America and The New World Order

By Richard K. Moore, 14 October 1996

Part 1—The birth of democratic republics—the American Revolution

Roots of independence

Although there was very little sentiment for independence in the American colonies prior to the middle of the 18th century, there were objective conditions which made independence a natural, and comparatively non-disruptive step. The colonies were largely self- governing, had their own social identity, had immense natural resources, were mostly self-sufficient economically, and had their own extensive trading fleet. Boston had the third-busiest harbor in the British Empire.

The colonies paid taxes to the Crown, lived under restrictions such as a prohibition on industrialization, and received in return the protection of the Crown and access to British markets. But in fact the benefits of being subject to Britain were marginal. When frontier war with the French-backed natives occurred, for example, help from the Crown was slow in coming, and the colonies were then taxed for the troop expenditures. On a day-to-day basis, colonists collectively fended for themselves.

Role of propaganda

The factor necessary to spark revolution turned out to be ideological: the enlightenment ideas regarding market forces and of the rights of man. For the wealthy elite, these ideas implied commercial freedom—from Royal interference in economic development, while to the populace, the ideas were presented as implyingpersonal freedom and popular democratic sovereignty.

These two different meanings of freedom, and their two distinct constituencies, created a foundation of political hypocrisy and propaganda doublespeak which has fractured the integrity of democracy ever since. It was the elite, in pursuit of commercial self- interest, who were the vanguard of the revolutionary movement, while the populace was stirred up by high-sounding democratic principles and sensationalized rabble-rousing around the issue of Royal oppression and taxation.

The turning point in revolutionary consciousness, when a majority came to favor independence, occurred in the form of a single earth- shaking essay: Tom Paine's Common Sense. This essay, written in an unprecedented popular style that anyone could understand, broke all existing publication records and was read aloud in every village and town (and not only in America).

Common Sense created in the popular Western mind, for the first time since the early Roman republic, the notion that government arises from the consent of the governed—that the peopleare the nation. It marked the beginning of the popular concept of _nationalism_&$8212;the notion that citizens find their identity in their nation and its interests, rather than in their role as subjects of a domain belonging to royalty and nobility.

Constitution and elite control

Following independence, the American Constitution was drafted in secret by members of the elite leadership. In fact, though not in rhetoric, the Constitution was carefully designed to protect the interests of the wealthy elite: from autocracy on the one hand, and from popular democracy on the other. The original document did not even contain a citizen's Bill of Rights, which had to be amended in later, following popular outrage.

Some members of the elite certainly did support popular democracy (typified by Thomas Jefferson)—after all, the elite are people too. But in the final analysis, it was the rhetoric of the new regime which was democratic, while the reality was the facilitation of capitalist development under elite control.

Part 2—Capitalism unleashed—the American experience

Propaganda & Credulity

America was founded on hypocrisy (the myth of popular sovereignty) and has been characterized by propaganda ever since. Propaganda is by no means unique to the American experience—all governments and elites employ propaganda—but propaganda has played a uniquely intimate role in the American experience. Every event in American history, from Independence onward, has been characterized by an elite agenda, coupled with a propaganda cover story.

Because America is endowed with democratic mechanisms—the government is elected, after all—such propaganda has been essential from the beginning in order to maintain elite control. Propaganda is one of the elite's primary antidotes to the dreaded disease ofactual democracy.

The tendency of Americans to believe in illusion was a central part of their nation's birth trauma. America is the land of Hollywood, advertising, public relations, sugar-coated fairy tails, cult religions, the Defense Department, Disneyland, and progress. It was of Americans that it was said A fool is born every minute, You can fool all the people some of the time, and You can never underestimate the intelligence of the public.

The rhetoric of liberation and democracy captured the imagination not only of Americans, but of the whole world. America became an almost mystical symbol, spoken of in fable-like imagery: the land of freedom, the land of opportunity, the American Dream, streets paved with gold, bastion of democracy. America was something people everywhere yearned to believe in—it seemed (and claimed) to be the fairy tale kingdom of everyone's childhood dreams.

The rhetoric vs. reality examples abound: rights-of-man vs. slavery, self-determination vs. native genocide, democracy vs. exploitation, defense vs. imperialism—it was profound ironic justice (almost a proof of a just God) when the Liberty Bell cracked on first ringing.

