Authoritarian rulers know; Fear is the opiate of the masses


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Americans obey their masters' voice


So, Osama Walks into This Bar, See? and Bush says, “Whad’l'ya have, pardner?” and Osama says, “Well, George, what are you serving today?” and Bush says, “Fear,” and Osama shouts, “Fear for everybody!” and George pours it on for the crowd.

Then the presidential bartender says, “Hey, who’s buying?” and Osama point a thumb at the crowd sucking down their brew. “They are,” he says. And the two of them share a quiet laugh.


But wait a minute. I’d better shut my mouth. The sign here in the airport says, “Security is no joking matter.”

But if security’s no joking matter, why does this guy dressed in a high-school marching band outfit tell me to dump my Frappuccino and take off my shoes? All I can say is, Thank the Lord the “shoe bomber” didn’t carry Semtex in his underpants.

Today’s a RED ALERT day. How odd. They just caught the British guys with the chemistry sets. But when these guys were planning to blow up airliners, the USA was on ORANGE alert. That’s a “low threat” notice.

According to the press release from the Department of Homeland Security, low-threat Orange means that there were no special inspections of passengers or cargo.

Isn’t it nice of Mr. Bush to alert Osama when half our security forces are given the day off? Hmm. I asked an Israeli security expert why his nation doesn’t use these pretty color codes.

He asked me if, when I woke up, I checked the day’s terror color.

“I can’t say I ever have. I mean, who would?”

He smiled. “The terrorists.”

America is the only nation on the planet that kindly informs bombers, hijackers and berserkers the days on which they won’t be monitored. You’ve got to get up pretty early in the morning to get a jump on George Bush’s team.

There are three possible explanations for the Administration’s publishing a good-day-for-bombing color guidebook.

1. God is on Osama’s side.

2. George is on Osama’s side.

3. Fear sells better than sex.

A gold star if you picked #3.

The Fear Factory

That’s because Osama got what he wanted. There’s no mystery about what Al Qaeda was after.

Like everyone from the Girl Scouts to Bono, Osama put his wish on his web site. He had a single demand: “Crusaders out of the land of the two Holy Places.” To translate: get US troops out of Saudi Arabia.

And George Bush gave it to him. On April 29th, two days before landing on the aircraft carrier Lincoln, our self-described “War President” quietly put out a notice that he was withdrawing our troops from Saudi soil. In other words, our cowering cowboy gave in whimpering to Osama’s demand.

The press took no note. They were all wiggie over Bush’s waddling around the carrier deck in a disco-aged jump suit announcing, “MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.” But it wasn’t America’s mission that was accomplished, it was Osama’s.

Am I saying there’s no danger, no threat? Sure there is: 46 million Americans don’t have health insurance. IBM is legally stealing from its employees’ pension plan and United Airlines has dumped its pensions altogether.

Four-million three-hundred thousand Americans were injured, made sick or killed by their jobs last year.

TXU Corporation is right now building four monster-sized power plants in Texas that will burn skuzzy gunk called “lignite.” The filth it will pour into the sky will snuff a heck of a lot more Americans than some goofy group of fanatics with bottles of hydrogen peroxide.

But Americans don’t ask for real protection from what’s killing us. The War on Terror is the Weapon of Mass Distraction.

Instead of demanding health insurance, we have 59 million of our fellow citizens pooping in their pants with fear of Al Qaeda, waddling to the polls, crying, “Georgie save us!”

And what does he give us? In my own small town, the federal government has paid for loading an SUV with .50 caliber machine guns to watch for an Al Qaeda attack at the dock of the ferry that takes tourists to the Indian casino in Connecticut.

The casino dock is my town’s officially designated “Critical Asset and Vulnerability Infrastructure Point (CAVIP).” (To find the most vulnerable points to attack in the USA, Al Qaeda can download a list from the Department of Homeland Security — no kidding.)

But that’s not all. Bush is protecting us from English hijackers with exploding coffee cups with a fearsome anti-terrorist tool: the Virginia-class submarine. The V-boat was originally meant to hunt Soviet subs.

But there are no more Soviet subs. So, General Dynamics and Lockheed Martin have “refitted” these Cold War dinosaurs with new torpedoes redesigned to carry counter-terror commandoes.

That’s right: when we found Osama’s beach house, we can shoot our boys right up under his picnic table and take him out. These Marines-in-a-tube injector boats cost $2.5 billion each — and our President’s ordered half a dozen new ones.

Lynn Cheney, the Veep’s wife, still takes in compensation from Lockheed as a former board member. I’m sure that has nothing to do with this multi-billion dollar “anti-terror” contract.

Fear sells better than sex. Fear is the sales pitch for many lucrative products: from billion-dollar sailor injectors to one very lucrative war in Mesopotamia (a third of a trillion dollars doled out, no audits, no questions asked).

Better than toothpaste that makes our teeth whiter than white, this stuff will make us safer than safe. It’s political junk food, the cheap filling in the flashy tube.

What we don’t get is safety from the real dangers: a life-threatening health-care system, lung-murdering pollution production and a trade deficit with China that’s reducing mid-America to coolie status.

