My Name's Not Winston, And This Isn't 1984

The Evil Muslim Fanatic (let's call him/them EMFs for short) in aforementioned vidclip has a gun behind him. His buds no doubt have a few others (and let's not lose sight of the fact either that many if not most of these guns came from the Americans themselves, when they trained these EMFs a few years ago (although at that time they were Glorious Freedom Fighters (ask Ronnie - although maybe EMFs to the Russians, oh I'm getting dizzy... unfortunately real life is like that, somewhat complicated, rather than the black and white cartoonland world the propaganda tries to portray on tv, we good they bad) - anyway, his buds have a few other guns too, no doubt, and every now and then they even get some old bombs, or make some little ones with household chemicals (MOMM! WHERE'S THE PEROXIDE!!! - sorry, is my sarcasm showing???) - dangerous, in a fairly limited sort of way, like any criminal activity... (Oh ho! I hear the supporters of the gov screaming as they finally get their opening, as always the first strategy being to scream loudly any old crap that comes into the small brains and drown out voices they don't want to hear, frothing at the mouth at where they see this going - you consider the horrible, evil destruction of the World Trade Center a "limited sort of way"?!?! hahaha gotcha! - well, actually, leaving aside some very serious questions about what actually did happen that day, as we have no credible evidence whatsoever that the EMFs had much to do with this at all, and quite a lot of considerably more credible evidence that the American gov was involved somehow in a false-flag sort of operation (google Operation Northwoods or Reichstag Fire or even Gulf of Tonkin for starters if that concept is foreign to you, I know you haven't seen it on the tv news, and carry on where the truth shall lead you ...) - but let us even assume for a moment that the EMFs were involved with this dastardly deed - the death toll was around 3,000 people (really, you frothing-at-the-mouthers, you don't want to get into comparisons of the physical or financial damage caused by the WTC vs the destruction American bombs have been responsible for in other places before and after, believe me), and it was completely a one-shot affair, nothing before or after from these EMFs in America, and precious little else elsewhere outside of a lot of gun-waving and bluster and stuff... And the perspective on that, the reason I say "limited sort of way"? Well, just a for instance, one could go other places, work it out yourself after this, Americans murder each other, mostly with guns, at a rate of something like 10,000 people per year - and, as noted, the WTC was a one-time affair, but the Americans have been doing this for as long as we care to think about, and don't look to be stopping anytime soon - that is to say, in the almost four years since the WTC affair, in which EMFs (may have) killed some 3,000 Americans - Americans themselves have killed - that is to say, murdered with malice and aforethought - well over 40,000 of themselves!!!! - and you can do the figuring yourself about how many of themselves they've killed since the Al Capone days, or the wild wild west days, or whenever - believe me, if I was in America, I would be a LOT more afraid of other Americans than some beturbaned EMFs somewhere on the other side of the world, as would any sane person. But where is the hysterical press, where are the grim talking heads on the tv, day after day after freaking day, about American terrorists murdering tens of thousands of Americans and we better all stay home so we don't get shot and the police have to search everyone for handguns everytime you even blink suspiciously and all the rest of it? (we need an identifiable enemy? Well, what about the gun manufacturers? or the American gov, who refuse to even try to control the use of guns in that country? Or the terrible poverty so widespread in that country, which leads to rage and violence - again, target the lawmakers who ensure the rich get richer and f*** the poor, we'll hire more cops and build more jails, that'll teach em. Just a bit of perspective!!)). So yea, a limited sort of way - which is not to say it was trivial, murdering 3,000 people is not trivial - but the attacks and killings have NOT been ongoing, wherever they came from, and the reaction, I am saying, is WAY out of proportion and inappropriate as well. Read on. But bigger perspective (I know I know that's not encouraged in America where discussing the latest sexual escapades of movie stars passes for intellectual conversation on the news and where the young leaders of the country gather after work, but get that damned tv off and let's think outside the box a bit...) - let's think about who the EMFs are "fighting" as we assess this "huge" threat the media keeps screaming about day after day. These