As Russian artillery shells were raining down on Berlin, even after the German Fuehrer had committed suicide, the security state continued on. Through the ruins of the Berlin streets, roving bands of S.S. officers roamed, hunting down and executing on the spot anyone suspected of desertion or cowardess. The third Reich had less than forty eight hours to live; yet, the security state was alive and well and lives on with us today.
Many people fail to understand that though the third Reich was pounded into dust long ago, many of its tenets of government live on. As the Red army rolled into Poland, the Polish underground began to rise up against the German invaders in Warsaw. It was at that moment that Joseph Stalin called a halt to the Russian push towards Warsaw. It was in Stalin we see the afterbirth of modern politics and of the security state. Flash forward to Libya and Syria; American policy has a light touch. Let the combatants bloody and eliminate the strongest and most popular and who do you suppose will be waiting in the wings to pick up the pieces?
[I]t is much safer to be feared than loved when, of the two, one must be dispensed with. Because … love is preserved by the link of obligation which, owing to the baseness of men, is broken at every opportunity for their advantage; but fear preserves you by a dread of punishment which never fails. – Niccolo Machiavelli
No man of prestige is without ambition. It is quaint to think of George Washington as a backwoodsman surveyor, but Washington was a blindly ambitious man. He married one of the wealthiest widows in Virginia and through those marriage vows became a wealthy man himself. Yes, it is entertaining to think of the founding fathers by their popular historical images. The French and Indian War cleared Colonial America’s borders of potential adversaries. Ambitious men asked, “What do we need a British crown for, when we might have our own?”
Many if not most of Parliament’s odious taxes were raised to pay down Britain’s French and Indian War debt; but the colonies wanted it both ways; they wanted protection, but refused to pay for it. America’s colonial rag tag army defeated the better trained and equipped British with the weapon of time. The colonials never went to battle without knowing the way out. There was no security state, if there had been, Washington, Jefferson and Adams would have been hunted down and executed, their estates seized their wives and children arrested and detained just as the US Army seized the wives and children of the notables of Iraqi leadership.
Naturally the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia, nor in England, nor in America, nor in Germany. That is understood. But after all, it is the leaders of the country who determine policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country. – Hermann Goering
The media’s the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power. Because they control the minds of the masses. – Malcolm X
The other day I was listening to National Public Radio from New York. They were holding a discussion about the “Fiscal Cliff” and they spoke of it as a foregone conclusion, as if even the questioning of the existence of a “fiscal cliff” was beyond discussion. So, say we substitute one eyed, one horned, flying purple people eater, for “Fiscal Cliff”. Such is the essence of propaganda, making the theoretical, mythical or mystical, real and dangerous.
The Nazis burned the Reichstag building, then claimed it was an attempted Communist coup, thus giving the government an excuse to jail communist members of the Reichstag. It also silenced critics of the regime, setting up an us-or-them mentality. It divided the people making any cooperation among foes of the regime impossible. A German blue ribbon panel declared after examining the evidence that one lone Dutch communist was responsible for the fire, despite reams of evidence to the contrary. In a time of crisis it is unpatriotic to question such blue ribbon conclusions. The state is alleged to be the fountainhead of truth and to question that lone principle in the security state is the genesis of treason. As the patriots shout, “My country right or wrong”, presupposing the state is right and not wrong. Distilling down thought, wisdom and logic, and replacing these prudent ingredients with the heady intoxicating spirits of anger and emotion.
On September 11, 2001, the World Trade Center was attacked and destroyed. After much foot dragging, a government blue ribbon commission was empanelled and lo and behold, the committee determined it was all exactly as the administration had told the public. Just like the Reichstag fire before, the blue ribbon panel left behind glaring omissions and controversial and downright hard to believe theories and yet, what happened to the United States after 9-11besides the rise of the security state?