The War Culture

America was born out of a war it initiated, and it has achieved its growth through periodic warfare ever since. There has been a significant war approximately every thirty years, usually initiated (overtly or covertly) by America, and always achieving a new stage in the growth of American power and the expansion of American-based elite interests.

The national anthem glorifies exploding rockets and the waving of the flag, and warfare is central to the American spirit. A common scenario underlies these wars: there is always an incident which is portrayed as an outrage against America, and the populace then rallies to the common defense with a characteristic ferocity and self-righteousness.

The incidents may be provoked, as with the Mexican War, arranged, as with the Lusitania, or imagined, as in the Gulf of Tonkin—but they are always deftly exploited and enable the elite expansionist agenda to be further advanced, under cover of yet another crusade for freedom and democracy. The elite is always well-prepared for the incident, has a plan ready for execution, and its propaganda machinery goes into full gear as the incident unfolds.

The use of outrage-incidents to launch elite-planned military campaigns accomplishes several objectives. It triggers the in-built American war spirit, and channels the resulting righteous wrath toward the nominated enemy. It also concentrates power in the executive branch, where elite control is usually most undiluted by popular influence. Congress—where popular will is most likely to find expression—is then relegated to the role of loyal stores- supplier for the duration of the campaign.

This process is exemplified by the Gulf of Tonkin incident, which enabled full-scale U.S. military involvement in Vietnam. The incident itself was faked, but Congress promptly issued its usual knee-jerk Resolution, authorizing the President to act in defense. The authorized actions were then incrementally escalated into a full-scale war, with Congress having no further influence, and popular will finding expression only in the streets.

The eventual scope of the war was completely beyond anything authorized by the original Congressional Resolution, but once America is on the warpath, its war-culture ethic does not include room for dissent or reconsideration—it would be betraying the boys at the front.

Territorial expansion

Territory was acquired via purchase (Louisiana, Alaska) or conquest (Mexican Southwest). But the interesting story was the process of consolidation into the capitalist scheme of development.

The front line against the natives was not advanced by the army, but rather by land agents. They would gain title to tracts of native land, sell them at a profit to naive pioneers, and then the army would finally get involved to enable the pioneers to occupy their land. The propaganda was about defending against the heathen savages, while the real agenda was increasing the territory available for profitable investment.

The Civil War was not a moral crusade against slavery, as became the cover story. It was rather a scuttling of the feudalistic, free-trade oriented, plantation pattern, in favor of a national dedication to protectionist industrial development, which offered greater scope for capital growth.

Imperialism

Just as America was originally an economic colony—an investment zone more than an administrated territory—so America's own pattern of imperialism has been one of creating safe-haven investment zones, administered by proxy.

Every revolution takes to heart the lesson of its own birth, and America has excelled at preventing its econo-colonies from breaking away—avoiding a replay of the American Revolution. Vietnam was a singular setback.

America gained independence via guerrilla warfare, and became thereafter the world's expert at suppressing guerrilla warfare. It espoused democracy in its own formation, and endeavored thereafter to suppress or subvert democracy everywhere. Its independence was possible because of a fortunate self-sufficiency, and ever since it has sought to undermine or destroy self-sufficient economies, to provide new venues for capital growth.

Immigration and the Melting Pot

While immigration's cover story was welcoming the huddled masses, the real purpose was to provide a constantly renewed pool of exploitable cheap labor. Instead of Britain's static class system of tiered exploitation, America invented a dynamic class ladder system (known as the Melting Pot), where new (ethnically identifiable) lower classes were continually placed on the bottom rung, willingly trading their home-country cultural identify to struggle for acceptance as bona fide Americans.

Ethnic rivalries helped divide-and-conquer the masses, preventing democratic solidarity. Each segment of the American socioeconomic ladder was happy to see lower rungs suppressed, while it viewed higher rungs as its future opportunity. Thus the prisoners of the ladder class system were motivated to embrace their own exploitation, and the elite was spared the development of a general popular socioeconomic consciousness.

The American Image became not only the land of freedom, but also the land of opportunity. This latter image was more truthful, and more in harmony with the elite's own vision for America, focused on wealth accumulation. The Horatio Alger myth was born, of the poor immigrant who achieves immense wealth in one lifetime.

