Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #440 Triumph of the Shill Part 4: The Gropenfuhrer

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Fur­ther devel­op­ing analy­sis of the guber­na­to­r­i­al tenure of Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, this pro­gram high­lights an inter­est­ing aspect of Schwarzeneg­ger’s cov­er-up of sex­u­al harass­ment charges. In select­ing a pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor to look into his sex­u­al mis­ad­ven­tures, Schwarzeneg­ger chose Antho­ny Pel­li­cano, the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor for Mark Fuhrman dur­ing the O.J. Simp­son case. Pel­li­cano is being inves­ti­gat­ed for alleged­ly con­duct­ing ille­gal wire­taps and has been con­vict­ed for pos­sess­ing ille­gal explo­sives. Pre­vi­ous­ly, he had been involved in obscur­ing the facts con­cern­ing both the era­sure of the Water­gate tapes and the deter­mi­na­tion of a fourth shot from the grassy knoll in the Kennedy assas­si­na­tion. When Pel­li­cano’s legal dif­fi­cul­ties accel­er­at­ed, Schwarzeneg­ger backpedaled on his announced plans to have a not­ed P.I. firm look into the sex­u­al harass­ment charges. To date, Schwarzeneg­ger has played true to his char­ac­ter, engag­ing in the type of psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare he engaged in as a body­builder. Much of the pro­gram focus­es on Schwarzeneg­ger’s role as “Der Emer­gency Fuehrer”. Cre­at­ing fis­cal emer­gen­cies on his own and tak­ing advan­tage of nat­ur­al dis­as­ters (which may have been delib­er­ate­ly cre­at­ed), Schwarzeneg­ger has been able to project him­self as the action hero, step­ping in to save the day.

Pro­gram High­lights Include: Pel­li­cano’s legal opin­ion that the famous 18.5 minute gap in the Water­gate tapes may have been an acci­dent; Pel­li­cano’s opin­ion that there was no fourth shot from the grassy knoll (in con­tra­dic­tion of the offi­cial find­ings); Schwarzeneg­ger’s delib­er­ate exac­er­ba­tion of the finan­cial cri­sis in Cal­i­for­nia; the Gropin’ Fuehrer’s solu­tion to the prob­lem he helped cre­ate; the Paso Rob­les earth­quake of Decem­ber 2003; review of the ENMOD treaty between the U.S. and Sovi­et Union; the pro­ject­ed use of earth­quakes and wild­fires as weapons of war in the ENMOD treaty; Schwarzeneg­ger’s manip­u­la­tion of the media in order to con­trol the body politic; his appoint­ment of the wife of The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle’s Sacra­men­to bureau chief as his deputy chief of staff.

1. Begin­ning with the sub­ject of Schwarzeneg­ger’s polit­i­cal zig-zag­ging, the pro­gram notes that he has repeat­ed­ly reversed his posi­tion on numer­ous issues. Mr. Emory views these changes of direc­tion in the con­text of Schwarzeneg­ger’s pen­chant for psy­cho­log­i­cal war­fare and delib­er­ate mis­lead­ing of those he intends to manip­u­late or dom­i­nate. Schwarzeneg­ger “flip-flops” because he is dis­hon­est and has a pen­chant for lying and mis­rep­re­sent­ing things in order to achieve his goals. “Whether it is polit­i­cal inex­pe­ri­ence or sim­ply a bumpy start to a new admin­is­tra­tion, Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger con­tin­ues to exas­per­ate law-mak­ers and inter­est groups by his sud­den and inex­plic­a­ble flip-flops on major pol­i­cy ques­tions. The new gov­er­nor has already been crit­i­cized for break­ing cam­paign promis­es to lim­it his fundrais­ing, to audit the state’s books ful­ly and to con­duct an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into alle­ga­tions of sex­u­al harass­ment against him.” (“Gov­er­nor’s Flip-Flops Wor­ry Law­mak­ers” by Tom Chorneau; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 12/28/2003; p. A23.)