horrible scary people are supposedly threatening the militarily strongest empire the world has ever known, plus its allies, all of whom are also heavily armed with the best modern weaponry. Put down your tv-induced, mindless reactionary hysteria for a second and just think about that. Think about the turbaned guy in his video clip with his ohmygod lookatthat DANGEROUS!!!gun, and think about something they are rather careful NOT to show, NOT to get you thinking about - picture Fearless Leader Bush/Blair (I'm tempted to mention Big Brother here) in a matching video - I was going to try a short composite of American military might, but that's like trying a short composite of life on earth or something - but to be effective - picture blustering EMF with his sad little M-16 or Kalashnikov or whatever the hell it is (a gun expert I am not) there behind him - and then Fearless Leader on a split screen with an American aircraft carrier, floating threateningly off some country's coast, manned by 10,000 marines, pilots and highly trained support personnel pictured beside him, loaded to the gunwales with more F-16s than you can count and (militarily speaking) state-of-the-art everything including communication systems that integrate with spy satellites that can identify and target and lineup the guns to shoot the eye out of a nat at several hundred miles or put smart cruise missile bombs right down a frigging chimney on the other side of the mountains, including vast stockpiles of ammo which includes nuclear weapons that could make a glass plain out of the entire country the turbaned guy is broadcasting from within about 10 minutes of receiving the command from Fearless Leader, and remember our Big Brother probably has, conservatively speaking, one of these aircraft carriers for every turbaned "leader" the EMFs have, and the absolute flaming ridiculousness of this kind of propaganda should be evident. There are almost certainly far more (and more modern) rifles and bullets and bombs on that one carrier than in every "terrorist" armoury in every cave in the desert from Algeria to Pakistan. And back again. And yet, day after day, we are barraged with visions of The Elephant, clutching his great arsenal, climbing up on the stool pretending to cower in the classical oxymoronic cartoon, calling all we little elephants to join him, screaming about that terrible dangerous mouse with its peashooter and wadded up spitballs (but - but - but - but, scream the frothing-mouthers, but those spitballs could contain WMDs!!! yeayea. and Mr. Turban knows all about glass plains too, believe me. Not to mention the difference between a defensive bluster and Shock and Awe, or an M-16 and an F-16..). Think as an example we're almost all familiar with personally about the 6 foot 4 250 pound schoolyard bully with his equally loud and stupid gang around him, going to the principal and whining that 67 pound Johnny, whom the bully and his buds have just laid a severe beating on and stolen his lunch pennies to boot, has lifted his little bleeding head from the ground, waved a half-clenched fist, broken fingers and all, and threatened to "get him some day" before falling back down unconscious, and you get a taste of how ridiculous this is. Unfortunately, in our scenario, the bully's family kind of owns the town and the local press and all the rest of it, and the result is that the principal gets on the phone to the local tv station and alarms all the parents about that little hoodlum Johnny, and how they better lock their houses up and what not, and tells the cops to keep an eye on him as well, and they get on the case with bulletins in the post office and all the rest. Life just ain't fair sometimes. Which is no excuse for intelligent people to stop thinking or jump on the stupidest bandwagon going by just because the town fathers are leading it. As a cartoon joke, the elephant on the stool is quite pathetic. As a reflection of reality, it is considerably more sinister, once you think about it. Picture the elephant with shifty little eyes, darting around to see who's falling for its little scheme. If you're with me so far, and you've at least muted the talking heads on the tv telling you why that turbaned guy really is so gosh-darned dangerous you ought to be really, really worried about him and the other "evil freedom-hating terrorists" lurking somewhere nearby according to the same "commentators" (think propagandists instead, if you like, it might inspire you to ask more questions and be less credulous), you might want to wonder then why the people in charge here are so very anxious that you and the rest of the people should be so afraid of these small-time criminals they've given the bogeyman name of EMFs to, why that big elephant with its huge power wants you to be terrified of that little mouse, why they are so anxious to make larger-than-life bogeymen out of some