Happy New Year Ethiopia!

In memory of the U.S./C.I.A. power surge in Chile on 11th September 1973 and dedicated to all the victims of injustice and those who have died as a result of the terrorism of global terrorists in their never-ending war of conquest.

7/7: Crime and Prejudice, by Tom Secker

Based on and inspired by the research of
J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign
http://julyseventh.co.uk/
http://77inquests.blogspot.com/

Can you tell what it is yet? [1984 Version]

Factoring this trusty little quote from the MoD in to the equation:

The Middle Class Proletariat

The middle classes could become a revolutionary class, taking the role envisaged for the proletariat by Marx. The globalization of labour markets and reducing levels of national welfare provision and employment could reduce peoples’ attachment to particular states. The growing gap between themselves and a small number of highly visible super-rich individuals might fuel disillusion with meritocracy, while the growing urban under-classes are likely to pose an increasing threat to social order and stability, as the burden of acquired debt and the failure of pension provision begins to bite. Faced by these twin challenges, the world’s middle-classes might unite, using access to knowledge, resources and skills to shape transnational processes in their own class interest.

Who would ever suspect that the story behind a nice gentle headline such as NUS starts campaign to oust leading Lib Dems might contain a confirmation of the State's virtually tacit declaration of war on anyone with half a conscience? Probably not many - but it does.

As police face continued criticism for failing to control the march, the Observer has learned that defence firms are working closely with UK armed forces and contemplating a "militarisation" strategy to counter the threat of civil disorder.

The trade group representing the military and security industry says firms are in negotiation with senior officers over possible orders for armoured vehicles, body scanners and better surveillance equipment.

The move coincides with government-backed attempts to introduce the use of unmanned spy drones throughout UK airspace, facilitating an expansion of covert surveillance that could provide intelligence on future demonstrations.

Derek Marshall, of the trade body Aerospace, Defence and Security (ADS), said that such drones could eventually replace police helicopters.

He added that military manufacturers had discussed police procurement policies with the government, as forces look to counter an identified threat of civil disobedience from political extremists.

Meanwhile police sources say they have detected an increase in the criminal intentions of political extremists and are monitoring "extreme leftwing activity" in light of last week's student protest.

The office of the National Co-ordinator for Domestic Extremism (NCDE) said it was feeding information to Scotland Yard's National Public Order Intelligence Unit, which holds a database of protest groups. NCDE, which in turn works closely with the Confidential Intelligence Unit that monitors political groups throughout the UK, said it had already recorded a rise in politically motivated disorder.

- The Guardian

Delightful to learn that these private military corporations have identified the general public as their new targets, an added bonus that State officials think so too. More wonderful still to learn of the rapidity with which "senior officers", such as the lovely fellows of the Association of Chief Police Officers, have tendered a sympathetic ear or two.

The police even shut down a web site -- which sort of backfired somewhat, what with the Internet being the way it is for now -- but it's very important everyone remembers that censorship only takes place in China or Iran, and probably Somalia too. That'd never happen here.

Not long ago, you'd have been a 'conspiracy theorist' if you thought there was the remotest possibility of the State censoring web sites or arming itself in earnest against the people that happen to live under its jurisdication.

It might be fascism, but is it still a 'conspiracy theory'?

Jean Charles de Menezes - gone, but never forgotten

There follows a copy of a missive issued by Justice4Jean, the Jean Charles de Menezes' family campaign for justice after the extra judicial execution of an innocent man at Stockwell underground station. The police have murdered others since and, as with the killing of Jean, have done so with impunity.

* Please circulate widely *

Dear all,

The Justice4Jean Campaign has launched an online petition today, on the 4th anniversary of Jean's death, calling on Transport for London and London Mayor Boris Johnson to allow the Mosaic of Jean Charles de Menezes to be erected outside Stockwell Tube station as a permanent memorial.

The petition reads as follows:

"We the undersigned call on Transport for London and the Mayor of London to allow the Mosaic of Jean Charles de Menezes to be erected outside Stockwell Tube station as a permanent memorial.

Jean Charles De Menezes was an innocent man who died in tragic circumstances after being shot dead by police in 2005. His story has touched people worldwide. The family and local community have maintained a temporary shrine for 4 years, outside Stockwell station, to express the huge amount of public sympathy about the manner and circumstances in which he died. We believe the mosaic, made by the family of Jean Charles with local artists, represents the best and most fitting replacement to this shrine - it celebrates his short life whilst ensuring his tragic death is never forgotten."

Please join us in signing the petition. It takes just 30 seconds, but can truly make a difference.

http://www.thepetitionsite.com/120/justice-for-jean---never-forget

Once you have signed, you can help even more by asking your friends and family to sign as well.

Thank you!
Justice4Jean Campaign

When fascism comes to town....

It will probably look a little something like this.






The expression, "a captive audience", redefined.

Welcome to the prison ship.

--
Edit: Compare and contrast (via amtte).

No Fifth amendment, "No Comment."

Still think Orwellian, Big Brother style, police state fascism isn't in operation? Open your eyes.

You may not have the right to silence, but you certainly have the right to "No comment." Lessons in why from America via Professor James Duane.

If you suspect it, report it

The "It" referred to in the title of this post is, of course, bullsh-it.

Recent political power surges have ensured the appointment of Josef Goebbels as minister for news and propaganda from beyond the grave. Residents of prison ship Britain wake to find themselves living simultaneously in the maelstroms of the occupied territories of Iraq, the occupied territories of Afghanistan and the occupied territories of Palestine, all without the hassle of having to sell their homes in challenging economic times.

Government warns of nuclear terror threat - Telegraph.co.uk

New anti-terror strategy warns of chemical attack threat - guardian.co.uk

Fanatics 'could use roadside bombs to kill VIPs in Britain' - Daily Mail

Terror attack on UK highly likely, says Home Office - Scotsman

UK citizens encouraged to confront terror threat - The Herald

'Workers army' trained for counter-terror force - Times Online

All this marks the launch of the long time in the making Contest 2 'anti-terror' strategy of the government, as widely publicised by the housing benefit thief Home Secretary, J'Accuse Smith (no relation to housing benefit thief Employment Minister Tony McNulty).

The publication of the report coincides with a new police campaign to urge Londoners (and nobody else?) to report 'suspicious activity'. Gordon BrNWO was banging on about it in last week's Sunday Observer. For his efforts, as if he wrote the article in question, BrNWO received a good and entirely justified verbal kicking right until the bitter end.

Goebbels' new campaign to reinstate blockleiters comes with a few simple posters issued by the simple police as the cross media marketers are only too aware that people busy losing their homes, savings, pensions, cars and just about everything else they've ever worked for, with no end in sight, probably don't have the time to read lengthy government reports designed to distract from the misery of the material reality of their existences.

One of the posters looks a little something like this, only slightly different (click for larger image):


What the government hasn't [sic] failed to notice in its haste to train 60,000 people to recognise what the ruling classes like to think of as terrorists -- through the use of posters featuring Aryan folk in the foreground, complete with Aryan babies, while a couple of lesser, darker-skinned human beings mill about in the background because, despite everything, they must appear to matter too -- is that the 60 million residents of the UK already learned to recognise terrorists and terrorist activity when they see them.