2. Focus­ing on one “flip-flop” in par­tic­u­lar, the pro­gram under­scores the Gropin’ Fuehrer’s rever­sal of a deci­sion to hire a not­ed pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor to look into charges of sex­u­al harass­ment that have long dogged him. “Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger, who promised after his elec­tion to seek an inde­pen­dent inves­ti­ga­tion into alle­ga­tions that he groped or harassed women dur­ing his act­ing career, has changed his mind, an aide to the gov­er­nor said Mon­day. ‘After con­sult­ing with legal coun­sel and advi­sors, the gov­er­nor has con­clud­ed that giv­en the polit­i­cal nature of the alle­ga­tions, an inves­ti­ga­tion could only pro­vide more fod­der for his polit­i­cal oppo­nents,’ said Schwarzeneg­ger spokesman Rob Stutz­man.” (“Gov­er­nor Aborts Grop­ing Inquiry” by Bob Egelko and Chris­t­ian Berthelsen; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 12/9/2003; p. A1.)

3. Schwarzeneg­ger’s change of mind occurred as a for­mer stunt­woman filed a law­suit against him. One of the Gropin’ Fuehrer’s accusers, she alleges that Schwarzeneg­ger’s staff libeled her by claim­ing she was a con­vict­ed felon. “The announce­ment came hours after a for­mer movie stunt­woman sued Schwarzeneg­ger for libel, claim­ing that one of his cam­paign oper­a­tives had smeared her after she accused the actor of sex­u­al­ly abus­ing her on two movie sets. She said the oper­a­tive, Sean Walsh, had led reporters to believe that she was a con­vict­ed felon.” (Idem.)

4. Next, the pro­gram high­lights the con­tro­ver­sial Antho­ny Pel­li­cano, appar­ent­ly hired by Schwarzeneg­ger to inves­ti­gate what dirt might be used by polit­i­cal oppo­nents against him in a pro­posed cam­paign for Gov­er­nor. Schwarzeneg­ger’s body-build­ing men­tor Joe Wei­der swung a lucra­tive busi­ness deal with tabloid pub­lish­er Amer­i­can Media—a deal which appears to have qui­et­ed poten­tial tabloid gos­sip about the Gropin’ Fuehrer. That deal may well have con­vinced Schwarzeneg­ger to go for­ward with his deci­sion to par­tic­i­pate in the recall elec­tion, after the poten­tial gos­sip and dirt unearthed by Pel­li­cano’s inves­ti­ga­tion appar­ent­ly deterred his 2002 run. “Hol­ly­wood’s hottest detec­tive sto­ry may have a polit­i­cal sub­plot. Asso­ciates of just-jailed pri­vate eye Antho­ny Pel­li­cano sat that just-inau­gu­rat­ed Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger once hired the gumshoe to see what dirt foes might dig up if he entered the 2002 guber­na­to­r­i­al race. Less than a week after Pel­li­cano turned in a 27-page file, Schwarzeneg­ger said he would­n’t run, for­mer Pel­li­cano leg­man Paul Bar­resi tells L.A Week­ly’s Nik­ki Finke.” (“Ahnold Got Pel­li­cano Brief-On Self” by Rush & Mol­loy [“The Front Page”]; New York Dai­ly News.)

5. The pos­si­bil­i­ty that Pel­li­cano’s firm was the “well-respect­ed” P.I. firm that Schwarzeneg­ger was plan­ning to hire to con­duct the inves­ti­ga­tion is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­missed. “Curi­ous­ly, Schwarzeneg­ger announced on Nov. 6 that he was hir­ing a ‘well-respect­ed’ P.I. firm to inves­ti­gate alle­ga­tions that he groped more than a dozen women. A for­mer Pel­li­cano col­league cor­rob­o­rat­ed that the action star inves­ti­gat­ed him­self. ‘Pel­li­cano told me, ‘It’s already been done,” the source told us. Bar­resi won’t say what was in Pel­li­cano’s report, com­mis­sioned in April 2001.” (Idem.)

