August 17, 2011
"The “war on terrorism” is a classic simulacrum. A global political script written by secret elites is now running on automatic. Triggered by the events of 9/11, reenergized by periodic injections of media “poison” into the circulatory system of American public opinion, from anthrax scarces traceable to U.S. Army testing laboratories to Tom Clancy scenarios of nuclear weapons in suitcases delivered to New York City by viral terrorists, the simulacrum of the “war on terrorism” is already a new form of hyperreality, understandable only in relationship to its internal signifiers. A closed system of meaning, the war on terrorism declares war most of all on perception." - Arthur Kroker (1).
Arthur Kroker, a professor of political science at the University of Victoria, is the author of numerous books on technology, culture, media, and politics. He also edits a peer-reviewed journal called "Ctheory," with his wife Marilouise.
They gave an interview to William R. Wood in 2004 that was published in the journal Critical Sociology called, "Viral Power: Interview with Arthur and Marilouise Kroker." They talked about the 9/11 attacks, the war on terror, the global nature of the American empire, the new security regime that was put into gear after 9/11, the politics of conspiracy, the shadow government, and the role of the media and Hollywood in popularizing imperial myths as well as the logic of colonial domination.
Their analysis of the war on terror cuts across many intellectual terrains and penetrates to the core of the issues that face human civilization in this century. It's a shame that their ideas are not broadcasted or even mentioned on television because they can help the public better understand their imbalanced relationship to the current governing structures in society. The elites are robbing the majority of the global population of a future.
The corporate and state media in Western society does not act as a buffer to the power elite, but as its megaphone, turning Washington's myths and lies into accepted history.
The Western Totalitarian State acts as the father and creator of history, while the mass media serves as the mother in the relationship, as the womb of life.
The American Totalitarian State's lies like "9/11 was done by al-Qaeda," or "Bin Laden was shot dead in Pakistan and dumped in the sea" are the seeds which the mass media gives birth into the global public mind through an orchestrated propaganda and indoctrination campaign.
In essence, your mind is literally being fucked by Washington and the mass media. Your only defence is to recognize that you are being mentally toyed with, and stop the psychological abuse.
Hollywood's resources are also tapped by Washington to further circulate the Pentagon's myths in the global public mind. Arthur Kroker says:
That is why the “theatre of war” is literally transformed into a cinematic bluescreen for projecting a global right-wing script back into the screenal consciousness of America. A new form of hyperreal TV in which war itself becomes a “staged communication,” the object of the “script” is the constant enervation of always-flagging American attention. Very much a politics of conspiracy, the war on terrorism as simulacrum combines the best political efforts of what has been publicly acknowledged as America’s “Shadow Government,” with the zealous cooperation of Hollywood cinema which resequences the popular diet of cinema to feed psychological war scenarios of betrayal and blood-revenge. But, of course, as in the nature of all great conspiracies, everybody is in the know: political, economic, entertainment and academic elites most of all, but certainly the masses in “mass society” as well who grant the changing scenarios of the war on terrorism a special place of honor in a mediascape that is also populated by basketball, Britney Spears, and TV trials of “Mothers Who Kill their Children” and “Attack Dogs that Eat the Neighbours.” (2).The recent Casey Anthony trial that was televised for weeks is an example of "Mothers Who Kill their Children," television programming that Kroker says fills the media to serve as a mass distraction. The trial of Michael Jackson was another one.
What gets lost in the media is an objective view of reality, and that is what media elites want. A confused public is a disengaged public. An ignorant public is easier to control, rob and rule.
But the media elites are losing the battle to own the public mind because they are no longer good at the one thing that defines their industry - entertainment.
Conspiracies are much more entertaining and interesting than "reality television." Jesse Ventura's TruTV program on Conspiracy Theories testified to the change in the American public's acceptance of alternative narratives of recent American history.
One of the biggest truths that is not covered by the mass media is the existence of a shadow government in America, and continuity of government plans which are expected to be put into effect in the event of a national emergency caused by a false flag nuclear attack, an economic collapse, or some other provoked crisis.
Some media publications have done stories on the nature and purposes of America's shadow government, but they have not dug deep enough or asked the big questions. Getting at the heart of the issue is not in the interest of the establishment media.
But, we can still get some idea of what the shadow government's structure is like and how it runs by reading the few mainstream media articles that are out there. On April 8, 2002, Junior Scholastic magazine published an article called "Shadow Government Ready to Take Over." Here is an excerpt:
Shhhh! Don't tell anyone, but in underground bunkers somewhere along the East Coast, a group of people are preparing to take over the U.S.
