The U.S. government isn't acting as the world's mediator and global manager in Egypt's political crisis, supposedly balancing democracy and stability, nor is it the world's policeman, bringing order where there is chaos, it is rather acting as a self-interested, elite-owned terrorist state, imposing oligarchical economic policies on countries like Egypt and supporting dictatorships across the Middle East to do the bidding of Israel, and Washington's anti-revolutionary foreign policy.
America's imperial rise began in the nineteenth century, but it was in the last century when America's constitutional government was completely subverted and hijacked by the country's ruling elite. Some people point to 1913 as the crucial date, the year when the oligarch-owned Federal Reserve Bank was established, while others say that America's victory in World War II marks the country's critical transition from a constitutional republic to a criminal global empire.
Frankly, dates don't matter all that much. What is important to understand is that there was a silent coup d'état in Washington. America's constitutional government was quietly replaced with a secretive and deceptive anti-democratic government that favors force and oppression as opposed to peace and freedom. President John F. Kennedy tried to stop this development, and was working towards a real peace between the U.S. and the Soviet Union before his last days on Earth, but his efforts were resisted by individuals both within and outside the government who were profiting tremendously from the system, and the endless conflicts that it guaranteed.
After JFK's assassination America's shadow government rose to greater heights, and shrouded its criminality from the American people by using totalitarian tactics, manipulating the media, filling the public discourse with propaganda and misinformation, and mastering the same techniques of repression and state terrorism that the Egyptian government is currently using against the Egyptian people who are demanding freedom and a complete overhaul of their tyrannical government. Here are just two instrumental techniques of repression used by the governments of Egypt, America, Iran, and other dictatorial governments:
1) The Use of Agent Provocateurs: Mubarak's regime is using agent provocateurs to cause chaos on the streets of Egypt, loot stores and other buildings, and intimidate anti-government protesters. Washington's Blog has a couple of great posts (here and here) with many links to news articles that detail the widespread use of this technique by the Egyptian government following the protests that started almost two weeks ago. This deceptive technique is used by many tyrannical states to portray average protesters as criminals and looters, which then causes distrust in the entire society about the legitimacy of the protesters' grievances, and prepares the situation for a government crackdown on protests and civil liberties. Many governments practice this technique, including Iran, the United States, Israel, England, and Canada.
In 2007 at the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America summit meeting in Montebello, Quebec, the police went undercover, dressed as anarchists and carrying rocks, to instigate violence and disunity at protests. So as we see images of members of the Egyptian police wearing regular clothes and hitting people we should remember that Egypt is not unique. Our so-called democratic governments in the West have allowed this type of deceptive and anti-democratic behaviour by our police forces on numerous occasions.
2) Press Censorship, And The Shutdown of Communication: The shutdown of the Internet and cell phone service in Egypt was one of the first things that Mubarak's regime did in anticipation of the huge protests in Alexandria and Cairo on Friday, January 28. It is critical for repressive regimes to control the flow of information during a period of civil unrest, and keep its citizens from communicating and coordinating with each other via the internet, social network tools, and cell phones. Sens. Other regimes, from China to Iran, and even the United States also like the option of shutting down the internet. Senator Joseph Lieberman and Senator Susan Collins have introduced an Internet "Kill Switch" Bill in the Senate, which hands tyrannical powers to the President of the United States to shut down the internet during a "national cyber emergency." While the language of the bill has been toned down in some ways by a Senate committee, it still gives the President the dictatorial power to shut down the internet, and thereby silence dissenting voices, with the justification that the government has to take aggressive action to deal with a "cyber-emergency."
