The Christo-Military State of Corporate America

It is way past time for people to get very nervous about the governance of the United States. We have the ongoing erosion of constitutional and legal protections under the U.S. P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act, and several hundred other "intelligence" and "security" laws attached to a myriad of legislation. We have, the promotion of the military to be the responder of choice in an emergency by President Bush. We have the expansion of intelligence activities under Negroponte as Director of Intelligence and every agency pushing for new surveillance access. We have the Pentagon pushing for domestic intelligence authority through CIFA and the U.S.P.A.T.R.I.O.T. Act. We have the Airforce Academy under fire for forcing evangelical Christianity down the throats of students. We have corporations meeting in the White House and various agency offices to write the legislation they want. We have no-bid contracts to big military industrial firms, and pharmaceutical firms all with ties to the administration. We have the corporatization of the military and intelligence with the use of "contractors" to fill both combat and intelligence roles. All wrapped up in a blanket of God tells him what to do. I keep thinking I am dreaming a very bad B movie and wake up, but it just gets worse.

What is this nation coming to, and is the public getting properly alarmed?

Bush was making his "protect the borders" appearance, and the news showed a predator drone flying along the U.S. - Mexico border with a black suburban in its sights. Maybe folks are a bit numbed out to the flashy Predator pictures from Iraq, but this is the United States, and that was a military weapon capable of firing missiles being remotely flown over the United States. That means that either the Immigration and Naturalization Service now has the authority to use military technology, or that the military has the authority to actively deploy war technology in the United States. Both scenarios were illegal.

Lots of folks are talking about Walter Pincus' Washington Post article :Pentagon Expanding Its Domestic Surveillance Activity. Under a Presidential directive, CIFA (Counterintelligence Field Activity) was created and tasked with domestic terrorism duties. The Pentagon now wants to expand the role of CIFA in ways that should make every citizen nervous.

Remember the failed TIA program (Total Information Awareness)? It went down to defeat because we screamed and Congress refused to fund it. However, like the hydra that has been constructed, it is being reborn in a million forms across a wide array of agencies - including Health and Human Services. Now the Pentagon, through CIFA, wants their place in the TIA pond.

We claim the United States as the "Land of the free and home of the brave." We hear incessantly how the brave soldiers - past and present - have died for our freedom. They are purportedly dying for that right now in Iraq and Afghanistan. Yet, what is being implanted here would take a broad stretch to be called freedom, and it passes largely unchallenged because of fear. Fear of a faceless "foreign" enemy out to nuke our cities with "dirty bombs," and fear of a government which has extended the reach of "Big Brother" with the threat of being labeled an "enemy combatant," and locked up without charge, without counsel, without hope of release.

The fascism is spreading to the general public with students claiming suppression by "liberal" academia, and eyes everywhere to report "suspected terrorists," and terrorist "sympathizers. The circle gets smaller and smaller, and the privacy of our daily lives gets increasing ephemeral.

The pressure is on to get U.S. troops out of Iraq (though I doubt they will go far). Nor will it likely relieve the National Guard and Reserve of their burden as where the Iraqi' forces seem weakest is the supply line and logistics - Guard and Reserve specialities. But with the draw down of troops from Iraq we are likely to see the build-up of suppression and control here. If the argument has consistently been "We are fighting them over there so we don't have to fight them over here," then ending the fighting there means beginning the fighting here - in the B movie of the Bush regime. Except here, we need watch for the "enemy within." Everyone is suspect. Everyone must be monitored. The military needs to be prepared to control the U.S. population - by force of arms. Predator Drones sweeping the skies and new technologies like microwave to send the complainers to their knees to be easily swept up by U.S. troops or Darth Vader garbed police into waiting trucks. We will be hauled away to ... where? It be charged with sedition, or perhaps just lack of "patriotism." To wait in orange jump suits with dogs trained to hate orange jump suits outside the bars. People screaming and gasping from water-boarding down the hall and shouting your name as a member of a terrorist cell?

Think it can't happen HERE? Well think again. Piece by piece they are putting it all in place. Join the mega-church or disappear. Say nothing challenging the new status quo, or lose your job. Be born again as a high consuming, patriot, Christian or you just aren't safe. Meanwhile the generational "war on terrorism" will chug along until the next generation remembers nothing of freedom. We may indeed be in the "end times," but it is the "end times" of democracy as we mythologize it. McCarthy must be shaking his head in wonder.