Handy clues like the mass-murder of hundreds of thousands of innocent people is simultaneously a bit of a giveaway and a clincher and it will stand up in an International Criminal Court of law a bit better than black pepper, hair dye and chemical impossibilities, so pretending that hairdressers and chefs and "hardcore antagonists" are terrorists just isn't going to wash any more.

Bullshit - If you suspect it, report it.

Antagonista TV: The New American Century, a film by Massimo Mazzucco

"A stunning film. It should be seen as widely as possible, in cinemas, bars, clubs, at meetings and, of course, through the internet. I'm sure the film will continue to be a source of debate and political education for many years. Maybe until the war criminals have been brought to trial."

-- Ken Loach

A recommendation like that, from one of the best and most admirable film directors in history, should be sufficient to pique people's interest.

"In the White House, they weren't thinking of 9/11 as an attack, but as a gift!"

-- Robert Steele, former CIA agent

What's all the fuss about?

'THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY'
Worldwide Screening of Massimo Mazzucco's Political Documentary
Starting January 23rd 2009

On 23rd January, the political documentary ‘THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY’ was screened worldwide through a network of digital cinemas ranging from Italy to Brazil, from Spain to South Africa. With international press coverage and the support of prominent filmmakers from all over the world, the event shows that the existing digital network is already capable of effectively delivering a complete product on a global basis.

The digital revolution is working at both ends of the chain, the clear beneficiary being the audience in the middle. On one end the exhibitor, faced with dramatically lower costs, can afford to choose from a much wider range of films than those offered by the mainstream circuit. On the other end, filmmakers can now embark in low-cost, hi-quality production with the full awareness that there is a valid, worldwide venue awaiting their product, enabling them to reach a proportionately satisfying audience.

At the same time the astonishing rate of technical improvement by the internet indicates that the full integration of the digital realm is only minutes away. When that happens, the array of possibilities - ranging from downloadable updates for works-in-progress to live, server-to-theater digital feed - will make the existing system so obsolete that it won't even be necessary to fight the restrictions the majors are now trying to impose on digital distribution in a desperate effort to survive such rapidly changing times.

All efforts should be made to support bold events like this. Any steps towards discovering a new distribution method for truly independent films is valuable for filmmakers and audiences alike."

-- Gonzalo Justiniano

Angry? Outraged? Livid? Incensed? Good!

What was good for the Saddam goose is also good for the Imperialist, plundering, profiteering ganders. Time to start twisting hemp into some rope yarns as the momentum increases to get Blair and his war criminal cohorts up in front of the International Criminal Court for multiple breaches of the Rule of International Law, the U.N. Charter, the 1998 Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court and miscellaneous other war laws.

John Pilger, David Halpin, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown, Ken Loach, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Lindsey German, Ben Griffin, Dr Nawal Saadawi, Haifa Zangana, Dr Kamil Mahdi, Bruce Kent, and other citizens of Spain, Argentina, USA, and UK, support a Blair War Crimes Foundation to seek signatures for a petition to the United Nations General Assembly and the UK Attorney General, to uphold the UN Charter, the Geneva and Hague Conventions, and International Law, and to indict Tony Blair for war crimes.

Sign the petition here. Harold Pinter would have rallied for the cause too.

Time for everyone to play their part in wiping the smug, meretricious grin from Blair's lying, mass-murdering, bastard face, and not a moment too soon. Rather, much too late. Those also complicit in these war crimes should not rest easy either for their time and numbers are almost up too.

Truth will prevail -- is prevailing -- justice will be done, and the world will be a better place for it.

--
Updated 25/06/09 - Fixed embedded video link.

Mind your business, Peter Power

It's been a while since the man who left the Dorset Police under distinctly odd circumstances showed his face on the TV, but when there's a "crisis" of any sort, snow matter what sort of crisis, there's plenty of crisis management money to be made, even in times of general financial woe. What better way to kick-start an ailing business than with yet more free publicity from the dear old State Broadcasting Corporation. Cinderella Man provides some background information on how such cross media marketing trickery functions, Lord Patel has more, and yours truly provides the commentary for Power's latest appearances:

After a little bit of snow that everybody vaguely human enjoyed immensely for its day off work, day off school, and a day of fun and frolics chucking snowballs around, Mr Peter Power seizes the opportunity to advertise his Crisis Management services, courtesy of BBC News. Again.

While ordinary people enjoy a few inches of snow every now and then, the economy, along with Mr Peter Power's own personal bank balance, isn't very happy about that sort of thing. To Peter Power and his ilk, the economy -- the thing that left in the hands of the likes of Peter Power has entirely gone to hell in a handcart -- is very, very important indeed. Far more important than all the people that had a fun day off playing in the snow.

The ever charming Mr Power and those lovely people at the government are all going to save the world for us. As if that wasn't enough, Mr Power and those lovely people at the government are going to save the world and make money doing it. The clever things that they are.

So, here he is, that lovely unchanging hairdo and everything, blathering on in his usual way and trying to sound a little bit helpful and a little bit scary all at the same time. Amaze and amuse yourself at quite how he managed to get from home to a TV studio what with all that terrible, ghastly old snow that managed to bring the country to a standstill, but couldn't keep Mr Power off the TV.

2009-02-02 BBC Two - Newsnight - Peter Power

Earlier the same evening:

2009-02-02 19 43 BBC News - Peter Power

Expect to see Mr Power again soon, courtesy of the BBC's self-defeating Conspiracy Files series, just as soon as the "7/7 helpers" show trial number two comes to an end. The CPS seems to have adopted a policy of "If at first you don't convict, trial, trial again." Except, in Mr Power's case, the CPS decided not to prosecute.

9/11, 7/7, conspiracy theories, power surges & coups

Three weeks ago:

Three posts of a kind, all about the popularly propagated myth that cannabis consumption is responsible for increased levels of psychosis, all published right here on Reason.... just weeks before the 2005 coup d'etat "power surge" changed everything.....

The phrase coup d'etat, complete with its deliberate conflation with the term "power surge", carried a link to an article by Joseph Raso on his Resources for Political Change web site, Understanding the September 11, 2001 Attacks as a Coup D'Etat. Since then, Raso's article, which has been online since 2006, appears to have been removed along with the rest of his web site. At the time of writing the site is is still offline.

The disappeared article outlines a useful and important framework from within which the events of 11th September 2001 can be seen not just as the made for TV terrorist spectacular that they were, but instead as a made for TV terrorist spectacular with deliberate political aims, intents and purposes, albeit ones completely contrary to those offered in the official narrative. Raso makes the case that history is beset with such politically charged spectaculars for which alternative narratives have been, and still are, dismissed by some as "malicious lies" and "outrageous conspiracy theories". Many of these "conspiracy theories" have since been proven to be, albeit some time after the events to which they refer, "conspiracy fact" but this has never prevented purveyors of official doctrine from the endlessly fast and loose use of the throwaway terms "conspiracy theory" or "conspiracy theorist" as they attempt to call a halt to critical thinking and critical thinkers. The irony of the anti-intellectualism practiced by those who would hold themselves to be intellectuals is lost on no-one, yet the anti-thinking endeavour to defend their staunchly held positions of weakness with a renewed sense of desperation and transparency.

