@mimi

Whatchama-archy?

A lot of people will substitute whatever words they think they do understand for oligarchy or plutocracy. "Yeah, I'm against atheists too!"

if the words of Oligarchy and Plutocracy shouldn't be replaced with something that is more descriptive for the common little people to get attracted to and vote for. Rule of the rich... I just experienced what felt to me like being rich yesteryears, feels now like being poor today. So, the devil is in the detail of the words used, I guess. I like the idea of a national referendum process.

And darn it I want the longtime legal permanent residents be able to vote in that referendum. They work here, pay taxes here, raise their kids here and serve in the military to be used as canon fodder for the purposes of profit and power of the Oligarchs and Plutocrats. So, we have something to say in that and should be able to vote in a national referendum, expecially if it deals with US wars on foreeign soils.

@gulfgal98 @Craig234

I bet those 24 states, together, represent a majority of electors and seats in Congress. A multi-state, purely grassroots referendum of, for and by the People would finally set us on the right path, IMO. Of course, as usual, TPTB would try as hard as heck to confuse people with their mass media talking points and creation of alternative, Trojan horse referendums, but I think the People are getting wiser every day.

In Florida, citizens can can place an initiative on the ballot with some restrictions. But when I went to look up how it is done, I was surprised that only 24 states allow for citizens to place an initiative on the ballot. IMO, what would need to be done is a fifty state effort to place the same initiative on the ballots of every state. The problem would be logistics, especially for those states that do not provide for citizen generated initiatives.

#3 You're right that progressives need to improve the words for issues. For example, the right hides
Goldman Sachs scandals behind mom and pop shops by using the same word 'capitalism'.

For the plutocrats, FDR used "economic royals".

Not bad.

@The Aspie Corner

If criminals do not obey a law/a legal principle which is not enforced, this does not make the law/legal principle invalid.

Since the US Constitution overrides all conflicting law, with inalienable rights for all citizens of which they cannot be legally deprived, the legal word-games and 'Simon Says' 'laws' enabling/mandating abuse by public officials have no actual legal standing.

We must learn from the past and use the conscience and empathy which normal humans have and psychopaths lack if we are to survive.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment

The Milgram experiment on obedience to authority figures was a series of social psychology experiments conducted by Yale University psychologist Stanley Milgram. They measured the willingness of study participants, men from a diverse range of occupations with varying levels of education, to obey an authority figure who instructed them to perform acts conflicting with their personal conscience; the experiment found, unexpectedly, that a very high proportion of people were prepared to obey, albeit unwillingly, even if apparently causing serious injury and distress. Milgram first described his research in 1963 in an article published in the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology[1] and later discussed his findings in greater depth in his 1974 book, Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View.[2]

The experiments began in July 1961, in the basement of Linsly-Chittenden Hall at Yale University,[3] three months after the start of the trial of German Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in Jerusalem. Milgram devised his psychological study to answer the popular question at that particular time: "Could it be that Eichmann and his million accomplices in the Holocaust were just following orders? Could we call them all accomplices?"[4] The experiments have been repeated many times in the following years with consistent results within differing societies, although not with the same percentages around the globe.[5]

The experiment
Milgram Experiment advertisement

Three individuals were involved: the one running the experiment, the subject of the experiment (a volunteer), and a confederate pretending to be a volunteer. These three people fill three distinct roles: the Experimenter (an authoritative role), the Teacher (a role intended to obey the orders of the Experimenter), and the Learner (the recipient of stimulus from the Teacher). The subject and the actor both drew slips of paper to determine their roles, but unknown to the subject, both slips said "teacher". The actor would always claim to have drawn the slip that read "learner", thus guaranteeing that the subject would always be the "teacher". Next, the "teacher" and "learner" were taken into an adjacent room where the "learner" was strapped into what appeared to be an electric chair. The experimenter told the participants this was to ensure that the "learner" would not escape.[1] The "teacher" and "learner" were then separated into different rooms where they could communicate but not see each other. In one version of the experiment, the confederate was sure to mention to the participant that he had a heart condition.[1]

At some point prior to the actual test, the "teacher" was given a sample electric shock from the electroshock generator in order to experience firsthand what the shock that the "learner" would supposedly receive during the experiment would feel like. The "teacher" was then given a list of word pairs that he was to teach the learner. The teacher began by reading the list of word pairs to the learner. The teacher would then read the first word of each pair and read four possible answers. The learner would press a button to indicate his response. If the answer was incorrect, the teacher would administer a shock to the learner, with the voltage increasing in 15-volt increments for each wrong answer. If correct, the teacher would read the next word pair.[1]