These people aren't terrorists. They are U.S. government officials who have been given the job of setting up a "shadow government," in case of a nuclear attack.
Such a plan was drawn up many years ago, but it was not carried out until after the September 11 terrorist attacks. Since then, a rotating group of 75 to 150 senior managers from a variety of government departments have been living and working in the secret bunkers. If the nation's capital is destroyed, the "shadow government" will keep basic operations, such as food deliveries and communications and transportation systems, running as smoothly as possible.
On March 1, 2002, NPR's Morning Edition also covered the revelations of Washington's shadow government. The news report was called "Profile: Concept of Shadow Government." NPR host Bob Edwards interviewed Washington Post reporter Barton Gellman about the story. Here is an excerpt:
BOB EDWARDS, host: This is MORNING EDITION from NPR News. I'm Bob Edwards. President Bush has activated Cold War-era plans for a shadow government. He has sent about a hundred government officials to live and work outside Washington, DC. The story appears in today's Washington Post whose reporter Barton Gellman is here.Good morning.
Mr. BARTON GELLMAN (Reporter, The Washington Post): Good morning.
EDWARDS: Shadow government was designed to help the government withstand Cold War nuclear threats. Why has it been reactivated now?
Mr. GELLMAN: Well, it's never been activated before because during the Cold War they always assumed they would have some strategic warning. Now we have an adversary that would like to attack with no warning at all.
EDWARDS: But do they call it a shadow government?
Mr. GELLMAN: No, that--I'm trying to find some way in plain English to talk about it. They call it the COG, which is short for Continuity of Government.
EDWARDS: Who's involved in operating it?
Mr. GELLMAN: Well, the people who are living and working in these underground bunkers are top career officials mainly. They're GS-14s and 15s and members of the Senior Executive Service. They're people who've spent their whole lives in the departments and understand the issues and the information systems that would be needed to start to reconstitute government in the worst case if Washington vanished from the map.
EDWARDS: So they're not the appointees, the deputy secretaries, the assistant secretaries.
Mr. GELLMAN: There have been Senate-confirmed officials who've passed through, but they're not stationed there as part of the normal rotation.
EDWARDS: How about Vice President Cheney, who's disappeared for long periods?
Mr. GELLMAN: Well, either the vice president or some other senior member of the constitutional chain of succession has been away, and sometimes they've been in one of these two sites, but this is kind of a parallel procedure to that. You need a constitutional successor to the top leadership but you also need to have a level of management that would allow that person to give effect to his orders.
EDWARDS: They don't want to tell you where this is. It's outside of the capital.
Mr. GELLMAN: We know at The Washington Post where this is. It's two places and the government has asked us quite firmly not to name them. We can say that they're security facilities along the East Coast.
EDWARDS: Very high tech, I would imagine.
Mr. GELLMAN: Well, oddly enough, one of them is very high tech because it has been principally devoted to an existing military alternative command structure. The other one was prepared during the Cold War and hasn't been updated so often. So these shadow governors arrived there and found computers that were several generations behind and incapable of accessing current databases. The found not nearly enough phone lines, not nearly enough of the technology that allows secure audio and video links. And so they've ordered rather hasty upgrades.
EDWARDS: I guess that's part of this budget, you know, emergency budget for terrorism that's been passed.
Mr. GELLMAN: I'm confident that it is. This part of it is classified. You have to realize it's a huge expense and disruption to start to maintain scores of people in a remote location. The numbers have ranged as high as 150 or so, and in the quietest periods, it goes down to 70.
EDWARDS: This has been going on since September 11th? We haven't been paying attention to this?
Mr. GELLMAN: Since early morning on September 11th they were scrambled on the fly as an emergency measure. The White House expected this to last maybe days, but as they stopped and considered the possibilities, and the key threat here is nuclear detonation, they decided they had to keep it activated. I'm surprised it hasn't leaked before now. You're talking about more than 200 people altogether since September 11th who vanished from their families for periods of time.
The open secret is that the shadow government's alternative governing structure is directly controlled by the power elite and accessible by a few selected insiders who will not share their secrets and knowledge with the American people.
If the elite go ahead with their plan to blow up an American city with a nuclear weapon to cause another staged crisis then the shadow system will become even more dominant. The Congress is already powerless, so imagine a prolonged emergency situation during which it becomes irrelevant, unnecessary, and useless. The unconstitutional powers of the Super Congress and the Unitary Executive will be fully exercised to deal with the engineered crisis.
