9/11 and the Burning of the Reichstag

          As someone who is always interested in historical parallels, I have begun to wonder if the attacks known as 9/11 are going to be known by future historians as the “American Burning of the Reichstag”.  It is becoming clearer that American policy makers have adopted the same economic strategies used by the Nazis during the 1930’s.  The destruction of labor unions, the undermining of any source of authority other than that of the state, the elimination of the distinction between the state and large scale enterprises, and the focus on the use of propaganda to produce a compliant populace are all reminiscent of Germany under Nazi rule.  It should be kept in mind that it was the British who financed the Nazi rise to power and the Americans who financed German rearmament. 

     Historically, in the West, there has always been a tightly knit “Capitalist Class” that continued to do business with one another, even when their respective countries were at war.  An excellent example of this is that during WWI, Nobel, a British Company, held patents on artillery shell fuses.  After the war, Krupp, who had been making shells for Germany had to make payments to Nobel based on the number of shells they  manufactured.  (The amount Krupp offered was ridiculously small, but when Nobel’s attorneys pointed out that if they went to court, it might “appear” that they were profiting from the deaths of British soldiers; they decided on an out of court settlement.)  This also explains why Allan Dulles was sent to Switzerland to assist his German colleagues  in getting  their money out of Germany before the collapse of their war effort. It also explains why after the war there was a large influx of Nazi War Criminals into the United States where they were employed in both the defense and aerospace industries.

     Beginning with the assassination of John Kennedy in 1963, there was  a wave of political assassinations in this country.  From that time until recently, assassination as policy seems to have been confined to reporters looking too closely at things not generally known to the public such as government agencies involved in drug smuggling and arms trafficking.  It now appears that the assassination of lesser known but “inconvenient” political figures is making a comeback.  Both Minnesota Senator Paul Wellstone and Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan seem to have died in almost identical circumstances.  They were both passengers in small aircraft that crashed for no discernable reason.  In both cases no explanation was forthcoming as to why the planes crashed.  (My surmise is that the reason Ross Perot withdrew from the presidential race is that he “knew how to take a hint”.)

     One political assassination I would like to discuss in detail is that of Bruce Edward Ivins, the man who was chosen to take the blame for the Anthrax distribution that accompanied the attack of 9/11.  I have absolutely no firsthand knowledge of his death, but the logic of the situation is so compelling; there can be no doubt that he was murdered.

     Sometime in the months following 9/11, I was listening to NPR and heard an interview with an FBI agent.  He said that there were so many labs handling anthrax that it might take years to determine the source of the anthrax used in 9/11.  I knew immediately that he was lying or had been lied to.  As far back as the 1970’s it was public knowledge that all germ warfare materials contained genetic markers so they could be traced back to the lab that they came from.  When Ivins was chosen to be the culprit, the FBI announced not only could the material be traced back to the lab, but to the individual researcher within the lab.  So why did it take 10 years to figure out that the anthrax came from his stockpile?

       Now let us look at what the government expects us to believe:

1)      Researchers who work in germ warfare labs, work in their street clothes.

2)      They carry their briefcases and/or lunches into their work areas.

3)      They do not have to weigh or otherwise record the amount of material they are working with.

4)      There are no security cameras in the labs.

5)      Researchers do not have to undergo any decontamination procedures before leaving work.

6)      There are no security guards checking on what people carry in and out of these facilities.

     If just any one of these things is true, that is far more frightening than the notion that Ivins might have been guilty.  In fact there is no doubt in my mind that the security and decontamination procedures are sufficient to prevent any individual from smuggling toxic materials out of any germ warfare lab.  There can be no doubt that whoever did so had access to Ivins’ work station and was sufficiently high up in the chain of command so that he could bypass all security measures in place.

                                                  Economic Policy

     One of the prime movers behind the American Revolution was Benjamin Franklyn.  In the period just before the revolution he was the colonies representative in England.  He saw first hand factories where people were being worked to death so the factory owners could gamble away thousands of pounds and throw lavish parties.  Franklyn wrote back to the colonies encouraging revolution to prevent the British class system from recreating these conditions in the colonies.  It now appears that the American upper classes are working towards just that end.