Others are somewhat wiser and more honest with their analysis. The research of Professor David MacGregor includes studies in the Hegelian-Marxist political economy of concrete evil, inaugurated in an article The Deep Politics of 911: Political Economy of Concrete Evil. MacGregor has also written an article for J7: The July 7th Truth Campaign, July 7th as Machiavellian State Terror? in which he posits the notion that the events of July 7th may fall into the category of what he terms "Machiavellian state terror, spectacular violence perpetrated against the state by elements of the state itself". The theory was born in another of MacGregor's articles on the subject of 9/11, September 11 as Machiavellian State Terror, in which he highlights the importance of 'oppositional theorizing: questioning government and looking for connections between events', activities which he suggests 'are critical features of what it means to be vitally active in the political universe'.

At around 9:17 on 7th July 2005 rolling TV news began to break stories of explosions on the London Underground. It wasn't long before the media were reporting that the explosions on underground trains were the result of "power surges".

In most cases the coup is undertaken to displace one set of rulers, typically the civilian leadership, and establish the power of an alternative group, which is often, but not necessarily, the military. What distinguishes a coup from revolutions is that they are typically carried by relatively small groups and do not involve mass political action. The second key difference is that while those who carry out the coup are seeking to change the government or ruling group, they are not usually trying to change the regime or bring about broader social change. [answers.com]

Removing the initially reported cause of the underground explosions on 7/7 from its implied electrical context, the term "power surge" well describes a method by which an attempt could be made to "establish the power of an alternative group". An examination of key socio-political events since 7/7 in the U.K, and since 9/11 in the U.S., easily reveals many crucial changes in political and social life where new and more intrusive, paternalistic, fascistic methods of operation have been adopted. Worse, these policies and practices have been seamlessly integrated into the operation of State machinery with barely a challenge from within the machine. On the odd occasion where challenges have been made from inside the establishment, the State has elected to ride roughshod over them and continue unchecked in the business of establishing all the politics and technologies of political control that anyone with dictatorial designs might need, complete with a Weimar Republic economy and modern day Reichstag Fire.

To date, where opposition to the actions of the State have materialised from outside the establishment, it has largely confined itself to relatively small, single-issue groupings, too limited in time, resources and publicity to embark on wider political and social campaigns. There are some exceptions, for example the Stop The War Coalition, who have time, reach, resources and the potential to affect change through their broad-based membership instead of merely organising the occasional feel-good march. Yet this hasn't happened and there may be other reasons for this lack of progress such as a lack of decent leadership, an absence of the desire to affect real political change, or other less obvious and slightly more nefarious attributes that prevent them from advancing a more all encompassing political agenda.

This paradigm is changing though, particularly with regard to the nebulous but ever growing 9/11 Truth movement whose reach seems to include most of the world. As general levels of political awareness and distrust of the establishment grow in tandem with each other, new "anti-terror" legislation in both the U.S. and the U.K. is specifically designed to ensure the loudly stated objectives of new laws mask the way in which just about any activity at all, particularly any activity that is in any way political or has political objectives, can now be prosecuted as the common offense of "terrorism", in advance of there being any actual terrorism and irrespective of the "terrorists" possessing the means, methods and motives to carry out acts of terror, much less the sustained campaigns of terror only achievable by States. Charity workers are now "terrorist fundraisers", solidarity workers are now "terrorist sympathisers" and so too is anyone campaigning for any sort of meaningful justice for those deemed by word alone to be "terrorists".

In the days of The Troubles it was just the same. By some sheer coincidence of unimaginable proportions, many of the very same old boys who happened to play key roles in running the show in Northern Ireland on behalf of the British government just happen to be in the positions of power to run a similar show on mainland Britain.

With that as an introduction, and because it's a concise article that deserves to be read and espouses something worth thinking about, here's a copy Joseph Raso's Understanding the September 11, 2001 Attacks as a Coup D'Etat.

April 2006
Understanding the September 11, 2001 Attacks as a Coup D'Etat
by Joseph Raso

"The fetters imposed on liberty at home have ever been forged out of the weapons provided for defence against real, pretended, or imaginary dangers from abroad."

-- James Madison

On the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001, the world witnessed a coup d'etat unfold in the United States of America. Although the U.S. government and compliant media have presented 9/11 as a surprise assault perpetrated by Islamic militants acting in a conspiracy under the direction of Osama bin Laden, the terrorist attacks in New York and at the Pentagon should be viewed very differently given the results of the investigations conducted by many researchers which indicate U.S. government complicity. Analyzing 9/11 as a coup is appropriate whether government officials possessed foreknowledge and allowed these atrocities to occur, or if, as the available evidence suggests, 9/11 was a covert operation akin to Operation Northwoods, a false-flag attack orchestrated by elements within and associated with the U.S. state.(1) In terms of loss of life, deception, and global implications, it would be accurate to characterize it as the most audacious coup in history.

Coups: North and South

A coup is best defined as a sudden extraconstitutional seizure of power, often violent in nature, by individuals within the state apparatus. It is commonly identified with the classic military intervention, but coups may assume other forms. They are associated with politics in the 'Third World'/global South, where these events have typically occurred without pretense. One of the most infamous cases in the South was the coup in Chile, supported by the Nixon administration and facilitated by a CIA campaign, on the morning of Tuesday, September 11, 1973.(2) It resulted in seventeen years of military rule, the murder of more than 3,000 Chileans and some foreigners by the Pinochet regime, and countless victims of torture in a country previously respected for its history of constitutional democracy.(3)

In the West/global North, dramatic extraconstitutional seizures of power also occur, albeit less frequently. Certainly the most significant coup in the North during the Cold War era was perpetrated by the U.S. 'national security state' on November 22, 1963. It was in the wake of the Dallas coup that 'conspiracy theory' became a term of ridicule, which, although profoundly ahistorical and intellectually bankrupt, managed to achieve the objective of diverting attention from the truth about state responsibility for the murder of President Kennedy.(4) His death, as intended, led to a policy shift favourable to the interests of the 'military-industrial complex' of which President Eisenhower had famously warned the country in his farewell address less than three years earlier. In fact, all coups in the North are policy coups, designed to force a change in foreign and/or domestic policies, which has not always been the case with coups in the South. Evidence in the kidnapping and murder of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro in 1978 follows this pattern and strongly suggests the involvement of a clandestine NATO network linked to terrorism.(5)

9/11: Global Coup

9/11 was both a domestic and international coup. When a coup occurs in the world's hegemonic power, it will necessarily have vast implications on a global level. The events of 9/11 can be viewed as a violent takeover by neoconservative fascist elements in the 'national security' apparatus of the state, whose extremist agenda would not have been viable without 9/11. The neocon camp includes individuals who have figured prominently in the Bush regime: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, John Bolton, Paul Wolfowitz, Lewis Libby, Elliott Abrams, and others. Their worldview is identified with Leo Strauss, the founder of the neoconservative school and a former professor at the University of Chicago who influenced a generation of political leaders. At the core of the neocon ideology is contempt for democracy and an emphasis on the desirability of deception, conflict, and perpetual war. From this perspective, 9/11 was ideal to initiate the 'clash of civilizations' popularized by Samuel Huntington, a Harvard academic whose work has considerable influence in foreign policymaking circles.(6)

The neocon program for global domination was delineated in publications of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC), a neocon think tank founded in 1997 and comprised of the key administration officials noted earlier as well as other government advisors. In respect to 9/11, the document entitled "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century" (September 2000) deserves scrutiny. In this blueprint for U.S. imperialism in the twenty-first century, PNAC members noted that their plan would demand global military force and thus a substantial increase in military spending, but "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event-like a new Pearl Harbor."(7) A year later, 9/11 conveniently provided this requisite 'new Pearl Harbor' pretext for the neocon architects' imperial project.