Another thing to keep in mind is the fact that the CIA and the U.S. intelligence community has already left the building, so to speak. The Washington Post announced on May 6, 2005 that the CIA was transferring to Colorado. What are they hiding from the American people? Do they think Washington may be blown up and sacrificed as the Pentagon and World Trade Center were on September 11, 2001? Why leave the capital of the country? Is Washington unsafe?
Dana Priest, author of the Washington Post article, "CIA Plans to Shift Work to Denver," wrote:
It is unclear how a move to Denver would increase the effectiveness of the domestic division's operations, said several former intelligence officials.It is obvious that a dramatic shift is underway in how the planet is governed. The social contract is being erased. Nations such as America, Canada, and Mexico are not controlled by democratic governments but by a financial and corporate establishment which sees itself as the guardians of the planet.
Colorado has become a major intelligence hub since Sept. 11, 2001.
The Denver suburb of Aurora is home to the little-known Aerospace Data Facility. Located inside Buckley Air Force Base, it has become the major U.S.-based technical downlink for intelligence satellites operated by the military, the National Security Agency and the National Reconnaissance Office, according to military and government documents obtained by William Arkin, author of "Code Names," a book about secret military plans and programs.
About 70 miles away, the U.S. Northern Command, based at Peterson Air Force Base, in Colorado Springs, is tasked with homeland defense and has been increasing its domestic intelligence work.
This is the same establishment that has robbed, pillaged, and raped most of the planet, including the United States of America. The current "financial crisis" is in reality the largest transfer of wealth from the middle class and the poor to the oligarchy in human history.
America is being sacrificed on the altar of a dictatorial, technocratic and corporatist global government.
But before that happens, the corrupt power elite will attempt a string of new false flag terrorist attacks, and possibly a false flag nuclear attack in an American city. Their aim is to increase the power of their tyrannical security regime, and expand the empire's wars in the Middle East.
To the elite that wants a dominant and limitless U.S. empire which they control, terrorist attacks are welcome events.
Kroker says that the U.S. empire profits immensely from terrorist attacks in America because it grows stronger each time. Kroker writes:
"Baudrillard’s thesis elaborated in his book, L’esprit du terrorisme is a truly brilliant account of the seduction of terrorism. With one exception: following his classic formulations about the “terrorism of the code” versus the “death of symbolic exchange,” Baudrillard analyses 9/11 in terms of the apparent instability of a globalized hegemonic power that is always weakened by its loss of a sustaining symbolic myth. 9/11 then, has about it the fascination of the “wrecked windshield,” the delirium of always anticipated apocalypse. Maybe so, but perhaps something else is at work. Maybe the real secret of American power is that the language of empire has never been passive, but an active reader of the cultures it harvests. And so, perhaps one day rummaging through the texts of French theory – reflecting in passing on Virilio’s theory of “electropolitics” and Barthes’ eloquent meditations on the “empire of the sign” – the eyes of the empire stumbled upon Baudrillard’s earlier texts: The Death of Symbolic Exchange, Simulacra and Simulations, The Perfect Crime. Alarmed by this prophecy of its apprehended doom, the “empire struck back.” Refusing to be the lumbering patsy in the game of “terrorism of code” versus the lost language of “symbolic exchange,” the empire flipped the political binary by injecting itself with its own spasms of symbolic exchange. Nietzsche understood this first. In Zarathustra, he said that power reanimates itself by injecting itself with poisons, mild at first but then as the effects of the injection wear off, stronger and stronger doses of self-administered poison. Nietzsche’s “poison” is Baudrillard’s “symbolic exchange” is America’s “9/11.” A poison whose ironic effect has been to immediately strengthen the empire." (3).A false flag nuclear attack would be the ultimate injection of poison into the imperial-banking system. The shadow government won't self-destruct because it has positioned itself geographically, economically and politically to take in a high dose of poison. In fact, it needs it badly.
Another catastrophic terrorist attack in America would do wonders for the Obama administration's re-election campaign, the neocon total war agenda, the criminal looting of America by the banksters on Wall Street, the Israeli shadow government, and the political establishment's plans for a global authoritarian government. For these devils, it will be a gift from heaven.
For the rest of humanity, it will be another reminder that the dark forces of hell want the majority of us dead and gone.
Notes:
1. Wood, William R. "Viral Power: Interview with Arthur and Marilouise Kroker." Critical Sociology 30.2 (2004): 385-396. Print. Pg. 394.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid. Pg. 392.