What many people do not realize is that America, having gone under a state of emergency following the 9/11 attacks on September 14, 2011, is still under a state of emergency. President Obama renewed the state of emergency for the second time during his term in September 2010. Washington's Blog has a great article about what a state of national emergency means for the freedoms of the American people. National emergency law grants the President of the United States the power "to impose censorship and martial law." Michael Tennant wrote an article for The New American called, Bush, Obama, and the Nine-year “Emergency,” highlighting the fact that President Obama has followed in the footsteps of former President Bush, and maintained many unconstitutional policies and procedures of the Bush administration. He wrote:
While Obama, as a Senator and presidential candidate, claimed to differ from Bush significantly when it came to issues of executive power and civil liberties, his repeated extensions of Bush’s national emergency declaration and continued use of emergency powers (including some of rather dubious legality) put the lie to such claims. Instead of effecting “a fundamental break with the Bush administration’s policies on detention, accountability, and other issues,” Obama instead is “ratif[ying], rather than reject[ing], the dangerous notion that America is in a permanent state of emergency and that core liberties must be surrendered forever,” as the ACLU warned in a July report.Of course, Egypt and America are not totally alike, but the differences are not as big as they seem. It is pointed out that Egypt, unlike America, has one ruling party, but the Democratic and Republican parties agree on so many critical issues like funding illegal wars and providing multi-trillion bailouts to corrupt banks and corporations that they might as well be one ruling party. Both parties are resistant to real change, and like to maintain the status quo. Voices from other parties are not allowed in debates, despite having a large following. Naturally, the American people view the Republicrats with disdain for mismanaging the country and crushing democracy at home and around the world, not unlike the ruling party in Egypt that is hated by the Egyptian people.
One of the few differences between the two countries is that in America the ruling elite hide behind presidential masks like Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama, whereas Egypt is controlled by a powerful figure. Both regimes ignore the people's will, and maintain its grip on power through deception, and brutal force. In the last four decades the U.S. ruling elite has set up a massive police state under the guise of fighting a war on drugs, and a war on terrorism, both of them unnecessary, and built on government lies.
America's police state, like that of Egypt, is ramp with corruption and official criminality, but its repressive nature is mostly hidden from the American public, except on a few occasions like during protests at G20 meetings and Republican/Democratic National Conventions in the election season. Since the 9/11 attacks police forces throughout the United States have become more militarized, and new unconstitutional agencies like Homeland Security have been created to enslave the American people.
Washington has justified the misallocation of public resources in ways that profit the police state apparatus, which is controlled by a few politically connected corporations and individuals, by fear-mongering about the ability of Islamic terrorists and other violent extremists to harm the public. Upon the discovery that the official 9/11 story is a lie, however, all those justifications about "securing the public from terrorism" go out the window. The truth is that the American people must secure themselves from the sick treasonous freaks who have taken control of their government and operate a shadow terrorist state with the power to spy on and kill any human being on this Earth. The two-faced rulers of America pose a threat to all mankind, and they must be resisted, and stopped.
State Terror is A Greater Threat to Civilization and Freedom Than Anti-State Terror
We have all heard about the threat from Islamic terrorists, and other kinds of terrorists, but the the threat from Islamic extremism and non-state terrorism is largely exaggerated and/or outright manufactured by the governments of United States, Israel, England, and other Western nations. The biggest threat to civilization, human society, and freedom comes from terrorist states like the U.S., England, and Israel and their use of terrorism to scare the people into supporting criminal wars, extreme government repression, the destruction of democracy, and the creation of dictatorial policies.
Dr. Robert A. Denemark and Howard P. Lehman wrote a paper called, "South African State Terror: The Costs of Continuing Repression," in 1982, describing the different elements of repression and state terror. They wrote:
Repression is a more general and pervasive phenomenon that systematically and structurally molds the individual. State terror, on the other hand, may be viewed as the more precise and deliberate act of inflicting harm on an individual or group in order to change the nature of their behavior and/or instill fear in other individuals or groups. Terror is a more direct method of behavior modification that seeks a more direct effect. However, any attempt to establish a strict line of demarcation between terror and repression proves difficult. (Denemark and Lehman. From the book 'The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression.' Edited by Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez. Pg. 147. Greenwood Press: 1984.).State terror is largely hidden. The media, and academia focus mainly on anti-government terrorists, overlooking the reality of government terrorism. When acts of state terror by the U.S. government are laid bare like the 9/11 attacks, the usual reaction from people is that it is nothing more than a "conspiracy theory" to say that the U.S. government is capable of murdering its own people, and keeping it a secret from the American people. But, as many of us know, the hijacked U.S. government is capable of killing innocent people in America and outside of America. The treasonous rulers of America could care less about the safety, well-being, and freedoms of the American people.