Thus was fostered a lottery mentality regarding economics—attention is focused on the rare individuals who win big, distracting attention from the overall pattern of systematic subjugation and exploitation. The victim takes the blame for his own predicament: if he isn't well-off, it's only because he's not clever enough. The question of why most things are owned or controlled by the elite is never raised.

Capitalism, development, and progress

Capitalism has only one goal: the increasing of a pot of gold into a larger pot of gold. National economic development is not pursued to provide general prosperity (as goes the cover story), but because it facilitates the growth of elite wealth hordes. This distinction becomes clear when we see capital migration to lower-waged areas (early: movement of cotton mills from New England to the South; eventually: movement of capital out of the country entirely).

Progress, says the myth, is about improving the quality of people's lives. In fact, progress is about continually scrapping one infrastructure (or product portfolio) for another—thereby allowing capital to go through another cycle of re-investment and profit- taking. Thus rail is superseded by highways, coal by oil and electricity, home-made by store-bought clothes, ovens by microwaves, main streets by shopping centers, small farms by agribusiness, family doctors by medical corporations, home remedies by high-priced pharmaceuticals, etc.

Such transformations do not always make even economic sense, but often require intentional elite intervention. Functioning intra-city light rail systems, for example, were covertly purchased (in several urban areas) and dismantled, by automobile-related interests, to be replaced by far less efficient, more polluting, oil-hungry bus and auto traffic.

Part 3—Word War II—America gains global control

Background of the war

World War II, it turns out, was largely planned and arranged by elite elements, primarily in the U.S., Germany, and Britain. Hitler began his rise as an operative of German military intelligence, and received funding and support from elite Western industrialists. While in prison, he kept a portrait of Henry Ford on his desk.

During the Spanish Civil War, the West kept the anti-fascist opposition disarmed, while it approvingly observed the efficiency of Hitler's growing war machine. American volunteers who fought against Franco found their patriotism questioned when they returned home.

One must keep in mind that the rise of communist and socialist movements created intense fear in elite capitalist circles. The fascist movements were welcomed as desirable bulwarks against popular democracy, which would naturally have involved less elite-friendly economic policies, with socialist leanings.

Mein Kampf made it quite unambiguous that the primary strategic objective in Hitler's mind was the subjugation and economic exploitation of Russia. By ignoring their own prohibition on German re-armament, and providing loans, the Western powers were in fact collaborating with Hitler in the development of an invasion force targeted on Russia—socialism's bastion.

Meanwhile, the West was watching with discomfort Japan's growing economic power and imperial scope. Japan was aiming to create a formidable Asian economic zone, backed up by a large, modern navy.

This was a significant threat to Western, and especially American, interests and designs. Not only would markets and investment opportunities in populous Asia be highly curtailed, but Japan would be dislodging the West from its accustomed role as collective master of the seas and arbiter of global imperial arrangements. And who knew what would be the bounds of this Asian empire? The aggressive expansionism of Japan seemed destined to force a war with the West, sooner or later.

America handled this complex situation with all the finesse and subtlety of a skilled marital-arts expert, guided by a strategic vision unsurpassed by the imperial masterminds of any previous age.

America orchestrates global domination

In the prewar years, Japan and Germany enjoyed credit and trade with the West, while their aggressive designs and military machines were allowed to develop. They were being given enough rope to hang themselves with. Then, as was completely predictable, Hitler became embroiled in a war with Russia and Japan became similarly entangled in China and Southeast Asia.

It was only after this anticipated scenario had unfolded that Uncle Sam unholstered his guns and prepared to take charge of the sequel. The traditional war-popularizing incident, in this case, was the inevitable Japanese strike on America's Pacific fleet. The incident- facilitating provocation, in this case, was the cutoff of Japanese oil supplies, which America convinced Holland to undertake.

When the incident occurred, President Roosevelt feigned surprise and outrage, and the most formidable, popularly supported, military crusade of all time was launched. The well-funded and well-armed G.I. was loose on the world, and because of the eagerness with which Germany and Japan had hung themselves in world opinion, he was welcomed as a hero wherever he went.

