The Trillion-Dollar Conspiracy (31 page)

O
NCE A NATION
of zombies has been created, the population must be kept docile and under control. This can be done through legislation and regulations, increasing police powers, and drugging the food and water supplies. But many commentators have written about how so many Americans become zombielike while sitting mesmerized before their TVs for more than eight hours a day. Between September 2007 and September 2008, the average household watched TV for more than 8 hours a day, a record high since the 1950s when TV viewer polls first began. In the third quarter of 2008, Americans watched more than 142 hours of TV a month, up 5 hours from the same period in 2007.

What is most essential to control is that the zombies are unaware they are being controlled. This, of course, would require controlling the mass media. Could this be happening in the United States, home of the First Amendment, and with a proud heritage of a free press?

MEDIA CONTROL AND FEARMONGERING

T
HE
I
NTERNET HAS DONE
a marvelous job of bringing alternative news and information to the people, but it has only done that for those who own and can use a computer. Everyone else is at the mercy of the corporate-controlled mass media, whether it be broadcast, cable, or satellite. America’s mass media is currently in the hands of only five major multinational corporations: AOL-Time Warner, the Walt Disney Company, Viacom, Vivendi Universal, and News Corporation.

Media mogul Ted Turner once observed, “The media is too concentrated, too few people own too much. There’s really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It’s not healthy.” Not to mention Bertlesmann AG, which has become the largest English-language print publisher in the world and has roots in Nazi Germany.

The face of the media has changed considerably since 1975, when cable TV served less than 15 percent of the viewing population and satellite TV and the Internet did not even exist as we know them today. More than thirty years later, less than 15 percent of American homes don’t have either satellite or cable TV, and one-third of the population receives its news through the Internet.

GOVERNMENT-DICTATED NEWS

F
AR TOO OFTEN THE
relationship between the government and the media corporations shapes what the news covers. “As technology blurs the distinction between print and electronics, the success of media businesses depends increasingly on the decisions of government, embodied in regulations, legislation, and judicial rulings,” explained Leo Bogart (who died in 2005), a former Media Studies Fellow and general manager of the Newspaper Advertising Bureau. “This must make the people who run them more sensitive to the political effects of their news coverage. As political advertising has become a considerable component of television revenues, politicians have found it increasingly necessary and expedient to court the media, creating a new source of pressure on journalists.”

Media reformist Robert McChesney agreed with Bogart, writing, “Professional journalism is now about currying close relations to the powerful so you have access to their news. When the powerful are entirely in agreement on an issue, for example, whether or not the U.S. has the right to invade another country (taken as a given by many people in power), the journalists don’t ask questions. They reproduce the elite consensus, take it as a given. In fact, if a journalist were to question the right of the U.S. to invade a country, they would be regarded by the professional news community as un-professional. They would be seen as someone who was bringing their ideological agenda or axe to grind to the discussion. When a journalist dares to question the motives of those in power, they are framed as bringing their own personal political bias into news reporting. But when a journalist just reports and repeats what people in power say and doesn’t try to weigh in with critical observations, they are regarded as professional, ‘fair and balanced.’”

Editors, particularly those in publicly held corporations whose executives are cautious about reactions on Wall Street, do not have to be ordered to kill stories or slant the coverage. They intuitively understand the views and interests of their bosses and act accordingly. This capacity to anticipate the owners’ desires is why they are made editors.

FEARMONGERING

W
ITH THEIR MASTERS CRACKING
the whip, the “watchdog” media have turned into lapdogs for their corporate (and political) owners, which in turn has allowed the government to manipulate the public through national fearmongering.

One of the best examples of fearmongering came in early 2006, when President Bush—under fire for the unresolved wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the torture of terrorist suspects, and unconstitutional spying on Americans—declared: “We cannot let the fact that America hasn’t been attacked in four and a half years since September 11 lull us into the illusion that the threats to our nation have disappeared.”

Bush then went on to describe a thwarted terrorist attack on Los Angeles in 2002, revealing that the attack in California was planned by a man named Hambali, reportedly a key lieutenant of Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the 9/11 attacks. Both Hambali and Mohammed were reportedly captured in 2003.

According to Bush, al Qaeda leaders Hambali and Mohammed recruited Asian men who were supposed to use shoe bombs to blow open the cockpit door of a commercial airliner and then crash the plane into the U.S. Bank Tower in Los Angeles. Bush mistakenly referred to this building as “Liberty Tower,” but was quickly corrected that its original name had been “Library Tower.” Bush said the plot was foiled when a key Asian al Qaeda member was arrested. Bush declined to name the suspect or his nationality.

Soon, this story filled the mass media airwaves as some stations aired scenes from the Hollywood alien invasion film
Independence Day
as graphic representation of the destruction of the U.S. Bank Tower. But even before Americans could let out their collective sigh of relief at being spared further carnage, serious questions arose over Bush’s statement. Many thoughtfully wondered why Bush had not called attention to saving the Los Angeles building early in 2003, soon after the attacks were thwarted and the criminals behind the attacks were captured. If Bush had delivered this news in 2003, he might have helped calm or prevent the large and numerous antiwar demonstrations conducted prior to the invasion of Iraq.

Public skepticism increased when Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa told newsmen he knew nothing of the attempted attack and felt “blindsided” by Bush’s announcement. Prior communication with the White House had been “nonexistent,” despite the fact that the mayor had requested to meet with Bush at least two times over security issues. “I’m amazed that the president would make this [announcement] on national TV and not inform us of these details through the appropriate channels,” Villaraigosa told newsmen. “I don’t expect a call from the president—but somebody.”