pretty ineffective people on the other side of the world, call them a much more fear-inducing name "TERRORISTS!!!" than simply the lawless criminals they are (or maybe even Freedom Fighters, actually, but still pretty powerless compared to those carriers), whoever they are, and why, instead of trying to mobilise the entire planet into a state of war to eradicate these pests, they don't just simply get a few good cops on their tails to deal with whatever actual crimes they may have committed in our countries (setting bombs was a crime, the last time I checked the law books), whether in New York, Bali, Madrid, London, wherever. (Where's Columbo when ya need him? haha - rhetorical question - there's no way they're going to sic a good cop (as in a real, non-corrupt one (if we could even find one anymore)) onto anyone's tails in this game, because a REAL cop doing a REAL investigation would quickly find him-or-herself heading back towards Washington to clear a few things up first, asking questions of people who don't much like being asked questions and who appear to have a great deal to hide - no no, dropping bombs all over the place, inciting mindless hysteria and fear in the populace when one of the bombees makes some feeble effort to strike back, is much less dangerous for the people whom we really need to be investigating. Speaking of investigations, we also ought to remember that there has NEVER been any investigation into who did what on 911 (the US Gov coverup does NOT count - remember, they started from the premise that those darn Arab-EMFs in caves did it all - but that is exactly what has never been investigated, and which appears very, very unlikely, once you start thinking for yourself and asking some real questions - http://www.serendipity.li/wtc.htm ). So there's at least one good reason to think about as to why they're doing all this - the people inciting you to be afraid of a lot of mysterious sort of people from the other side of the world just might have a lot to hide about their own activities, about this "terrorism" stuff and quite a lot of other stuff as well which I don't have time to get into here but I am sure if you google "halliburton cheney cronyism" or "enron" or "US financial scandals" and things like that you can start your own sidebar (or book haha), and would very much prefer your attention to be directed elsewhere (if you really want to get your old "coincidence meter" going crazy, do a little comparison of the number of times a "terrorist incident" or RED ALERT of some sort came within hours of some semi-honest news media (there's a few around the world, not many, but a few) releasing a story indicating the Bush government was up to something crooked, or pointing out one of their more obvious lies or something...). It's the sort of thing that has to be maintained, of course - there's no statute of limitations on the big sorts of crimes they may have been involved with, and if you ever have a chance to think about things and start putting two and two together without someone screaming DUCK TERRORIST ALERT or ON YOUR KNEES CITIZEN OPEN THAT BAG in you ear all frigging day - well, who knows what sort of conclusions might suggest themselves. With those sort of questions in mind just to start with, you might then carry on and do a bit of reading on the necessary conditions for fascism to take over a country, just as some background info you might find interesting. Fear is a good place to start, as citizens who are very afraid of some bogeyman are much easier to control as they look trustingly to their "leaders" for protection, and you gotta admit they've been spreading a lot of fear around, with precious little actual "terrorism" to actually point to - poor old George STILL has to remind you of 911 every time he makes a speech, since there's nothing else concrete in America to point at regarding IMMINENT TERRORIST THREAT. You see all those security people checking knapsacks and stuff these days? You think they ever find anything outside of some embarrassing condoms or a bit of weed or a Hustler mag or vibrator or something? When was the last time you heard of a "terrorist" with some bomb or something being apprehended by a random search at the subway or bus station or an airport scanner? We've heard any number of horror stories of innocent people being screwed around in various ways, but they're not catching many "terrorists" (I'll let you in on a secret - they're not catching many "terrorists" for the same reason the guys in the Rocky Mountains aren't catching many Sasquatches. Sit down foaming-mouthers, don't keep asking me to prove negatives until you get beyond all your scare talk and prove some positives - I say there are no terrorists out there, and I'm just waiting for you to show me some.... yea yea and we're not all being eaten by little green men right this very moment because I ask god specially