The means of defense against foreign
danger have been always the instruments
of tyranny at home. ― James Madison
Who
designed the malware worm that is now
wreaking havoc on tens of thousands of
computers internationally
by hackers demanding a king’s ransom? The
U.S. government.
Who is the
biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of
cyberweapons
(weaponized malware that can be used to hack
into computer systems, spy on citizens, and
destabilize vast computer networks)? The
U.S. government.
What country
has
one the deadliest arsenals of weapons of
mass destruction?
The U.S. government.
Who is the
largest weapons manufacturer and exporter
in the world, such that they are literally
arming the world? The U.S. government.
Which is the
only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in
wartime?
The United States.
How did
Saddam Hussein build Iraq’s massive arsenal
of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical
weapons during the 1980s? With help from the
U.S. government.
Who gave
Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “access to a
fortune in covert funding and top-level
combat weaponry”?
The U.S. government.
What country
has a
pattern and practice of entrapment
that involves targeting vulnerable
individuals, feeding them with the
propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to
turn them into terrorists, and then
arresting them as part of an elaborately
orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The
U.S. government.
Where did
ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons,
including assault rifles and tanks to
anti-missile defenses? From the U.S.
government.
Which country
has a
history of secretly testing out dangerous
weapons and technologies
on its own citizens? The U.S. government.
Are
you getting the picture yet?
The
U.S. government isn’t protecting us
from terrorism.
The
U.S. government is creating the
terror. It is, in fact, the source of the
terror.
Just think about it for a minute: almost
every tyranny being perpetrated against the
citizenry—purportedly to keep us safe and
the nation secure—has come about as a result
of some threat manufactured in one way or
another by our own government.
Cyberwarfare. Terrorism.
Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race.
Surveillance. The drug wars.
In
almost every instance, the U.S. government
has in its typical Machiavellian fashion
sown the seeds of terror domestically and
internationally in order to expand its own
totalitarian powers.
It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived
by government propaganda.
We’re not dealing with a government that
exists to serve its people, protect their
liberties and ensure their happiness.
Rather, these are the diabolical
machinations of a make-works program carried
out on an epic scale whose only purpose is
to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and
profitably) employed.
Case in point: For years now, the U.S.
government has been creating what one
intelligence insider referred to as a
cyber-army capable of offensive attacks.
As Reuters
reported
back in 2013:
Even as the
U.S. government confronts rival powers
over widespread Internet espionage, it
has become
the biggest buyer in a burgeoning gray
market where hackers and security firms
sell tools for breaking into computers.
The strategy is spurring concern in the
technology industry and intelligence
community that Washington is in effect
encouraging hacking and failing to
disclose to software companies and
customers the vulnerabilities exploited
by the purchased hacks. That's because
U.S. intelligence and military agencies
aren't buying the tools primarily to
fend off attacks. Rather, they are using
the tools to infiltrate computer
networks overseas, leaving behind spy
programs and cyber-weapons that can
disrupt data or damage systems.
As part of this
cyberweapons programs, government agencies
such as the NSA have been stockpiling all
kinds of nasty malware, viruses and hacking
tools that can “steal
financial account passwords, turn an iPhone
into a listening device, or, in the case of
Stuxnet, sabotage a nuclear facility.”
And now we
learn that
the NSA is responsible for the latest threat
posed by the “WannaCry” or “Wanna Decryptor”
malware worm which—as a result of hackers
accessing the government’s arsenal—has
hijacked more than 57,000 computers and
crippled health care, communications
infrastructure, logistics, and government
entities in more than 70 countries already.
All
the while the government was repeatedly
warned about the dangers of using criminal
tactics to wage its own cyberwars.
It
was warned about the consequences of
blowback should its cyberweapons get into
the wrong hands.
The
government chose to ignore the warnings.
That’s exactly how the 9/11 attacks
unfolded.
First, the
government helped to create the menace that
was al-Qaida and then, when bin Laden had
left the nation reeling in shock (despite
countless warnings that fell on tone-deaf
ears), it
demanded—and was given—immense new powers in
the form of the USA Patriot Act in order to
fight the very danger it had created.
This has become the shadow government’s
modus operandi regardless of which
party controls the White House: the
government creates a menace—knowing full
well the ramifications such a danger might
pose to the public—then without ever owning
up to the part it played in unleashing that
particular menace on an unsuspecting
populace, it demands additional powers in
order to protect “we the people” from the
threat.
Yet
the powers-that-be don’t really want us to
feel safe.
They want us cowering and afraid and willing
to relinquish every last one of our freedoms
in exchange for their phantom promises of
security.
As
a result, it’s the American people who pay
the price for the government’s insatiable
greed and quest for power.
We’re the ones to suffer the blowback.
Blowback:
a term originating from within the
American Intelligence community,
denoting the unintended consequences,
unwanted side-effects, or suffered
repercussions of a covert operation that
fall back on those responsible for the
aforementioned operations.
As historian
Chalmers Johnson explains, “blowback
is another way of saying that a nation reaps
what it sows.”