     Wisconsin was once known as a “liberal” state.  Right now it is being used as a test case to see how much resistance the American people will put up as all remaining labor unions are destroyed.  The propaganda apparatus is now so powerful, the general public has no idea of what is really at stake here.  If they are successful in undermining and destroying the unions in Wisconsin, unions in other states will all fall like dominoes.  Within ten to twenty years , not only will all existing unions be destroyed, but legislation will be introduced to make sure that they will never return.

     After the destruction of the unions, the next item on the agenda will be minimum wage laws.  Americans will be told that in order to compete in the global marketplace, they will have to accept lower wages.  In short order they will find themselves working fifty to sixty hours a week for just barely enough food to live on and a shack to sleep in.

                                        Methods of Social Control

1)      Education

                 The post World War II era produced the most broadly educated public the United States has ever known.  This helped to produce the civil rights movement, anti-Vietnam War demonstrations, support for unions and the unionization of the labor force, mass higher education, student demonstrations and other social changes all of which were anathema to the upper classes.  Consequently, starting in the 1960’s , under the pretense of “democratization” and later on to “help the handicapped”, education was diluted and standards were lowered. Education was scrapped in favor of vocational training and schools were turned into social service institutions.  As a result we now have large numbers of under educated people who sense that things have gone amiss, but don’t have the knowledge or perspective that would allow them to make sense of what is going on in the world around them.

2)      The deficit

             I consider myself a fairly sophisticated observer of America and yet for many years I considered the fiscal irresponsibility displayed by government to be the product of mismanagement and a catering to the demands of “instant gratification”.  Given recent events, it is now coming into focus that the deficits are an instrument of policy and another tool of social control.  When people protest about the relentless pressure to eliminate all spending that benefits anyone but the extremely rich, they are told “we can’t afford it”. We can afford Orwellian wars without end in Afghanistan and Iraq; but we can’t afford libraries.  We can afford massive tax cuts for the wealthy; we cannot afford health care for the poor and middle-class.  We can afford aircraft carriers, tanks, military aircraft and missiles; we cannot afford to provide our children with an education. For now and into the foreseeable future, the only services we will be able to afford for the general public are prisons and large numbers of security forces whose job it will be to protect the upper classes.

3)   Propaganda

             In the early part of the nineteenth century newspapers were financed by sales only. When businesses first wanted to purchase advertising space in them, many newspapers refused on principle.  Editors and publishers understood that if they became beholden to advertisers, it wouldn’t be long before the advertisers came to control the editorial content of the paper.  Beginning in the 1960’s, an effort was made to systematically undermine and destroy the newspaper industry in the United States.  The first step was in those cities that had competing papers, all advertising revenue was shifted to one paper, effectively driving the other paper out of business.  The surviving paper understood the tenuousness of its existence.  Later on, advertising revenues were shifted to television so local papers could no longer afford to maintain their own staffs and became almost totally dependent on the wire services.  Finally, the newspapers were merged into chains and became nothing more than conduits for advertising flyers and supermarket coupons.

            Television as a medium is a propagandist’s dream.  When you read a book or newspaper your brain goes into a beta wave state.  This state is associated with critical thinking and intellectual activity.  This is why people retain far more of what they read than what they see on television.  For when you watch television, the brain goes into an alpha wave state which is  meditative and almost trance-like in nature.  (Essentially, watching news or information on television is like having “colitis of the brain”; very little nourishment sticks to the neurons.)  This explains the futility of trying to use television as a forum for matters of serious import and why there has been a natural progression of transforming “news” to entertainment.  In fact, there is no subject of sufficient importance that it can’t be turned into entertainment.  (I have no doubt that some future historian will refer to America as the “society that entertained itself to death”.)

              Unfortunately, these methods of social control have proven to be so powerful, it is hard to see how the general public will be able to resist them  Left to their own devices, it is clear that the upper classes seem to be intent on creating  an America that will make the “Road Warrior” look like a trip to Disneyland.  Oddly enough, the one thing that may save us is Islamic Terrorism.  Once Europe has been subsumed by Islam, the next battleground will be here in the United States.  One thing that seems to be historically true is that all wars have unforeseen consequences.  So what looks today like a drive towards an Orwellian future, may in fact hold true for only the next fifty years or so.