's stated belief that democracy is the solution to bloodshed in the Middle East.

"Who is probably the single most violent nation on planet Earth?" Bennish asked. "The United States of America, and we're a democracy - quote, unquote."

On capitalism, he questioned whether it did anything to provide "everybody in the world with the basic needs that they need."

"Do you see how this economic system is at odds with humanity, at odds with caring and compassion?" he asked.

At the end of his talk, Bennish told students he was "not in any way implying that you should agree with me. I don't even know if I'm necessarily taking a position. But what I'm trying to do is get you to think about these issues more in-depth." [...]

But Derek Belloni, who once had Bennish as a teacher, believes high school students are too impressionable and that the teacher's views are inappropriate.

"He is making interpretation as facts," said Belloni, an 18-year-old senior. "He's preaching politics in geography class. You don't teach math in an English class."

"He wants these kids to become liberals," he said.

Wow! It makes it sound like "Liberals" is a really bad word, like "serial killer" or "cannibal." Just to make the point, let's look at a snippet of another story along the same line, a teacher dealing with the reality of the Neocon Administration honestly:

Bush goes on 'trial' in Morris - Parsippany students confront issues of terrorism and war

The former sheriff opined: "Those are young, impressionable minds those people have control over. We don't need those liberal academics doing what they're doing. I find that offensive," said Fox, a Republican who graduated from Parsippany High School.

There's more. It seems that quite a few students protested and the kid who created the furor (a psychopath in training?) has been doing the talk shows:

Students Protest After Teacher Suspended for Bush-Hitler Comments

The recording was made by 16-year-old sophomore Sean Allen the day after the president's speech. Allen said he had been disturbed by "political rants" he heard in Bennish's class.

"So these kids are going to have notes on why George Bush is related to Hitler and why the state of Israel was founded on violence and terrorism," Allen told KHOW Radio Wednesday when he went public with his tape.

"These kids are going to have notes on this and accept that as fact."

The abysmal ignorance of the majority of Americans is literally stunning.

We notice, first of all, that the word "liberal" is used by these people as though it were a bad word - a nasty "label." We also notice that these "anti-liberals" object strenuously to the word "nazi" or to Bush being compared to Hitler. Apparently they are so ignorant of history that they don't know that the Nazis, too, were rabidly "anti-liberal." They, too, used the term "liberal" as if it were a bad word.

People often wonder how the Nazis actually came to power in a civilized and modern country when you consider that the Nazi regime was among the most criminal, barbarous and immoral that the world has ever witnessed (until now, that is). The fact is that the Nazis made huge efforts to present themselves as the defenders of conventional social and moral values just like Bush and the Neocons do. They presented themselves as guarantors of public decency and law and order just like Bush and the Neocons do. The Nazis suppressed homosexuals and pornography just as Bush and his coterie of Christocrats seek to do.

The daily reality of the Third Reich was a complex mixture of fear and bribery, terror and concessions, barbarism and appeals to conventional moral values which were employed in order to gain and maintain a grip on German society. Does that sound familiar?

Nazi activists gloried in violence and hate though their targets were Jews, Poles, Gypsies and Blacks. Among their anti-Jewish propaganda images were photographs of Jews consorting with Black nightclub entertainers as though this were the epitome of Evil. There were also cartoons of Jews with bags of money they had "stolen" from respectable families who were depicted as homeless and in rags; there were even cartoons of Jewish intellectuals being arrested out of classrooms where they were teachers. We can easily picture the good German householder saying exactly what the retired sheriff said above: "Those are young, impressionable minds those people have control over. We don't need those liberal academics doing what they're doing. I find that offensive."

We can also easily picture young Mr. Sean Allen as a member of Hitler's Youth saying: "So these kids are going to have notes on why Hitler is a murderer and why the Nazi party was founded on violence and terrorism. These kids are going to have notes on this and accept that as fact."

Wow! What a concept! The Truth as Fact!

Long before Germany was officially declared a one-party state, open political dissent had come to an end by virtue of the attacks of such individuals who had the power and support of the Nazis behind them even if the official Nazi party did not openly - at first - use hardline tactics.

Once a government is committed to the principle of silencing the voice of opposition, it has only one way to go, and that is down the path of increasingly repressive measures, until it becomes a source of terror to all its citizens and creates a country where everyone lives in fear. --Harry S. Truman

Another interesting thing about Nazis was their extreme hatred of Communists. Communists and Liberals. Keep in mind that Communism as it eventually came to be practiced was nothing at all like the "theory." The Communism of the Soviet Bloc countries was little more than State Corporatism. It could even be said that it was a variation on Fascism.

The communists of Germany tried to protest the intensification of the Fascist dictatorship in the city of Breslau (now Wroclaw, Poland) one morning. No sooner had the peaceful protesters assembled than about 500 Nazi Storm Troopers marched through the square. They tried to provoke the protesters to violence. In Breslau, violence did finally erupt when the police began firing on the protesters, and this was used as a reason to ban the Communists and all rallies as a "threat to public order."

That evening, the Nazis celebrated their victory over the Communists by staging a huge demonstration of their own. Over 50,000 people took part in the center of Breslau. The square of the largest city in Eastern Germany became a sea of swastika flags and marching columns of brown-shirted storm troopers.