Unfortunately, “we the people” are the ones
who keep reaping what the government sows.
We’re the ones who suffer every time,
directly and indirectly, from the blowback.
We’re made to pay trillions of dollars in
blood money to a military industrial complex
that kills without conscience. We’ve been
saddled with a crumbling infrastructure,
impoverished cities and a faltering economy
while our tax dollars are squandered on
lavish military installations and used to
prop up foreign economies. We’ve been
stripped of our freedoms. We’re treated like
suspects and enemy combatants. We’re spied
on by government agents: our communications
read, our movements tracked, our faces
mapped, our biometrics entered into a
government database. We’re terrorized by
militarized police who roam our communities
and SWAT teams that break into our homes.
We’re subjected to invasive patdowns in
airports, roadside strip searches and cavity
probes, forced blood draws.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
We
can persuade ourselves that life is still
good, that America is still beautiful, and
that “we the people” are still free.
However, as I
make clear in my book
Battlefield America: The War on the
American People,
the moment you tune out the carefully
constructed distractions—the year-round
sports entertainment, the political
theatrics, the military’s war cries, the
president’s chest-thumping, and the
techno-gadgets and social media that keep us
oblivious to what’s really going on in the
world around us—you quickly find that the
only credible threat to our safety and
national security is in fact the government
itself.
As
science fiction writer Philip K. Dick
warned, “Don’t believe what you see; it’s an
enthralling—[and] destructive, evil snare.
Under it is a totally different world, even
placed differently along the linear axis.”
In
other words, all is not as it seems.
The
powers-that-be are not acting in our best
interests.
“We
the people” are not free.
The
government is not our friend.
And
America will never be safe or secure as long
as our government continues to pillage and
plunder and bomb and bulldoze and kill and
create instability and fund insurgencies and
police the globe.
So
what can we do to stop the blowback,
liberate the country from the iron-clad grip
of the military industrial complex, and get
back to a point where freedom actually means
something?
For starters, get your
priorities in order.
As long as Americans are more inclined to be
offended over the fate of a Confederate
statue
rather than the government’s blatant
disregard for the Constitution and human
rights, then the status quo will remain.
Stop playing politics with
your principles.
As long as Americans persist
in thinking like Republicans and
Democrats—refusing to recognize that every
administration in recent years has embraced
and advanced the government’s authoritarian
tactics—then the status quo will remain.
Value all human life as
worthy of protection.
As long as Americans,
including those who claim to value the
sanctity of human life, not only turn a
blind eye to the government’s indiscriminate
killings of innocent civilians but champion
them, then the status quo will remain.
Recognize that in the eyes of
the government, we’re all expendable.
As long as we allow the government to play
this dangerous game in which “we the people”
are little more than pawns to be used,
abused, easily manipulated and just as
easily discarded—whether it’s under the
guise of national security, the war on
terror, the war on drugs, or any other
manufactured bogeyman it can dream up—then
the status quo will remain.
Demand that the government
stop creating, stockpiling and deploying
weapons of mass destruction: nuclear,
chemical, biological, cyber, etc.
As long as the
government continues to use our tax dollars
to create, stockpile and deploy weapons of
mass destruction—whether those weapons are
meant to kill, maim or disable (as in the
case of the WannaCry computer virus)—we will
be vulnerable to anyone who attempts to use
those weapons against us and the status quo
will remain.
Finally, stop supporting the war machine
and, as Chalmers Johnson suggests, “bring
our rampant militarism under control”:
From George Washington’s “farewell
address” to Dwight Eisenhower’s
invention of the phrase
“military-industrial complex,” American
leaders have warned about the dangers of
a bloated, permanent, expensive military
establishment that has lost its
relationship to the country because
service in it is no longer an obligation
of citizenship. Our military operates
the biggest arms sales operation on
earth; it rapes girls, women and
schoolchildren in Okinawa; it cuts
ski-lift cables in Italy, killing twenty
vacationers, and dismisses what its
insubordinate pilots have done as a
“training accident”; it allows its
nuclear attack submarines to be used for
joy rides for wealthy civilian
supporters and then covers up the
negligence that caused the sinking of a
Japanese high school training ship; it
propagandizes the nation with Hollywood
films glorifying military service (Pearl
Harbor); and it manipulates the
political process to get more carrier
task forces, antimissile missiles,
nuclear weapons, stealth bombers and
other expensive gadgets for which we
have no conceivable use. Two of the most
influential federal institutions are not
in Washington but on the south side of
the Potomac River–the Defense Department
and the Central Intelligence Agency.
Given their influence today, one must
conclude that the government outlined in
the Constitution of 1787 no longer bears
much relationship to the government that
actually rules from Washington. Until
that is corrected,
we should probably stop
talking about “democracy” and “human
rights.”
By John W. Whitehead
Information
Clearing House
Constitutional attorney and author John W.
Whitehead is founder and president of The
Rutherford Institute.
His new book Battlefield
America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks,
2015) is available online at www.amazon.com.
Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
The
views expressed in this article are solely those
of the author and do not necessarily reflect the
opinions of Information Clearing House.
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