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Lew Rockwell remembers the subtle procedures of the East German STASI in the late 1970s.
"The goal was to destroy dissidents and potential dissidents socially and emotionally without resorting to arrest and imprisonment. The Stasi collected information about the victim’s private life, and proceeded to ‘disintegrate’ their careers and their family and private life.
"Damaging lies (or truths) would be conveyed to employers until the target was rendered unemployable. Relationships with spouses and kids would be poisoned with gossip by operatives, professional failure, and financial stress. Friends would be warned away through the grapevine.
"The goal was to destroy the reputation of the target and make him so preoccupied with his personal difficulties and emotional turmoil that he had no will to question the government of the DDR. It was done covertly, and often victims weren’t believed even if they discovered [the covert campaign].”
-- Lew Rockwell, Jr.
"In the discussions to which this interest has given rise and in the arrangements by which they may terminate the occasion has been judged proper for asserting, as a principle in which the rights and interests of the United States are involved, that the American continents, by the free and independent condition which they have assumed and maintain, are henceforth not to be considered as subjects for future colonization by any European powers. "
-- James Monroe, speech to the US Congress on December 2, 1823
