The Sky is Falling!!! TERRORIST Propaganda
Overreaction to terrorism is the true threat
Terrorism is a passing phenomenon. It is not likely to become a permanent fact of American life. Nonetheless, it is a threatening part of today’s reality, and society must find ways to respond. The greatest danger is not complacency. Worse is the prospect that in our panic over terrorism, we willingly surrender some of the values that make our society worth defending. The true threat to our democracy is not terror, but our reaction to it.
Since the 2001 attacks on the Pentagon and World Trade Center, about two dozen Americans have died as the result of terror attacks inside the United States. During that period, more than 100,000 Americans were shot to death [here]. Four times that many perished in car crashes. One hundred Americans die every day from opiate overdoses. Forty thousand commit suicide every year. Yet terrorism is the threat that galvanizes us.
Part of the reason is that although guns, highway crashes, overdoses, and suicide take many more lives than terrorism, most of those deaths seem like private tragedies. They unfold as if inexorable. Terrorist attacks are the opposite: shocking public spectacles that rivet our attention with bloody mega-theater. As a result, the epidemics that truly devastate our society have faded into the background of national life. We are infinitely more determined to “fight” terrorism than we are to fight far deadlier scourges.
Terrorism is frightening because it is an attack on a community, a nation, even a way of life. One of its modern variants, the sort carried out by Muslim militants, seems especially scary. Behind every act of Islamic terror, some see the stirrings of a global army that can rise to destroy our country and civilization.
This is the way most Americans saw Communism during the 1950s. Politicians and the press portrayed it as an ultimate evil, capable of wiping away humanity and liable to do so at any moment. In retrospect, we can see Americans’ embrace of Cold War fears as a form of collective hysteria. Yet today we are panicking in much the same way.
We are told, that to deal with the threat of terrorism, we must profoundly reshape our approach to privacy, security, surveillance, and criminal justice. Many “counter-terrorism” projects are designed and run in secret, so, informed debate about them is difficult. They are “on autopilot,” as Secretary of State John Kerry has said. Politicians clamor to support obscure and costly security measures rather than risk being portrayed as weak after the next attack.
Some Americans, driven by a high-energy news culture and instinctively suspicious of the outside world, seem to delight in conjuring mortal dangers that they imagine threaten the United States. Last year the arrival of child refugees from Central America set off national alarm; now it is forgotten. Later we were scared into fearing that the Ebola outbreak in West Africa would poison us. Our over-reaction to those stories, however, was relatively harmless. When we overreact to the threat of terrorism, we risk irretrievably changing our society.
The next bombing or shooting will not erode our liberties. Only we, ourselves can do that. The true threat of terror is that grotesque provocations will lure us into self-defeating choices. If we react by creating a surveillance state, abandoning the due process of law, and intensifying our military campaigns in the Middle East, we give terrorists victories they can never win on their own.
Excerpt from “Reject the surveillance state” by By Stephen Kinzer, Jan 2015
Photo courtesy: Sub Sonix
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James 12:12 on December 28, 2015 Permalink |
“Terrorism is a passing phenomenon” – okay then, nice interpretation of history. Typical American ignorance to think the very first act of terrorism occurred on September 11, 2001.
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James 12:18 on December 28, 2015 Permalink |
Ignorance and arrogance, I should say. The terrorist threat is real and ongoing, but we are only terrorised if we allow ourselves to be. In that sense, I agree with the writer here.
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@GeneticPsycho (Tina) 16:35 on December 28, 2015 Permalink |
The real terrorists are right here in the U.S. Death by cop is far more likely than death by foreigners. And we do nothing about that. We just keep pouring money into a war that the corrupt system doesn’t really want to win. The politicians just line their pockets with lobbyist money from weapons manufacturers. Terrorists are bullshit compared to our real problems.
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James 19:02 on December 28, 2015 Permalink |
I agree. Though terrorists cause more harm internationally than your police officers do (let’s not forget who arms them though)
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@GeneticPsycho (Tina) 22:25 on December 28, 2015 Permalink |
Sure terrorists have always been in existence, and the white people killed the Indians, etc, etc, etc, terrorism forever.No white country cares about African wars. People are evil everywhere. My main position is that “terrorism” is in the news every day and people put “terrorists” into every conversation, and the fear of terrorists around every corner for 15 years and into eternity is ridiculous. Nobody’s getting rid of terrorists. People will always suck. The propaganda is used to take rights away and keep the citizens in the dark as to our real reasons for conducting illegal warfare. I understand your desire to keep “fighting”. Another psychopath I know just wants to go Genghis Khan. Well, psychopaths just want to “win”. Whatever that means. But he didn’t know that we already conducted over 8000 airstrikes this year alone. Which should have wiped them off the map, except for the corruption and suspected expenditure of bomb drops into empty desert. It’s a scam.