Others were even less considerate when characterizing Bush’s breaking news. Doug Thompson, a writer for the Internet’s oldest political news site, Capitol Hill Blue, said he was contacted by members of the U.S. intelligence community who disputed Bush’s claim. Thompson said he was able to confirm the credentials of at least four of the persons who contacted him. All of those who contacted him asked not to be identified for fear of reprisals. “The president has cheapened the entire intelligence community by dragging us into his fantasy world,” Thompson quoted a longtime CIA operative as saying. “He is basing this absurd claim [regarding the Los Angeles attack] on the same discredited informant who told us al Qaeda would attack selected financial institutions in New York and Washington.” Suspiciously enough, during the heat of the presidential election in August 2004, the Bush White House tried to increase the terror alert level by claiming attacks were imminent on major financial institutions. This alert was later withdrawn after administration officials admitted it was based on old information from a discredited source.

It has not always been the case that American leaders with a strong siege mentality broadcasted warnings of imminent attack to the public. In a prophetic testimony before joint hearings of the Senate Armed Services Appropriations and Intelligence committees in the spring of 2001, Colin Powell, then secretary of state, explained why Americans should not give up their freedoms in search of security. “If we adopted this hunkered-down attitude, behind our concrete and our barbed wire, the terrorists would have achieved a kind of victory,” he declared.

This type of reasoned rhetoric changed completely after constitutionally questionable laws and regulations were put into effect after the terrorist attacks in New York City and at the Pentagon later that year. Within days of the 9/11 attacks, President Bush declared a “war on terrorism.”

PATRIOT ACT

S
INCE
9/11
THE GOVERNMENT
has used nationalism as cover for implementing measures to control the population. Secret evidence, closed trials, false imprisonment, warrantless searches, involuntary drugging, the seizing of private property—all seem like something from a 1930s totalitarian regime, but fear has pushed many Americans into a zombielike passiveness to authority.

A shining example of fear-based legislation is a dreadful piece of legislation entitled the Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism Act of 2001, more commonly referred to as the PATRIOT Act. The name is reminiscent of Hitler’s 1933 “Enabling Act” legislation passed hurriedly following the burning of Berlin’s Reichstag (its Parliament building) in 1933. This law, which founded Hitler’s Third Reich, was called “The Law to Remove the Distress of the People and State.”

Similarly, the PATRIOT Act was 342 pages long and made many changes to more than fifteen different U.S. statutes, most of them enacted in the wake of previous misuse of surveillance powers by the FBI and CIA. It was hurriedly signed into law by President George W. Bush on October 26, 2001, a little more than one month following the 9/11 attacks.

According to some congressmen, many lawmakers had not even read the entire document when it was passed. The ACLU also reported that some members of Congress had less than one hour to read the extensive changes of law contained within the act. The speed with which this legislation was presented to Congress caused some observers to believe that it had long been prepared and simply needed some provocation to put it into effect. Civil libertarians felt those two facts alone should be cause for wholesale dismissals of the obliging members of Congress.

Representative Ron Paul, who ran for president in 2008, confirmed rumors that the bill was not read by most members of the House prior to their vote. “It’s my understanding the bill wasn’t printed before the vote—at least I couldn’t get it. They played all kinds of games, kept the House in session all night, and it was a very complicated bill. Maybe a handful of staffers actually read it, but the bill definitely was not available to members before the vote.” Paul added he objected to how opponents were stigmatized by the name alone. “The insult is to call this a ‘patriot bill’ and suggest I’m not patriotic because I insisted upon finding out what was in it and voting no. I thought it was undermining the Constitution, so I didn’t vote for it—therefore I’m somehow not a patriot. That’s insulting.”

Provisions of the original PATRIOT Act that most concerned civil libertarians were the following:

The federal government may now monitor religious and political institutions without suspecting criminal activity to assist terrorism investigations (a violation of the First Amendment right of association).


The feds now can close to the public once-open immigration hearings and secretly detain hundreds of people without charge while encouraging bureaucrats to resist Freedom of Information requests (a violation of Amendments 5 and 6 guaranteeing due process, speedy trials, and freedom of information).


The government may prosecute librarians or other keepers of records if they tell anyone that the government subpoenaed information related to a terrorism investigation (a violation of the First Amendment right of free speech).


The government now may monitor conversations between federal prisoners and their attorneys and may even deny access to lawyers to Americans accused of crimes (a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to have legal representation).


The government now may search and seize individual and business papers and effects without probable cause to assist an antiterrorism investigation (a violation of the Fourth Amendment right against unreasonable searches and seizures).


The government now may jail Americans indefinitely without a trial or charges (a violation of the Sixth Amendment right to a speedy trial and individuals’ right to be informed of the charges against them).

After later reviewing the act further, Representative Ron Paul said, “The worst part of this so-called antiterrorism bill is the increased ability of the federal government to commit surveillance on all of us without proper search warrants.” This section of the PATRIOT Act, entitled “Authority for Delaying Notice of the Execution of a Warrant,” is commonly referred to as the “sneak-and-peek” provision. It allows authorities to search personal property without warning.

Congressman Paul pointed out that the act’s supporters were flawed in thinking that the government would act in a restrained and responsible manner. “I don’t like the sneak-and-peek provision because you have to ask yourself what happens if the person is home, doesn’t know that law enforcement is coming to search his home, hasn’t a clue as to who’s coming in unannounced…and he shoots them. This law clearly authorizes illegal search and seizure, and anyone who thinks of this as antiterrorism needs to consider its application to every American citizen.”