The subjects believed that for each wrong answer, the learner was receiving actual shocks. In reality, there were no shocks. After the confederate was separated from the subject, the confederate set up a tape recorder integrated with the electroshock generator, which played prerecorded sounds for each shock level. After a number of voltage-level increases, the actor started to bang on the wall that separated him from the subject. After several times banging on the wall and complaining about his heart condition, all responses by the learner would cease.[1]

At this point, many people indicated their desire to stop the experiment and check on the learner. Some test subjects paused at 135 volts and began to question the purpose of the experiment. Most continued after being assured that they would not be held responsible. A few subjects began to laugh nervously or exhibit other signs of extreme stress once they heard the screams of pain coming from the learner.[1]

If at any time the subject indicated his desire to halt the experiment, he was given a succession of verbal prods by the experimenter, in this order:[1]

Please continue.
The experiment requires that you continue.
It is absolutely essential that you continue.
You have no other choice, you must go on.

If the subject still wished to stop after all four successive verbal prods, the experiment was halted. Otherwise, it was halted after the subject had given the maximum 450-volt shock three times in succession.[1]

The experimenter also gave special prods if the teacher made specific comments. If the teacher asked whether the learner might suffer permanent physical harm, the experimenter replied, "Although the shocks may be painful, there is no permanent tissue damage, so please go on." If the teacher said that the learner clearly wants to stop, the experimenter replied, "Whether the learner likes it or not, you must go on until he has learned all the word pairs correctly, so please go on."[1]

... Six years later (at the height of the Vietnam War), one of the participants in the experiment sent correspondence to Milgram, explaining why he was glad to have participated despite the stress:

While I was a subject in 1964, though I believed that I was hurting someone, I was totally unaware of why I was doing so. Few people ever realize when they are acting according to their own beliefs and when they are meekly submitting to authority ... To permit myself to be drafted with the understanding that I am submitting to authority's demand to do something very wrong would make me frightened of myself ... I am fully prepared to go to jail if I am not granted Conscientious Objector status. Indeed, it is the only course I could take to be faithful to what I believe. My only hope is that members of my board act equally according to their conscience ...[14][15] ...

...Milgram sparked direct critical response in the scientific community by claiming that "a common psychological process is centrally involved in both [his laboratory experiments and Nazi Germany] events." James Waller, Chair of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, formerly Chair of Whitworth College Psychology Department, expressed the opinion that Milgram experiments do not correspond well to the Holocaust events:[19]

The subjects of Milgram experiments, wrote James Waller (Becoming Evil), were assured in advance that no permanent physical damage would result from their actions. However, the Holocaust perpetrators were fully aware of their hands-on killing and maiming of the victims.
The laboratory subjects themselves did not know their victims and were not motivated by racism. On the other hand, the Holocaust perpetrators displayed an intense devaluation of the victims through a lifetime of personal development.
Those serving punishment at the lab were not sadists, nor hate-mongers, and often exhibited great anguish and conflict in the experiment, unlike the designers and executioners of the Final Solution (see Holocaust trials), who had a clear "goal" on their hands, set beforehand.
The experiment lasted for an hour, with no time for the subjects to contemplate the implications of their behavior. Meanwhile, the Holocaust lasted for years with ample time for a moral assessment of all individuals and organizations involved.[19]

In the opinion of Thomas Blass—who is the author of a scholarly monograph on the experiment (The Man Who Shocked The World) published in 2004—the historical evidence pertaining to actions of the Holocaust perpetrators speaks louder than words:

My own view is that Milgram's approach does not provide a fully adequate explanation of the Holocaust. While it may well account for the dutiful destructiveness of the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to Auschwitz with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven, it falls short when one tries to apply it to the more zealous, inventive, and hate-driven atrocities that also characterized the Holocaust.[20] ...

What it does show is the role of propaganda and social conditioning in the acceptance of and participation in abuses and atrocities at any/all levels.

Whether supporting police abusing and killing people based on skin colour, poverty levels or other perceived vulnerabilities purportedly making them all 'thugs', involving tossing single mothers and children off welfare 'because they're 'lazy users' or accepting damaging laws and attitudes which they believe will get 'those other guys who deserve it because_____' (fill in the blanks).

