On The March

February 20th, 2006 at 20:38 Björn Hallberg

Democracy … fascism and fear mongering, even totalitarianism is on the march in America and elsewhere. No real surprise there. Here are a few gems from the last week or so in a new section tentatively called “On The March.” Stories that essentially write themselves and are in themselves but pieces of the puzzle being assembled.

The U.S. Department of Homeland Security wants to recruit school bus drivers to spot potential terrorists. I.e. an anti-terrorism training program for … school buses. And it’s not for the Baghdad school district either but rather for plain old America. So who or what are they watching for? “Terrorists” trying to blow up school buses, or would-be terrorist kids that misbehave? It’s a moralistic nightmare that has very little to do with terror by its strict definition. Terrorizing the kids to be “good” citizens and good cannon food for future wars more likely. Or perhaps the program is set up to watch other bus drivers going berserk after being harassed by the DHS. A former DHS official was quoted as saying that “[t]oday it’s bus drivers, tomorrow it could be postal officials, and the next day, it could be, ‘Why don’t we have this program in place for the people who deliver the newspaper to the door?’ We could quickly get into a society where we’re all spying on each other.”
The breakdown of the social fabric and the spying of all against all is a hallmark event for fascism as it developed in Germany in the 1930s.

Or how about the same lovely DHS raiding libraries to enforce obscenity laws. Because obviously, people go to a library to view pornography? Common sense in Bushzarro world. The real rationale is more likely stifling the use of public libraries as they continue to pose a considerable hurdle to any government wanting greater control. Hence the registration of “terrorist” reading material. Not even the DHS puppeteers believe that, but it makes the library experience that much more unpleasant. Information is dangerous and needs to be controlled and curtailed lest people learn about how the world really works.

And while on the topic of naughty reading, I guess Henry Rollins wasn’t too happy with being reported to Australia’s National Security hotline for reading Ahmed Rashid’s “Jihad: The Rise Of Militant Islam In Central Asia” on the plane from New Zealand to Australia.
The Australian authorities made no big deal out of it, but they still sent him a note, saying that

I hope this finds you before you leave Australia as I think its something that won’t surprise you but might give you a smile when you are sitting in a hotel room. I work in one of those Government areas that deals with anti terrorism matters. A fine service is provided but unfortunately we get to read a lot of things submitted by lunatics. The Australian Government set up the National Security Hotline to report terrorists.

The person who sat next to you on the flight from New Zealand does not agree with your politics or choice of reading and so nominated you as a possible threat. As they were too cowardly or stupid to leave their details I can’t call them to discuss their idiocy with them.

A fine example of the sort of society we are about to create and the sort of lunatics will use it to report the guy sitting next to them. And it works. Henry Rollins may not be the easiest guy to influence, or as he puts it, he likes “adversarial relationships.” But most people would most likely have thought twice about bringing a controversial book to a public place ever again. And as such, even the lunatics help governments to shape our future. If one were to really believe that terrorism was real and needed to be stopped, one certainly wouldn’t rely on impulsive, clueless people, some of whom believe that the best way to spot a “terrorist” or a “security threat” is to look for people reading a book with “Jihad” in the title … on an airliner! Really. But to be fair, this is almost on the same level as the handy suggestions given by organizations like for instance the DHS. Preposterously simplistic ideas that suggest the “the enemy” is on the same cognitive level as a five year old. Perhaps that is also why they don’t see what a wonderful place America is and are all hung up America’s genocidal policies and cruel power politics? It’s no wonder that people start filling in the gaps and become their own anti-terrorism experts. Especially since most of the bona fide experts are themselves mumbling fools.

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