to protect us every night and spread the magic potion around my bed, prove it ain't so haha ....). You might read a bit on some things common to fascist states, and think about how the new "laws" our governments are forcing on us in the name of this "war on terror" resemble those things (I like to encourage people to google their own info, so I don't get accused of the same sort of agenda-setting I accuse the gov of, but you can start here so you get an idea - http://www.rense.com/general37/char.htm .) Carry on from that, and think of some things that, without "horrible, immediately really really imminently dangerous terrorists RED ALERT" messages from the Ministry of Truth haha sorry News Bulletins, you would probably not be that happy about, in our "great, free democratic societies": - because of "terrorism" ... we "have to" search everybody at every airport - which is not only pretty insulting, it is a big hassle and wastes a lot of time - tell me really, would you pea your pants and faint and just give up if some guy pulled out a pair of nailclippers and screamed I'M AN EVIL TERRORIST AND I'M HIJACKING THE PLANE HAHAHA!!!! at you? Or would you smack him with your purse and put an armlock on him until somebody gave him a hit of prozac or something? Really now.... - because of "terrorism" ... we "have to have" National ID cards - because of "terrorism" ... we "have to have" laws that will infringe on your privacy and monitor all your internet traffic, books you read, "suspicious" packages you get in the mail, bank accounts, organisations you belong to, your friends, etc and etc - because of "terrorism" ... we are all supposed to sneakily keep an eye on our neighbors and view everyone else with suspicion, and phone the police if we see anything "suspicious". We're not actually supposed to phone the police just to cause some grief to someone we don't like because they're queer (or sure act like it) or Asian or drive a Bug or some other thing we don't like, or smarter than we are or have too many girlfriends or we just don't like their attitude or something - but hey, we're all human .... - because of "terrorism" ... we "must be prepared" to accept "limits" on "freedom of speech" - joking about bombs in airports will get you in jail real fast (although it's evidently ok to refer to certain of "those" people as "scumbags" or "murdering scum" and so on http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/WarOnTerrorism/2005/07/14/1131814-cp.html ) - because of "terrorism" ... secret warrants and secret trials and holding people in jail for long periods of time incommunicado are okay now - I mean, you know, maybe not real great, but we can understand why they have to do it, you know.... - and on, and on, and on .... Wow, what a great place we are becoming, our great "free democracies". We're all getting more and more used to being ordered around and herded around like cattle - and you don't dare object, if you do they'll likely as not slap you around and accuse you of "suspicious terrorist-like behaviour" while they do a full body cavity search right there in public and throw you in jail (if you're lucky and they don't just throw you on the ground and put some bullets in your brain, and not even apologise later to your family, it was your own damned fault for making them suspicious...), and they can do that with secret warrants and secret trials now, and your fellow "citizens" (for some reason the phrase "fellow sheepizens" comes to mind) will not come running to your aid, they will just frown at you disapprovingly for not doing all that "we" must do to stop "the enemy" (maybe a good time to refresh yourself on the Rev Neimuller story, and maybe even peruse a book called "1984" if it hasn't yet been removed from the library or bookstore in your town ...). We are being encouraged to stay home with our doors locked, and be suspicious of our friends and neighbors. We are very aware that whatever we do on the internet might be being secretly monitored by secret police. Soon we'll have our very own personal biometric ID cards, and the gov will be able to track our every move, keep us from accessing our bank account, stop us from flying, come and search our hard drives at will. Boy, we'll sure be safe then. hahaha Do you REALLY believe that??????????? Once you get done sorting some of that out, you might ask yourself why, again, if what I have been saying so far is credible, the media hasn't been a bit more clued in about these things - if the danger (from EMFs) is so low as I say it really is, why are the media parroting the government propagandists, pretending the "terrorist threat" is so great? Why indeed, assuming I am right, do the media actually seem to be a part of the problem, rather than a part of the solution, as a "free media" is, as we are all taught from our very baby days, such a central and important part of a