6. Pel­li­cano was already in hot water for ille­gal pos­ses­sion of explo­sive devices when anoth­er case broke, in which he was accused of ille­gal wire­tap­ping. “When the news broke last year that the celebri­ty pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor Antho­ny Pel­li­cano was him­self under police inves­ti­ga­tion, many here saw it as a deli­cious dol­lop of Tin­sel­town scan­dal to enliv­en din­ner par­ty gos­sip. They had no idea. The fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion has placed pow­er­ful lawyers and crooked cops under scruti­ny amid sug­ges­tions that Pel­li­cano may have rou­tine­ly wire­tapped movie stars, ex-spous­es and even nan­nies in an effort to tip the out­comes of legal dis­putes in favor of his clients. “The cir­cle of peo­ple impli­cat­ed has widened by the day, mak­ing the case even more tan­ta­liz­ing and cliché-rid­den than the best Ray­mond Chan­dler tale. The Los Ange­les Police Depart­ment has already said one sergeant is under inves­ti­ga­tion for steal­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion from police com­put­ers and sell­ing it to Pel­li­cano.” (“L.A. Wire­tap Flap’s Become a Pot­boil­er of the First Order” by James Stern­gold; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 11/16/2003; p. A2.)

7. “In addi­tion, near­ly every day, more lawyers and peo­ple involved in lit­i­ga­tion are acknowl­edg­ing that they have been inter­viewed by the FBI. They have been told their con­ver­sa­tions may have been ille­gal­ly taped or have been asked about appar­ent tap­ings of the com­bat­ants in lit­i­ga­tion bat­tles.” (Idem.)

8. “The inves­ti­ga­tion is a clas­sic case of pulling a loose bit of yarn and hav­ing an entire sweater unrav­el. Pel­li­cano built what was once a thriv­ing busi­ness and a high-pro­file rep­u­ta­tion by defend­ing a range of clients from John DeLore­an to Michael Jack­son. When celebri­ties found them­selves in trou­ble, Pel­li­cano was often the first per­son they called. . . .” (Idem.)

9. ” . . . The widen­ing scan­dal plays into every grainy, black-and-white pulp fic­tion image of Los Ange­les as a city run by a cor­rupt sub­ter­ranean cabal. It began on a hot June day, the sun like a hard­boiled egg and the dish­pan-gray streets steam­ing, when a reporter named Ani­ta Busch, a Los Ange­les Times enter­tain­ment writer, head­ed for her parked car. On the wind­shield, she found a dead fish, a rose and a note with a sin­gle word, ‘Stop.’ ” (Idem.)

10. “Busch had been inves­ti­gat­ing alleged ties between the actor and pro­duc­er Steven Sea­gal and a reput­ed mob­ster. Not long after, an FBI infor­mant taped a con­vict­ed drug deal­er named Alexan­der Proc­tor con­fess­ing that he had deliv­ered the threat. On whose behalf? He said it was a job assigned by Pel­li­cano who, it turned out, was work­ing for Sea­gal.” (Idem.)

11. “That led fed­er­al agents to raid Pel­li­cano’s offices, on a tony stretch of Sun­set Boule­vard in West Hol­ly­wood. It turned into quite a fish­ing expe­di­tion. The agents not only found dan­ger­ous explo­sives in the office—Pellicano explained that an unnamed client had left plas­tic explo­sives, which includ­ed grenades that an FBI agent said had been mod­i­fied so they could be used as boo­by traps.” (Idem.)

12. “Adding to the high dra­ma, Pel­li­cano copped his plea sud­den­ly dur­ing a lunch break in his tri­al last month. He is sched­uled to sur­ren­der and begin his prison term Mon­day, but will not be for­mal­ly sen­tenced until Jan­u­ary. He could serve from 27 to 33 months in prison. If Pel­li­cano coop­er­ates with fed­er­al pros­e­cu­tors to short­en his sen­tence, even more fear could spread through Hol­ly­wood about oth­er peo­ple he could impli­cate. But at least for now, that does not appear to be the case. He’s not coop­er­at­ing with us at all,’ one fed­er­al offi­cial said.” (Idem.)

13. “In the mean­time, Bert Fields, one of Hol­ly­wood’s most influ­en­tial attor­neys, has acknowl­edged he is a sub­ject of the probe. He is known to be close to Pel­li­cano, but has insist­ed he nev­er autho­rized ille­gal wire­taps. Inves­ti­ga­tors have also ques­tioned Ed Mas­ry, the same attor­ney laud­ed as a hero in the movie ‘Erin Brock­ovich’ for his fight to help the real-life Brock­ovich nail a util­i­ty for poi­son­ing the ground­wa­ter in a com­mu­ni­ty near Los Ange­les.” (Idem.)

