Signs of the Times - 2004-05-30

It is clear from events following the seizure of power by Bush and the Neocons in the US at the end of 2000 that ever finer forms of control are being put into place in the US. The war on terror was designed to give an excuse to impose similar controls elsewhere in the world. One might attribute this totalitarian course simply to an internal dynamic of fascism -- that is, the corporate control of the state. In such a case, the external enemy is used, not because the threat is real, but merely as an excuse to tighten the screws. The real threat is that the people of a given country take the power back from the hands of the corporatist leaders. Therefore any and all internal opposition is crushed.

This is effectively what has happened in the United States. There is no opposition within the US, in the sense of an organised party, to US imperial claims. Kerry's foreign policy is the same as Bush's foreign policy.

If you look at the players and study the way the pieces have been put into place in the US over the last 100 years, it is hard not to come away with the impression that this was planned.

Look at the data:

The fundamentalist Christian Right. How did this group become the most important political force in the United States? These people have a literal interpretation of the Bible. Many of them believe the world is no more than 6,000 years old. They believe that Jesus is coming back in the near future to rapture them all up to heaven, prior to the tribulations the rest of us will face, "the End Times".

Unbelievably, this is occuring in the supposedly most modern, technologically advanced country in the world.

There are tens of millions of people who have been brainwashed into these beliefs.

The military-industrial complex. When President Eisenhower warned about the military-industrial complex in his farewell address in 1961, the power of the armaments industry was nothing compared to its power today. It was still an infant, priming the US public with scare stories about the Red Menace, the threat from the Soviet Union and China, and fears of reds under the bed. It was un-American to be a communist. Communism was not simply a political ideology like any other; it was the Other, that dark and forbidding something that was the antithesis of all American values.

The Soviet Union did not want, nor could it afford, the arms race. The military-industrial complex of the US forced it on the world, much to their profit, in order to bankrupt their opponent.

The sixties counter-culture. In reaction to the Puritan, over-organised and repressive society of the 1950s in the US came the cut-loose, free-love, drug haze of the sixties. The Civil Rights movement of the fifties and early sixties, which saw Americans of all classes and colours joining together against the structural racism of US society, was subverted and rerouted. Critical and rational response to the deep problems of post-war America was diverted into a hedonistic counter-culture where individualism was king and thinking gave way to "feeling." "If it feels good, do it!" was the slogan.

The assassination of JFK. We may never know by whom or why Kennedy was killed; however, there is more than enough evidence to show that it was a conspiracy and that Oswald either did not act alone or didn't even fire a shot and was the patsy. What we think is significant is that in spite of the evidence pointing to a conspiracy, nothing was done about it officially. And the American people have accepted that.

The Kennedy assassination opened an era in US politics that is bizarre, to say the least. Johnson got the US deeply involved in Vietnam. Then, rather than run in 1968, he decided to quit. The man who followed him, Richard Nixon, left office in disgrace after the Watergate affair. There are rumours that Nixon was set up because he was starting diplomatic relations with "Red" China. Whether Nixon was set up or was himself responsible, the integrity of the presidency was at an all-time low. Gerald Ford, a man who had been appointed Vice-President when Spiro Agnew resigned in disgrace, and a member of the Warren Commission, was named President. Faces at the White House in this period included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.

It was during the Nixon/Ford years that the Christian Right began its plan of attack for seizing power from within US governmental structures.

The Carter years were designed to bring respectability to the Presidency. Carter was an "outsider." He was known as a "good man." Under "good man" Carter, the plan for destabilising Afghanistan, leading directly to the current situation in that country, was put into play. Carter lost the 1980 election over the Iran hostage affair, after Bush senior convinced the Iranians to hold the US prisoners until after the US elections in exchange for arms for the Contras-- which later became known as the Iran-Contra affair.

The plausible deniability necessary to safeguard the "moral integrity" of the office was maintained -- that is, do what you want, including torture and murder, just keep it to yourselves.

Under Reagan, US covert operations in Latin America went into overdrive. Given that Reagan was almost senile, it seems that "George the First" was running the show. Rumsfeld went to Baghdad to shake the hand of business partner Saddam Hussein. The CIA continued funding Islamic fundamentalists working in Afghanistan against the Russians, including a man by the name of Osama bin Laden. Reagan was the victim of an assassination attempt early in his term, shot by a young man whose family had close relations to Vice President Bush. Democracy lives on. Not a very pretty picture for a country that claims to be the beacon of liberty.

Under George the First, Saddam moved from friend to enemy. The first Gulf War lit up the screens of CNN. George lost to "Slick Willy" Clinton in 1992, and the right wing started doing anything and everything to discredit the man - which in Clinton's case was very easily done. Partisan politics descended to new levels. But looking back at Clinton, all he ever lied about was his sex life, surely a matter of importance in his marriage, but hardly a matter of national importance -- except in the US, where the fundamentalists, holier than thou, have real problems with sex. This is obvious in the double discourse seen in the US where Puritanism reigns with its shadow, pornography. Do as we say, not as we do.

By the time the Republicans stole the 2000 election, there was no real political life left in the US. There were no real debates. People were told what to think through the media. Critical thought had been eliminated from the national scene through the debasement of the education system where metal detectors checking for guns replaced books on the budget sheets.

