“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 US government.
Who is the largest weapons
manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming
the world? The US government.
How did Saddam Hussein build
Iraq’s massive arsenal of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical weapons
during the 1980s? With help from the US government.
Who gave Osama bin Laden and
al-Qaida “access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry”? The US
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 US government.
Where did ISIS get many of their
deadliest weapons, including assault rifles and tanks to antimissile defenses?
From the US government.
Which country has a history of secretly
testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own
citizens? The US government.
Are you getting the picture yet?
The US government isn’t protecting us from
terrorism.
The US 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.
Biochemical attacks. The nuclear arms race.
Surveillance. The drug wars.
In almost every instance, the US 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 US government has been
creating what one intelligence insider referred to as a cyber-army capable of
offensive attacks.
Even as the US 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 US 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 ironclad 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.”
Constitutional attorney and author
John W. Whitehead is founder and president of The Rutherford Institute. His new
book is Battlefield America: The War on the American People (SelectBooks,
2015). Whitehead can be contacted at johnw@rutherford.org.
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