Last Rights By Chris Floyd The Moscow
Times 9-14-3
- Once again, the dispiriting spectacle of the American
media in full campaign cry is upon us, as coverage of the 2004
presidential race begins in earnest. But this time around, the usual
inanities, inaccuracies and insipidities have a more melancholy flavor,
an almost elegiac feel. It's like watching priests of a dead cult,
vacantly enacting their rituals in a ruined temple whose gods have been
broken, desecrated and cast down.
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- The difference from past campaigns lies in the media
mandarins' sad belief that there will actually be a genuine, open,
presidential election in November 2004. This childlike faith stems, of
course, from their equally fallacious conviction that the United States
did not suffer a coup d'etat in December 2000 at the hands of an
extremist faction of elites.
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- Although the installation of second-place finisher
George W. Bush was engineered in a wholly unprecedented and
unconstitutional manner -- from the illegal purging of more than 90,000
eligible, predominantly black voters from the Florida rolls by Jeb Bush
to the violent mobs of Republican congressional staffers paid by George
Bush to break up the vote recounts in Miami to the threats of military
insurrection muttered by Bush Family factotum General Norman Schwarzkopf
to the use of Republican-paid ex-CIA operatives to "correct" 15,000
Florida absentee ballots to the Supreme Court ruling that unlawfully
halted the Florida recount by citing a totally fictitious deadline for
final tallies, down to the congressional session that officially
"ratified" the election result, held in an half-empty chamber lacking
the legally required quorum -- America's media leaders insist there was
no coup because power was transferred "without tanks in the
streets."
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- But of course, a classic coup is "not necessarily
assisted by either the intervention of the masses or, to any significant
degree, by military-type force." It's an inside job, carried out by
factions within the elite. Who says? The man who literally wrote the
book on the subject: right-wing guru -- and Pentagon advisor -- Edward
Luttwak.
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- In 1968, Luttwak penned "Coup d'Etat: A Practical
Handbook," which could be the text of the 2000 Bush campaign, as John
Dee reports in Lumpen magazine. Drawing on the extensive experience of
the CIA in such pranks, Luttwak says that "a coup consists of the
infiltration of a small but critical segment of the state apparatus,
which is then used to displace the government from its control of the
remainder." True coupsters "want to seize power within the present
system" [his italics], then use the existing lines of authority and
habits of obedience inherent in legitimate government to advance their
own illegitimate aims.
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- Propaganda and false patriotism are key coup
ingredients. Luttwak says a coup's "information campaign" must "reassure
the general public by dispelling fears that the coup is inspired by
extremist elements, and to persuade particular groups that the coup is
not a threat to them. The first aim will be achieved by manipulating
national symbols and by asserting our belief in the prevailing pieties."
United we stand!
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- Meanwhile, Luttwak explains, opponents of the coup
must be painted as isolated cranks, "a few misguided or dangerous
individuals," unable to "move on" and accept the wonderful new reality.
Reports of opposition must be "withheld" whenever possible; failing
that, they must be marginalized and belittled, because "news of any
resistance against us would act as a powerful stimulant to further
resistance by breaking down this feeling of isolation."
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- We know that Bush never reads any book that doesn't
have pictures of goats in it, but it's clear that Dick Cheney has had a
well-thumbed copy of Luttwak's handbook in his back pocket for years.
The 2000 coup was carried out along Luttwakian lines by a small group of
ideologues and elitists -- the latter drawn largely from the energy and
defense industries -- seeking to advance their illegitimate aim of
global domination by military force and control of the world's energy
resources.
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- These objectives were no secret. Since 1992, Cheney,
Don Rumsfeld and a gaggle of other dominionists now in power aired their
plans publicly via a web of corporate-funded pressure groups. These
documents -- including their chilling call in September 2000 for a "new
Pearl Harbor" to shock Americans into supporting rapacious dominion
schemes -- provided a blueprint that the coup-makers have followed with
remarkable fidelity. The truth was there for anyone to see. But it was
ignored by the dim-witted, well-wadded corporate media -- whose owners,
drooling over Bush promises of mega-mergers and deregulation, were
easily persuaded that the takeover "was not a threat to them."
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- It's dangerously naive to believe that such a gang,
coming to power in such a fashion, will allow a legitimate electoral
contest to take place next year. They have too much to lose. They
haven't expended so much effort -- and so many thousands of innocent
lives -- to build this vast engine of repression and profit only to turn
it over to Howard Dean or John Kerry, just because the stupid American
people say so.
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- So yes, there will be an "election" -- with
conventions, debates, ads, voting, the whole schmeer. But as Josef
Stalin once said: "It's not the votes that count, it's who counts the
votes." And in 2004, most votes will be "counted" by paperless,
unverifiable, eminently hackable computer systems, privately owned and
secretly programmed by Bush supporters from the Religious Right and the
military-intelligence complex.
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- Again, this is no "conspiracy theory"; it's all out in
the open -- for anyone who cares to look. Next week, we'll do just that.
Stay tuned.
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- © Copyright 2002, The Moscow Times. All Rights
Reserved.
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- http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2003/09/12/120.html
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