However, not all of the beneficiaries of the 9/11 coup are located within the borders of the United States. A thoughtful analysis has recently been offered by General Leonid Ivashov, Chief of Staff of the Russian armed forces at the time of 9/11: "We have to look for the reasons of the attacks in the coincidence of interests of the big capital at global and transnational levels, in the circles that were not satisfied with the rhythm of the globalization process or its direction." In this sense, 9/11 served the economic interests of a transnational elite. He contends: "This means that terrorism is not something independent of world politics but simply an instrument, a means to install a unipolar world with a sole world headquarters, a pretext to erase national borders and to establish the rule of a new world elite."(8)

Machiavelli and Democratic Appearances

Undoubtedly, 9/11 was also a coup in a domestic context. The post-9/11 Patriot Act (like similar 'anti-terror' legislation in other countries) has severely undermined civil liberties while the authoritarian approach of the Bush administration, in combination with the astonishing weakness/complicity of Democrats, have allowed for the concentration of virtually unrestricted power in the executive branch, the gradual disappearance of 'checks and balances' and the dismantling of the constitution.

The writings of Florentine political philosopher Niccolo Machiavelli provide a useful guide for comprehending the neocon ruling strategy. Machiavelli explained the importance of deceiving the public in undertaking major political change. In Discourses on Livy, he argued that one "must at least retain the semblance of the old forms; so that it may seem to the people that there has been no change in the institutions, even though in fact they are entirely different from the old ones."(9) In their Machiavellian rule, the neocons have hollowed out democratic institutions of substance while retaining the structures, thus preserving the appearance of a functioning liberal democracy.

Consequences

The consequences of this grand coup extend far beyond the loss of nearly 3,000 lives that day, health problems in New York for many thousands more, and much greater loss of life in subsequent wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.(10) In fact, it is difficult to exaggerate the impact of 9/11 on the world over the past several years: the persecution and dangerous dehumanization of Muslims, widespread use of torture, advanced erosion of civil liberties, brazen violation of international law, establishment of the doctrine of unilateral preventive war, the potential for nuclear conflict, and the construction of a new world order which poses the threat of global fascism.(11) All of these appalling developments are the product of 9/11. One must also consider the deterioration in the political climate and intellectual discourse.

Meanwhile, the fraudulent 'global war on terror' has deprived vital global issues of critical focus and funding. Environmental degradation, the AIDS pandemic, extreme poverty, and the massive debt burden of the South are overshadowed in the post-9/11 world. U.S. domestic concerns in health care, education, social decay, and a host of other issues are also neglected in favour of astronomical military spending. The atrocious war in Iraq, predicated on lies that were transparent prior to the invasion, only increases the country's deep indebtedness and further jeopardizes the long-term prospects of the U.S. economy.

Conclusion

9/11 was a coup against humanity. Exposing it is essential to prevent another 9/11-type event and more wars for oil and empire, which have the potential to culminate in a world war. There exists no alternative to dismantling this coup in order to steer the world away from its disastrous course. The future of everyone on this planet depends on it and we cannot afford to fail in this historic task. Consider the title of a book on public denial over the unpleasant truth of the Kennedy assassination, written by psychiatrist E. Martin Schotz: History Will Not Absolve Us.

NOTES (updated)

(1) a) David Ray Griffin and Peter Dale Scott (eds). 9/11 and American Empire: Intellectuals Speak Out (Volume I). Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2006.

b) Peter Dale Scott. The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007.

c) David Ray Griffin. Debunking 9/11 Debunking: An Answer to Popular Mechanics and Other Defenders of the Official Conspiracy Theory. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2007.

d) David Ray Griffin. The 9/11 Commission Report: Omissions and Distortions. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2005.

e) Paul Zarembka (ed). The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 (Research in Political Economy, Volume 23). Amsterdam: Elsevier, 2006.

f) Barrie Zwicker. Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-up of 9/11. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2006.

g) Michel Chossudovsky. America's "War on Terrorism." Pincourt, PQ: Global Research, 2005.

h) Webster G. Tarpley. 9/11 Synthetic Terror: Made in USA. Joshua Tree, CA: Progressive Press, 2005.

i) Michael C. Ruppert. Crossing the Rubicon: The Decline of the American Empire at the End of the Age of Oil. Gabriola Island, BC: New Society Publishers, 2004.

j) Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed. The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation, and the Anatomy of Terrorism. Northampton, MA: Interlink Books, 2005.

k) Steven E. Jones. "Why Indeed Did the WTC Buildings Completely Collapse?" Journal of 9/11 Studies (September 2006/Volume 3). [PDF]

l) Joseph P. Firmage. "Intersecting Facts and Theories on 9/11." Journal of 9/11 Studies (August 2006/Volume 2). [PDF]

m) Global Outlook: The Magazine of 9/11 Truth

n) Scholars for 9/11 Truth and Justice

(2) National Security Archive Electronic Briefing Book No. 8, "Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents Relating to the Military Coup, September 11, 1973"

(3) Report of the Chilean National Commission on Truth and Reconciliation

(4) a) Joan Mellen. A Farewell to Justice: Jim Garrison, JFK's Assassination, and the Case That Should Have Changed History. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books Inc., 2005.

b) Vincent J. Salandria. False Mystery: Essays on the Assassination of JFK. Louisville, CO: Square Deal Press, 2004.

c) E. Martin Schotz. History Will Not Absolve Us: Orwellian Control, Public Denial, and the Murder of President Kennedy. Brookline, MA: Kurtz, Ulmer & Delucia, 1996.

d) Peter Dale Scott. Deep Politics and the Death of JFK. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993.

e) Alan J. Weberman and Michael Canfield. Coup D'Etat in America: The CIA and the Assassination of John F. Kennedy. San Francisco: Quick Trading Company, 1992.

(5) a) Philip P. Willan. Puppetmasters: The Political Use of Terrorism in Italy. New York: Authors Choice Press, 2002.

b) Daniele Ganser. NATO's Secret Armies: Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe. London: Frank Cass, 2005.

c) Arthur E. Rowse. "Gladio: The Secret U.S. War to Subvert Italian Democracy." Covert Action Quarterly (No. 49: Summer 1994).

