The absurdity of the world today is so blinding that we can barely see through the fog to discern what went so wrong.
Plans had been spun for years in the dark underground caves by the enemies of man. The Neoconservatives had it all planned, but one factor was missing.
Propaganda had already been working its insidious misinformation. The mass media were already more than willing to play the game of Big Money. Americans were thoroughly indoctrinated to toe the line of Big Power. Respect for power and blind obedience were the result of the U.S. educational system. “I pledge obedience to the flag of the United States of America …” Millions and millions of yes-men had been molded out of the clay of propaganda and history books.
Yes, the Neoconservatives had it all in hand. Ronald Reagan had taken the first big step to load the dice. Anybody with a conscience was now going to be deprived of any realistic means of resetting the scales to a just balance. This was the beginning of the policy of ‘starving the beast’. The little people had no say. Only Big Money weighed heavily enough to tip the balance. Bill Clinton continued in the steps of his predecessors and the famous climbing ladder, supposed to be available to all Americans, became more and more of an illusion.
But the real introduction of lawlessness and the total contempt for the needs of the masses, that were soon to follow, were still only in the sick minds of the Neocon cavemen. In order to carry out their destructive projects, one factor was standing in their way. The people might become a powerful force against their openly unconstitutional planned take-over. Could even the Supreme Court be relied on to take the side of the Neocon monsters? The Project for the New American Century (PNAC)[1] may well have as its goal the promotion of American global leadership, but would the end justify the means? Could this little clique of psychopaths do their deeds and clear the hurdles that were still in clear view?
The path to world domination is made possible
September 11 made it all possible. Whatever really happened on that fateful day will probably never be known to the public, even though theories abound. But what we do know is that mass hysteria was awakened in the American people and the surgeons could now come in and chop away at human rights, spread fear instead of showing a reasonable calm, and all this without being hampered by any humanitarian considerations. The homeland had been attacked. All means were from now on considered legal.
The cheerleaders were in full swing, flags were waving all over America the beautiful. National pride was steered towards revenge with an unstoppable force, constantly nurtured by radio, television and bumper-sticker propaganda.
Patriotism had its field day and barely any questions were asked. The tiny clique of cavemen made preposterous statements, unsupported by any real facts and the citizens lapped it up blindly, without the slightest attempt at verifying the truth of the accusations. Mass hysteria snowballed.
A country was pointed out as being behind this incomparably heinous deed. It made absolutely no sense whatsoever, but people didn’t pay any attention. The propaganda channels were screaming: “Never in the history of mankind has a deed been wrought that was more evil, more undeserved, more incomprehensible. What do they have against us? There’s absolutely nothing in the world that we have done that would deserve an attack like this one.”
The rah-rah chorus got louder and louder. “Our country, the most civilized, the most moral and the most powerful country in the world has been attacked by an evil country. How did they dare?”
The patriotic screams covered over any voice that dared point out that the entire show didn’t make any sense.
The ingenious invention – the WAR ON TERROR
Now the doors were open for the United States of America to put their underground plans into action. From that day on, any lies were accepted without so much as a question as to the logic and credibility of the claims brazenly made.
The U.S. President became an ever more powerful actor on the world stage. He could wage wars that were not wars. He could kill civilians who were not civilians. He could initiate invasions of nations that were not invasions. Up was down and down was up. Sense and logic had given up the stage to hysteria and illusions. Non-sense is the rule of the day.
How was this possible? Because of an attack on two skyscrapers that collapsed like sand castles because two airplanes flew into them and a third one that did so without anything hitting it? No, that wasn’t enough. It wasn’t quite that simple.
They had to invent a WAR ON TERROR. Never was a shrewder invention made in human history. Everybody who opposes our holy war on terror is a terrorist. Et voilà. As simple as that.
The fear and pride in their country made Americans blind to what was really going on in the aggressive U.S. politics. Countries were invaded and torn apart, hundreds of thousands of civilians were killed, lost their homes, were made to flee their countries. Families were disunited, parents were searching for their children, children were crying for their lost parents. The horror that spread through the world was hidden from the American people due to the corruption of the mass media. What they saw on their television screens was theater à la carte. What they heard and read was that the United States was saving the world from tyranny and introducing freedom and democracy.
The overall purpose of the PNAC people, the Neoconservatives, is to control the planet At whatever cost. Cost in human lives, cost in destruction of the environment, cost in the destruction of other people’s cultures. Millennia of traditions are of no importance.
To this end slogans are made up that fit their goal. Muslims are terrorists. Everybody who is against the War on Terror and Washington’s all-means-justify-the-end principle is a terrorist and should be sent to lifelong imprisonment or killed outright. Drug traffic is evil, unless it’s run by the United States. U.S military are all good people and are justified in doing whatever they are doing. Except for a few bad apples, of course.
Whatever country does not cooperate fully with the United States is corrupt and should be made to see the light. See Libya. See Syria. See Iran. And first of all there was of course Afghanistan and Iraq. Any country which has valuable resources that they don’t willingly turn over to U.S.-centered corporations must be taught to rethink their policies. Or they will become the victims of invasions and ghastly killing sprees.
Washington’s sore toe
Latin America was once considered the U.S. backyard and it is against nature itself that those countries now have the gall to run their own business. So Paraguay happens. So Mexico happens. How long will they be able to run business in Colombia? When will the freedom fighters (the ‘terrorists’ of course) manage to stop the corrupt and deadly U.S. influence over the running of this nation?
