Selling Fear

By Stephen Lendman

Fear mongering is longstanding US policy, facilitated by false flags – state-sponsored terrorism, 9/11 Exhibit A, perpetrated with an agenda in mind.

When well-executed, these schemes always convince a naive public to believe what they’re told, not realizing they’re being duped, manipulated to support what harms their security and well-being.

Various polls conducted days after the Paris attacks showed most Americans support using US combat troops against ISIS in Syria and Iraq. A Gallup poll conducted six days before the attacks revealed majority opposition to direct US involvement on the ground.

Polling data also show most Americans willing to sacrifice fundamental freedoms for greater security, including Big Brother watching everyone more intrusively – not realizing that sacrificing one for the other assures losing both.

Post-9/11 domestic and geopolitical horrors are well-documented. War on humanity followed, specifically targeting Islam at home and abroad. Repressive laws enacted straightaway and other totalitarian measures turned America into a police state.

In the wake of the Paris attacks, worse than ever policies may follow – greater unrestricted war without mercy along with perhaps eliminating the fading remnants of fundamental freedoms at home in America and across Europe.

Most Americans get so-called news from television, unaware they’re fed a daily diet of state-sponsored propaganda – now selling fear on steroids, manipulating the public to accept likely planned horrors to come, mindless that terrorists “R” us.

On the one hand, war is terrorism, the late Howard Zinn explained, notably when waged against invented enemies, nations threatening no one.

America’s war on terrorism, about to be escalated, is a complete fabrication. It gives US neocons “a perpetual war and a perpetual atmosphere of repression,” Zinn explained.

War profiteers cash in hugely. Terrorism replaced communism as the pretext for militarizing America, waging endless wars, and destroying constitutional freedoms.

US statute law calls “international terrorism” activities involving:

“(A) violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State;

(B) are intended to –

(i) intimidate or coerce a civilian population;

(ii) influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or

(iii) affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and

(C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States…”

The US Army Operational Concept for Terrorism (TRADOC Pamphlet No. 525-37, 1984) called it “the calculated use of violence or threat of violence to attain goals that are political, religious, or ideological in nature…through intimidation, coercion, or instilling fear.”

During the Vietnam War, Martin Luther King called America “the greatest purveyor of violence in the world today.” Now more menacing than ever. Humanity’s survival is at stake.

Enemies are invented to serve US imperial interests, letting it use its war machine freely. Endless conflicts rage. Nations are destroyed to liberate them. Orwell’s dark vision of a boot stamping on a human face – forever” is today’s reality.

America’s Global War OF Terrorism reflects it. Things today ominously resemble events preceding WW II. The threat of another global war is greater than any time since the late 1930s.

Washington wants nothing standing in the way of achieving its imperial objectives – world domination by eliminating all independent governments, notably Iran, Russia and China, replacing them with US-controlled puppet regimes.

Vladimir Putin is the preeminent world geopolitical leader, overwhelmingly supported by Russians, a peace champion, wanting the scourge of terrorism eliminated, the best hope to beat Washington at its dirty game.

Obama officials are duplicitously challenging him, drawing him into a so-called an anti-ISIS coalition, Paul Craig Roberts explained, Obama, John Kerry and others pretending they want the scourge they created eliminated.

On the one hand, America, Britain and France blocked a Russian Security Council resolution, calling for cooperating with Syrian ground forces against ISIS.

On the other, they got a French-introduced SC resolution unanimously passed – “call(ing) upon member states that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measure…on the territory under the control of ISIL…in Syria and Iraq,” omitting the importance of working jointly with Syrian forces.

Russia’s UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said “attempts by several members of the UN Security Council (namely America, Britain and France with veto power) to block our work on the project is politically shortsighted. You can’t fight terrorists with one hand and with the other practically play along with them.”

Obama launched preemptive proxy war on Syria in March 2011 to oust Assad the way Saddam and Gaddafi were removed, along with ending the sovereign independence of their countries.

Roberts fears Putin may agree “to turn Assad’s fate over to the West” in return for a free hand to neutralize, contain and eliminate the threat of ISIS spreading to Central Asia and Russia – his main objective.

Hopefully he’s too savvy to fall for the scheme. Russian and Syrian sovereignty depend on it. So does world peace.

 

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

http://www.claritypress.com/LendmanIII.html. Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com.

Listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network. It airs three times weekly: live on Sundays at 1PM Central time plus two prerecorded archived programs.

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