George A. Lopez, a Professor of Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, looked at why certain governments use terrorism to achieve their political ends in a paper called, "A Scheme for the Analysis of Government as Terrorist," writing:
In an examination of the state as terrorist, an investigation of background political circumstances operative at the time permits us to assess how, and possibly why, government availed itself of this form of social control and political power. Two dimensions of the political climate will be explored: the "state" of the state and the manner in which the government develops and executes terror policy.Lopez identifies three kinds of regime change that lead to the rationalization and practice of state terror and extreme acts of repression. The first is the "deposition of a dictatorial rule":
By the "state" of the state, I mean those historical events that precede terror action by government with a focus specifically on those changes in government structure and/or leadership that make rule by harsh and arbitrary force more viable, defensible, and advisable than under prior conditions. In terms of the literature of comparative political violence, the most interesting cases on which to dwell in the analysis of the "state" of the state fall under the rubric of regime change. (George A. Lopez. From the book 'The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression.' Edited by Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez. Pg. 60. Greenwood Press: 1984.).
Under such circumstances, whether it ascended to power via coup d'état or through more widespread revolt, and particularly after a long-term rule by force of its predecessor, pressures operate on the new regime in two directions. On the one hand, the new rulers want to build processes and institutions distinct from the autocratic style of the past. In the place of harsh, arbitrary, and particularistic policies and actions, they would like to erect more standardized, open, and universalistic modes of government and societal operation and change.If we are to believe American government officials, and certain Western commentators, Egypt could face such a situation as described by Lopez should Mubarak be ousted from power, leaving a power vacuum that could be filled with violent extremists dedicated to a particular ideology or peaceable protesters who want free elections. But a closer examination of the situation shows those fears to be misplaced. Democracy has a real chance of flourishing in Egypt. There is no violent revolutionary force in Egyptian society that will take power and crush any opposition. And the fear of Islamic radicalism is drummed up by Mubarak, as well as other Arab dictators, and Western government officials for Western public consumption in order to maintain their own power. What is even more cynical and criminal is the American government's policy of funding Islamic radicals to divide Arab nations and block them from being unified and independent.
On the other hand, however, the toppling of the central political power may have unleashed a host of factions that despite their union against the common enemy of the past, now desire either to garner the spoils of political victory or to vie for full governmental power with the ruling faction. In the latter case, sometimes compounded by concerns about external threats, the new government feels extreme pressure to consolidate power. In such a situation, short of full-scale purges or campaigns of extermination, a government may resort to terror tactics such as detention legislation, press censorship, travel restrictions, and even the economic coercion of certain groups. (Lopez. Pg. 60).
The protests in Egypt show that the Arab world can be unified, independent, and free. The peaceful calls for change in Egypt are similar to the Indian's people peaceful fight against the British empire in the middle of the last century. The Egyptian people seem to be well disciplined, and are edging towards acts of civil disobedience to overthrow their dictator rather than violence and terrorism.
Lopez's description of a second type of regime change leading to a policy of government terrorism and repression is instructive in regards to America's terrorist regime in particular. Lopez says:
A second regime change with implications for the study of government terror occurs when ruling elites in societies undergoing increased pressure for social, economic, and political reform appear to find no way (or consciously choose to find no way) of translating these forces into the development of more effective rule. Rather, the government, whether democratic or autocratic, capitalist or socialist, civilian or military, begins to respond to the changing national environment with a curtailment of civil and human rights, with increased militant policies of coercive control of collective and individual behavior. In its final stages of development this ruling style stimulates a general system of repressive practices and policies designed to maintain the power of the incumbents and the benefits accruing to their allies. (Lopez. Pg. 61).America's ruling elite rejected the movements for social and economic reform in American society in the 1960s, championed by Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, Robert F. Kennedy, and John F. Kennedy, by assassinating those four men and other popular figures who called for radical proposals. But they weren't totally deaf to the changing times. They moved forward quickly to institute some popular changes like passing the Civil Rights Act. In general, though, economic reform was not taken seriously, instead, Washington funded the disastrous Vietnam war.