functioning democratic society, imparting all the information a citizen needs to make rational decisions about what is happening in the world, with which information we decide what should be our responses to those things? Why are the media war-mongering, rather than giving us some sane and rational info with which to ask some of these hard questions to our politicians? Well, you need to keep on with the questions - you need to think of some of them yourself, because the media aren't going to help out here, and I don't want to keep having to put questions in your head. Be creative. And keep that frigging tv off, it turns the mind to mush - check out what happens to the thinking beta-waves in your brain when you watch tv sometime. You need to ask who owns the media, and who owns the companies that are profiting from this "war on terror" stuff (google gets you started pretty well) - check out some corporate connections - that old cui bono stuff. You might think arms manufacturers, for instance. You might do a bit of looking around about politicians being paid off (big numbers) by defence contractors. I read regularly about one of any number of "business" organisations meeting with politicians to "discuss" policy - when was the last time you heard of an anti-poverty organisation doing so? An environmental NGO? An anti-war Peace NGO? Hahaha, sorry, I didn't really mean to slip into the ridiculous here. But wait a minute, wait a minute, I know you're thinking - there's way too many people working in the media - they can't ALL be corporate owners, or bought off! True enough - but remember first the huge media concentration today, with all major media in all major western countries being owned by about half a dozen huge megacorps, who have again as I said serious ties with "defence"-armaments industries who do NOT benefit from peace and happiness around the world, but who do make huge amounts of money, in many ways, from war and violence, and the many interconnected industries which also reap great profits therefrom (and don't forget here we're ultimately dealing with "investors" whose ONLY prerogative, as established in law, is to max their profits - no other considerations whatsoever need apply or be considered). Then your second-level top people can be bought off if necessary (you don't usually need to buy yourself off, and second level people are very well paid - would you rather make several million bucks a year plus stockops and percs doing what they tell you (which is good for *you* anyway, financially speaking, and at this level there seems to be precious little concern about "others", "the guy with the most wins" is the only game rule, I mean, it's no secret, they brag about it enough...), or sleep under a bridge in Fargo in December?), and the top people hire the lower down people, going only through a very small number of iterations to do the major staffing - and it's natural enough and easy enough to hire people who agree with you, rather than people who are going to write stuff you don't want and argue with you and stuff you'd rather not have to deal with. Think about it now - if you wanted to start a newspaper that promoted American corporate interests - would you hire Ralph Nader or Donald Trump as an editor (assuming they both applied for the job haha)? Likewise further down the line your young earnest cub reporters on this pro-business, pro-corp neocon paper - are you going to hire the young hippie social activist who has been to every demonstration since Seattle and is constantly telling everyone how important it is to tell the truth about what is happening here and get the hell out of Iraq just for starters - or do you want the young guy in a 3-piece suit, shorthair, who wants his cut of the pie ASAP, and has made it very clear at the interview that he is oh-so-anxious to please, and get on up that corporate ladder and get his DinerGold and BMW? This stuff ain't rocket science - then again, when was the last time you read a comment like this in one of the daily papers???? Did you ever wonder WHY you don't read stuff like this in your daily papers? Did you ever wonder just what else you might not be reading in your daily papers that might be worth thinking about a bit? Final question - but why?? Even if a lot of what you are saying is true - WHY are they doing all this? What's in it for them, to get us all scared, to spend all this time and effort promoting bogeymen and fear and pass all these laws and stuff? Well, aside from it's doing this or going to jail for a long time for most of these people as noted above, there are some other things you might think about. Again, we have to hypothesize a bit, as they're not leaving a written trail of their thought processes (my wouldn't that be a fascinating read? - put all of your horror-book fiction writers right out of business!!), but my first offering would be that they're