Reblogged from reagan-was-a-horrible-president
Seriously America .. WTF ?
The latest move in the remorseless shift to police-state America came when the Senate voted last Tuesday to effectively declare the entire USA a ”battleground” where U.S. military forces can operate with impunity, with the unchecked power to arrest, interrogate and detain U.S. citizens. Yes, you or one of your loved ones could be ‘disappeared’ to Guantanamo to be locked up for life without trial or due process if your elected representatives get their way.
So clearly there must be an overwhelming, imminent threat of terrorism on a truly massive scale for the Senate to want to impose what is effectively military law on America ? Well no. Quite the opposite in fact. Did you know that in 2010 only 15 American private citizens died from terrorism. And that’s not even in America. That’s worldwide with almost all the deaths occurring in dangerous areas of Afghanistan, Iraq and Uganda.
In the same period far more Americans were killed by lightning strikes (29) and by dog bites (34) than by terrorists. In fact, your risk of dying in any plausible terrorist attack is vastly lower than your risk of dying in a car accident, by walking across the street, by drowning, in a fire, by falling, or by being murdered.
Your risk of being shot by accident or in a stupid argument is enormously greater too, with over 30,000 Americans every single year shooting themselves or each other. You even have more chance of being shot by your local cops than of dying at terrorist hands. That’s the unarguable reality rather than the Senates fantasy.
And while we’re on the subject of reality versus fantasy, in the real world every year over 6 million children die of starvation. Needless deaths, in the main, because the rich countries haven’t made a ‘war on poverty’ any kind of priority. There are more important priorities, apparently, like ‘terrorism’.
If you’re a rational kind of person looking at whats going on now in America you have to wonder why. Why this latest attempt to turn America over to military law, why the bone-headed, endless war in Afghanistan, why the hideously unpatriotic and now permanent Patriot Act, why the TSA with their porn-scanners and sexual groping of long-suffering travellers, why the Orwellian surveillance society, why the ever expanding FBI ‘watch-list’ with all its abuses, why the whole repressive and obscenely expensive apparatus of Americas irrational ‘War on Terrorism’ ? Whats it all about ?
Since its clear that this grotesque over-kill is not even remotely proportionate to any realistic threat or risk faced by America, and that much is obvious, what on earth is going on ? And why ?
Seriously America .. WTF ?( * also Glenn Greenwald on the subject .. best explanation I’ve read so far)
