It’s been obvious for quite some time that the so-called “war on terror” is nothing more than a fear-mongering induced power grab; a convenient excuse to strip the citizenry of its civil liberties and humanity. Many commentators, including myself, have predicted for years that the entire counter-terror juggernaut that has been constructed post-9/11 would be ultimately redirected upon the domestic population.
Snowden’s heroic whistleblowing has already proven without a doubt that the government spy apparatus (along with tech company complicity) has been zeroed in on the domestic population for quite some time, but is the situation about to escalate? Are the feds so fearful of their own people, they are about to focus all their counter-terror energy on U.S. citizens? It appears so.
I warned about this development back in 2011 in my post: The War on Freedom. In it I stated:
This whole charade shouldn’t be called “The War on Terror.” It is actually all about keeping the citizenry terrified. The government loves keeping you in a state of fear so that then they can do anything they want to the little sheep. It should be called “The War on Freedom.” Your freedom.
Before I get to the main topic of this article, I think it’s important to read excerpts from yesterday’s powerful and timely op-ed by Noam Chomsky titled: Edward Snowden, the World’s “Most Wanted Criminal. Discussing the Snowden revelations, he writes:
These exposures lead us to inquire into state policy more generally and the factors that drive it. The received standard version is that the primary goal of policy is security and defense against enemies.
The doctrine at once suggests a few questions: security for whom, and defense against which enemies? The answers are highlighted dramatically by the Snowden revelations.
To defend state power and private economic power from the domestic enemy, those two entities must be concealed – while in sharp contrast, the enemy must be fully exposed to state authority.
The principle was lucidly explained by the policy intellectual Samuel P. Huntington, who instructed us that “Power remains strong when it remains in the dark; exposed to the sunlight it begins to evaporate.”
Huntington added a crucial illustration. In his words, “you may have to sell [intervention or other military action] in such a way as to create the misimpression that it is the Soviet Union that you are fighting. That is what the United States has been doing ever since the Truman Doctrine” at the outset of the Cold War.
Policy must assure the security of state authority and concentrations of domestic power, defending them from a frightening enemy: the domestic population, which can become a great danger if not controlled.
From that day forward, in order to carry out violence and subversion abroad, or repression and violation of fundamental rights at home, state power has regularly sought to create the misimpression that it is terrorists that we are fighting, though there are other options: drug lords, mad mullahs seeking nuclear weapons, and other ogres said to be seeking to attack and destroy us.
Throughout, the basic principle remains: Power must not be exposed to the sunlight. Edward Snowden has become the most wanted criminal in the world for failing to comprehend this essential maxim.
In brief, there must be complete transparency for the population, but none for the powers that must defend themselves from this fearsome internal enemy.
The concept of the U.S. government viewing the population as the true enemy has been a theme on this site for many years. For some background, I suggest reading the following:
Rep. Steve Cohen Calls Tea Party Republicans “Domestic Enemies” on MSNBC
It’s Official: The FBI Classifies Peaceful American Protestors as “Terrorists”
The reason I chose to highlight these two articles, is that in one case it is the “tea party” being demonized, and in the other it is Occupy Wall Street. It doesn’t matter if the dissent is seen as emanating from the “right” or the “left,” it is dissent in general which is increasingly being demonized as “domestic terrorism.”
With all of that in mind, here is what Eric Holder’s “Justice” Department is up to. From the LA Times:
Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder, Jr. on Monday announced the creation of a task force within the Justice Department to combat an “escalating danger” from “homegrown” terrorists within the United States.
The task force will chiefly comprise leaders from the FBI, the Justice Department’s National Security Division and U.S. Attorneys. Called the Domestic Terrorism Executive Committee, it is a recreation of a task force formed by former Atty. Gen. Janet Reno after the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. The task force fell into disuse after 9/11.
Though the original task force, which was little known, focused mainly on right-wing zealots, Holder’s version is aimed at U.S. citizens or visitors radicalized via the Internet. Holder said the government will continue to fight terrorists abroad.
Oh the internet! That dangerous place where the citizenry engages in thoughtcrime and can actually perform real journalism without the censorship of mainstream propaganda media.
“But we also must concern ourselves with a different type of threat. We face an escalating danger from self-radicalized individuals within our own borders,” he said.
“Now — as the nature of the threat we face evolves to include the possibility of individual radicalization via the Internet — it is critical that we return our focus to potential extremists here at home,” Holder said.
NPR adds that:
“The threat from al-Qaida is much more diffuse after Sept. 11, and the threats posed by a single horribly misguided citizen or permanent legal resident in the U.S. is in a sense as great as what core al-Qaida posed before Sept. 11,” says Neil MacBride, a former U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Virginia.