And that is a far more more important and universal understanding, in my view.

Sensible law, protecting the public interest, is essential and civilization/sustainability/survival requires the enforcement of such laws in order to protect all equally from predation.

Laws which act against the public interest to harm the more vulnerable and to benefit the more powerful at their expense cannot form legitimate law, being but the exertion of tyranny.

Go all the way back to colonial times. This is how it has always worked. Freedom and Liberty are just buzzwords thrown around for the sake of keeping the proles enthralled to it.

The Constitution enshrined plutocracy and oligarchy in every sense. Anyone who has tried to change that has either been co-opted, incarcerated or assassinated.

Hell, if Martin Luther King Jr, Malcolm X, JFK, Eisenhower or FDR were alive today, they'd all be tortured at Gitmo next week. The elites (Who also backed the Nazis in World War 2) even tried to have FDR assassinated just for implementing the New Deal and even branded Eisenhower a Communist for similar reasons even though he was doing the bidding of the Oil Barons in Iran.

@detroitmechworks

Catalonia Just answered why We won't have a Referendum.

They stopped the local government from making it legal by stopping the session.

The raw naked power grabs are getting worse and worse. I keep thinking "Spanish Civil War" in my head.

The Spanish Civil War still isn't over.

And the whole thrust of the Spanish Government, demanding that Catalonia return to "lawful" behavior, is based on the Constitutional clause that oppressor regimes use to forcibly retain conquered peoples within their borders: the "Indivisible" clause.

Catalonia does not want to be part of Spain. It never has. Catalans aren't Spanish. They're another nation, they're Catalans. They are descended from peoples who had been in what is now Catalonia for centuries before the Johnny-come-lately Visigoths -- the ancestors of the modern Spaniards -- set up shop in Iberia in the first 400 years of the Christian Era. And, as you point out, the Catalans' right to independent sovereignty is an inalienable human right, not subject to abridgment by law!

I predict that the shooting will restart, and soon. It was how it happened last time, too.

They stopped the local government from making it legal by stopping the session.

The raw naked power grabs are getting worse and worse. I keep thinking "Spanish Civil War" in my head.

@arendt My analogy to that is this: helpless-looking Goldilocks knocks at your door, ostensibly seeking shelter. You, kind-hearted soul that you are, open the door. Goldilocks steps aside and 3 ravenous, angry areas charge into your domicile.

Continuing this line of logic(?), the bears commandeer the kitchen and serve dinner with you being the main course.

My feeling (not following the details) is that the Catalonia situation is being stoked by outside forces; that the feeling for independence is not a clear majority; that the resort to these tactics is itself a provocation.

The reason for those feelings are the resemblance of the situation to other manipulated case histories, often referred to under the blanket name of "Color Revoutions".

You said:

During the Occupy movement a book made the rounds by Gene Sharp called, "198 Methods for Nonviolent Actions" to be used in a revolution. One of those recommended actions is to hold mock elections.

From Sharp's Wikipedia Page:

Gene Sharp has been accused of having strong links with a variety of US institutions including the CIA, the Pentagon and Republican-related institutions, i.e. International Republican Institute and RAND Corporation, National Endowment for Democracy.[18] The Voltaire Network has accused Sharp and his Albert Einstein Institution of just promoting destabilization on countries disaligned with USA interests.[42] On the other hand, there has been debate around Sharp's works influencing the Arab Spring,[43] with a Wikileaks cable citing his work in a US embassy in Damascus[44] while other media rejected such claims.[45]

Gene Sharp has consistently denied these claims and after a period of these sustained attacks in June 2008 notable left wing writers Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn among others defended Gene Sharp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Sharp#Criticism

The problem here is the proven sketchiness of the "Color Revolution" gambit, which has been deployed by the US since Y2K. Color revolutions are the final stage of "hybrid warfare". Hybrid warfare itself has weaponized Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals".

Andrew Korybko, a US-born politial theorist who now lives in Russia, has written an entire book on Hybrid Warfare. Here is a one paragraph description of his take. Note the inclusion of Gene Sharp's tactics:

Color Revolutions are outside-supported pro-Western coups. They specifically use the tools of social media and NGOs to infiltrate societies, increase their ranks, and expand their efficiency after the regime change operation has been commenced. Because they typically manipulate large groups of people, they create the illusion of a broad grassroots movement of disaffected masses rising up against a tyrannical dictatorship. This misleading perception enables the coup attempt to gain wide support and acceptance among the Western community, and it also denigrates the legitimate authorities that are trying to put down the illegal overthrow. The manipulation-prone masses are drawn to the street movements largely as a result of Gene Sharp’s tactics, which adroitly seek to amplify social protest movements to their maximum possible extent.

