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Manufacturing Panic and Paranoia
Thu Jan 8 10:02:46 2004
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Manufacturing Panic and Paranoia


What's wrong with the Independent's lead story on 6/1/04 that opened with the assertion?

"Air travel turmoil as terror threat grows"

Terror threat grows? Three loaded words for which there is not a shred
of evidence that supports either the existence of terror or that there
is a 'threat' or that it's 'growing'. Why this choice of words? For not
only are they irresponsible as they have no basis in reality, they set
the 'tone' for the entire front page article. The article then compounds
its unsupported allegations when it says in the second paragraph:

"In an atmosphere of growing panic and intelligence reports that Islamic
terrorists [sic] intend to hijack a passenger plane to use as a missile,
foreigners arriving in the United States were for the first time
electronically fingerprinted and photographed."

So who exactly, is panicking? Not the passengers that's for sure, though
the hysteria fomented by the security state's allegations of impending
doom is surely intended to have that effect. And in spite of all the hot
air expended on the 'intelligence reports' not a single 'terrorist' has
been apprehended, let alone identified. And what of the 'shoe bombers'
and the 'al-Qu'eda' terrorist that the Sunday Telegraph informed us had
been identified this past Sunday? In fact, aside from disrupting
travellers and costing the UK government (that is, the British public)
£100,000 for every flight that's cancelled under the pretext of
security, the only thing 'gained' is the construction of the global
security state that has been advanced yet one more notch.

And the Brit government's 'Civil Contingency Act' that I reported on
awhile back, gets published today (7/1/04). Coincidence? It would seem
that the US and UK governments are in lockstep in their combined assault
on our liberties in a 'war' that they freely admit has 'no end' in
sight.

The Independent's long lead story on 'terror in the air' had only a
single mention of the threat to our hard-won freedom's when it said:

""But some have questioned the measures. The American Civil Liberties
Union (ACLU) said it was concerned the new checks could be used to
discriminate against people. "Contrary to the assertions of the Homeland
Security Department, the US-Visit programme is an addition to - not a
substitute for - the notorious special registration programme that
resulted in the detention and deportation of hundreds of Arab and Muslim
men because of their national origin""

The Independent's story continued on p. 4 with a purely 'personal' view
of travelling on BA flight 223 that had been delayed by the US
authorities. The issue that I raised the other day, that flights had
actually been cancelled because of the refusal of British pilots to fly
with armed 'sky marshalls' onboard has still to be dealt with by the
British media. The Independent's story had only a passing reference to
the issue when it reported on Thomas Cook's refusal to fly its planes if
they had to carry armed police. The report in the New York Times that I
referred to has had only a passing mention and has certainly not been
the focus of a single news story that I have been able to trace in the
British press.

The reason for the cancellation of flights is still being presented to
us as one of a terrorist threat rather than the refusal of pilots to fly
with armed police onboard. What is most insidious about the reportage is
that it is impossible to separate fact from speculation except that what
surfaces like scum on water is the generic sense of an unspecified
'threat' and that's what the public carries away as 'received opinion'.
Such is the making of the propaganda war to persuade the public that it
should lay down and roll over in the face of the state's manufacturing
of terror and the outrageous attacks on our liberty.

So why is the hysteria being jacked up at this particular time? I think
that there are several issues involved here and probably the most
important, at least from the public's perception, is the dire straights
of the Iraqi occupation that needs a distraction.

The second is the sneaky introduction of Patriot II legislation in the
US Congress. The third reason is connected insofar as the public needs
to be properly 'primed' for ever more authoritarian restrictions on
civil liberties and what better reason than some nebulous and dire
'threat' from equally nebulous 'terrorists' and what better time to do
it than during a major public holiday.

The fourth reason is the abject failure of the imperium's strategy to
prepare us not only for the war on everything but the realisation that
the imperium is incapable of waging war on the planet, at least in the
way it waged war on a starved and broken and essentially defenceless
Iraq.

At the heart of this failed strategy is the very notion of the 'war on
terror' as a pretext for propping up terminal capitalism, for unlike a
country whether a 'legitimate' target or not, individuals ie terrorists'
are not liable to having war waged upon them. At best, targetted police
actions may or may not achieve success. It should be obvious to anyone
that the 'war on terror' is nothing but a pretext for a (not so) hidden
agenda. If as the securicrats admit, the 'war' may last 50 years, what
is the 'end product'? Is there an 'end product and is one actually
intended'?

The only 'end product' is the creation of a police state that looks to
be around for at least 50 years and frighteningly, what we are
witnessing now is merely a prelude, for the longer the 'emergency' is
maintained, sooner or later, we will see some kind of attack on the US
and the UK if only in response to increasing repression and further
breakdown of the poor countries of the world. And then what? The
security state will demand ever more restrictions on our freedoms (or
what's left of them) as they will argue that what we have already, wasn'
t effective. It's obvious that there is no end to this process in a
classic case of negative feedback.

The 'Iron Heel' of Jack London's prescient novel written almost a
century ago has arrived, that predicted 400 hundred years of capitalist
repression. And what of the 'war on dictatorships' that lasted much of
the 20th century and led to the rise of military-industrial domination
of the major powers' economies and in no small measure contributed to
the demise of the Soviet Union? A war 'we' supposedly won in 1990?

The end of democracy has been brought about under the pretext that a
tiny handful of people that numbers maybe a few hundred at most, who, if
you add up every victim that can be said to be a result of their
actions, doesn't even add up to a few US bombing raids on Iraq,
Afghanistan or Panama. This is the reality of the world the imperium is
busily building. Think about it.


--
Belief is based on fear.
Knowledge is based on truth.

All of this human belief system management has
become unmanageable because it is a giant lie.