(6) Samuel P. Huntington. The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.

(7) Project for the New American Century, "Rebuilding America's Defenses: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century" (September 2000)

(8) Leonid Ivashov, "International terrorism does not exist"

(9) Niccolo Machiavelli. Discourses on Livy. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998.

(10) Sabrina Tavernise and Donald G. McNeil Jr. "Iraqi dead may total 600,000, study says." International Herald Tribune (11 October 2006).

(11) Richard Falk, "Will the Empire be Fascist?"

N.B. This article does not preclude other perspectives on 9/11 e.g. viewing it as a psychological operation (psyop) against the general population.

European Court of Human Rights DNA retention ruling

At last! We've found something that the British government has a track record of managing successfully over an extended period of time, breaching human rights.

The European Court of Human Rights has ruled that the British government has breached human rights, over a million times, through the retention of DNA belonging to innocent people.

The unanimous verdict was delivered by a panel of 17 judges from around Europe after a couple of Sheffielders took their case to the European Court. The judgment means that any person hassled by the increasingly voracious police force, whose DNA was taken irrespective of being charged or convicted of a crime, has had their human rights breached, unlike the 2.3 million people "with a conviction, caution, reprimand or final warning", who are not on the database.

The ruling places the British government in violation of international law. Again. From a BBC News report:

The judges said keeping the information "could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society".

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she was "disappointed" by the European Court of Human Rights' decision.

So, a "unanimous judgement by 17 senior judges from across Europe" ruled that the British State's policy of retaining DNA in a giant database "could not be regarded as necessary in a democratic society" and Jacqui Smith is "disappointed".

Another perfect example of the true gangster nature of the State.

An unexpurgated message from Dr. Goldstein

A brief message from the much maligned Emmanuel Goldstein courtesy of (as with On Terrorism and the State) those wonderful folk over at NotBored. Lessons in life, history and political analysis for everyone.

Publisher's note: Chapters 1 and 3 of this book were previously published in George Orwell's 1984 (London: 1949). This edition is complete and unexpurgated.

Contents

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength

Chapter 2: Freedom is Slavery

Chapter 3: War is Peace

Chapter 4: God is Power

Chapter 5: The Proles

Chapter 1: Ignorance is Strength

Throughout recorded time, and probably since the end of the Neolithic Age, there have been three kinds of people in the world, the High, the Middle, and the Low. They have been subdivided in many ways, they have borne countless different names, and their relative numbers, as well as their attitude toward one another, have varied from to age to age; but the essential structure of society has never altered. Even after enormous upheavals and seemingly irrevocable changes, the same pattern has always reasserted itself, just as a gyroscope will always return to equilibrium, however far it is pushed one way or the other.

The aims of these three groups are entirely irreconcilable. The aim of the High is to remain where they are. The aim of the Middle is to change places with the High. The aim of the Low, when they have an aim -- for it is an abiding characteristic of the Low that they are too much crushed by drudgery to be more than intermittently conscious of anything outside their daily lives -- is to abolish all distinctions and create a society in which all men shall be equal. Thus throughout history a struggle which is the same in its main outlines recurs over and over again. For long periods the High seem to be securely in power, but sooner or later there always comes a moment when they lose either their belief in themselves, or their capacity to govern efficiently or both. They are then overthrown by the Middle, who enlist the Low on their side by pretending to them that they are fighting for liberty and justice. As soon as they have reached their objective, the Middle thrust the Low back into their old position of servitude, and themselves become the High. Presently a new Middle group splits off from one of the other groups, or from both of them, and the struggle begins over again. Of the three groups, only the Low are never even temporarily successful in achieving their aims. It would be an exaggeration to say that throughout history there has been no progress of a material kind. Even today, in a period of decline, the average human being is physically better off than he was a few centuries ago. But no advance in wealth, no softening of manners, no reform or revolution has ever brought human equality a millimeter nearer. From the point of view of the Low, no historic change has ever meant much more than a change in the name of their masters.

By the late nineteenth century the recurrences of this pattern had become obvious to many observers. There then arose schools of thinkers who interpreted history as a cyclical process and claimed to show that inequality was the unalterable law of human life. This doctrine, of course, had always had its adherents, but in the manner in which it was now put forward there was a significant change. In the past the need for a hierarchical form of society had been the doctrine specifically of the High. It had been preached by kings and aristocrats and by the priests, lawyers, and the like who were parasitical upon them, and it had generally been softened by promises of compensation in an imaginary world beyond the grave. The Middle, so long as it was struggling for power, had always made use of such terms as freedom, justice and fraternity. Now, however, the concept of human brotherhood began to be assailed by people who were not yet in positions of command, but merely hoped to be so before long. In the past the Middle had made revolutions under the banner of equality, and then had established a fresh tyranny as soon as the old ones were overthrown. The new Middle groups in effect proclaimed their tyranny beforehand. The new movements, of course, grew out of the old ones and tended to keep their names and pay lip-service to their ideology. But the purpose of all of them was to arrest progress and freeze history at a chosen moment. The familiar pendulum swing was to happen once more, and then stop. As usual, the High were to be turned out by the Middle, who would then become the High; but this time, by conscious strategy, the High would be able to maintain their position permanently.

The new "spectacular" doctrines arose partly because of the accumulation of historical knowledge, and the growth of the historical sense, which had hardly existed before the nineteenth century. The cyclical movement of history was now intelligible, or appeared to be so; and if it was intelligible, then it was alterable. But the principal, underlying cause was that, as early as the beginning of the twentieth century, human equality had become technically possible. It was still true that people were not equal in their native talents and that functions had to be specialized in ways that favored some individuals against others; but there was no longer any real need for class distinctions or for large differences of wealth. In earlier ages, class distinctions had been not only inevitable but desirable. Inequality was the price of civilization. With the development of machine production, however, the case was altered. Even if it were still necessary for human beings to do different kinds of work, it was no longer necessary for them to live at different social or economic levels. Therefore, from the point of view of the new groups that were on the point of seizing power, human equality was no longer an ideal to be striven after, but a danger to be averted. And so the idea of earthly paradise -- which had haunted the human imagination for thousands of years -- came into discredit at exactly the moment when it became realizable. Every new political theory, by whatever name it called itself, led back to hierarchy and regimentation.

As compared with their opposite numbers in past ages, the new aristocracy was less avaricious, less tempted by luxury, hungrier for pure power, and, above all, more conscious of what they were doing and more intent on crushing opposition. This last difference was cardinal. By comparison with that existing today, all the tyrannies of the past were half-hearted and inefficient. The ruling groups were always infected to some extent by liberal ideas, and were content to leave loose ends everywhere, to regard only the overt act, and to be uninterested in what their subjects were thinking. Even the Catholic Church of the Middle Ages was tolerant by modern standards. Part of the reason for this was that in the past no government had the power to keep its citizens under constant surveillance. The invention of print, however, made it easier to manipulate public opinion, and the film and the radio carried the process further. With the development of television and the personal computer, and the technical advances which made it possible to receive and transmit simultaneously on the same instrument, private life came to an end. Every citizen, or at least every citizen important enough to be worth watching, could be kept for twenty-four-hours a day under the eyes of the police and in the sound of official propaganda, with all other channels of information closed. The possibility of enforcing not only complete obedience to the will of the State, but complete uniformity of opinion on all subjects, now existed for the first time.