The scene was set for morally indignant and self-righteous fundamentalists to be led by the nose by the Neocon lobby, a lobby whose first allegiance was to Israel, not the US. This is all the more curious when one remembers the 1960 election when one of the arguments used against Kennedy was that, as a Catholic, his first allegiance would be to the Pope in Rome, not to the electors!

The United Sates has been sliding down a very slippery slope since the end of World War II, and yet, it has happened so carefully and gradually that the US public thinks that they are still living in paradise.

The attack of 9/11, the new Pearl Harbor, permitted the Neocon cabal to orient US foreign policy completely and openly towards the needs of Israel. Just don't say it out loud or you'll be denounced as 'anti-Semitic.' 9/11 justified repressive laws at home and the ignoring of international law abroad. In the three years since, similar laws have been passed in other countries.

Air travel within the US is a constant stream of humiliations. Xenophobia is on the rise, especially against Arabs.

We said above that this might simply be due to the internal logic of fascism. But what if there is an external reason, a real external threat, not only to one country, but to the planet as a whole?

There has been an increase recently in discussion on the internet, including on sites devoted to Bush and Jesus, about an impending storm of meteorites. Readers of this page know that we have done considerable research into this question. One then must ask whether this recent outcry is confirmation of what we have been saying, or whether it is more disinfo, designed for other reasons than to make people aware of the danger.

We think it is the latter.

Looking at the world, it is clear that the leaders of any and all countries do not have the best interests of their populations at heart. Different countries and political systems give different reasons for what they do, but it usually boils down to "we know what's good for you" and you - the people - aren't capable of understanding the complex world of politics, economics, or social relations. If this is true, it is not difficult to imagine the global elite's reaction to news that the earth would sometime soon go through a shower of space objects that might greatly damage or destroy large parts of the globe. They would look for ways of saving themselves. But they would also have to insure that the angry populations left out to face the menace head on would have no room to strike back.

One way for the powers that be to ensure that people don't revolt would be for them to sow the seeds to set brother against brother, neighbor against neighbor. We see this happening today with blame for internal problems in the Western countries being blamed on immigrants, with the polarisation in the US between Republican and Democrat, between defenders of the federal government and those who are heading to the hills armed to the teeth to fight federal encroachment on the Constitution, etc.

When the essentials for survival become scarce, human beings have a choice: work together for the good of all, or create hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion.

Our world is a world of people going it alone. This is how we have been programmed. How many people will be able to overcome this programming when and if things deteriorate?

A recent report for the US Defence Department on climate change speculated that a new ice age would throw "civilisation" back to a period of wars of survival. There would be continuous fighting over ever scarcer resources. How much easier for the elite if the plebes kill each other off. But to be on the safe side, they are putting in ever stricter forms of control over the population to weed out the potential "terrorists", that is, people who will be willing to stand up against the powers that be, cowing the public into believing that there is no hope, that they can do nothing, that they are powerless. Such a population will be dealt with either by armies or bands of marauding vigilantes. Another part of the population is being turned into psychopaths, trained to think like killers, filling their heads with violence on TV and the movies where nothing is ever resolved except with a gun.

If such a scenario is possible, and if the powers that be are aware of the threat facing our planet, we think that there is little possibility of the heavens falling upon us until such measures are in place. If this is true, then the recent upsurge in talk of comets and meteors may be designed to turn the whole idea to ridicule: if thousands or millions are expecting catastrophe this summer, outside of the cinemas where The Day After Tomorrow is showing, and nothing happens, a very real threat could be turned into this year's Planet X.

Rummy gleefully announces that there's plenty of murder and mayhem to come.

Rumsfeld Says 'War on Terror' Just Beginning

By Larry Fine
Sat May 29,12:36 PM ET

WEST POINT, New York (Reuters) - The United States' declared war on terror is closer to the beginning than the end, Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told graduates of the U.S. Military Academy on Saturday.

Rumsfeld told the 2004 graduating class of 935 cadets that in the three years since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on America, the U.S.-led coalition had "overthrown two vicious regimes and liberated 50 million people, disrupted terrorist cells across the globe and thwarted many terrorist attacks."

"Yet despite our successes, we are closer to the beginning of this struggle with global insurgency than to its end," he said. [...]

He said on the latest front, in Iraq where the Bush administration is facing continued fighting that is undermining efforts to end the U.S. occupation, "We are facing a test of wills, with an enemy that seeks to derail the Iraqi people's path to self-governance."

Comment: So let's see if we have this straight: The Iraqi freedom fighters - who Rummy calls the "enemy" - are trying to end the occupation of their country, which is undermining US efforts to end the occupation. The obvious solution is to slaughter entire wedding parties while they sleep. Of course, Rummy wants Americans to believe that the "enemy" is actually some al-Qaeda related terrorist group. Even if this was indeed the case, it is obvious from Rumsfeld's comments that the US intends to end its occupation of Iraq on terms that are the most favorable to the Homeland. Either way, it is clear that America's intentions have nothing to do with freedom or democracy.

"The extremists know the rise of a free, self-governing Iraq, respectful of all religions - would deal the terrorists a decisive blow," Rumsfeld said. "Its success depends on encouraging friends and allies with whom we are so interdependent to not be terrorized by threats or isolated by fear." [...]

Comment: Since 9/11, it seems that Americans are the only ones who have isolated themselves due to fear and manufactured threats of terrorism. When the US found itself alone in the world regarding the invasion of Iraq, the Bush administration decided to buy a coalition.