Ask yourself, if the Nazi regime had used the Reichstag fire to put into effect Hitler’s Enabling Act, thus destroying democratic government and the Nazis had actually set the Reichstag fire themselves, what does the imposition of the USA Patriot Act actually say to us about American government? If conspiracy A, leads to event B, and the end result is the creation of a security state C, then what would event B, with end result C, point to? Control of the truth is the key to the security state. We watch patriotically as shock and awe bombs rain down upon a Capitol city of another sovereign nation. The official truth, says to us, all justified, but what if the official truth is a lie?
We have developed a national energy policy designed to help bring together business, government, local communities and citizens to promote dependable, affordable and environmentally sound energy for the future. Note to George W. Bush from Dick Cheney’s Energy Task Force, May, 2001
How odd that the Energy Task Force included maps of Iraq. How odd that Governor George W. Bush entertained leaders of the Taliban in Texas trying to encourage the construction of an oil pipeline across Afghanistan. How interesting that after the US promoted a conflict in Afghanistan after 9-11, the administration co-mingled Saddam Hussein with Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban and even Al Queada.
It was in the aftermath of the assassination of Arch Duke Ferdinand of Austria by Serbian nationalists in 1914, that the Austrian government demanded of Serbia the right to conduct the investigation on Serbian soil. Imagine allowing foreigners into your country to conduct an investigation on their terms and by their laws. It was wholly unacceptable and a violation of the most basic rights of national sovereignty. It was a demand which was designed to be refused. It was no different than the demands made by the Bush administration of the government of Afghanistan — a demand which could not be accepted and must be refused.
Preventive war was an invention of Hitler. I would not even listen to anyone seriously that came and talked about such a thing. – Dwight Eisenhower
I can hear you, the rest of the world can hear you and the people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon. – George W. Bush
The Security state obviously requires security but with a primary difference of intent. Whenever there is a natural disaster, security is required to protect the citizenry from crime or injury. Broken gas mains, ruble or downed power lines constitute a legitimate threat to public safety. But take for example, the BP disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, where coast guard and law enforcement were used to keep reporters off of the oil soaked beaches; where the FAA closed the airspace over the well site to prevent flyovers by the press. There was no threat to the reporter’s safety here; the threat was to the state from the reporters.
These reporters were threatening the state’s monopoly on the truth. The Federal Government was parroting BP’s reports of the oil spillage verbatim, while at the same time preventing any independent observation. That in a nutshell, is the security state. Rather than protecting the populace from potential enemies the security state protects itself from the population, which it views as potential enemies.
The military is embedded in the mainstream corporate media as is the media embedded with the military while retired generals give expert analysis on cable TV channels. Sensational photography is the norm with little divergent questioning and only one voice, for the official truth has only voice and only that one voice is allowed to be heard.
Now, four years ago, I made a few commitments to you. I told you I’d end the war in Iraq, and I did. I said I’d end the war in Afghanistan, and we are,” said Obama. “I said we’d refocus on the people who actually attacked us on 9/11 — and today, al Qaeda is on its heels and Osama bin Laden is no more. – Barack Obama
The truth is there is no Islamic army or terrorist group call Al-Qaeda. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But, there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the ‘devil’ only in order to drive TV watchers to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US… - former British Foreign Secretary, Robin Cook, Inter-Services Intelligence
The creation of a security state is the last call; it is the two minute warning. It is the silent proclamation of a government hostile to the citizenry. A government holed up in the palisades of power because it is a government up to no good. It is a government of robbers, thieves and criminals all dressed up in the finery of democracy; a government which is obsessed with its own survival, heedless of its people’s survival.
Should any political party attempt to abolish social security unemployment insurance and eliminate labor laws and farm programs you would not hear of that party again in our political history. There is a tiny splinter group of course that believes you can do these things. Among them are a few other Texas oil millionaires and an occasional politician or business man from other areas. Their number is negligible and they are stupid. – Dwight Eisenhower
“The first method for estimating the intelligence of a ruler is to look at the men he has around him.” – Niccolo Machiavelli
David Glenn Cox is a senior staff writer for TLR and an award winning author and musician; he is the author of the novel, “The Servants of Pilate”.