Nothing the citizen does is indifferent or neutral. His or her friendships, hobbies, behavior towards his or her spouse or lover, facial expressions, gestures, characteristic movements, tones of voice, words muttered while asleep -- all are jealously scrutinized. Not only any actual misdemeanor, but any eccentricity, however small, any change of habits, any nervous mannerism that could possibly be the symptom of an inner struggle, is certain to be detected. Endless purges, arrests, tortures, imprisonments, and disappearances are inflicted both as punishments for crimes which have been actually committed and as the systematic wiping-out of any persons who might perhaps commit a crime at some time in the future.

And so today the determining factor in perpetuating a totally obsolete hierarchical society is the mental attitude of the ruling class itself. The problem, that is to say, is educational. It is a problem of continuously molding the consciousness both of the directing group and of the larger executive group that lies immediately below it. Skepticism and hesitancy among the ranks of the rulers must be prevented. (As will be seen in Chapter 3, the best method of molding consciousness is continuous warfare.)

The consciousness of the masses (the "proles"), by contrast, needs only be influenced in a negative way. The masses could only become dangerous if the advance of industrial technique made it necessary to educate them more highly: but, since military and commercial rivalries are no longer of primary importance, the level of popular education is actually declining. What opinions the masses hold, or do not hold, is looked upon as a matter of indifference. They can be granted intellectual liberty because it is thought that they have no intellect. In a member of the ruling elite, on the other hand, not even the smallest deviation of opinion on the most unimportant subject can be tolerated.

All the beliefs, habits, tastes, emotions, mental attitudes that characterize our time are really designed to sustain the mystique of the rulers and prevent the true nature of present-day society from being perceived. A member of the elite is required to have not only the right opinions, but the right instincts. Many of the beliefs and attitudes demanded of him or her are never plainly stated, and could not be stated without laying bare the contradiction at the heart of modern-day hierarchical society. To maintain this regime, a continuous alteration of the past is necessary. Both the elites and the masses will tolerate present-day conditions because they have no standards of comparison. Everyone must be cut off from the past, as well as from other countries, because it is necessary for one and all to believe that everyone is better off than his or her ancestors and that the average level of material comfort is rising. But by far the most important reason for the constant readjustment of the past is to safeguard the validity of the system itself. It is not merely that speeches, statistics, and records of every kind can and must be constantly brought up to date in order to show that the fundamental principles of society are sound. No change in these basic principles -- work, commodity production, private property, the State -- can ever be admitted. For to change one's mind is a confession of weakness, and weakness cannot be tolerated in a "perfect" system.

If human equality is to be forever averted -- if the High, as we have called them, are to keep their places permanently -- then the prevailing mental condition must be controlled insanity. And so, in our society, those who have the best knowledge of what is actually happening are also those who are furthest from seeing the world as it is. In general, the greater the understanding, the greater the delusion: the more intelligent, the less sane. This is the inner meaning of the slogan IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH.

Chapter 2 : Freedom is Slavery

Given this background, one could infer, if one did not know it already, the general structure of modern capitalist society. At the apex of the pyramid comes Big Brother. Big Brother -- in whose person the functions of military commander-in-chief, political leader and religious figure are combined and integrated -- is infallible and all-powerful. Compared to him, the average person (the human individual) is absolutely powerless, even nonexistent. Every success, every achievement, every victory, every scientific discovery, all knowledge, all wisdom, all happiness, all virtue, are held to issue directly from Big Brother's leadership and inspiration. Despite the fact that Big Brother is always watching everyone, nobody has ever seen him. Strictly speaking, Big Brother does not exist and thus can be "replaced" at any time. The personality and image of Big Brother is a merely a composite of several unusually ambitious and charismatic people. He is a silent pair of eyes, an inscrutable face on billboards, televisions, and computer screens. We may reasonably be sure he will never die, and there is already considerable uncertainty among his many biographers as to when he was born. Big Brother is the spectacular guise in which the ruling class chooses to exhibit itself to the world. His function is to act as a literal focusing point for love, fear, and reverence -- emotions which are more easily felt toward an individual than toward an organization.

It is important to note that Big Brother is not Big Father: The parallel with the Christian myth of Jesus Christ (the Son of God) is striking and intentional. Big Brother is not God the Patriarchal Creator; he was created by God the Father, as were we all. Fraternal and earthy, Big Brother fought the revolution against the oppressive Father with us. If Big Brother rules with an iron fist and a boot upon the back of the neck, this is because he knows what is good for us, for all of us, because he is one of us. The immense global oligarchy at whose apex he stands is a collectivist one. Big Brother was democratically and unanimously elected, and is democratically and unanimously re-elected every time he runs for office. As long as there is a hierarchical society to be ruled, Big Brother will always be in office.

And yet capitalism -- let us not forget that Big Brother presides over an integrated, global capitalist system -- must be democratic, because it cannot be anything else. Capitalism could only grow hand-in-hand with democratic society. To deploy itself fully over the face of the whole planet, capitalism must even now permanently assure everyone of a choice, the outcome of which it has determined in advance. One must be able to choose between two indistinguishable politicians or two indistinguishable political ideologies because one chooses between two indistinguishable commodities. If there is no appearance of political democracy, there can be no sustainable capitalist system. This has been proven to be true by the permanent atrophy of the merchants in oriental despotism, by the ultimate defeat of Hitlerian and Mussolinian fascism, and by how poorly bureaucratic capitalism was managed by Stalinism.

Every commodity -- whether it is a brand of shampoo or a brand of political ideology -- fights for itself, cannot acknowledge the validity of the others, and attempts to impose itself everywhere as if it were the only one. What can be called the spectacle is the epic poem of this machinic struggle, an epic which cannot be concluded by the fall of any Troy. The spectacle does not sing the praises of men and their weapons, but of commodities and their passions. In this blind struggle, every commodity -- pursuing its totalitarian passion -- unconsciously realizes something higher, which is the becoming-world of the commodity, which is also the becoming-commodity of the world. Thus, by means of a ruse of commodity "logic," what's specific in the commodity (the use-value) wears itself out in the fight, while the commodity-form (exchange-value) moves toward its absolute realization.

What hides under the spectacular oppositions between commodities and political ideologies is a unity of misery -- the misery experienced by wage slaves, by people who have always worked and must continue to work for a living, no matter what product they buy or who wins the election. Behind the masks of total choice and total freedom, different forms of the same alienation and oppression confront each other -- all of them built on real contradictions which are repressed. The fraud of satisfaction exposes itself by being replaced, by following changes of products and changes in the general conditions of production. That which asserted its definitive excellence with perfect impudence nevertheless changes; it is the system alone which must continue. Stalin as well as the outmoded commodity are denounced precisely by those who imposed them. Every new lie of advertising is also an avowal of the previous lie. The fall of every figure or object with totalitarian power reveals the illusory community which had approved of it unanimously, and which had been nothing more than an agglomeration of fragments.