14. Active duty LAPD offi­cers helped to pro­vide infor­ma­tion to Pel­li­cano. “The first LAPD offi­cer impli­cat­ed in the case, Sgt. Mark Arne­son was allowed to qui­et­ly retire with a full pen­sion ear­ly last month, but is still being inves­ti­gat­ed by the dis­trict attor­ney for hav­ing pil­fered infor­ma­tion about celebri­ties from police com­put­ers for Pel­li­cano, accord­ing to a police spokesman, Lt. Art Miller. The case is an enor­mous embar­rass­ment to the LAPD, which fired a third offi­cer not long ago for report­ed­ly steal­ing infor­ma­tion on celebri­ties from police files and sell­ing it to The Nation­al Enquir­er.” (Idem.)

15. Not men­tioned in the sto­ries above is the fact that Pel­li­cano had served as the pri­vate inves­ti­ga­tor for Mark Fur­man in con­nec­tion with the OJ Simp­son case. (“The Oth­er Cir­cus” by David Von Biema; Time; 9/19/1994.)

16. Among the oth­er cas­es Pel­li­cano has par­tic­i­pat­ed in was his tech­ni­cal legal opin­ion that the 18 ½‑minute gap in the Water­gate tape might have been acci­den­tal. Inter­est­ing­ly, that was the opin­ion of Gor­don Nov­el, a for­mi­da­ble US intel­li­gence vet­er­an with exten­sive elec­tron­ic coun­ter­in­tel­li­gence expe­ri­ence. Nov­el was one of the more con­tro­ver­sial fig­ures in Jim Gar­rison’s inves­ti­ga­tion of the JFK assas­si­na­tion. At one point Nov­el (who also par­tic­i­pat­ed with Pel­li­cano on the John De Lore­an case) was being active­ly recruit­ed to study the fea­si­bil­i­ty of eras­ing the Water­gate tapes. (Con­tract on Amer­i­ca by David E. Scheim; Copy­right 1988; pub­lished by Shipol­sky.)

17. In anoth­er case, Pel­li­cano dis­put­ed the authen­tic­i­ty of a dictabelt record­ing that indi­cat­ed a fourth shot from the grassy knoll on 11/22/63. It is worth not­ing that with the OJ Simp­son case, the JFK assas­si­na­tion and Water­gate, there are strong evi­den­tiary trib­u­taries run­ning in the direc­tion of the Under­ground Reich. It is Mr. Emory’s con­sid­ered opin­ion that Schwarzeneg­ger is a pri­ma­ry polit­i­cal oper­a­tive of the Under­ground Reich. (High Trea­son by Robert Gro­den and Har­ri­son Edward Liv­ing­stone; Copy­right 1989; Con­ser­va­to­ry Press.)

18. When asked by atten­dees at lec­tures Mr. Emory deliv­ered dur­ing the recall elec­tion, he was fre­quent­ly asked what he thought Schwarzeneg­ger would do if elect­ed. In response to the ques­tion, Mr. Emory not­ed that Schwarzeneg­ger would not be able to do what he said he was going to do, and that a ter­ror­ist inci­dent or (more like­ly) a nat­ur­al dis­as­ter would be required to dis­tract from the fail­ure. Fur­ther, Mr. Emory not­ed that, since a ter­ror­ist strike might make Bush look weak, a disaster—such as a trig­ger­ing of “the Big One” in North­ern California—would dis­tract from Schwarzeneg­ger’s fail­ure to ful­fill his cam­paign promis­es. In addi­tion, this would dev­as­tate a pri­ma­ry area of lib­er­al vot­er strength. It is to be hoped that this does not hap­pen. A major quake in Cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia has, how­ev­er, giv­en Schwarzeneg­ger the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play the “Emer­gency Fuehrer” once again—comforting the des­ti­tute vic­tims with his strong, action-hero per­sona. “An earth­quake rocked Cal­i­for­ni­a’s cen­tral coast Mon­day and shook the state from Los Ange­les to San Fran­cis­co, col­laps­ing old down­town build­ings in this small town and killing at least two peo­ple in the rub­ble. The 11:16 a.m. quake—its mag­ni­tude mea­sured at 6.5—pitched the roof of Paso Rob­les’ 1982 clock tow­er build­ing into a street, crush­ing a row of parked cars in this San Luis Obis­po Coun­ty town about 20 miles east of the epi­cen­ter.” (“Two Dead As Quake Hits Cen­tral Calif.” [AP]; 12/22/2003.)