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Amaterasu Solar 11:13 on December 29, 2015 Permalink |
I will agree that SOME People everywhere are psychopathic/evil, but MOST of Humanity choose to behave Ethically. The psychopaths in control do things and then blame “Human nature,” as if society could function if even half of Us behaved as They do. Humans do NOT “suck” as a rule.
And is it possible that the 8000 air strikes (at least a large number) are REPORTED but never really happened? Like the ISIS BS? (In Aleppo, a reporter interviewed many “Humans on the street” asking about ISIS/Daesh. Though We are TOLD that city was “overrun” by ISIS, every single One said, “Nope. No Daesh…” So clearly We cannot take a single thing We are told by the (now legalized) propaganda/psychopathis control machine.)
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@GeneticPsycho (Tina) 15:22 on December 29, 2015 Permalink |
Humans do not suck as a rule, but enough of them are antisocial, if they aren’t psychopathic. There are numerous hate groups in the world. Take this website as an example: http://www.dailystormer.com/an-explanation-as-to-why-we-should-all-support-donald-trump/
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Amaterasu Solar 17:08 on December 29, 2015 Permalink |
Yes, there are hate groups – fomented by and promoted by the psychopaths in control – but… The percentage of Humans that fall into such groups is really quite small. The perception that “everyOne” is hateful is pushed in the media, but again, that is what the psychopaths want Us to believe, for it dispirits Us.
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@GeneticPsycho (Tina) 17:12 on December 29, 2015 Permalink |
I think hate comes from ignorance and lack of exposure to a different culture -perpetuated by insecure people, not always psychopaths.
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Amaterasu Solar 17:18 on December 29, 2015 Permalink
While I agree that those are factors, and that the psychopaths are not ALWAYS involved, the focus in the “news” on such groups IS deliberate and serving Them. And many groups are specifically fomented, or infiltrated and diverted in such directions, or otherwise created (some completely fabricated for the “news,” no doubt).
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James 09:52 on December 31, 2015 Permalink |
Umm, I have no desire to keep fighting. I am too cowardly and selfish to be a soldier and have no desire for others to continue to risk their lives in pointless middle eastern wars. And if the west does eventually ‘win’, then that is not my win anyway. So you’re barking up the wrong tree.
But I agree, paranoia and fear about terrorism is the real enemy. It is used, by terrorists themselves and more importantly by our own governments, to control the population. IS is Emmanuel Goldstein made flesh.
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Amaterasu Solar 10:21 on December 31, 2015 Permalink |
Few see the Goldstein element… Yes, indeed. But ALL the “terrorists” are governments, whether directly, fomented, or in the case of ISIS/ISIL/IS/Daesh, fully manufactured.
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@GeneticPsycho (Tina) 22:28 on December 28, 2015 Permalink |
Isn’t it obvious to anyone else that the U.S. took over where the Nazis left off?
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Amaterasu Solar 11:15 on December 29, 2015 Permalink |
It’s VERY obvious to Me…
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James 09:54 on December 31, 2015 Permalink |
Perhaps…
Though the two regimes don’t resemble each other much, except for massive militaries and world domination.
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Amaterasu Solar 10:30 on December 31, 2015 Permalink |
Once One looks past the superficial trappings, the heart is identical – what They are aiming for here is for the US to look like WWII germany. It’s not there yet, but wow, They are working on it. One “national emergency” and the pres will contend all those executive orders have power and He (or She) will become dictator and steal everything from Us. (Do take a look at the exec orders O has made! Truly ugly.)
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James 17:28 on December 31, 2015 Permalink |
We’ll see. But he’ll have to hurry it up, Obama’s getting kicked out in 10 months.
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James 17:28 on December 31, 2015 Permalink |
And you’ll be left with Trump or Clinton
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Amaterasu Solar 10:15 on December 29, 2015 Permalink |
Indeed, “terrorism” is a passing thing. When the psychopaths in control get what They want from Us They will stop manufacturing the “terrorists.” The fact that it rather suddenly appeared in the quantity the “news” reports is one clue that it is manufactured. ISIS is manufactured – and what is REALLY there, in anything, is the Israeli Secret Intelligence Service. The psychopaths recently (re)legalized propagandizing Us here in the US. Do We suppose They are not using this power? And 9/11 was done by the psychopaths, and ALL of the “about two dozen Americans [that] have died as the result of terror attacks” in the US since that false flag have either been complete fraud (no One died at Sandy Hook), or sacrifices if anyOne died…which even in both Paris attacks, is unlikely based on the evidence.
Indeed We should not “overreact.” We should clutch Our freedoms all the more tightly and call out the true terrorists: Those who would wrest those freedoms from Us through the fraud, false, propaganda the “news” now feeds Us full of.
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