And so the satisfaction which no longer comes from the use of abundant commodities is now sought in the recognition of their value as commodities: the on-going use of totally unsatisfactory commodities becomes sufficient unto itself; the consumer is filled with religious fervor for the commodities' sovereign freedom. Waves of enthusiasm for a given product, supported and spread by all the media of communication, are thus propagated with lightning speed. Just when the mass of commodities slides toward puerility, the puerile itself becomes a special commodity; this is epitomized by the gadget.

We can recognize a mystical abandon to the transcendence of the commodity in free gifts, such as "I love Big Brother" watches which are not bought but are included by advertisers with prestigious purchases. The fanatic who collects these watches, which have been manufactured precisely for collectors, produces a glorious sign of his or her presence among the faithful. The reified person advertises the proof of his or her intimacy with the commodity as such, and not merely with certain commodities. This fetishism -- and Big Brother himself is nothing if not one big fetish-object -- reaches moments of fervent exaltation similar to the ecstasies of the convulsions and miracles of the old religious fetishism. The only use which remains here is the fundamental use of submission to a "higher," external power.

The unreal unity proclaimed by the society of the spectacle (the modern war-machine) masks the class divisions -- Low, Middle and High -- on which the real unity of the capitalist mode of production rests. What obliges workers to participate in the construction of the hierarchical world is also what separates them from it. What brings together people freed from the constraints of local and national boundaries is also what pulls them apart. What requires a more profound rationality is also what nourishes the irrationality of hierarchic exploitation and repression. What creates the abstract power of society creates its concrete unfreedom. This is the inner meaning of the slogan FREEDOM IS SLAVERY.

Chapter 3: War is Peace

War is no longer the desperate, annihilating struggle that it was in the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a warfare of limited aims between combatants who are unable to destroy one another, have no material cause for fighting, and are not divided any genuine ideological difference. This is not to say that either the conduct of war, or the prevailing attitude toward it, has become less bloodthirsty or more chivalrous. On the contrary, war hysteria is continuous and universal in all countries, and such acts as raping, looting, the slaughter of children, the reduction of whole populations to slavery, and reprisals against prisoners which extend even to boiling and burying alive, are looked upon as normal, and, when they are committed by one's own side and not by the enemy, meritorious. But in a physical sense war involves very small numbers of people, mostly highly trained specialists, and causes comparatively few casualties. The fighting, when there is any, takes place on the vague frontiers whose whereabouts the average person can only guess at, or around the military bases which guard strategic spots on the sea lanes. In the centers of civilization war means no more than a continuous shortage of consumer goods, and the occasional crash of a rocket bomb which may cause a few scores of deaths. War has in fact changed its character. More exactly, the reasons for which war is waged have changed in their order of importance. Motives which were already present to some small extent in the great wars of the early twentieth century have now become dominant and are consciously recognized and acted upon.

The primary aim of modern warfare is to use up the products of the spectacular machine without raising the general standard of living. Ever since the end of the nineteenth century, the problem of what to do with the surplus of consumer goods has been latent in industrial society. At present, when few human beings even have enough to eat, this problem is obviously not urgent, and it might not have become so, even if no artificial processes of destruction had been at work. The world of today is a bare, hungry, dilapidated place compared with the world that existed before 1945, and still more so if compared with the imaginary future to which the people of that period looked forward. In the early twentieth century, the vision of a future society unbelievably rich, leisured, orderly and efficient -- a glittering antiseptic world of glass and steel and snow-white concrete -- was part of the consciousness of nearly every literate person. Science and technology were developing at a prodigious speed, and it seemed natural to assume that they would go on developing. This failed to happen, partly because of the impoverishment caused by a long series of wars and revolutions, partly because scientific and technical progress depended on the empirical habit of thought, which could not survive in a strictly regimented society. As a whole the world is more primitive today than it was fifty years ago. Certain backward areas have advanced, and various devices, always in some way connected with warfare and police espionage, have been developed, but experiment and invention have largely stopped.

From the moment when the machine first made its appearance it was clear to all thinking people that the need for human drudgery, and therefore to a great extent for human inequality, had disappeared. If the machine were used deliberately for that end, hunger, overwork, dirt, illiteracy, and disease could be eliminated within a few generations. And in fact, without being used for any such purpose, but by a sort of automatic process -- by producing wealth which it was sometimes impossible not to distribute -- the machine did raise the living standards of the average human being greatly over a period of about 50 years at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth centuries. But it was also clear that an all-round increase in wealth threatened the destruction -- indeed, in some sense was the destruction -- of a hierarchical society. In a world in which everyone worked short hours, had enough to eat, lived in a house with a bathroom and a refrigerator, and possessed an automobile or even an airplane, the most obvious and perhaps the most important form of inequality would already have disappeared. If it once became general, wealth would confer no distinction. It was possible, no doubt, to imagine a society in which wealth, in the sense of personal possessions and luxuries, should be evenly distributed, while power remained in the hands of a small privileged elite. But in practice such a society could not long remain stable. For if leisure and security were enjoyed by all alike, the great mass of human beings who are normally stupefied by poverty would become literate and would learn to think for themselves; and when once they had done this, they would sooner or later realize that the privileged minority had no function, and they would sweep it away. In the long run, hierarchical society was only possible on a basis of poverty and ignorance. The problem was thus how to keep the wheels of industry turning without increasing the real wealth of the world. Goods must be produced, but they need not be distributed. And in practice the only way of achieving this was by continuous warfare.

War, it will be seen, not only accomplishes the necessary destruction, but accomplishes it in a psychologically acceptable way. In principle it would be quite simple to waste the surplus labor of the world by building temples and pyramids, by digging holes and filling them up again, or even by producing vast quantities of goods and then setting fire to them. But this would provide only the economic and not the emotional basis for a hierarchical society. What is concerned here is not the morale of the masses, whose attitude is unimportant as long as they are kept steadily at work, but the morale of the elite itself. Even the humblest bureaucrat is expected to be competent, industrious, and even intelligent within narrow limits, but it is also necessary that he or she should be a credulous and ignorant fanatic whose prevailing moods are fear, hatred, adulation, and orgiastic triumph. In other words it is necessary that he or she should have the mentality appropriate to a state of war. It does not matter whether the war is actually happening, and, since no decisive victory is possible, it does not matter whether the war is going well or badly. All that is needed is that a state of war should exist -- and so we have been confronted with the war on poverty, the war on crime, the war against drugs, the war against international terrorism, etc. etc.

Modern war, therefore, if we judge it by the standards of previous wars, is merely an imposture and a purely internal affair. In the past, the ruling groups of all countries, although they might recognize their common interest and therefore limit the destructiveness of war, did fight against one another, and the victor always plundered the vanquished. In our own day they are not fighting against one another at all. The war is waged by each ruling group against its own subjects, and the object of war is not to make or prevent conquests of territory, but to keep the structure of global society intact. The effect would be much the same if the world's ruling classes, instead of (pretending to be) fighting one another, should agree to live in perpetual peace, each inviolate within its own boundaries. For in that case each would still be a self-contained universe, freed forever from the sobering influence of external danger. A peace that was truly permanent would be the same as a permanent war. This is the inner meaning of the slogan WAR IS PEACE.