These would take a slice of the profits of the owning classes like the Lockheeds and the Exxons.

War on Terror is class war by other means — to keep you from asking for real protection from true threats, the landlords of our nation give you fake protection from manufactured dangers.

And they remind you to be afraid every time to fly to see Aunt Millie and have to give up your hemorrhoid ointment to the underpaid guy in the bell-hop suit with a security badge.

Greg Palast ---- http://www.gregpalast.com/so-osama-walks-into-this-bar-see

Authoritarian rulers know; Fear is the opiate of the masses

I wrote the following in another post, it happened when we had a dictatorship government:
Now, when the bombs weren't from "Shining Path" or the other leftist group MRTA, it was the very same government doing it to keep being re-elected (it is called something like psycho-social handling of the citizens).
Note: Shining Path and the MRTA were leftist guerrilla groups that opted for undiscriminated use of terrorism to pursue their goal, the taking over of the political power in my country.

All of Perú went to the polls 2 times after his first period of 5 years in the government as President and re-elected him out of fear, of course he committed fraud in the last two elections of the 3. Out of citizens "FEAR" he declared martial law, shut down the Congress, and muted the Press (though in US the Press willingly has muted itself). The only good thing he probably did was to appoint a group of special forces in the police to fight "terrorism".
This appointed group in Perú to fight "terrorism" never gave speeches or hints or anything that would let anybody know what they were doing, and in 1992 this group caught the whole High Command (including the Head of the movement). The group was created around a year and a half before the capture. and this capture wasn't in a cowboy shooting fashion style in the streets, they simply knock the doors dressed as regular citizens, I believe they pretended being salesmen. Although it isn't exactly as it happened (the capture of this terrorist group), but if you watch the movie "The Dancer Upstairs", it tells of this episode in Perú dealing with "terrorism", though it is portrayed as happening elsewhere.

Of the captured "High Command" only one escaped, actually he wasn't there, and it took the government several years to capture him, now that capture happened long before his last re-election, but he kept it secret until a couple of months before the elections when he called a Press conference to show the capture of the last member of Shining Path's high command.

I wrote the following in another post, it happened when we had a dictatorship government:
Now, when the bombs weren't from "Shining Path" or the other leftist group MRTA, it was the very same government doing it to keep being re-elected (it is called something like psycho-social handling of the citizens).
Note: Shining Path and the MRTA were leftist guerrilla groups that opted for undiscriminated use of terrorism to pursue their goal

Uhhh....ok, Cromagnon.

What the above has to do with the jist of this thread, I have NO idea.

and bush and his cronies in congress use fear as a factor to create and pass laws that contradict and usurp the constitution. to me this is TREASON.

I have always believed in the "New World Order... One World Gov't... Elitism.." sort of thing. What I feel that people don't understand is this is not a Republican thing, it's not a Democrat thing, its all those elitist.

People will give up freedoms for the thought of being secure, which in my mind is horrible.

Thanks for the post. It's nice to know there are people out there who believe in a lot of what I do.

I feel that people don't understand is this is not a Republican thing, it's not a Democrat thing, its all those elitist.

Exactly.

That is why this nation is about to fall by the wayside; millions believe that --"if only we can get the Democrats in to replace the Republicans, everything will be alright!"-- .....when the fact is that the Democrats are only marginally less fascist than the people now in power.

Our leaders have taken it for granted, and planted that belief in the minds of many people, that we are entitled, because of our moral superiority, to dominate the world. At the end of World War II, Henry Luce, with an arrogance appropriate to the owner of Time, Life, and Fortune, pronounced this "the American century," saying that victory in the war gave the United States the right "to exert upon the world the full impact of our influence, for such purposes as we see fit and by such means as we see fit."

Both the Republican and Democratic parties have embraced this notion. George Bush, in his Inaugural Address on January 20, 2005, said that spreading liberty around the world was "the calling of our time." Years before that, in 1993, President Bill Clinton, speaking at a West Point commencement, declared: "The values you learned here ... will be able to spread throughout this country and throughout the world and give other people the opportunity to live as you have lived, to fulfill your God-given capacities."

What is the idea of our moral superiority based on? Surely not on our behavior toward people in other parts of the world. Is it based on how well people in the United States live? The World Health Organization in 2000 ranked countries in terms of overall health performance, and the United States was thirty-seventh on the list, though it spends more per capita for health care than any other nation. One of five children in this, the richest country in the world, is born in poverty. There are more than 40 countries that have better records on infant mortality. Cuba does better. And there is a sure sign of sickness in society when we lead the world in the number of people in prison -- more than two million.

A more honest estimate of ourselves as a nation would prepare us all for the next barrage of lies that will accompany the next proposal to inflict our power on some other part of the world. It might also inspire us to create a different history for ourselves, by taking our country away from the liars and killers who govern it, and by rejecting nationalist arrogance, so that we can join the rest of the human race in the common cause of peace and justice. ____Howard Zinn

republicans, democrats, independents, whatever.

how do you know a politician is lying? his mouth is moving.