19. Lis­ten­ers unfa­mil­iar with the devel­op­ment of seis­mic weapon­ry are encour­aged to check out FTR#69. Such weapon­ry is a real­i­ty, and has been for quite some time. Based upon the devel­op­ment of tech­nol­o­gy dis­cov­ered by Nico­la Tes­la, the seis­mic weapon­ry uti­lizes the oscil­la­tion of the earth­’s mag­net­ic field and the res­o­nant prop­er­ties of the earth itself to pro­duce the desired effect. That res­o­nance is oblique­ly men­tioned: “Cal­i­for­ni­a’s largest earth­quake in years struck on Mon­day, caus­ing Plan­et Earth to ring ‘like bell. . . .” (“Calif. Earth­quake Rang Plan­et ‘Like a Bell’ ” by Peter Hen­der­son [Reuters]; 12/22/2003.)

20. In FTR#434, we exam­ined the (delib­er­ate­ly set) wild­fires that occurred as Schwarzeneg­ger pre­pared to take office. The notion that wild­fires could be employed as weapons of war and ter­ror is not one to be too read­i­ly dis­missed. “Zap­atista com­mu­ni­ties have also voiced sus­pi­cion that the exten­sive fires recent­ly expe­ri­enced in their region could be the prod­uct of delib­er­ate attempts to influ­ence the course of their insur­gency. . . .They are not alone in their con­cern about the use of fire to achieve eco­nom­ic and polit­i­cal objec­tives. Angry at the dam­age caused by delib­er­ate­ly-set fires in the Ama­zon, in 1998 a Yanoma­mi spokesman told Reuters: ‘The white men start­ed these fires and they have to put them out. If the fire is not put out, we will have noth­ing to hunt and noth­ing to fish . . . They will come and take the Indi­ans’ land. Our reser­va­tion will dis­ap­pear.’ ” (“Address­ing Envi­ron­men­tal Mod­i­fi­ca­tion in Post-Cold War Con­flict” by Susana Pimen­to Chamor­ro and Edward Ham­mond [The Sun­shine Project]; p. 3.)

21. Next the pro­gram fur­ther devel­ops the sub­ject of seis­mic weaponry—one of the devices specif­i­cal­ly cov­ered by a treaty signed by the U.S. and U.S.S.R. dur­ing the Cold War (known as ENMOD.) ” . . .Activ­i­ties that could vio­late ENMOD include: Trig­ger­ing earth­quakes . . . Set­ting fires . . .Manip­u­la­tion of El Nino/La Nina . . .” (Ibid.; pp. 4–5.)

22. ” . . .Arti­cle II lists exam­ples of envi­ron­men­tal mod­i­fi­ca­tion tech­niques and includes among them provo­ca­tion of earth­quakes, tsunamis, hur­ri­canes (typhoons), dis­rup­tion of eco­log­i­cal bal­ance in cli­mat­ic ele­ments, change in ocean cur­rents, and changes in the state if the ozone lay­er. . . .” (Ibid.; p. 8.)

23. Again, the Paso Rob­les quake, whether by caprice or design, gave the Gropin’ Fuehrer the oppor­tu­ni­ty to play “Emer­gency Fuehrer”—his favorite role to date. “Against a back­drop of crum­pled store-fronts and dri­ving rain, Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger on Tues­day declared a state emer­gency in San Luis Obis­po Coun­ty, as a first step toward finan­cial aid for the cen­tral Cal­i­for­nia region hard­est hit by Mon­day’s 6.5‑magnitude earth­quake. . . .” (“Schwarzeneg­ger Vis­its: Gov­er­nor Declares State of Emer­gency, Offers Hope” by Bar­bara Fed­er Ostrov and John Wool­folk; San Jose Mer­cury News; 12/24/2003; p. 1A.)