all certifiable loons as are most who feel they have a right to control the lives of millions of other people - you know, guys like Mao or Stalin. They're sneaky about all this, of course, as most of us wouldn't really choose a loon as a leader knowingly, but history tells us pretty clearly that there are a few people in every generation and society who, for whatever deep psychological reasons, so desperately desire power over others that they will do all this kind of stuff to get it, and I don't know of any rule at all that says people in western democracies would be immune to this, and there's no shortage of examples proving otherwise. I don't have to give names, you can think of dozens yourself from Pharaoh to Alexander to Ceasar to Napoleon to Hitler - one of the most prominent common denominators of such people, however, is that they were all willing to kill as many people as they needed to to get to where they wanted to be, and to do whatever was necessary to raise the military forces to accomplish their desired ends. And "whatever is necessary" sure as hell includes fixing "democratic" elections in the "modern" world. Google Diebold, campaign financing, FPTP, corruption, stuff like that and read on. You can imagine whatever reasons you like for wanting power and wealth - a lot of it is pretty obvious, I think, just in modern terms - wouldn't you like to have complete freedom to do what you liked, be able to fly around the world on your own jet anytime you wanted, stay at the fanciest resorts, have the best women (or whatever) and food and luxuries at your beck and call - and never have to do any kind of boring assembly-line type work ever again? Sure. How many people do you know who, if given that chance, would say, "Naah! Not for me! I love getting up at 7 am every day and going to the plant, 50 weeks a year, looking forward to that for the rest of my life, always worrying about money at the end of the month, always worrying about the mortgage and health costs and the kids' education, always fighting with the wife about not having enough money or anything else, always dreaming about going places and doing things but knowing I'll never have enough money - great life!" Right. Most of us accept that sort of life more or less with variations (as we're trained to beginning from the day we first sit in front of that tv), or devise ways to earn a bit more money or whatever - others of, shall we say, less moral fibre or more alpha genes or parents already on the path or whatever, embark on lives of killing, stealing, and general criminality etc to fulfil their goals. Depending on the level of violence and coercion they are capable of controlling and how much cash that leads to, and the level of crooked legal advice they can obtain, some aspire to be the neighbourhood don, some aspire to Empire. Whatever they aspire to, they do it on the backs of the normal people they control. You and I, that is to say, and the rest of the people you see in your neighbourhood every day. There are a number of men, and some women, who just crave the power. Read The Prince, if you doubt it (teaser - the author recommends a combination of violence and lying and sneaking around plotting and scheming as the road to getting and maintaining power - ring any bells?!?). They can be much more brutal today - things were a bit more civilised back then - the Borggias used knives and poison and targeted assassination and subtlety and brains, today it's more likely "my god's bigger'n yer god" and "bomb em all back to the stone age" - ask Milosevic or Saddam, read Shock and Awe. It's been several hundred years since Machiavelli wrote the book, and those who have come since have refined things quite a bit, insofar as raw force can be called refinement. Well, I seem to have strayed a bit from where I started, complaining about how unbelievable I find it that any intelligent person can believe the blatant, LCD propaganda that is going on these days - but looking back on the brief journey, I think I managed to say what I wanted to say about it all. If it encourages anyone at all out there to quit believing in cartoonland bogeymen, and to start asking a few questions about exactly what the hell is going on around here, I suppose I will consider the time well enough spent. Boo! Gotcha. siamdave@yahoo.ca Dave is a Canadian teaching English and living in Thailand, working on a utopian novel he calls "the social-democratic response to the shallow, dishonest libertarian world of Ayn Rand". He's still looking for a publisher if you're interested. Copyright by Dave Patterson, Licensed under a Creative Commons licence - repost at will in not-for-profit venues, with credit, otherwise please contact me for permission and payment details [Proofreader's note: this article was edited for spelling and typos on August 11, 2005]

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