There you have it. It’s no longer al-Qaeda, it’s now supposedly your friends and neighbors. This is the prevailing meme of every tyrannical fascist regime in history.
The state’s war on the citizenry is becoming overt. Don’t be fooled, this is real and it is very dangerous.
Image at the top of this post is brought to you by the always excellent WilliamBanzai7.
In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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“The prevailing meme of every tyrannical fascist regime in history.”
Yes, convince enough people to fear other people’s freedom more than they love their own, and it’s game over. Fortunately, more people know that than ever before.
You begged the question for the US: how to sell the critical mass (you don’t really need a majority) on preferring risky freedom to false security?
Snowden is a side-issue; evidence for the serious Ostriches; perhaps proof that even the judges are in on it. And his data might allow a cadré of patriots in congress to put the screws to some bureaucrat(s) who might or might not have been responsible, but without dismantling the power, replacing the schmendricks at the bureau is no help to everyone else.
What matters is giving more power to the people who don’t already need convincing; people like you and me and our friends and neighbors who also see this happening, and want to block it.
Your analysis is correct, but dealing with the umpteen layers of abstraction in both the history and theory aren’t necessary to untie it all. I speculate that the challenge of thinking through or arguing over all that detail it is what keeps most people from learning more and/or caring, and the attempt is a distraction and wasted effort.
Yeah, the War On Terror is bullshit, on several levels, but what, exactly, can you do to disarm it? What social process would you like to initiate that might have a chance of affecting it?
I think the proper approach requires admitting that Hayek is correct; rolling back the statism requires exposing the dissembling aka lies, and that can only be addressed via the language, because abusing the language is the primary lie; all the rest will fall if the primary mechanisms are defeated.
Indeed, Aristotle invented logic for exposing the lies of politicians, and it created world-wide success on all levels for unprecedented numbers of people via science and industry as a side-effect.
Specifically:
===
ALL abstract wars are unwinnable by their very nature and must therefore only exist as a result of propaganda.
===
Put another way: Poverty, Drugs and Terror … have won.
Therefore, we should surrender immediately, save the cost and suffering, and/or apply the funds and manpower to dealing with actual enemies and definite social conditions.
To the degree that view becomes widely-accepted, people wouldn’t listen to campaign bullshit based on those vapid abstractions, people wouldn’t contribute to those campaigns, therefore politicians would stfu about them, and judges and juries would reject it when rendering verdicts.
The whole Terrorist Police State apparatus could come crashing down, not for institutional or organized or political power reasons, but because the words simply wouldn’t carry anymore with anyone, and we can all take that step today. Defunding them would follow naturally, not including the crusading politicians who sees the trend and try to take credit by accelerating it with legislation.
De facto pot legalization is evidence that it can happen that way. Everyone knows “drug” is a propaganda term, precisely because it’s so abstract it could mean anything.
It’s because such abstractions can mean anything that politicians talk about them (so they can’t be pinned down), and police gravitate toward them (so they can call whoever they want a perp), and that’s what makes them so dangerous; because they give that license.
Again, it doesn’t take a majority, merely a critical mass so that the sheep see which way the winds are blowing and get on board. When that abstract bullshit isn’t selling anymore, the abstract wars will be over.
Speaking of which:
Michael, it’s long past time you explained what freedom and/or liberty actually means.
Look at the title of your blog. And you speak to it all the time.
Do you know what you’re talking about, or don’t you? Why should anyone listen to what you have to say about liberty, if you don’t even know what it is or how to recognize when you or someone else has it or has lost it?
Here I am, this blog’s best commentator (your words) asking the blog’s author (that’s you!) to explain the meaning of one of the words he uses the most! And I’ve asked about 4 dozen times, and you’ve blown me off every time…because you are so *knowledgeable* about your favorite topic?
Tell us what liberty is, Michael. Today.
Liberty is freedom from Xtrevilist regimes. Liberty is Fairism.
How do you achieve Fairism is the most important question.
How do you peacefully transition from the Xtrevilism now in power globally, where we are all forced to be complicit in order to get our crumb supply, to Fairism, where we will all be able to follow our own joy?
The answer is shunning and changing the dialogue. Shun the system, shun the crooked cops, shun the false culture and its deceptive values. Stop bouncing all of your grievances off of the daily supplied pap dialogue as Mike does and create your own dialogue. Don’t go after abstract terrorists, go after very concrete fat wallets. Excessive wealth is a key symptom of Xtrevilism; as is the Noble Lie, the corporate structure, central banking that favors interest creation for Xtrevilist cronies only, electoral systems that are non responsive to the will of the people, etc., and that is just for starters.