Chapter 4: God is Power

The heavenly masters -- the gods -- were cast in the mold of the ruling class (the "High" of Chapter 1) and require similar sacrifices. Because the rulers were themselves the product of alienated thought, the heavenly masters -- even God himself -- could not hope to be anything other than alienated. What were honest, self-respecting people to think of these "gods," who are supposedly robed in omnipotence and yet are beholden to human beings and their stupid prayers as if the "gods" were not fundamentally different from the earthly masters, who are answerable to their human slaves? Are these Gods -- is God -- then merely the sum of absent life? No, not even that. God is merely the gaping void that swallows up the impotence that we call the "power" of the strong and the rich, and all the despair that we call the "hope" of the weak and poor. God is merely the totalitarian projection of the economics of exchange and survival. "He" is nothing more than the false illusion of life.

And yet many people blithely proclaim that God is dead, and therefore powerless. It is quite true that the death of God created the chaos out of which both the person of and the need for Big Brother came. But even the self-avowed atheists continue to genuflect. God is "dead" as a sovereign entity, as master of the world, but he lives on in the very power structures that originally gave birth to him by submitting humanity to economic alienation, to thought separated from life, and to human bodies weakened, mutilated or broken in the name of labor. There is no God whose power is not based on the negation of life and on the inversion of pleasures; there is no power that is not based on God and the oppressive and hierarchical "natural order of things" he both created and was created by.

And so it remains true that the first critique is the critique of religion; the first revolt is against the supreme tyrannies of theology and the phantom of God. Ever since the fantasy of a Divine Being took shape in humanity's imagination, God -- all gods, and among them above all the God of the Christians -- has always taken the side of the strong and the rich against the ignorant and impoverished masses. Through his presence, he has blessed the most revolting privileges, the basest oppressions, and the vilest of exploitations.

As long as we have a master in heaven, we will be slaves on earth, and our reason and ability to create our own lives will be annulled. As long as we believe that we must unconditionally obey -- and, vis-a-vis God, no other obedience is possible -- we must of necessity passively and totally submit, without the least reservation, to the holy authority of all his agents, messiahs, prophets, divinely-inspired lawmakers, emperors, kings, and all their functionaries and ministers, representatives and consecrated servants of the two greatest institutions which impose themselves upon us, and which are established by God himself to rule over men and women -- namely, the Church and the State. All temporal or human authority stems directly from spiritual and/or divine authority.

Authority is the negation of freedom, of human self-determination and self-management. God, or rather the fiction of God, is the consecration and the intellectual and moral source of all slavery on earth, and the freedom of humanity will never be complete until the disastrous and insidious fiction of a heavenly master is annihilated. To annihilate totally hierarchical power and thereby bring about human equality, it is necessary to annihilate God; to "kill" God, it is necessary to annihilate totally hierarchical earthly power. This is the inner secret of the slogan GOD IS POWER.

Chapter 5: The Proles

Very little is known about the proles. As far as Big Brother is concerned, it is not necessary to know much. So long as they continue to work and do not riot in the streets, their other activities are without importance. To keep them under control is not difficult. A few police spies always move among them, spreading false rumors, and marking down and eliminating the few individuals who are judged capable of becoming dangerous; but no attempt is made to indoctrinate them with political ideas. It is not desirable that the proles have strong political feelings of any kind. All that is required of them on occasion -- on the "occasion" of continuous warfare, that is -- is an alienated patriotism which can be appealed to whenever it is necessary to make them accept longer working hours or less pay.

And yet, if there is hope, it lies -- it must lie -- in the proles, because only there, in those swarming disregarded masses -- eighty-five percent of the population -- can the force to destroy hierarchical society be generated. The society watched over by Big Brother can not be overthrown from within, or by partial revolutions: the revolution against it must come from without and must be total. Unlike those we have called the High and the Middle, the proles -- if only they can somehow become fully conscious of their own strength -- have no need to conspire, no need to become members of secret revolutionary brotherhoods. The proles need only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. For the proles are loyal to each other. They have stayed human; they have not become hardened or dead inside; they have held on to the basic instincts and emotions which the power elites and their bureaucratic priests have to re-learn by conscious effort.

The uprisings in Russia in 1905 and then again in 1917 -- the uprisings in Germany in 1918, in Kronstadt in 1921, in Spain in 1936 -- all these historical events show that the proles are quite capable of revolting against both the Middle and the High, of organizing on their own to fight for their own interests, and of attacking hierarchical society at its root. In all these uprisings, workers refused to work, but their refusal was made outside of the traditional, hierarchical structures of the trade union and the "alternative" political parties. The workers spontaneously organized themselves into autonomous and deliberately anti-hierarchical councils and committees, and began to plan and execute the re-organization of all of society in accordance with the principle of total human equality. It was precisely as a result of these uprisings -- and their ultimate likelihood of success -- that Big Brother fought and won the revolution in the first place. Given the fact that the material bases for a non-hierarchical society have now existed for decades, it is inevitable that Big Brother will continue to be challenged by the proles and their "spontaneous" uprisings for some time to come.

[Publisher's note added 1998: it would seem that history has indeed continued to prove that Dr. Goldstein's analysis is correct. Since the publication of this book in 1949, there have been proletarian uprisings in East Germany in 1953; in Hungary and Poland in 1956; in Belgium in 1961; in the United States in 1965; in France, Czechoslovakia and Mexico in 1968; in Italy in 1969; in Poland in 1970; in Portugal in 1974; in Italy again in 1977; in Romania in 1989; in Russia in 1991; in Mexico again in 1994; in France again in 1995, in Albania in 1997, etc. etc. And yet Big Brother is still watching us.]

Antagonista TV #1960S Peter Dale Scott & Dan Hamburg on Continuity of Government

A little light viewing and listening for the weekend. Forget conspiracy theories, here's a few ruling class conspiracy facts that will assist in putting world events into their correct historical and political contexts, thereby making them a little more comprehensible.

Peter Dale Scott discusses: Self censorship, drugs, the CIA, 9/11, JFK, Gary Webb, Deep Politics, Deep Events, Team B, Reagan, Oliver North, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Bush, Neocons, Martial Law, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, U.S. Election, Obama, McCain, PNAC, "a new Pearl Harbour", FEMA camps, warrantless surveillance, warrantless detention (known by its name of concealment in the UK as "42 days"), military dictatorships that speak English, wargames, bloggers as targets of wargames, Military Coups, hearts and minds, and a permanent state of class war; it's got the lot and more!

Peter Dale Scott & Dan Hamburg on 'COG'
Peter Dale Scott and former Democratic Party Congressman Dan Hamburg discuss "COG" - Continuity of Government plans by the George Walker Bush administration, and previous administrations. Recorded August 8, 2008.

Via 9/11 Blogger.