24. Schwarzeneg­ger declared an eco­nom­ic emer­gency in Cal­i­for­nia, after tak­ing steps to cre­ate that very emer­gency. To date, Schwarzeneg­ger has been suc­cess­ful­ly pro­mot­ed as “Der Emer­gency Fuehrer,” the action hero step­ping in at the moment of cri­sis (fis­cal or phys­i­cal) to save the day. “In light of all the praise Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger is receiv­ing for keep­ing his word to con­tin­ue fund­ing local gov­ern­ment, it is impor­tant to take a step back and review the nature of our state’s bud­get cri­sis.” (“Lim­it­ed Funds, Unlim­it­ed Needs” by Mark Leno; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 12/22/2003; p. A23.)

25. “The Leg­is­la­ture knew this past Sep­tem­ber when we passed the bud­get that we would face an $8 bil­lion deficit in the com­ing fis­cal year. That hole grew to approx­i­mate­ly $14 bil­lion on Nov. 17, when the new­ly sworn-in gov­er­nor signed an exec­u­tive order that rescind­ed the increase of the vehi­cle license fee, oth­er­wise known as the car tax. This was clear­ly a pop­u­lar first step for the new chief exec­u­tive to take, but was it fis­cal­ly wise or pru­dent?” (Idem.)

26. “Schwarzeneg­ger had repeat­ed­ly stat­ed dur­ing his cam­paign that the prob­lem in Sacra­men­to was the Leg­is­la­ture’s spend­ing addic­tion and that he would stop spend­ing mon­ey the state did not have. Iron­i­cal­ly, his first offi­cial act as gov­er­nor was to spend bil­lions the state did not have.” (Idem.)

27. “Giv­en that the pro­ceeds of the VLF go direct­ly to cities and coun­ties to cov­er the cost of fire and police pro­tec­tion, [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] park main­te­nance, street sweep­ing and libraries, any inter­rup­tion of those funds would have seri­ous con­se­quences. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, the gov­er­nor had no stat­ed plan to pro­vide for local gov­ern­ment to replace the fee. He even sug­gest­ed that it was the respon­si­bil­i­ty of the Leg­is­la­ture, and not him, to fill the increased deficit hole he had dug.” (Idem.)

28. One of the fac­tors that has per­mit­ted Schwarzeneg­ger to get away with what he has done has been the per­pet­u­al state of emer­gency that has pre­vailed in the state. With his last minute gam­bit to save fund­ing for local police and fire units (jeop­ar­dized by his own repeal of the vehi­cle tax), Der Emer­gency Fuehrer has had repeat­ed crises–fires and earthquakes—in which to dra­ma­tize his own “hero­ics.” “So the gov­er­nor quick­ly came to the res­cue of his per­son­al­ly cre­at­ed predica­ment by pro­claim­ing a pub­lic safe­ty emer­gency and invok­ing extra­or­di­nary pow­ers to make bud­get cuts suf­fi­cient to cov­er local gov­ern­ments’ imme­di­ate needs. [Ital­ics are Mr. Emory’s] State law allows him to do so inde­pen­dent­ly, with­out any leg­isla­tive or pub­lic review or com­ment. Sub­se­quent­ly, there is no way of assess­ing whether his cuts make sense or will result in even greater future costs.” (Idem.)

29. The pro­gram reviews a pre­sen­ta­tion of a Ger­man uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor’s account of what it was like to live dur­ing the rise of Hitler. Note the sim­i­lar­i­ty to aspects of the con­tem­po­rary polit­i­cal land­scape. Con­sid­er Schwarzeneg­ger (Der Emer­gency Fuehrer) and Hitler. “What hap­pened here was the grad­ual habit­u­a­tion of the peo­ple, lit­tle by lit­tle, to being gov­erned by sur­prise, to receiv­ing deci­sions delib­er­at­ed in secret, to believ­ing that the sit­u­a­tion was so com­pli­cat­ed that the gov­ern­ment had to act on infor­ma­tion which the peo­ple could not under­stand, so dan­ger­ous that even if the peo­ple the peo­ple could under­stand it, it could not be released because of nation­al secu­ri­ty. And their sense of iden­ti­fi­ca­tion with Hitler, their trust in him may have inci­den­tal­ly have reas­sured those who would oth­er­wise have wor­ried about it. Their trust in him made it eas­i­er to reas­sure oth­ers who might have wor­ried about it. ’ ‘This sep­a­ra­tion of gov­ern­ment from peo­ple, this widen­ing of the gap, took place so grad­u­al­ly and so insen­si­bly, each step dis­guised (per­haps not even inten­tion­al­ly) as a tem­po­rary emer­gency mea­sure or asso­ci­at­ed with true patri­ot­ic alle­giance or with real social pur­pos­es. And all the crises and reforms (real crises and reforms too) so occu­pied the peo­ple that they did not see the slow motion under­neath, of the whole process of the Gov­ern­ment grow­ing remot­er and remot­er.’ ” (They Thought they Were Free: The Ger­mans 1933–1945; by Mil­ton May­er; copy­right 1955 [SC]; Uni­ver­si­ty of Chica­go Press; ISBN 0–226-51190–1; pp. 166–167.)