To fix those you must shun them and work out side the now totally co-opted system to make a new and better system. Evolution demands it. You must realize that every time you vote, every time you plead your case to the Xtrevilists in control you only serve to validate and legitimize that ill gotten power. Make your own power outside the system. Talk to your friends and neighbors, start a new dialogue today, and beware the negative nellies.
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
“Xtrevilists”?
You don’t know what freedom is, either, do you?
Yes, I do, it is the antitheses of Xtrevilism, as stated above, it is Fairism.
You do not know what Xtrevilism is, either, do you?
http://www.boxthefox.com/deceptionology/11pigism.html#pigism7
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Listing antonyms synonyms isn’t a definition, even if you use words that are in the dictionary, because that just begs the question.
You failed. Sorry.
I don’t really care what Xtrevilism ‘is’ because you simply made it up. If you wanted to communicate, you’d explain it, rather than just contrasting it with other words you can’t define.
Communication means speaking and writing using the shared conventions.
If you aren’t going to show enough respect for that process to engage the honest curiosity when you duck those conventions, and you aren’t going to show enough respect to explain the idiosyncratic words you are using, then I don’t need to waste my time pretending you’re going to respect logic or cite websites that have anything valid to say.
So, to sum up: No, you don’t know what freedom is, as I suspected, or you’d have described it rather than making up your own personal thesaurus (“Fairism” ALSO isn’t a word.)
You be sure to write back when you’re ready to learn better, OK?
To sum up; you don’t give a rat’s ass what freedom is. Your an energy sink, shoot the messenger troll, deserving of treatment in kind; and you failed miserably.
http://www.boxthefox.com/articles/premiere%20article.html
Deception is the strongest political force on the planet.
Because I know what freedom means, which is the *opposite* of not caring what it is, you came off as obviously nuts. Likewise, asking you to explain yourself in no way qualifies as ‘shooting the messenger’ Mr Paranoiac.
Saying such illogical and ridiculous things is no way to persuade people to slog through your polemical blog.
Operating a website full of jargon that you expect people to learn before they can honestly evaluate your ideas is called “obscurantism” and it indicates a deep insecurity about your ability to articulate a good reason to consider your notions true, which is probably because they aren’t.
Yes, you did just get totally refuted on a simple point that is centuries old.
I promise that if you make your BS harder to debunk, I’ll stop pointing out what the attempt says about incompetence, OK?
See, if you don’t care enough about you notions to explain them to the honestly curious in Plain English, then I am willing to accept your revealed evaluation; they suck far too much to expect intelligent people to give them serious attention.
Thanks for that ‘update’ on your blog and/or philosophy of life.
Control the President—control many others, such as the Attorney General. We’ve hardly had a decent AG since Roger Taney left that post in November 1833 to become Treasury Secretary, immediately after which he withdrew government funds from the illegal U.S. Bank on orders of President Jackson. In 1902-1903 the money powers in England and the USA organized themselves into the “Pilgrims Society,” and several AG’s over the years have been confirmed as Pilgrims members—George W. Wickersham, William P. Rogers, Herbert Brownell Jr., Elliott Richardson and Richard Kleindienst—mostly from leaked rosters, because the Society does not voluntarily release these to public view. With incomplete coverage, especially since 1981, I assume other AG’s have been members. How can financial control be maintained without legal control? The President appoints all Federal judges, and the President is an “honorary” Pilgrims member (see Google images). I now point out a perhaps touchy matter, but one I hardly had any role in causing—in fall 1978 the Pilgrims admitted the first Black member, Clifton Wharton Jr., president of State University of New York and director, on behalf of the Money Power, of various large corporations. Predictably, Wharton was a “bright,” that is, light skinned Black. Obama and Eric Holder are also “brights,” which may be as much tolerance The Pilgrims Society has for admitting Blacks, and definitely, only into “outer circle” status. Many members of this group trace to the slave trade on both sides of the Atlantic and large plantations. Misinformation appears in some Pilgrims sources, especially the matter of persons asking to join—hardly so—this is by invitation only and it helps to have multiple large scale fortunes in one’s genealogy. Please ask your Congressman to subpoena a list of this shadow organization that keeps the President in its vest pocket.
Look at the case of Ryan Chamberlain. The only indication that anything was wrong with Chamberlain seems to be a facebook message that was set to go live Monday morning, three days after they started to search for him. He made no threats, and had “materials” that may have been assembled into a bomb, but it has not been reported that he had a working device. He had nothing with him when arrested. It seems the “IED” was removed – but if it was real, they would have detonated it. It is not clear that they did so. Nothing about this case is very clear. There is no mention of an anonymous tip, or any source for the initial contact. It is almost like they caught the suicide message of someone, who was not on anybodies radar, in the NSA net and they were responding to that.