While Japan was contained by rear-guard actions, peripheral pressure was applied against the Nazis. The full-scale landing in Europe was carefully withheld, to enable Germany to keep most of its troops on the Russian front, so that Hitler and Stalin could decimate one another to the maximum extent possible. Only when Stalin turned the Nazis around, and began to advance toward Berlin, was the landing carried out. D-Day was obviously timed to minimize the Russian advance, not to hasten the demise of Nazism.

At the end of the war, America had managed to put itself in a position which was very close to total global hegemony. It had the run of the seven seas, an intact military machine and national infrastructure, a monopoly on nuclear weapons, greatly expanded influence in the oil-rich Middle East, and the lion's share of the world's disposable wealth and industrial capacity. Meanwhile, most of the rest of the world was in shambles, in deep debt, and/or under occupation. America had the prestige, power, and resources to guide the construction of post-war arrangements largely according to its own designs.

Hitler had threatened to conquer the world, and lost a generation of his men instead; Uncle Sam lost a comparatively minuscule number of troops, with no proclaimed territorial ambitions, and yet world domination seemed to fall into his lap.

Part 4—The New World Order—the elite scheme for global fascism

The Free World— a global playground for capital

Following the war, the Western elite, led by America, drew a line on the globe, separating the part they dominated from the part they didn't. The free world (doublespeak for elite controlled zone) was organized into a new kind of global capital investment realm.

Meanwhile the communist block (doublespeak for beyond elite control) was contained: ostracized, pestered around its periphery by provocative military deployments, and subjected to chronic economic destabilization by means of the arms race, expensive brushfire engagements, and trade restrictions.

America could have used its position of strength to establish a traditional American-centered imperial system in the free world, relegating Europe to a secondary position, keeping Japan underdeveloped, etc. Instead America implemented a bold new world order. The elite had grander plans for capital growth than simply a larger American economy. The old European empires were disbanded, and a seemingly democratic United Nations was set up, promising to maintain orderly international relations.

The free world seemed to be entering an era of national self- determination and democratic renaissance—a bright new day following the fascist nightmare. But the reality—as elite designs unfolded—turned out to be quite different from that.

Instead of an end to imperialism, as the propaganda myth would have it, what was introduced was a collective imperialism. Under a pax- americana military umbrella, an international economic infrastructure was established (IMF, World Bank, et al). Investment and trade were free to flow, for the most part, around the free world at will, without the territorial partitions traditionally imposed by a competitive European imperial system.

The result for the smaller countries (soon to be dubbed the Third World), was that they found themselves dominated by the capital elite generally, rather than by the enterprises of a single national power.

Megacorps—the elite's Frankenstein monster

This semi-homogenized, semi-pacified, investment environment enabled corporations (elite-owned money-multiplying machines) to develop orderly operations on a global scale. Thus arose the era of megacorps (aka: multinationals, transnationals)—mammoth corporations with wealth and influence on a scale comparable to some nations.

While Third-World countries became acutely aware that megacorps were becoming the autonomous overlords of the free world, the First World did everything it could to encourage their growth—they were seen as the agents of First-World economic domination, and necessary to maintaining home-country prosperity.

Megacorps are much more than simply large units of economic enterprise, capable of executing big-scale transactions over time. They are also significant social institutions—semi-autonomous global-scale societies—which provide to their employees sustenance, a sense of belonging, and a focus of identity.

Megacorps are also significant political and economic powers in their own right on the world stage. They increasingly have outgrown any sense of home-nation loyalty, view regulations and trade barriers as provincial interference, and see themselves as autonomous masters of the globe. Their needs and demands are more often than not the hidden agenda behind the policies of the Western powers.

The rise of megacorps must be viewed as an historically momentous development: the emergence of a new species of political entity, a species in direct competition with its ancestor species, the modern national state. Born out of limited-liability laws, nurtured in a capitalist culture, and lacking any natural bounds to growth or restraints on behavior, megacorps extend themselves as would cancer cells, poisoning and strangling their host planet in the process.

Megacorps, in the end, are capitalist investments, and their motivation, pure and simple, is to increase their own market value, on behalf of their absentee owners. This means that the primary drive of the megacorp species is growth. Unlike natural species, where individuals grow only to a certain size, and mating habits limit population to what the environment will support, megacorps are driven to grow without limit, and have no natural concern with whatever stands in their way.

