Never let a tragedy go unused. This mantra of the State is as strong today as it was the day after 9/11.
As 9/11 was used to invade and occupy Iraq and Afghanistan – securing a geopolitical foothold in the region like never before – civil rights were dismantled and energies were devoted to the development of a massive domestic surveillance state that Stasi Germany could only dream of.
Indeed, 9/11 served as the perfect pretext for carrying out the goals of the Project for the New American Century (PNAC) – headed by Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and other purveyors of U.S. military hegemony.
In a policy document called Rebuilding America’s Defenses published exactly one year before 9/11, PNAC wrote:
Further, 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.
While Cheney and the gang were wrecking the Middle East, carrying out countless extrajudicial killings and torturing “enemy combatants,” the same fabricated legal justifications for those actions were being used to build an enormous surveillance apparatus in the homeland.
Construction of spy centers increased at a frenzied rate as the “black budget” soared. The military- and surveillance-industrial complex couldn’t be happier, and indeed, their profit windfalls fueled about half of the economic recovery during the 2000s.
The Patriot Act, NSA warrantless wiretapping and FBI National Security Letters are a few examples of the abuses carried out under the banner of 9/11. The Snowden revelations finally began to jolt enough Americans into a state of awareness.
No one really knows the extent of the “hidden world, growing beyond control” of the surveillance state. Six years ago a Washington Post investigation found:
Some 1,271 government organizations and 1,931 private companies work on programs related to counterterrorism, homeland security and intelligence in about 10,000 locations across the United States.
An estimated 854,000 people, nearly 1.5 times as many people as live in Washington, D.C., hold top-secret security clearances.
In Washington and the surrounding area, 33 building complexes for top-secret intelligence work are under construction or have been built since September 2001. Together they occupy the equivalent of almost three Pentagons or 22 U.S. Capitol buildings – about 17 million square feet of space.
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There is no evidence to suggest this astounding growth has been put in check. In 2013, the Black Budget was $52.6 billion, spent on 16 spy agencies with over 107,000 employees. The “espionage empire…rivals or exceeds the levels at the height of the Cold War.”
According to the New York Times, the amount spent on domestic counter-terrorism since 9/11 is a staggering $1 trillion. This is only for “homeland security measures,” not the overseas so-called War on Terror.
It is disturbing insight into how the State can manage a sustained campaign of fear-mongering, with the aid of mainstream media, to fog the vision of the American populace while spending incredible amounts of our tax money on an almost non-existent threat.
As John Mueller, senior research scientist at Ohio State’s Mershon Center for International Security Studies, says, this spending is not based on factual reality. It is a government-media scam based on an “aberration” of 9/11 rather than a true likelihood of terrorist attacks.
“An American has about a 1 in 4 million chance of being killed by a terrorist on U.S. soil, which has resulted on average seven deaths a year. One is far more likely to die from lightning or getting struck by a deer,” Mueller said.
“No one wants to talk about acceptable risk. But clearly we do accept a lot of risk. We can’t get risk down to zero in anything: automobiles, surgery, or a deer running across the road,” Mueller said. “We basically live with those threats.”
The Department of Homeland Security receives the lion’s share of the funding, with $37 billion to be allotted there in 2017, out of the total $50.4 billion – an 11.5 percent increase over 2016.
The director of the Ohio Homeland Security agency, a prime beneficiary of the funding, says the San Bernardino and Orlando shootings justify all this spending and warns that another 9/11 could happen if we don’t remain committed to the spending.
He doesn’t explain how we can expect to stop a psychopath from grabbing a gun and shooting up a nightclub or a place of employment, unless they put in place the kind of total surveillance George Orwell fictionalized in his book 1984.
Perpetrators of the surveillance state don’t need facts when justifying their existence. They will continue simply appealing to emotion, stoking fear and using 9/11 to spend another trillion on an almost non-existent threat.
Justin Gardner writes for TheFreeThoughtProject.com, where this article first appeared.
We know from Aaron Russo the Rockefellers had a direct hand in the planning of 9/11. This nightmare goes beyond “neocons”, beyond PNAC.
Before 9/11 there was the 1999 Moscow false flags that launched a parallel dystopia, before that Gladio…..Vietnam, Korea, WWII, WWI, US Civil War, British Opium Wars…all Bankers’ Wars.
Yep, Israeli Mossad planted the mini Nukes in the buildings. ….it was a Zionist operation with full support of the Zionists like Rockefeller and the Bush’s.
I agree Mossad had a hand in the operation and the global elite dominated by Zionism planned the operation long in advance.
Don’t fall for the persistent PSY OP of limiting the blame to one small faction, That is DESIGNED to fragment our view of the TOP of the PYRAMID: the banksters, the royals, and the Zionist-minded plutocrats – the psychopaths who are using the UN, treaties, Orwellian technocracy, and their new energy based economic system to enslave humanity on the level of China and beyond.
Why is the world history of false flags not incorporated into the lens of power corrupts: REICHSTAG / Pakistan school shootings / Moscow
Why does the neoliberal left focus on the neocons? Alt disinfo outlets such as VT (admitted by the Editor in Chief, a “world socialist”) zero in on Israel? [The experience of Dr. Suarez described in his recent article on Activist Post provides a clue.]
They learned there lessons from the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution false flag. All the Vietnam riots. They knew what would happen if we got in another unwinable war after 9/11. They didn’t expect people to get pissed off. Should of had another 68 DNC this year!
Actually the people who planned this jumped up and down about the ‘takedown of America’ . That is exactly what they called it. The banking oligarchy and thier corporate cooperees (which is basically all.of them by now) have so well succeeded in thier plans for using the dollar and the US tax base for a massive worldwide program.of fraud and theft that they dont need it anymore…and any remaining implications of freedom they consider an obstacle because theyve stolen all the options and benefits.for themselves. So we have to be elimated. Did you know that WW2 was really an ‘unleashing the dogs of war’ operation? Julius Ceasar attained a perennial place in history by killing by his own admission 10% of the Gallic.population…for the sole ourpose of tearing the gold jewelry of thier dead bodies. I argue that ww2 never came to an end because this never came to an end. The REAL NAZIS….the.people who were responsible for what weve been told about WW2 are the same ones ruling the world today….and the pourpose for the neverending war conducted by the United states…hasnt changed either.