Obama Embraces Fear as the Coin of the Realm

Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.

-Roy Batty

Under fire for his NSA Stasi’s trolling and compiling of the phone and internet records of law-abiding Americans and smarting over being humiliated by Russia’s granting of asylum to Edward Snowden, El Presidente reached into his predecessor’s playbook and played the fear card. Since September 11, 2001 hyping the threat of terrorism has been the most kick ass club in the bag. The Obama regime for the most part has largely refrained from using it until this week. With the administration seething over being rebuked by Russia after weeks of bullying it was finally time to bring the back the invocation of the threat of the other as a distraction and to justify the unconstitutional mass surveillance programs.  

The state media has been in rare form the last two days, hyping an imminent threat to American citizens abroad due to a reputed threat from Al-Qaeda. Excuse me if this all sets off my overly sensitive personal B.S. detector. After all, I do remember the years when the Bush administration was riding tall the saddle, largely because they knew full well that in post 9/11 America that FEAR had become the coin of the realm. Unlike most TV addled and forgetful Americans I remember with crystal clarity the multi-colored terror alert charts that Tom Ridge would trot out whenever the Bush-Cheney junta needed political cover. Ridge to his credit came out and admitted that the threat levels were manipulated for political purposes but the color coded alert system became an albatross and was eventually discarded. Now that Obama’s insipid regime is cornered like rats it is no surprise that they are now going to the well by conjuring up the Muslim bogeyman.

The fear-mongering of which I refer to is the hysteria over an Al-Qaeda overseas threat to Americans issued by Obama’s State Department. Not that crazy things do not happen, when you are an empire, occupying countries, supporting torturers and murders and murdering innocent civilians with bombs and drones people tend to become upset and fight back. The definition of terrorism has become so skewed so as to become virtually meaningless in the 21st Century United States of Orwell. Guerrilla warfare or attacks by those with no power against foreign symbols and institutions in lands being colonized by corporations, using the U.S. military as their henchmen and ruthless private mercenaries for the real wet work are common. In fact this has been the norm rather than the exception throughout history. The technical term for such incidents is blowback and it is insane or stupid to not believe that becoming oppressors of people in foreign lands for the sake of plundering their natural resources, installing hand-picked despots as their leaders and keeping the money rolling in for the defense industry will not result in blows against the empire. Terrorism is more of a political term, it worked like a dream for Hitler as his enemies were slaughtered, imprisoned and worse and it worked like a dream for Bush and Cheney in launching their ruinous adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, wars of choice that have done more to bankrupt this once great country than anything else and Obama and the establishment are practically wetting their pants to go into Syria and if crazed Senator Lindsey Graham gets his way Iran. 

The establishment is putting a lot into this weekend's alert, closing many U.S. embassies on Sunday and hoping for violence that would serve up some breathing room on the calls for reigning in the NSA. I suspect that something will happen too, such is the pattern of serendipity when the imperial police state has a need to justify further crackdowns on civil liberties. Now there is the insertion into the narrative of impending doom of the fanatical  Peter King, the porcine anti-Muslim bigot who on Friday stated:

“We’re not certain exactly where something might happen but it’s very specific as to when and it’s also very specific as to the fact that it is going to happen, so we have to be on alert everywhere”

King, who should be an expert on real terrorists given his ardent support for the civilian murdering IRA will undoubtedly show up on at least one of the Sunday morning masturbatory fests to defend Obama's NSA and to call for further restrictions on American freedoms. With a bit of luck he can even gather up another of his anti-Muslim inquisitions where he will whore himself out to the media and set more precedent for such kangaroo courts when it becomes policy to start hauling other Americans in front of them as well. 

But I digress...

The very definition of "terrorist" has been deliberately rendered vague here in Der Homeland, prior to this week there has been an ongoing effort to begin to shift the threat of surveillance justifying 'terrorism' inward. I reference this very recent story about Michele Catalano, a Long Island woman whose home was stormed by government goons after unconstitutional spying on her household's internet activity found that she was looking up information on a pressure cooker. Her son was using the internet to research the Boston Marathon bombings and her husband was looking for a backpack. This is absolutely true and is yet more evidence of how out of control Obama's Stasi is. I excerpt the following from the story via The Guardian: 

I felt a sense of creeping dread take over. What else had I looked up? What kind of searches did I do that alone seemed innocent enough but put together could make someone suspicious? Were they judging me because my house was a mess (Oh my god, the joint terrorism task force was in my house and there were dirty dishes in my sink!). Mostly I felt a great sense of anxiety. This is where we are at. Where you have no expectation of privacy. Where trying to learn how to cook some lentils could possibly land you on a watch list. Where you have to watch every little thing you do because someone else is watching every little thing you do.
 All I know is if I'm going to buy a pressure cooker in the near future, I'm not doing it online.
 I'm scared. And not of the right things.

I myself must wonder whether a paramilitary goon squad is going to visit me now that I have done queries on pressure cookers, terrorism and other red-flag terms while writing this today, in this sorry husk of what used to be a free country anything is possible anymore. With the bar now lowered so as to turn even such normal behavior as the Catalano family doing web searches for household cooking items into suspected 'terrorist' activity what can't be considered as such? The entire system is being tweaked so as to allow for the future roundup of Americans whose data will be stored in that massive NSA facility in Utah. We already know that there exists the capability to do three-hop queries and that there are indeed plans in place to abduct and detain American citizens. This will likely happen when the big collapse comes, the economic collapse that has been so deftly covered up and put off by Obama's financial alchemists and state media propagandists and is a ticking time bomb that could detonate at any time  It is simply unsustainable and when it blows it is going to be a society killer. 

It could be two days, two months or two years but the day to pay the piper is coming and it won't be the culprits who will have to shell out their pound of flesh.