Megacorps are cancer cells on steroids, expanding their dominance daily over commerce, communications, finances, public opinion, and governments. If allowed to continue on their current evolutionary path, megacorps threaten to become the dominant species on the globe, with humanity serving as ant-like cells of these larger organisms, and governments reduced to the role of subjugating the disenfranchised population, keeping them subservient to megacorp operations.

It is well to consider what would be the nature of a megacorp- governed world. In short, its slogan would be Feudalism locally, Gangsterism globally. Locally, the role of the employee to his megacorp would be much like that of a vassal to his lord in the middle ages: without rights, and serving at the will of his master. Globally, megacorps would interact with one another according to the dynamics of mafia bosses: usually cooperating, sometimes feuding, but always thinking about what collective scam they can engineer next.

Another word for such a system is fascism. Mussolini's original fascista were corporate committees who were given responsibility for managing aspects of the Italian economy—an early experiment with privatization. Hitler too emphasized corporate management, and made Herr Krupp Oberfuhrer of Industry in the Nazi realms.

The Neoliberal Revolution—the elite changes horses

For thirty-five years megacorps continued to spread their tentacles in the free world, pressure was kept up on the communist hold- outs, and the elite-controlled regions were increasingly consolidated into a tightening noose of international financial arrangements and dependence on megacorp operations.

Then in 1980, a new phase of elite power-consolidation was launched simultaneously in America and Britain, under the stage-management of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, respectively. This new phase was the neoliberal revolution, and its platform was lower corporate taxes, reduced regulation, privatization of public services, liberalization of international trade barriers, and the self- demonization of democratic political institutions —The only good government is less government became the official kamikaze agenda in both countries.

What the neoliberal agenda amounts to is a wholesale transference of power, assets, and sovereignty into megacorp hands. The thrust of government activity under neoliberalism is embezzlement on the grandest scale ever before attempted. Public lands, rights, responsibilities, and assets are being given into private hands at undervalued prices and without effective public oversight. Government itself is being dismantled, defunded, and prepared for the scrap heap. By rights, neoliberal government leaders should be indicted for conspiracy and high treason against the state.

What the neoliberal revolution is really about, is a declaration by the elite that nations are no longer their chosen tools of power, and that megacorps are to become their primary vehicle not only of wealth accumulation, but also of organizing global society. The elite are now making it clear, under the rhetoric of neoliberalism, that First- World nations and their populations are no longer to be privileged partners in the elite game—they are scheduled to come under the same kind of corporate domination that the Third-World has long been accustomed to.

To this end, international arrangements such as WTO, IMF, World Bank, NAFTA, and GATT have been set up so that economic, and increasingly social and political, polices can be dictated on a global scale by corporate-dominated commissions.

Global propaganda—exporting the American model

In its fundamentals, the neoliberal revolution is a replay writ-large of the American revolutionary scenario. On the one hand there is a propaganda cover story—modernization, competitiveness, greater efficiency, universal prosperity, reduced corruption—while on the other there is the unspoken elite agenda—firmer elite control, expanded exploitation opportunities, dismantlement of democratic institutions.

Just as the early American elite had overthrown royalty, today's global elite aims to dethrone nation states—the principal source of popular interference in elite hegemony. Democracy, the scam which unleashed capitalism, has now become a hindrance.

As happened in America, the myth-fantasy unfolds in the elite- controlled media, while the hidden agenda is being systematically implemented behind the scenes. The promise is to make the whole world a land of opportunity, but that opportunity is to be for elite investments, not popular prosperity.

The globalization of American-style propaganda was critical to the orchestration of this scenario, and thus Milton Friedman and his Chicago conjurers were dispatched to Downing Street to help sell the package. Neoliberal mythology became a global media phenomenon, with CNN, Hollywood, Murdoch, et al, deftly spreading the phony gospel of free-trade, government inadequacy, deregulation, and, as always, the American Dream.