Lopez says the pattern of state terror from this type of regime "leads to questions concerning the particular political, legal, or extra-legal mechanisms that actualize these alterations in governance and of the ideologies or symbolic constructs that spark and legitimize them. This form of rule has clearly emerged as a reaction to pressure for internal change of either government policies and/or social structure. The government response has been to withstand such pressure via new methods of persuasion, enforcement, and coercive rule called state terror." (Lopez. Pg. 61.). America's ruling style is clearly marked by state terror, and violent repression. In place of structural reform and balanced economic growth, America's rulers have brought about a police state, to be used to crush protests and intimidate the American people.
And, finally, according to Lopez, the "third and most distinct variety of regime change that may give rise to the dynamic of state terrorism occurs in the aftermath of a major civil war. Here the pressures toward centralization of control mentioned above in connection with the disposition of an autocratic ruler are pushed to their extreme." (Lopez. Pg. 61).
How State Terror is Implemented and Justified
A government with a democratic edifice, but actually ruled by an elite, has to justify government violence against foreign states and government repression against citizens. During the Cold War America's terrorist regime had to provoke the fear of communism in the American people and carry out a false-flag attack called the Gulf of Tonkin incident in order to get the public to approve the war in Vietnam, and massive funding for the pentagon. Since 2001, the new fear is about terrorism, and 9/11 was the false-flag attack that convinced the American people and the West that the treat from Islamic terrorism is real and requires military force to defeat it.
While in America state terror is justified, and hidden, in countries with no democratic traditions it is out in the open, which is one of the reasons why Washington still has some credibility with the American people. Another reason is that the U.S. government has not been forced to be as brutal towards protesters as the governments of Egypt, Iran, China, and other authoritarian countries, largely because the American people have not acted aggressively and defiantly on the streets, but that could change in the near future.
Lopez says that not all terrorist states use the same amount of violence and repression to achieve their political ends, which is a very important point to reflect on when comparing America's terrorist regime with Egypt's terrorist regime, and those of other states. He writes:
Another consideration under the rubric of political climate relates to the manner of institutionalizing state terrorism. By the "institutionalizing of state terror," I mean how a governmental elite develops and implements a program of terror in the context of the political climate and political system in which they find themselves. The aim of this categorization is to permit us to distinguish between those regimes that clearly invoke terror as a cautious, temporary, and limited policy approach and those who opt for state terror as a full-scale and legitimate government policy. (Lopez. Pg. 62).Regardless of how often the American government commits terrorist acts against its own people, which so far has been minimal, it does not change the fact that barbarous and tyrannical state terrorists are in charge of America's shadow terrorist state. It is arguable when this change occurred, but once things changed, there was no turning back. America's treasonous rulers obviously believe that democracy is defunct, and that America's open and free society must be replaced with a closed and authoritarian one. They view the people as slaves at best.