30. Anoth­er fac­tor that has facil­i­tat­ed Schwarzeneg­ger’s tenure as gov­er­nor and dis­tract­ed pub­lic atten­tion from his sex­u­al harass­ment and his stat­ed admi­ra­tion for Hitler has been his use of “the opin­ion-form­ing media.” With his own sta­tus as the quin­tes­sen­tial action hero and his wife’s sta­tus as an NBC reporter, the Gropin’ Fuehrer has played the media like a piano. The print media have fawned over Schwarzeneg­ger, and the fol­low­ing sto­ry gives a hint as to one of the rea­sons why: “Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger named a Sacra­men­to pub­lic rela­tions exec­u­tive Wednes­day as his deputy chief of staff to over­see bal­lot ini­tia­tives and the gov­er­nor’s office of spe­cial projects. The exec­u­tive, Don­na Lucas, worked briefly ear­li­er this year as an advis­er to Maria Shriv­er, Schwarzeneg­ger’s wife, dur­ing his tran­si­tion into the gov­er­nor’s office. Lucas, 43, worked for the pub­lic rela­tions firm Porter Nov­el­li, over­see­ing its offices in Sacra­men­to, Irvine and San Diego. She and three oth­er part­ners sold their pub­lic rela­tions firm, Nel­son Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Group, to Porter Nov­el­li in 2000.” (“Gov­er­nor Names PR Exec­u­tive to a Top Staff Post” [Chron­i­cle Staff Report]; San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle; 12/19/2003; p. A18.)

31. “Lucas, who will earn $123,000 per year in the posi­tion, has a back­ground in man­ag­ing state-wide bal­lot mea­sure cam­paigns, a skill that Schwarzeneg­ger is keen to tap since he has threat­ened to take many of his leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als direct­ly to vot­ers if the leg­is­la­ture is unwill­ing to enact them. Don­na Lucas is the wife of Greg Lucas, the Capi­tol bureau chief of The San Fran­cis­co Chron­i­cle. While Don­na Lucas is work­ing for Schwarzeneg­ger, Greg Lucas will be reas­signed. To avoid any con­flict of inter­est, he will not report on the Schwarzeneg­ger admin­is­tra­tion or state gov­ern­ment.” (Idem.)

32. Look­ing ahead to some of the dis­cus­sion in FTR#441, the fis­cal cri­sis affect­ing munic­i­pal­i­ties in Cal­i­for­nia is being exac­er­bat­ed by the ter­ror alerts, which drain valu­able resources away from com­mu­ni­ties. Cal­i­for­nia under Der Emer­gency Fuehrer is going through in minia­ture what the coun­try as a whole is expe­ri­enc­ing. If one con­sid­ers the fis­cal impact of the emer­gen­cies, state and nation­al, those emer­gen­cies could be seen as an appli­ca­tion of Von Clause­witz’s con­cept of Total War. Von Clause­witz’s con­cept was dis­cussed in FTR#‘s 366 and 396, and will be dis­cussed at greater length in FTR#441. “For cash-strapped U.S. cities and states, this week’s height­ened nation­al threat alert lev­el has reignit­ed con­cerns about costs along­side fears of a new ter­ror attack. From over­time for police offi­cers to extra patrols at key facil­i­ties and bor­ders, cities nation­wide must spend tens of mil­lions of dol­lars each week for the addi­tion­al secu­ri­ty mea­sures, mon­ey some local offi­cials say they do not have.” (“Cash-Strapped Cities Grap­ple with Secu­ri­ty Costs” by Car­o­line Drees [Reuters]; 12/22/2003; p. 1.)