A significant difference between the neoliberal and American revolutions, is the lack of propaganda emphasis on democracy and freedom. The promises are related to land of opportunity much more than land of freedom. The propaganda intent, here, is to portray neoliberalism as an economic movement, and to keep its political agenda hidden. Citizens are encouraged to assume that democracy is a fact of life, an unshakable institution, secure from any fatal dangers.

They are also, with mind-boggling irony, encouraged to perceive capital exploitation itself as a sign of democracy, particularly in formerly socialist states. As we watch those populations suffering under intentionally destabilized economies, while megacorps organize their own exploitive infrastructures, we are told that the people are slow to adopt to democracy.

The police state—public order under neoliberalism

Traditionally in democracies, police forces have been small, and order has arisen from the spirit of citizenship—This is our country, We are benefiting from its existence, and order comes out of following our own rules. Under neoliberalism, maintenance of public welfare is being abandoned—undermining public satisfaction—and nationalist ideology is being de-emphasized—undermining civic identity and voluntary compliance.

The elite is well aware that massive economic suffering and political discontent are an inevitable part of the megacorp future, with its obeisance to the religion of market forces, and its abandonment of citizen motivation via democratic processes.

Not surprisingly then, what we see growing up, in tandem with the neoliberal revolution, are police-state systems and an intense propaganda-myth campaign regarding crime, its causes, and its cures. More police, longer sentences, and more prisons are the elite's answer to the question of public order.

Third-World countries show where this leads: military dictatorships, systematic torture and killings, and suppression of unions, political parties, and non-compliant publications. In America, the First- World's most fully developed neoliberal state, we can see clearly how such regimes are to incrementally imposed on the First World.

The media plays its part by ignoring the obvious fact that planned high unemployment and the abandonment of national hope are the primary causes of crime and the erosion of civic compliance. In place of this obvious truth, is offered a mythology which blames the victims: they lack family values, they are lazy, they have a genetic predisposition to crime, they are habitual offenders—the only solution is to lock them up. How one can follow family values, when one has no family income, is strangely absent from public debate.

The nature of the penal system is rapidly changing in America, reflecting the anticipated further increase in social unrest, and justified by the propaganda mythology. A formidable prison capacity is being built—prison construction is the largest growth industry at present in the U.S.—and the concept of who the prisons are for is undergoing radical change.

It used to be the case that punishment was a response to a crime, and when the debt to society was repaid, the offender was expected to join the ranks of the responsible citizenry. Increasingly, prisons are being seen as a place to house certain segments of the population: those who can't or won't fit into society. That's what three strike laws and mandatory sentencing (and soon, preventive detention) are all about.

Under a neoliberal, megacorp-centered system, there are two kinds of people: megacorp members (employees, contractors, etc.) on the one hand, and the redundant, on the other. Without social services, the redundant become a starving, potentially dangerous under-class, and stiff laws and numerous prisons are being implemented as the final solution to this problem.

In a very literal sense, prisons are to be the concentration camps of the neoliberal regime—a place to isolate those redundant to corporate needs. Never wanting to waste an exploitable resource, the elite in America are now developing an extensive prison-labor system, renting out inmates to fill lower-rung corporate labor needs. Thus, in the land of the free, we see the development of a network of slave-labor concentration camps, without the fact seeming to reach public awareness. Again, fascism seems to be the most descriptive word available to describe the situation.

In terms of America's traditional class ladder system, what's happened is that the lower part of the ladder has been shoved down into the mud. As feudalistic social arrangements are being re- introduced by neoliberalism, there comes also a re-introduction of slavery, with, as it turns out, a familiar ethnic bias. It is disproportionately blacks who are confined to crime-likely life scenarios by corporatization, and it is largely blacks who seem destined to populate America's slave-labor prisons.

The Gulf War—America becomes the official elite enforcer

With megacorps evolving into the world's dominant political-economic- social institutions, and with their open grab for political power being reflected in the neoliberal revolution, the question remains as to how order in the world is to be maintained.

If nations are to be weakened—and especially if identification with nationalism is to be de-emphasized—then where are the armies to come from to maintain the elite-architected system? Nationalist spirit—with a feeling of everyone pulling together—has been central to modern war efforts. How can a disenfranchised, betrayed populace be expected to rally to the defense when the elite need their support?