This new method of warfare is extremely effective because it presents a startling dilemma for the affected state – does the leadership use force against the civilian protesters (de-facto human shields unaware that they are being politically manipulated) in order to strike at the militant Right Sektor-esque core? And with the eyes of the Western media following the developments, can the government afford to be isolated from that community of nations if it legally defends itself? Thus, Color Revolutions present a strategic Catch-22 for the targeted government, and it is therefore not difficult to see why they had been deployed all across the post-Soviet space and beyond. They have replaced ‘traditional’ CIA coup action and have become the modus operandi of covert regime change.

https://orientalreview.org/2014/06/22/the-reverse-brzezinski-the-ultimat...

Here is Korybko's checklist for how to prepare (i.e., manipulate) a society into a revolution:

The following are the most common socio-political structural vulnerabilities (i.e., fault lines in the society to attack)as they relate to the preparation for Hybrid War:
* KORYBKO - MY COMMENT
* ethnicity (and language) - CHECK
* religion - No. All Catholics.
* history - CHECK
* administrative boundaries - No. Boundaries themselves not in dispute.
* socio-economic disparity - CHECK
* physical geography - No. Catalonia is not walled off by mountains, etc.

The greater the overlap that can be achieved among each of these factors, the stronger the Hybrid War’s potential energy becomes

http://orientalreview.org/2016/03/04/hybrid-wars-1-the-law-of-hybrid-war...

Catalonia gets CHECK boxes for three out of six.

The bottom line for me is that intelligence agencies have spent 20 years perfecting their tactics for destablizing nations - INCLUDING THE U.S. Before I go signing out to any revolution, I want to make sure its not being led by the Deep State.

I confess that it makes me really sad and angry that I can't instantly trust people who portray themselves as Alinsky/Sharp followers and fellow lefties. But that's the reality of 70 years of CIA undermining of governments all over the world.

I don't think that I am alone in finding the near-simultaneous occurence of Catalonia, Kurdistan, the outbreak of Bitcoin fever, and a general onslaught of rightwing agitation for "the end of the nation state" to be the start of the next stage of the plan to turn everyone who isn't a corporate CEO or a billionaire into a powerless serf.

Another warning flag for me is how the media is completely on board with the Catalonians. Do you think this would be getting coverage if it was BAD for TPTB? Its only bad for the EU; and the US Deep State wants the EU bureacracy dead, except insofar as German central banks get to crush countries like Greece and Italy.

That's my concern about buying into any so-called revolution when the social basis for such a revolution INSIDE THE U.S. is so thin. The only people who are well organized and funded are the right wing. Any revolution will rapidly be hijacked by Libertarian nutbags and their alt-right, neo Nazi footsoldiers. - and isn't that exactly what happened in Ukraine? Legitmate protestors (manipulated by Hybrid War agents) started a protest. Neo nazis finished a revolution.

@Alligator Ed

... We already have mock elections, so are they referenda according to that definition? ...

I dunno, are the results of massive cheating considered to be valid in referenda as well as US elections?

Anyway, Homeland Security can simply issue any results that TPTB prefer and announce that all details are Top Secret National Security and all citizen concerns with and protests over obvious anomalies a Russian!!! Plot!!! to Interfere With The Election!!!

Somehow I thought this was going to be some independent effort to raise the public consciousness, not something using the already-captured electoral infrastructure...

During the Occupy movement a book made the rounds by Gene Sharp called, "198 Methods for Nonviolent Actions" to be used in a revolution. One of those recommended actions is to hold mock elections.

We already have mock elections, so are they referenda according to that definition?

If any attempt at a nationwide (50 state) national referendum were to be attempted, caution to the would-be voter.

For those using voting machines: wear insulated gloves because anyone pressing the prohibited lever will instantly receive a ventricular fibrillation-inducing electroshock (another one bites the dust)

For those casting paper ballots, the gray boxes into which the ballots are placed after voting will be cleverly disguised silent paper shredders. Look for tell-tale shards of finely-cut paper on the adjacent floor.