When will the other September 11 be repeated, the one in Santiago, Chile, in 1973, when Salvador Allendewas killed and a murderous dictatorship installed? Oh yes, the neoliberalism of Milton Friedman and the Chicago boys dates back much farther than to the Neoconservative fanatics.
A coup was tried again in April of 2002, this time against Hugo Chávez, but the rage of the people made this coup a miserable failure. Chávez was reinstalled after two days of rightist brainless celebrations. If the mass media had done their job, the power behind the coup, that is the United States, would have become a worldwide laughingstock.
Caring for the people is communist-inspired soft-headed nonsense
Socialism is for the weak of heart, and a strong nation doesn’t need nationalized enterprise. Private ownership is what makes for progress and private profit is what makes the world go round. Real men are capitalists.
The people are of no importance. They are all collateral damage. Who needs the local store owner? Who needs the industrial worker since labor is so much cheaper elsewhere. Who needs the small farmer since agribusiness is so much more profitable to the corporations?
The United States is busy wielding its secret power in any country that becomes a threat to the Empire – any country that might possibly be won over to democracy in a popular uprising. Egypt looked at first like a promise to the world of freedom, but there is not a chance that a new regime will ever heed the voice of the people who fought so bravely in Tahrir Square over a year ago. The military and the Muslim Brotherhood will no doubt do whatever Washington tells them to do.
Libya was callously and stealthily destroyed. Tripoli and much of the rest of the country was bombed to smithereens. And what hadQaddafi made himself guilty of? Making Libya the richest country in Africa after its having been the poorest. But he threatened to nationalize the oil and gas and that is strictly verboten if the U.S. can have a say. And they made sure they did. Qaddafi had to go since Libya is essential for U.S. control over the Middle East [2].
And then comes Syria, an increasingly bloody mess, waiting for its turn to be submitted to the same destiny.
And who is in collusion with Washington in all this western imperialism? NATO, of course. The EU with all its puppets called Barroso, Christine Lagarde (IMF), Cameron, Sarkozy/Hollande (in spite of Hollande’s empty talk of ending austerity measures), Merkel, who might well be the one honest prime minister/leader in Europe, since she seems to be acting for Germany more than for the Empire.
But Washington is the preserver of freedom and democracy in the world and no country is as free or has the moral rectitude of the United States. Follow the example of Washington and all will be well. We will all be little Americans and we will all be eating big Macs at MacDonald’s and buying our T-shirts at Walmart’s.
The way the Empire runs its mission of saving the world is by ignoring any humanitarian needs at home or abroad. The standard of living is steadily going down in the Western world. Who cares? People are dying by the hundreds of thousands all over the world and in particular in the countries that have become the special targets for Washington since they are considered essential for U.S. absolute global domination.
The corporations are getting together to make the poor farmers in Africa a mass of starving slaves of Big Money, the victims of the monstrous proceedings of the totally immoral corporate agribusiness.
The absurd world
We are living in a theater of the absurd. Our world has been emptied of all real meaning. The substitute for real living is accumulating – whatever. Mainly money, of course. Or things. Anything. In the absence of money, we accumulate debt. Our reason for living has become adding one gadget to another, or one million to another, and then, finally, sitting on top of a tower of failed hopes and ambitions.
Communication is getting limited to incessant blabber on our mobile phones to say – nothing. People have let their own hearts and minds go stale and they are now only occupied with a semblance of communication which has become an obsession without any meaning. With no ideals, no goals in life, what are we going to become? Empty vessels of hate and fear, exactly the robots that the monsters in power were planning on.
Politics have become entertainment, another soap opera to distract the masses. There is no sense in participating in the election game since all elections are rigged in advance. The stage is set for the Corporations to run the planet Earth into the ultimate abyss.
Have people even noticed that democracy is dead?
Conclusion
The predator hawks are flying across the skies, swooping down to attack wherever there is a vague sign of populism, combined with resources of any kind that can be turned into money.
All this is made possible in the thick fog spread over the world by the WAR ON TERROR. Anything goes. People are totally ignorant of how the Corpocrats are busy destroying their lives and the environment. The blind and deaf people, the propaganda victims, are the perfect, easily manipulated human robots that the Neocons were depending on for their total success.
Unless we can relearn to use our brains and our critical sense, our ability to see the reality through the fog of fear and indolence, not only will we ourselves be done away with through the gradual ‘starving of the beast’, but the whole planet will be made a sterile desert. At the end of the day the predators will be found begging for the crumbs of food left over from the few self-supporting farmers who managed to withstand the corporate predators.
Siv O’Neall was born and raised in Sweden where she graduated from Lund University. She has lived in Paris, France and New Rochelle, N.Y. and traveled extensively throughout the U.S, Europe, and other continents, including several trips to India. Siv retired after many years of teaching French in Westchester, N.Y. and English in the Grandes Ecoles (Institutes of Technology) in France
Notes:
[1] The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was an American think tank based in Washington, D.C. that lasted from 1997 to 2006.
[2] See Noam Chomsky in Julian Assange’s interview with him and Tariq Ali ‘The Julian Assange Show: Noam Chomsky & Tariq Ali’ (Russia Today)