The modus operandi of empires throughout history has been to create crisis, generate fear and promote panic. The current empire is no exception.
911 offered the empire the opportunity to rush through the Patriot Act essentially gutting the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. The attack was a criminal act, not an act of war which is military aggression by one government against another. A declaration of war empowered the empire to attack Afghanistan even though most of the alleged perpetrators were from Saudi Arabia.
Weapons of mass destruction were used to justify the war against Iraq. Fear and panic led to the acceptance of torture, extraordinary rendition, secret prisons, Quantanamo Bay, the elimination of habeas corpus and other practices characteristic of closed societies.
The War on Terrorism led to the expansion of a military/police state both at home and abroad. The privatization of war enabled unaccountable corporations such as Bechtel, Halliburton and Blackwater to profiteer at public expense in rape, pillage and destructive ventures. The War on Terrorism justified surveillance, intimidation, arrest, incarceration and denial of free speech and assembly.
Economic Terrorism, in the form of an economic meltdown, demonstrated the incredible power and control of corporations and bankers. Unaccountable, unelected mercenaries in the Federal Reserve Bank, private financial institutions, Wall Street financiers, predatory lenders and the International Monetary Fund/ World Bank have created a system based on deregulation, mergers into mega-monsters “too big to fail,” abdication of oversight responsibilities and privatization of all aspects of the economy. The same mercenaries who created the crisis were then empowered by the Treasury Department to use taxpayer money to bail out the banks and financial institutions conveniently eliminating social programs and destroying the middle class. Financial experts were apparently unable to foresee that unbridled capitalism with its mantra of free markets and free trade would inevitably lead to free fall of the domestic and global economy.
How does a country move from an open to a closed society, from democracy to empire, and what are the consequences? The empire builders must be able to manipulate the minds of citizens and manufacture consent through creation of crisis, fear and panic. A compliant, corporate media is essential. The rule of law and the legal system must be changed to represent the demands of the empire, not the rights of citizens. There must be a consolidation of power establishing a leader who is above the law and unaccountable to other branches of government. A compliant and corrupt Congress, for example, would not challenge authority and a Supreme Court could appoint an unelected leader with no concern for the demise of democracy. Corporations, emboldened by Supreme Court decisions which granted personhood and the declaration of money to buy votes as a free speech issue, would become dominate players in the system of control. Police and military power as well as a vast network of government and privatized security systems would be created and expanded to prevent and crush resistance. Martial law could be declared if necessary to protect the empire and its ruler.
Uninformed and fearful citizens have seldom recognized the suppression and oppression leading to an empire but they have always suffered the consequences. They have learned at great cost that there is no such thing as a benign dictatorship and no such creature as a democratic despot.
Sue Bastian, Bend
This article appears in Jan 1-7, 2009.
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To see an education completely wasted is a sad thing.
Bastian lists a long, sweaty, frantic litany of sheer lunacy…spewing a seemingly unending supply of mouth foaming labels which she uses to avoid the reality of actually thinking…
It’s frightening to realize that we share the same planet, let alone the same city…
But the editorial went off the rails on the 5th paragraph.
Indeed, Ms Wheeler, it is sad that we share a planet with those such as you.
Can someone from the Central Oregon obtrusive, parnoid community respectfully (J/K, what was I thinking?) explain without name-calling (LOL, like that would ever happen) how the rightwing claims that “Big Government’s” crime bills are threatening and eroding Our civil liberties, Our bill of rights and democratic ideals (the small “d” is non-partisan and represents a Jeffersonian p.o.v.” but the Patriot Act somehow preserves our liberties? “We are not going to preserve and protect our liberties by taking them away!” (censored for profanity) Harry Truman shouting at J. Edgar Hoover, the cross-dressing crime fighter. Please do not respond with the usual fabrications or classic denials of facts or with your emotional partisan attacks. Just let the Truth finally escape its hiding place in your mouths sans the ever-present conspiracy theories.
Dear Sue,
You say: “Uninformed and fearful citizens have seldom recognized the suppression and oppression leading to an empire but they have always suffered the consequences.”
I respectfully nonconcur.
I’d suggest a listen to the Leonard Cohen classic “Everybody Knows” (available on YouTube). Cohen disagrees with your analysis. The first stanza says everything we need to know about the walkingshadows who make up most of our population:
“Everybody knows that the dice are loaded
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed
Everybody knows that the war is over
Everybody knows the good guys lost
Everybody knows the fight was fixed
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich.
Thats how it goes… Everybody knows”
So very close to the truth, Sue. How can you not realize that 9/11 was a false flag, inside job?. It was the essential pretext for all these actions. Please visit Patriots Question 9/11 on line for some intelligent observations of the evidence.
BJ,
Sue and I are on the same page as you are regarding 9/11 Truth.
Everyone who has a brain here ought to simply do a quick Google search on “false flag” to get an idea of how governments actually tend to work. Those who do not have a brain should attend church services and praise George Bush as a good Christian man who hasn’t allowed a single horrible terrorist incident since September 11, 2001.
Every logical thinker knows that the 9/11 airplanes that hit the twin towers were actually flying saucers from Roswell, New Mexico, disguised as airplanes via holographic technologies, filled with neo-con robots guided by Karl Rove and pre-ordained to start the Iraqi and Afghan wars to further the capitalistic war machine that will also halt the Obama nomination, opps I mean election, opps I mean inauguration, so that Bush can install marshall law. I mean everyone who has a brain knows all of that.