And if strong nation-states are to be dismantled, whence will come the infrastructure to maintain systems of weapons and delivery? What will be the command structure, and on behalf of what political entity will military operations be carried out? And what about public opinion? Even though the police state will have the capability to suppress troublesome dissent, the myth of continued democracy requires that some degree of popular sentiment be roused for dramatic military interventions.

The Gulf War and its aftermath demonstrate clearly how the elite has chosen to deal with these problems. This war was a major historic precedent on several levels. It established new paradigms for global propaganda, weapons technology, blitzkrieg tactics, and international law. It established in the global public mind the principle that America has a justifiable global policing role, and it exported to the global stage America's traditional war-incident scenario.

Technologically, the war was in fact a field test of significant new blitzkrieg weapons systems. Precise night operations, stealth defenses, guided weapons, satellite navigation, cruise missiles, bulldozers as mass-murder devices, air-fuel explosives, uranium- weighted shells—an entire new generation of weaponry—were tested on a modern, supposedly well-armed, industrial nation. With almost no loss of life in the elite forces, it was demonstrated that Iraq's infrastructures could be systematically destroyed, and her population could be subjected to relentless terrorism from the skies.

This suite of technology and operating procedures solves the problem posed by the demise of strong nationalism, which formerly provided massive, motivated armies willing to risk their lives for freedom. By emphasizing hi-tech weapons, operated from safe havens—and by using blitzkrieg tactics—the duration of an intervention is minimized, the number of aggressor casualties is kept low, and the need for a large, non-professional army is eliminated.

The elite no longer needs public support for its military ventures, it only needs acquiescence. A gulf-style approach minimizes negative public responses, making acquiescence easier to achieve. But acquiescence is too important to leave to chance, and so the Gulf War also served as field test for a new generation of propaganda techniques.

Starting with the source of information itself, the propaganda was characterized by a complete lack of information regarding the objectives of the intervention, the targets of attack, the morale of the troops, the type of operations being carried out, and the behavior of the enemy. From this base vacuum of actual war information, an intensive PR campaign constituted the fare from which war entertainment could be constructed.

The war-provoking incident was a direct exportation of the proven American scenario. The incident was arranged, by an economically provocative policy by Kuwait, followed by a go signal from the U.S. Secretary of State regarding the invasion by Iraq. Once the incident occurred, outrage and surprise were feigned, and a world-wide media/lobbying campaign was launched to achieve UN approval of U.S. military action.

Once the approval was obtained, the U.S. then launched on a military campaign of its own design (the destruction of Iraq), and—as with the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution—the UN approval turned out to amount to a blank check, to be interpreted however the U.S. administration wished.

This Gulf-War precedent has established itself very firmly on the media-managed world stage. When the Bosnia situation advanced to the point where the U.S. wanted to jump in and manage the sequel, it was able to get its way with very little fuss. The U.S. has all but been handed the official title of Judge Dredd—judge, jury, and executioner of international law—and U.S. intervention, certainly not a new phenomenon, seems no longer to be viewed as imperialism.

The New World Order (NWO)—global feudalism & corporate overlords

These then are the essential elements of what amounts to an historic New World Order. Overall policies are to be set by non-elected, corporate-dominated commissions; the world's economy, information, and working conditions are to be managed directly by megacorps; and governmental function is to shrink down to administrative matters and police-management of the populace. All this to be enforced globally by an elite-dominated strike force built around the U.S. military and NATO.

America clearly has a unique role in this scenario. Partly this is because America has the dominant military power. But it also reflects the fact that America, compared to other First-World countries, is the most thoroughly captured by megacorp interests (recall Eisenhower's speech re/ military-industrial complex), and that the American people, in their habitual credulity, are the most effectively mesmerized by the media mythology they are fed via television. America is a kind of safe house for NWO operations.

Humanity on the precipice—is a second Dark Ages inevitable?

There is now a brief window of opportunity in which First-World populations could get it together and reclaim their paper democracies through intensive political organizing and the creation of broad coalition movements. Soon their governments will be disempowered and that opportunity will be lost.

Such an unprecedented peaceful revolution will only become possible if people generally wake up to the true nature of the threat facing them. Helping them wake up becomes a duty of citizenship for anyone who's managed to grasp the situation.