33. “It’s enor­mous­ly frus­trat­ing,’ said Randy King, spokesman for the city of Har­ris­burg, Penn­syl­va­nia, a state cap­i­tal of 49,000 peo­ple near the Three Mile Island nuclear pow­er plant. ‘All of it costs mon­ey, lots of mon­ey, and there’s no fed­er­al reim­burse­ment,’ he said.” (Idem.)

34. “On Sun­day, the U.S. Depart­ment of Home­land Secu­ri­ty raised the col­or-cod­ed ter­ror alert lev­el to ‘high’ orange from ‘ele­vat­ed’ yellow—the fourth such move this year. Lift­ing the lev­el trig­gers a raft of auto­mat­ic addi­tion­al fed­er­al secu­ri­ty pre­cau­tions, and serves as a guide­line for cities and states. ‘We need to rec­og­nize that every time the gov­ern­ment ratch­ets up the threat lev­el, we force the state and local gov­ern­ment offi­cials to make a choice,’ said ana­lyst David Hey­man at the Cen­ter for Strate­gic and Inter­na­tion­al Stud­ies.” (Idem.)

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #440 Triumph of the Shill Part 4: The Gropenfuhrer”

  1. http://pagesix.com/2013/10/18/schwarzenegger-mounting-legal-challenge-to-run-for-president/

    Arnold lob­bies for White House run

    By Emi­ly Smith

    Octo­ber 18, 2013 | 12:53am
    Modal Trig­ger

    Pho­to: Film­Mag­ic

    Action star and for­mer Cal­i­for­nia Gov. Arnold Schwarzeneg­ger has been lob­by­ing for sup­port to change the law to allow him to run for pres­i­dent in 2016, Page Six has exclu­sive­ly learned.

    We’re told Ahnold has been open­ly talk­ing about his polit­i­cal ambi­tions while in New York to pro­mote his new movie with Sylvester Stal­lone, “Escape Plan.”

    One source said: “Schwarzeneg­ger has been talk­ing open­ly about work­ing on get­ting the con­sti­tu­tion­al rules changed so he can run for pres­i­dent in 2016. He is ready to file legal paper­work to chal­lenge the rules.”

    Arnie was born in Aus­tria, and the US Con­sti­tu­tion pre­vents for­eign-born cit­i­zens from hold­ing the nation’s top job. Any amend­ment to the Con­sti­tu­tion must be approved by two-thirds major­i­ty in the House and the Sen­ate.

    But Arnold, who became a US cit­i­zen in 1983, still could mount a legal chal­lenge. In 2010, he appeared on the ‘Tonight Show,’ and was asked by Jay Leno if he would make a White House run if the law were changed.

    Schwarzeneg­ger replied, “With­out any doubt.” With Amer­i­ca becom­ing more diverse, it is not clear what would hap­pen if Arnie or any oth­er for­eign-born nat­u­ral­ized cit­i­zen decid­ed to run.

    Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty Law School pro­fes­sor Michael Dorf, an expert in con­sti­tu­tion­al law, said about the Governator’s case in 2007, “The law is very clear, but it’s not 100 per­cent clear that the courts would enforce that law rather than leave it to the polit­i­cal process.”

    While Arnold’s rep didn’t respond to us, even May­or Mike Bloomberg has spo­ken play­ful­ly about form­ing a pres­i­den­tial tick­et with Schwarzeneg­ger.

    “There would be a fight to see who would be the pres­i­den­tial can­di­date and who would be the vice pres­i­den­tial can­di­date,” Bloomberg quipped a few years back. “He would want to arm-wres­tle for the top spot; I would want to check the Con­sti­tu­tion.”

    If it does hap­pen, an arm wres­tle between Arnold and fel­low 2016 con­tender Hillary Clin­ton would be a spec­ta­cle, although our bets are on Hillary.

    Posted by Vanfield | October 18, 2013, 10:29 am

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