The Nazis didn't, at first, use direct state violence against their opponents. They used propaganda and people like Sean Allen and retired sheriff Fox, who later got a pat on the head and maybe a nice cushy position as a Storm Trooper - about the only place left where people had work and food.

Anybody who thinks that the US isn't heading in that direction is dreaming. You don't even have to read the news to know it, just check your bank balance.

In philosophical terms, the word "Liberal" could be used to describe both the Leftists and the Communists of Germany. The Leftists of Germany were known as "Social Democrats." These were largely trade unions, worker's organizations struggling for fair wages and medical care and so on.

There was tacit encouragement by the Nazi government for the violence against the "Left." Later, as the Nazi party solidified its position, leading members of the left-wing parties were arrested as the various police forces and Nazi formations began to coordinate their activities. Attempts by the Social Democrats or Communists to hold election rallies were broken up with growing frequency. The left-wing press was suppressed, and by the time of the elections in Germany, violence from such individuals as Sean Allen, retired sheriff Fox, and their ilk (in the guise of Brown Shirts, Storm Troopers), as well as police repression, had combined to drive the Liberal Left from public view.

After the election, the Nazis turned their attention to rooting out and destroying the supporters of the now underground Left and Liberal parties. The once impressive supports of German Social Democracy, which had withstood Bismarck's attacks for fifty years, were destroyed piecemeal.

The same is being done in the U.S.

The campaign against the Left and Liberals was all the more effective because of its ambiguous nature. There was no single, decisive confrontation. It was carried out both within and outside of the existing legal structure just as we see happening in the U.S. today. The Leftists and Liberals essentially faced what were "spontaneous" attacks from "marauding bands" of Nazis just as marauding bands of Bushistas roam the schools, workplaces, internet and the streets of the U.S. These types of attack are quite effective because, essentially, the power of the State stands behind them even if it is not an "official policy".

Analysts suggest today that even if the Left and the Communists had been united, they would not have prevailed because once the Nazis and their conservatives controlled the State organs of power, as do Bush and the Neocons. I should note that the Neocons also control the vote counting, so you can just toss out any dreams of taking Congress back in the fall!

If the history of the Nazi seizure of power teaches us anything, it is that there is little the Liberals can do to stop a powerful Right Wing movement that has mass support, allies in powerful places (such as the media), and control of the repression apparatus of the State.

It should be added that the Third Reich was only able to establish and maintain itself by being in a perpetual state of emergency - under threat from "terrorists" of the day who were Jews and "Liberals." It seems that a liberal then and now is anyone who values human life in all its variations.

The bottom line is that these poor, ignorant, duped U.S. citizens who think they are so right and rightous in their anger that someone has come out and said Bush is like Hitler (he is) and whether or not the U.S. is following the same path Hitler took Germany down (it is), by using the word "Liberal" as they do, they only display their abysmal ignorance and state of complete brainwashing; because, when you start flaming Liberals, Communists and the "Left," the only conclusion that can be drawn is that you are a Fascist - a Nazi.

So, why is it so hard today? Remember, that's what I said at the beginning?

When I wrote my blog posts on COINTELPRO I knew that it was going to trigger a new wave of such activity against us though I have enough experience to know that it would very likely get a lot more subtle and devious.

Well, today a member of QFG reported the following:

I posted the Flying Fish article on Jeff Well's forum. I am quite surprised to see that an admin, using the name 'Rigorous
Intuition' (apparently Jeff himself) immediately suggested that believing that there was no passenger plane at the Pentagon was
COINTELPRO:

I've posted a number of times on the blog about the mistake of constructing 9/11 "truth" upon the sand of physical evidence. The "no plane" hypothesis (more than a hypothesis for many; more like an unforgiving creed) is one of the most egregious missteps. One I believe encouraged, if not led, by COINTELPRO.

He later quotes a witness. Weird that he thinks that witnesses are more reliable than physical evidence!

I also found strange that someone else wrote:

Hi all: I would urge everyone to very carefully investigate information coming from signs-of-the-times.org. I'm not accusing anyone of anything but rather suggesting due dilligence before accepting what is posted there. I'm also not trying to single out the person who started this thread--I've seen others link to them as well. Just consider this a friendly tip. Honestly

We knew it was coming: that the claims and counter-claims would start flying just to muddy the waters. I can only suggest to the reader that you read my articles on COINTELPRO carefully, that you read all that is on our websites completely, go to the Web Archive and see how long we have been on the web, what we have been saying from day one as is archived there, determine the overall picture based on data collection and let us be known by our fruits.

Beyond that, when I read the above comment that may have come from Jeff Wells, an individual whose work I have long admired and respected, my jaw just dropped: "the mistake of constructing 9/11 "truth" upon the SAND of PHYSICAL EVIDENCE?!

Holy GEEZUS! It's worse than I thought.

You see, you don't have to be COINTELPRO or even a Nazi to do the work of both. Many well-intentioned Germans did the work for Hitler. Why? Read Ponerology for the answer. It's all there for those who care to learn.

I know how it works, but it doesn't make it any easier.

And that is why today is harder than most.