- The power of irrational fear in the US is extraordinary.
It ranks up there with the Israel Lobby, the military/security complex,
and the financial gangsters. Indeed, fear might be the most powerful force
in America.
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- Americans are at ease with their country's aggression
against Afghanistan, Iraq, and Pakistan, which has resulted in a million
dead Muslim civilians and several million refugees, because the US government
has filled Americans with fear of terrorists. "We have to kill them
over there before they come over here."
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- Fearful of American citizens, the US government is building
concentration camps apparently all over the country. According to news
reports, a $385 million US government contract was given by the Bush/Cheney
Regime to Cheney's company, Halliburton, to build "detention centers"
in the US. The corporate media never explained for whom the detention centers
are intended.
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- Most Americans dismiss such reports. "It can't happen
here." However, In northeastern Florida not far from Tallahassee,
I have seen what might be one of these camps. There is a building inside
a huge open area fenced with razor wire. There is no one there and no signs.
The facility appears new and unused and does not look like an abandoned
prisoner work camp.
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- What is it for?
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- Who spent all that money for what?
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- There are Americans who are so terrified of their lives
being taken by terrorists that they are hoping the US government will use
nuclear weapons to destroy "the Muslim enemy." The justifications
concocted for the use of nuclear bombs against Japanese civilian populations
have had their effect. There are millions of Americans who wish "their"
government would kill everyone that "their" government has demonized.
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- When I tell these people that they will die of old age
without ever seeing a terrorist, they think I am insane. Don't I know that
terrorists are everywhere in America? That's why we have airport security
and homeland security. That's why the government is justified in breaking
the law to spy on citizens without warrants. That's why the government
is justified to torture people in violation of US law and the Geneva Conventions.
If we don't torture them, American cities will go up in mushroom clouds.
Dick Cheney tells us this every week.
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- Terrorists are everywhere. "They hate us for our
freedom and democracy." When I tell
- America's alarmed citizens that the US has as many stolen
elections as any country and that our civil liberties have been eroded
by "the war on terror" they lump me into the terrorist category.
They automatically conflate factual truth with anti-Americanism.
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- The same mentality prevails with regard to domestic crime.
Most Americans, including, unfortunately, juries, assume that if the police
make a case against a person and a prosecutor prosecutes it, the defendant
is guilty. Most Americans are incapable of believing that police or a prosecutor
would frame an innocent person for career or bureaucratic reasons or out
of pure meanness.
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- Yet, it happens all the time. Indeed, it is routine.
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- Frame-ups are so routine that 96% of the criminally accused
will not risk a "jury of their peers," preferring to negotiate
a plea bargain agreement with the prosecutor. The jury of their peers are
a brainwashed lot, fearful of crime, which they have never experienced
but hear about all the time. Criminals are everywhere, doing their evil
deeds.
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- The US has a much higher percentage of its population
in prison than "authoritarian" countries, such as China, a one-party
state. An intelligent population might wonder how a "freedom and democracy"
country could have incarceration rates far higher than a dictatorship,
but Americans fail this test. The more people that are put in prison, the
safer Americans feel.
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- Lawrence Stratton and I describe frame-up techniques
in The Tyranny of Good Intentions. Police and prosecutors even frame the
guilty, as it is easier than convicting them on the evidence.
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- One case that has been before us for years, but is resolutely
neglected by the corporate media, whose function is to scare the people,
is that of Troy Davis.
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- Troy Davis was convicted of killing a police officer.
The only evidence connecting him to the crime is the testimony of "witnesses,"
the vast majority of whom have withdrawn their testimony. The witnesses
say they testified falsely against Troy Davis because of police intimidation
and coercion.
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- One would think that this would lead to a new hearing
and trial. But not in America. The Republican judicial nazis have created
the concept of "finality." Even if the evidence shows that a
wrongfully convicted person is innocent, finality requires that we execute
him. If the convicted person is executed, we can assume he was guilty,
because America has a pure justice system and never punishes the innocent.
Everyone in prison and everyone executed is guilty. Otherwise, they they
wouldn't be in prison or executed.
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- It is all very simple if you are an American. America
is pure, but other countries, except for our allies, are barbaric.
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- The same goes for our wars. Everyone we kill, whether
they are passengers on Serbian commuter trains or attending weddings, funerals,
or children playing soccer in Iraq, is a terrorist, or we would not have
killed them. So was the little girl who was raped by our terrorist-fighting
troops and then murdered, brutally, along with her family.
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- America only kills terrorists. If we kill you, you are
a terrorist.
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- Americans are the salt of the earth. They never do any
wrong. Only those other people do. Not the Israelis, of course.
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- And police, prosecutors, and juries never make mistakes.
Everyone accused is guilty.
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- Fear has made every American a suspect, eroded our rights,
and compromised our humanity.
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