Although we don't know exactly when America became a fully operational terrorist state, we can understand how this type of change occurs in a society, by looking at recent and ancient history, especially the rise of totalitarian countries in the 20th century, and by reading the works of scholars like George A. Lopez. Here is how Lopez explains a system of government terror comes into being in a society:
The traditional pattern of government terror is well known; the ruling group suspends the constitution, invokes a state of emergency, and rules by the guarantee and "legality" of force. Not until the government issues a number of decrees do the average citizens come to know what types of political action or behavior on their part will be considered a threat to the state and hence illegal. What is curious about the current development or more appropriately the maturation of such rule by force and decree is that in a number of political systems we witness the institutionalization of such measures via approval of or promise of a parliamentary or semi-democratic system. (Lopez. Pg. 64).Lopez's last point is reflective of how the United States became a full-fledged terrorist state in the last ten years. It didn't take a dictator to crush the original blueprint laid out by the country's visionary founders, instead, Congress and the Senate went along with the Bush administration's destruction of the country by passing the unconstitutional Patriot Act, and other laws that support the country's shadow terrorist state. Last year, President Obama followed suit by extending the Patriot Act for one year, and this extension will be repeated again this year. The Senate is intent on passing the The Patriot Act Sunset Extension Act of 2011, which extends major provisions of the Patriot Act to December 2013, and possibly beyond. Patrick Leahy introduced the legislation, saying, "These are going to expire in a couple weeks so I would hope that all senators in both parties who have interest in that will meet with me and Sen. Grassley. None of us want to play politics on national security and we should get moving on this."
It is interesting that Leahy would mention "national security," to lend credence to the unconstitutional bill. The argument about "National Security" is supposed to satisfy the American people that their rights are being taken away for their own safety. It also gives the lawmakers the feeling of dignity and righteousness. They tell themselves "I'm doing this for national security," but it is a delusion, because the traitors in power don't care about national security, or the safety of the American people. The mantra about national security is only used to justify the enslavement of the American people. Lopez says that "National security consciousness" is a particular ideology that allows both high-level and low-level members of a state to justify government criminality, acts of government violence, and intrusive government behavior. Lopez:
A second general factor of significant import to the study of state terror is the ideology of the ruling group of the state. As Ray Macridis has defined it, "an ideology consists of a set of ideas and beliefs through which we perceive our outside world and act upon our information. It is a medium through which we try to learn and comprehend the world: but it also generates emotions which hold people together. Finally, ideologies are action-oriented. That is, they consist of ideas shared by many people who act in unison or who are influenced to act in unison in order to accomplish posited ends." (Lopez. Pg 65.).Lopez goes on to say that an ideology "serves as a sine qua non." "It stimulates, rationalizes, and blesses as patriotic political behavior government actions that deny others their basic human dignity and their universal political rights. It reifies the state, making it the highest institutional value to which the ruling elite must maintain their highest commitment." (Lopez. Pg. 65-66). He defines "National security consciousness" as a "set of ideas about the tasks of geopolitical security and economic development in the post-World War II world and the crucial role that governing elites play in these distinct but highly related processes." (Lopez. Pg. 67).
Lopez's scholarly contributions about government terrorism are deeply insightful. I recommend that you buy the book that Lopez and Michael Stohl co-edited in 1984 called "The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression." Near the end of his essay Lopez calls on scholars to inform the public about state terror, and quotes the former Under Secretary of State for Management Affairs Richard Kennedy:
Scholars, in educating citizens and sharing their findings with policy makers, must move beyond convention and jargon to understand terror in its diverse manifestations, causes, and outcomes.Lopez says that governments that rely on terrorism and repression to keep control are "often successful in accomplishing their political and social control visions" and that they only collapse as a result of "massive civil war or destruction from external enemies." (Lopez. Pg. 75). In Egypt's case, it looks like a peaceful transition to a true democracy is being denied by the anti-revolutionary forces that control America, who are backing a corrupt member of the old regime to lead the transition, and maintain the status quo. It seems that power in Washington must first change hands before there can be any real change in Cairo. And that reality may not be far away because the American people are awakening politically, and yearn to take back their country from the state terrorists who are destroying America's free society.
The words of Under Secretary of State for Management Affairs Richard Kennedy so aptly apply to our need to consider government terror. The bitter irony is that he casts them in the direction of group terror only: "terrorism is an assault on civilization itself. In addition to the lives and freedom of the innocent, the rights of the individual, democratic institutions, and the rule of law are under attack. In a real sense, terrorism strikes at our vital national interests and those of our closest friends and allies. (Lopez. Pg. 79).
Notes:
'The State as Terrorist: The Dynamics of Governmental Violence and Repression.' Edited by Michael Stohl and George A. Lopez. Greenwood Press: 1984.
